Peter Attia MD292 ‒ Rucking: benefits, gear, FAQs, and the journey from Special Forces to founding GORUCK
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,048 words- 0:00 – 1:21
Intro
- JMJason McCarthy
The best things that you want out of life require passion and energy and activity. You have to do them. W- we need to be people who do things. And the more that you do, the more confident that you get doing things. And this is a really important lesson that everybody has to relearn throughout the course of their life. And you have to keep doing stuff. The body is anti-fragile. The more that you work it, the stronger it, it, it gets. And, and that's an amazing, amazing thing that we have. And to not know what we're capable of is just a shame. And so let's, let's intentionally do these physically harder things than, than nothing, than just, you know, living our lives on phones or always wa- always standing to then sit, to never move. I mean, there's just so much freedom and there's, there's so much benefit that comes from, from your ability to move yourself and to carry weight, and you are built and born and have evolved in order to do this. You just have to kind of do it.
- PAPeter Attia
[upbeat music] Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia.
- 1:21 – 9:45
Jason’s upbringing and what inspired him to join the military
- PAPeter Attia
Jason, thanks so much for, for making time. I know you're here in Austin for some, for some awesome stuff that maybe we'll get to, but, uh, uh, always great to be with you in person again.
- JMJason McCarthy
Thanks for having me out to your podcast studio.
- PAPeter Attia
You know, people who listen to this podcast, especially for the past year or two years now, have heard me talk about rucking a lot. And, uh, I point back a lot to, to you and to Michael Easter, and of course, you and Michael are friends. In fact, I met you through Michael. So clearly, we're gonna talk a lot about rucking today, but I, I think, you know, for people to kind of understand what it is and all of the how-tos, I mean, I've got a list of all these questions that I know you're so facile in. Um, uh, I think maybe to, to put in context kind of your broader mission, it makes sense a little bit to kind of understand your journey. Uh, so, so, so maybe we can kinda start with some of that.
- JMJason McCarthy
Let's start. Where, where should we go?
- PAPeter Attia
All right, so you grew up in Florida. Um, you have a military background. Let's talk about how you found your way there and, you know, what, what, what were you doing in high school and college that ultimately led to that?
- JMJason McCarthy
Yeah, so I was born in Ohio. My mom was real young when she had me. We moved down to, to Gainesville, Florida. I was the unofficial mascot for the women's tennis team. Go Gators. And, you know, I kinda grew up like that, bounced around w- with my mom. And, you know, at that time, I- the military was not really a, a thing. My grandfather had fought in Korea. He was an artillery officer. Never talked about it, right? My uncle was a, a helicopter pilot. Talked about it a little bit, but I didn't see him that much. And so this was not something that was top of mind for me at all. I mean, the '80s was, you know, Wall Street and Gordon Gekko and all of that kind of stuff. And that's-
- PAPeter Attia
And how old was your mom when, when she had you?
- JMJason McCarthy
My mom was 18 and five days old when she had me.
- PAPeter Attia
Wow.
- JMJason McCarthy
So very young. And, you know, that's a very [laughs] ... That's a hell of a way to grow up. I became very close with my mother, you know, and just kind of went around with her everywhere.
- PAPeter Attia
Was your dad in the picture?
- JMJason McCarthy
My dad was and still very much is, yeah. So he's still in Ohio. Those are still kinda my roots. And both sets of grandparents were in Ohio. They lived a mile away. I mean, my parents were in high school together.
- PAPeter Attia
Mm-hmm.
- JMJason McCarthy
And, um, and so Ohio was always this kind of grounding thing, but it was because of my grandparents mostly. I mean, my, my dad, yes, and my, you know, my mom would go back. We'd visit Ohio, but, um, it was because of my grandparents, and they had an, an extraordinary amount of influence on my life.
- PAPeter Attia
In high school, what-- In college and whatnot, what did, what did you wanna do?
- JMJason McCarthy
Just to give you the, the years, I mean, I was in Jacksonville, Florida. I went to the Bolles School, which is a, a really, it's a, it's an athletic school. It's very competitive. And, you know, it was really, really hard. It was the hardest thing I've ever done was high school. And, you know, I've done-- I mean, it's just, you don't know who you are yet. The school was really hard. I mean, the English department just kicked my butt. And, you know, it just, all, it's coming at you. You have eight classes and it, it's, it's like I do not-- There's no part of me-- I'd rather go back to the Special Forces qualification course than go back and, and do a year of English [laughs] at Bolles. Um, but I played tennis. I played a little basketball. And so I was always, I was always into sports growing up and being really active. And, and so I, I just, I, I didn't know what I was gonna do with my life, though. I, I wasn't good enough to go to a big school and play tennis. I went-- I played D3 tennis at Emory in Atlanta, and, and that was great. That was a, a great way for me to kind of focus. It's easy for me-
- PAPeter Attia
What did you study?
- JMJason McCarthy
I studied economics and, and art history.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah.
- JMJason McCarthy
Which was a-- My grandmothers were both docents at the Dayton Art Institute, so, in Ohio, and that was just kind of an important part of how I, how I grew up in a lot of art museums in America and in the world. And so, um, so, you know, went to college, and then I graduated in May of 2001, and I, I did well in, I did well in college. I finally figured out the, the school stuff, and it, it turns out that if you don't live an hour from school and you're able to kind of focus a little bit more and, and there weren't these kind of distractions as much in life. Oddly, I was just kinda too focused in college, frankly. And so I played tennis. I did well there. I did well in school. And, and that's kind of what college was for me. And, you know, I, I remember applying to these places that people told me I should apply to, right? Pick your bank, apply to them. Pick your consulting firm, apply to them. And I, I had no real- I didn't know what any of that was, which I don't think most people do at 22, right? Like, what, what do you do at Goldman Sachs if you're 22? What do you do at McKinsey if you're 22? Well, i- importantly, you pay your dues. And so you have to figure out how to get into these larger organizations and, you know, I, I didn't know how to do that yet. And so I went and traveled around Central America and kind of backpacked a little bit and then came back and was like, "Man, I gotta get a job. I gotta do something." So I started working at this marketing firm, and I was in, working at a call center on 9/11 in, in Daytona Beach, literally across the street from the racetrack. And that was just the day that, you know, anybody that was alive remembers exactly where they were on 9/11, and for me, it was just this enormous kind of sense of sadness and anger that led to, to, to rage. And, you know, at 22 years old, military-age male with no dependents, no attachments, I mean, I felt compelled to serve our country. And, and that was a really important thing for me. Now, [chuckles] saying that you wanna serve our country and watching, you know, NVGs, the night vision goggles, and everything's in green on CNN and it's Operation Anaconda, and it's, you know, "Yeah, I wanna go do that. I wanna be that," you know? I mean, that's a lot different than the process of, of actually signing up to go fight in a time of war. And so I, I looked at all other kinds of places, the CIA, the FBI, the whole alphabet soup universe, went and started looking at all those. And, and you know what? Rightfully so, those places take a long time to get in. The, the application process is, is long. And even on the military, I mean, I'd just gone to college, so I have this big enormous brain, right? And I'm so valuable and smart and [laughs] and, uh, yeah, that's not how it works.
- PAPeter Attia
[laughs]
- JMJason McCarthy
Um, but, you know, everybody wanted to serve our country at that time. It wasn't something you just walked up and said, "Oh, I'm gonna be an officer," and pick your branch.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah.
- JMJason McCarthy
Like, there was a line a mile long of people, young people that wanted to serve our country because of what happened at, at 9/11. So without even a huge call to service, there was this, this call to service. And, you know, I just kinda, I remember reading... By now it's 2003 and I've started working at a bank in DC, and I'm still kind of applying to places, but I keep not, it keeps not clicking.
- PAPeter Attia
Uh, th- say, say more about that. I mean, we're a year and a half... What, what's happening in that year and a half between 9/11 and early 2003?
- JMJason McCarthy
So I felt really down in, in Daytona Beach and Jacksonville Beach where I, I was. I just felt really far away from what was going on. And, and so I had some friends that were in New York. I went and visited them in New York, and it just felt very communal in a very positive way. I mean, it was nice to be around parents and loved ones in Florida, but Ground Zero was in New York and the Pentagon was in DC, and it just felt like that's where the decisions were being made. It fe- it felt like that's, that was just such an important place at, at, at that time, and I wanted to see it. I mean, I, I went to New York in October of 2001. I mean, you can smell it still.
- PAPeter Attia
Mm-hmm.
- JMJason McCarthy
A- anywhere you were, you could smell it. And I can smell it sitting here in your office right now. I know what that smells like. And, and God bless the people that, that worked through that, and I mean, they just, day after day, they just pulled, pulled bodies out of the rubble. And, you know, I mean, I still get goosebumps when I think about, like, the amount of sacrifice and the service that went into that day and then to the handoff to the military. And I was just didn't know... I mean, the military is kind of a family business thing. It's, it's, you're, you're best served if you're familiar with what that looks like.
- 9:45 – 20:46
Jason’s path to becoming a Green Beret, his calling to serve, and staying true to oneself
- PAPeter Attia
Now, at the time, late '01 and most of '02, presumably, you know, anybody could walk into a recruiting office and join the Marines or join the m- join the Army or things like that, so not necessarily Special Forces. Um, was that something you were thinking of, or were you thinking immediately, or were you still at that point thinking, "No, I wanna be in the CIA or the FBI or something"?
- JMJason McCarthy
Yeah, so the, the full picture there was, uh, Johnny Micheal Spann died. He was the first casualty of, of the war, and he was in, um, the ground branch or the paramilitary side of the CIA, right? Now, he had come over from the Marines, and he was chosen for that mission. This was the John Walker Lindh prison uprising where, where M- Mike Spann died. And he had, uh, special language skills which gave him why he was given that mission. And, you know, they needed to kind of loosen the reins on some of the press around 9/11 at that time for various reasons. Like, people wanted to know what was going on, and his story was, in fact, a very inspirational one for me personally. And it, it's like, "That's what I wanna do. I wanna be on the tip of the spear serving our country like that." And so that led me down the path of the CIA, and it's a, it's a long process. I mean, I went through, I went through a l- uh, almost all of it. And, you know, it was just not... I mean, I was 22 years old and a very active person and, and I, I wanted to join the paramilitary side of the CIA. The CIA does not take people and turn them into soldiers. It takes very, very well-trained, highly experienced soldiers, and it plugs them into kind of a different mission set, and I didn't know any of that. So there was this guy that was interviewing me, and finally you get to one-on-ones, and there's more of those, and there's lots of those. And I'm in a, you know, one of the office parks in northern Virginia, and he looked at me and he was like, "Look, we don't train..." I kept asking about this. "How do I get this?" He's like, "We don't, we do not train people off the street to go do this. You need to go join, you know, the Special Forces or you need to do something like that inside of the military first and then come and work with us." And I'm like, "Okay, finally, a year later, here we go. We have our answer." And so I really doubled down on the officer route again because I felt like that's what I should be doing. And, and, and-
- PAPeter Attia
And just for folks listening, officer route because you have a college degree-
- JMJason McCarthy
Correct
- PAPeter Attia
... rather than the enlisted route for people, say, just doing this right out of high school.
- JMJason McCarthy
Correct. Exactly. And And so, you know, and there's far fewer numbers of officers. Those numbers are determined by Congress. You know, enlisted ranks, they can grow very quickly, and when you're fighting a war, you need to grow enlisted ranks very quickly. And so we were. And so fast-forward, and now there's the build-up to Iraq, which was also, I, I know what it felt like to live in America at that time. It was a very, started to become very divisive and all that, which put some strain on my process, my thought process, just because I, I joined up to go to Af- Afghanistan and fight Al-Qaeda. Um, but ultimately, you know, you don't get to choose when you're, when you're serving. You don't get to choose. And I just remember reading, there was the, uh, the Generation Kill series that came out in Rolling Stone, and it was written about the recon Marines that, that took Baghdad and that whole thing, and it was later made into, you know, TV series, movie, and stuff. And I was just like, and, and that was March of '03. I'm like, "Man, these wars are passing me by." Like before, you know, little did I know that they would go on so, so long, but it just felt like I, I needed to do something. And so I, I bypassed the officer route, and I, I started talking to the Army, and they had this program where you can enlist, and they would guarantee you slots into the schools that, that comprise the Special Forces pipeline. The only caveat is you gotta keep making it. And, and so, you know, there's a lot of different schools in that pipeline. And so it starts out with basic training and Airborne School and then a prep course and then selection and then another prep course and then phase two and phase three and phase four and survival school and language school and all sorts of stuff. And so you just have to keep making it through, and then they give you that little Green Beret, and you feel like you're king of the world.
- PAPeter Attia
And so they basically said you'll, you will, you will be able to rise to the level of your capacity.
- JMJason McCarthy
Yes, and you have to get lucky. I mean, you know, you, if you get injured, you get recycled. You get... I mean, anything's possible. But yes, I mean, and, and so, you know, part of the calculus is you, you look at, say, the, the Army, and there's a lot of infantry options. So say you go through basic training to be, to join the infantry. Okay, well, you're infantry qualified. You can serve in, you know, the 101st. You can serve in, you go to Airborne School. Okay, well, now you can serve in an airborne unit, the 82nd Airborne or whatever the case may be. And then once you get, like d- you can still fight, and that's what I wanted to do, was I wanted to fight. And you know, I, it's, it's odd because I was not a kid that grew up, I don't start fights. I don't, like, I wasn't just, you know, fist fighting every day on the playground or anything. I just felt, I mean, in every, every fiber of my being, I just wanted to fight for our country.
- PAPeter Attia
Wh- where do you think that came from? And, and I mean, you know, if you think about other kids you went to college with, college with who were in the exact same situation, they graduated right before 9/11, um, do you have a sense, did you, did you talk about this with any of those guys, and who were your friends in college, and did you get the sense that, you know, that any of them felt so compelled? And, and if not, why do you, why do you think this was sort of unique to you?
- JMJason McCarthy
You know, I have thought about it, and I don't really understand. I mean, out of our high school class, there were two of us that joined the military. My wife would join the CIA later and serve on the front lines in Africa as well, you know, the, um, but we were the three out of a cla- you know, this class of 150, 160. We all graduated in '97. We all graduated from college in '01. You know, in college, there was an ROTC program at Emory, which frankly I thought was a little bit odd. Now, uh, full, full story here is my grandfather, [sighs] you know, both of them kind of revered the military, right? At the same time, and, and in our country, they had both kind of worked really hard and been successful and, and, like, loved our, our country. And, and yet, you know, my grandfather, this is something that I don't think he got right, was he had this idea of, you know, after Black Hawk Down in Mogadishu with, with Bill Clinton, he was like, "Nobody should ever serve in this man's military." And I think that that's a very knee-jerk and a very human reaction to say when you don't like someone politically, but you always need people to serve this country, or else everything that we hold dear crumbles.
- PAPeter Attia
In other words, the, the need for service should be completely nonpartisan.
- JMJason McCarthy
Amen. And, and that's, it's not just the military men. I felt compelled to fight, but I'm, I'm a, you know, a military-age male that's been active my whole life who's, you know, predisposed to wanna do hard things and, and challenges and, and, and that's not more important or better than someone that wants to become a teacher. We n- we need both, and we need to celebrate both and honor both for what they do for us and our kids and our society and our way of life. And I, I, so I think it took kind of all of the data points in my life that brought me to that point, and I just, I really, I really wanted to do something special with my life, and I didn't know... It's, it's a scary time. How do you do that? Do you do that by joining Company A, B, C, D? The short answer is no, that's a stepping stone to something else. You have to learn. You have to push on life, and it's gonna push back, and you have to learn what matters to you and what doesn't. What are you gonna do, and what are you willing not to, what do you refuse to do, and for what reason? And you have to learn these things the hard way, and, and everybody's a little bit different. And just my life had brought me to that, that point, and it just happened to be four months before 9/11 and then 9/11, and then it took me two and, you know, over two years to finally join. This was not an immediate thing. A lot of cowardice baked into that whole process, you know? 'Cause it's, it was hard. It was really hard. And then, you know, keeping it secret from my family, my mom crying on the kitchen counter when I finally told her, like, "Yep, signed up to join the Army today." "Oh, that's awesome," like said no mom ever. [laughs]
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah. [laughs]
- JMJason McCarthy
Right? I mean, Iraq's on the front page news every night. They're, they're showing, you know, portraits of soldiers, sailors, you know, Marines who are dying in, in Iraq. Yep, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go fight. Like, that's not, that's hard.
- PAPeter Attia
Did your conviction waver by the fall of 2003? Uh, less about public sentiment, um, which, you know, I think even by the fall of 2003, public sentiment had not fully sort of, you know, shifted on Iraq. Um, but just in terms of your own thinking about, hey, you know, Al-Qaeda based out of Afghanistan, probably half in Pakistan at this point, that's where the fight is. Not sure I understand this Iraq thing. I mean, what, what was your thinking about that?
- JMJason McCarthy
Personally, I never really understood the, the, the buildup to Iraq. I mean, WMDs. I mean, and I, I never really got it, but I still knew, and, and this is something that I, I now have this litmus test about regret. I think that regret is about the worst thing that you can carry around with you everywhere you go in life. And, and I think that most of us know when we're going to regret something. We just don't listen to that voice that's inside of our head. And so I knew for a fact, politics be damned, I knew that I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't join up and serve our country at that time. And so all of-
- PAPeter Attia
That, that, that outshone any of the other potential-
- JMJason McCarthy
All of the other stuff. And it was hard. Once-- It's like you are joining up to go fight. You're not becoming an officer. You're going through this enlisted route to become a Special Forces soldier, intentionally going to fight on the tip of the spear, and we're about to start a, a, or we have started a second war on a new front, and it's, it's, you know... So what wavered was, "Oh, man, w- did I make the wrong decision? I can probably get out of this, and I can probably go join-- go, go try the CIA again. I can probably, you know, go cash in some favor from somebody somewhere and get an officer billet and, you know, be safer." But, you know, being safer doesn't always spare you from regret. And in fact, it's, it's usually just a way to delay what you know you need to do, which is the right thing for you and your path. And that was a really, really hard decision. In a lot of ways, it was a, it was an extremely selfish decision. But for me, for the rest of my life, I mean, I had to be willing to roll the dice a little bit at that
- 20:46 – 26:31
About the Green Berets: their role in the military, unique abilities, missions, and more
- JMJason McCarthy
time.
- PAPeter Attia
Tell folks where kinda Green Berets fit in the hierarchy of the military. Uh, I, I think people are sort of familiar with Special Forces, and people have maybe heard of Navy SEALs and Army Rangers and, uh, Delta Special Forces, y- you know. But, but I think for most of us, those things are kind of vague.
- JMJason McCarthy
Yes. So the, the main and-- The, the main difference between Green Berets and pick your other, pick your other, the, the SEALs, the Delta, SEAL Team Six, you know, the Rangers, is those are in essence strike forces. I mean, the Rangers are... and, and, and the Marines. I mean, the Marines take the, take the beaches, they secure the land, and then a bigger force comes in. It is speed and violence of action, and it's, it's they're doing it with other Marines. The, the classic mission for the Green Berets that people will remember is right after 9/11, a, a, a few ODAs, a few Operational Detachment Alphas, A Teams of Green Berets went into Afghanistan, into the boneyard of the Soviet empire, right? And instead of fighting as the Soviets did, which is more assaulters, more helicopters, more whatever, instead of just throwing more of our own people at it, we linked up Green Berets, linked up with the Northern Alliance and, and fought by, with, and through them in order to defeat the Taliban. And that happened in, you know, under three months. And so that is the, the sweet spot for what we in, in Army Special Forces, Green Berets are, are synonymous.
- PAPeter Attia
And, and historically, th-that w- how long had they been around? Had they been around since Nam? Had they been around since World War II?
- JMJason McCarthy
June of 1952.
- PAPeter Attia
Okay, so Korea, basically.
- JMJason McCarthy
Y- yeah, and Vietnam was very much a, a, a lot of the similar work was done with, with local indigenous tribes, the Montagnards in Vietnam, and it... I mean, this has been-- I mean, Green Berets are in 100 countries right now, right? And they're working with local forces. If you go to Africa, Green Berets are diplomats, right? I mean, you know, diplomats working out of the embassy is fine, but you've got-- I mean, who's, who's really controlling that country is the, the military, so you need military people to go and be kind of diplomatic with those people, and we do. We train, we train up partner forces, and then we get them to achieve our desired end state, our, our mission set. And so in the case of Afghanistan after 9/11, it was, you know, overthrow the Taliban-
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah
- JMJason McCarthy
... and do it with the minimal footprint possible. So you can send very few Green Berets in, and, and God bless the Air Force while we're at it because, you know, having air cover and that, that's a, that's a total game changer.
- PAPeter Attia
So where did you learn the skills that are clearly diplomatic, right? I mean, to be thrown into Afghanistan and realize that you have to now work with the Northern Alliance is very different from saying, "Hey, this is our show," right? Meaning our show, meaning like we're here to do this. Now it's we're working as partners to do this together. Um, was that explicitly, uh, taught? Was that part of the training, or are they selecting for that as they're weeding people out?
- JMJason McCarthy
So these were some of my cadre, my-- the, were the, the guys that were on those teams, you know, Triple Nickel, ODA 555, 595. I mean, like, those were guys that had just come back and were our cadre. Um, and, and so it is a part of the selection process, and I think that when you get into whether it's the military or business or anything, so much is determined by who you serve with. And, and what are you looking for out of the people? And so you need this strong culture, and yes, it's very much a part of, of Special Forces pipe and like, do you play well with others, right? And, and then there is a, a language component, like you have to be able to speak foreign language, which-
- PAPeter Attia
How long did it take you to learn a foreign language?
- JMJason McCarthy
So I already spoke German, so I, I passed out of the, that part of the language component, but that's because I'd also lived in Germany for over a year at that point and studied abroad and done all that, which is part of what you need to be successful. I mean, there is a... The, the culminating exercise of the Special Forces qualification course is called Robin Sage. It's a mock war spread out all over North Carolina. And you would insert, like we jumped out of an airplane with 125 pounds on a rucksack between our legs, right? Jumping out, and then you land, which is, hurts. [laughs] And then we rucked for 18-plus hours to-
- PAPeter Attia
With 125 pounds on your back.
- JMJason McCarthy
Yes. To link up with what is a, a, a guerrilla chief. Like a, a, it's, it's basically a warlord. And, you know, you're testing your ability to think in a gray area because the military is very doctrinally based. It's black, it's white, you know. If this happens, you do this. If that happens, you do, you do that, right? And this is a world where, you know, the, the warlords have malleable morals.
- PAPeter Attia
[laughs]
- JMJason McCarthy
And so, you know, you roll up, and this is your, your point of contact, and there's a, an execution that happens within four minutes of you being there. And this is, this is in the training environment. But this is real. I mean, this is exactly how it happens, and it's... And so you're just kind of, well, how can you not lose your cool? You lose your cool, you burn rapport, you're, you're done. You just... You, you have sacrificed the mission because of your dogmatic principles that you brought with you from America. And I mean, if you don't like that, don't, don't leave our shores and, and don't take this job because you have to learn how to, how to conduct yourself like that because you still need to work with them. If you don't work with the Northern Alliance, you're going to lose against the Taliban.
- PAPeter Attia
Let's talk
- 26:31 – 40:54
The mental and physical challenges of special forces training and selection
- PAPeter Attia
a little bit about the physical training. Um, I'll preface this by saying that I'm sure most people are familiar with what Hell Week is like for the SEALs and, you know, what the, the, the, the, um, what's their underwater demolition-
- JMJason McCarthy
BUDs?
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah, BUDs that they go through, um, for, for months leading up to it. Um, it's very interesting, by the way, I'll caveat this by saying I, I, I have three good friends who are former SEALs, and, uh, they're very much like you, which is to say they're, they're not these... They're not what people would expect stereotypically, right? These aren't, you know, uh, super aggressive individuals. Um, and I'll, I'll share with you a question I have asked them, and, and you can, I'm sure you, you might echo the same thing, which is, um, you know, what predicts a person's success going through that grueling physical, uh, series of tests? So I'll... And then the second question I ask them, 'cause these guys are all now in their 40s, 50s even, knowing what you know today, having the mental toughness you have today, could you physically go back and do it again? So I'll, I'll share with you their answers as we get into yours. But, um, let- let's go through what, what was physically involved in, in the most demanding part of that training?
- JMJason McCarthy
So if you, you see this stuff on the Discovery Channel, which I had seen as well, and you think that that's what it is. You think that the yelling and the screaming, which plays really well on TV, and it lets people think that that's what it is. Like, that part is laughable, and it's very s- it's very short. It was very, very... I mean, I'm talking that was hours out of years-
- PAPeter Attia
[laughs]
- JMJason McCarthy
... of training was, was yelling. The, the, the hardest thing that you're competing against is your own mind.
- PAPeter Attia
Mm.
- JMJason McCarthy
And so the rucking is the foundation of Special Forces training, just to answer the, the, the foundational-
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah
- JMJason McCarthy
... piece of this. And so I, you know, what I have done, what we have done at GORUCK is very much tapped into this. We've not invented this. We've not created it. And what I learned I owe to the people that taught me, and it's a tribal culture, and I'm, and I'm grateful that I was able to, to, to share some time with them in that regiment. And, and so I had no idea what rucking was when I joined the Army. I started out, you know, doing stuff in the gym on, you know, normal stuff that you would do with the mirrors everywhere and, you know, people and just like normal stuff, and then I ran a lot. I thought, "Okay, well, cardio, and I'll get strong." It's, it's better than nothing, right? You need to have miles on your legs, and you need to be strong, but it's, that is not what this is about. And, you know, you start out, I mean, Special Forces selection, ultimately, to be a great teammate, you first have to be a great individual. So they test you really, really hard to make sure that you're the type of individual that has, that has the, the ability to do really, really hard things and to not quit because the, the draw to do that is, is hard. But, you know, so you start out, and it's 45 pounds dry, meaning water doesn't count. Any consumables don't count. They weigh you when you get there. Don't be late, light, or last are the rules, and there's a series of checkpoints that you get throughout the pine forests in outside Fort Bragg at a place called Camp Mackall, and you're just doing land navigation route after route after route after route. You're plotting with map and compass. You have nothing.
- PAPeter Attia
And you're doing this alone or in teams?
- JMJason McCarthy
Always alone to start out.
- PAPeter Attia
Okay.
- JMJason McCarthy
Always alone. So you have to be a great individual first. And, you know, you start to learn stuff like, "Okay, well, if I plot this route, I gotta go through this creek. Oh, that won't be too hard. There's a draw." You know, anytime you get water, you get vegetation. When you got vegetation, it's gonna slow you down. There's thorn bushes and all this stuff. And You would get to, you, you get there and it's just so thick and you, you lose which direction you're going. You're getting all turned around, and you're trying to save two miles of walking around this, this draw, this heavy vegetation next to water because, you know, your feet hurt because you've got blisters because you've put so many miles on them already on uneven ground. And your feet get wet, which makes them harder and, you know, you don't... It, it's just like there's so many-
- PAPeter Attia
What would be a typical distance for that type of a navigation early on?
- JMJason McCarthy
I mean, you're doing, you know, overnight. I mean, it's... I don't know. It's a five-point, say, and it's gonna take you, I don't know, I'll just say six hours. Maybe more, maybe eight hours. I, you know, seems like forever. And you're, you j- but the thing is, is SFAS or Special Forces Selection, it's, it's three weeks. You're just doing this over and over and over and over. It, it doesn't stop. And so they're making-
- PAPeter Attia
And did they explain to you why? Did they say there's a physiologic reason why rucking is the foundation of what we do? Did they say it's this, it's simply the most efficient way to mimic what you will have to do in the field?
- JMJason McCarthy
There was zero of that. It was more, "You're here to be tested." It's silent. There used to be a whiteboard. There, there's kind of barracks and, and stuff, and everybody's in there, and there was a whiteboard. And the cadre would write the next hit time on the whiteboard. That's the only way that instructions were communicated. I mean, if you're looking... And, and the main point is if you're looking for someone to give you more information or to help you solve your problems, if you're looking for that, you're in the wrong place. This is not like the Army where someone's gonna walk around and make sure that you have everything. They're gonna weigh your ruck at the end of your, at the end of your iteration, and if you d- if, if you're 44.9 pounds, you're done. Adios. See you later.
- PAPeter Attia
Y- so you're responsible for putting the ballast in the pack?
- JMJason McCarthy
Oh, yeah. And so what, what we would do is, you know, there's rocks everywhere, which man, y- walking around on pebbles after being out and about and your feet are sore, and, and I don't just mean the muscles are sore, like the skin is sore. And you're-- You got shower shoes, so flip-flops on, and it's just... Man, I can feel it right now as I'm [laughs] describing this. Your feet are just shifting around and it hurts, you know? And, and you would take that, that gravel and you would put it in a little bag, and then you would use like fish scales. And they have them out. You can go weigh your ruck, and if you're dumb, you're gonna put 55 pounds in, and if you're smart, you're probably gonna put, you know, 47 in just because scales are different. And if two pounds is gonna be what undoes you, you got bigger problems. So you wanna make sure that you don't be late, light, or last, and so you always have to have that. Th- there-- It's a very-- It's, it's breeding this culture of autonomy, and the selection process is weeding out people that basically people self-select. This is-
- PAPeter Attia
Oh, so how many people start at that three-week, uh, selection process?
- JMJason McCarthy
Oh, shoot. Hundreds at that time.
- PAPeter Attia
And what's the attrition?
- JMJason McCarthy
I don't know. 20% make it maybe. I mean, it's, it's, it's a lot.
- PAPeter Attia
And of the 80% who don't make it across that three weeks, how many raise the flag and how many are, are, show up light or ca- they're trying but they just fail?
- JMJason McCarthy
I mean, most people self-select. They, they get out in the middle of... So they give you a flare, right? And you'd be out in the middle of your navigation. Say it's, it's at night. Night when it's cold or it's raining, I mean, the conditions of course matter. And when you see people popping up their flares, what that means is, "I quit." 'Cause the cadre then comes and gets them and puts them in the back of the pickup truck and, you know, takes them to the quitter's fire, which they conveniently locate right next to the where the people still going through the course are going. So they have, you know, the warm fire and all this stuff, and it's, it's like one of life's great like... Don't fall prey for that.
- PAPeter Attia
And these folks that end up quitting, what do they end up doing? Are they-
- JMJason McCarthy
They go serve somewhere else.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah.
- JMJason McCarthy
I mean, so honorably. You know, they would go to Alaska or the 82nd Airborne. And a lot of them would, were, you know, at that time they were going straight to war. And, and you know, I got a lot of respect for that. Like there's not... They, these are the people that are showing up towing the line. You can't know if you have what it takes to go through this until you go through it. Now, you talked about predictors of, of success. Yes, you need to be f- physically fit, say. You need to be able to carry weight and do all that. Whether you know you can or not, I didn't know if I could or not, but I kind of figured it out. Um, but really what it boils down to is there is no kind of predictor. Like you can't look at, at a lineup and say, "Oh, you were the high school quarterback, and you look like a, you know, a statue of what physicality should be." I can tell you that from my personal experience, those are usually the first ones gone.
- 40:54 – 51:51
Rucking challenges as a Green Beret
- PAPeter Attia
was... So, so the 45 Dry is kind of your foray into rucking.
- JMJason McCarthy
Yep.
- PAPeter Attia
As the training progressed, talk more about some of the rucking, uh, challenges.
- JMJason McCarthy
Yeah, so 45 Dry was uneven and kind of tank trails. So tank trails are basically sandy trails that tanks would go on, on, on, on bases, right? And those are... You can, you can make better time on those because they're not, you know, sloped and, and stuff quite as much. And we would have straight up ruck run competitions. I mean, and you have to meet certain time standards on that. And that is just you, and you have a, we call it a rubber duck, like a version of a rifle that you have to carry with you, which is just, you know, asymmetrical carry of, of s- several pounds for 10 miles or 12 miles or-
- PAPeter Attia
Carry that in your hands, not strapped on the pack.
- JMJason McCarthy
Yes.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah.
- JMJason McCarthy
Yeah. And so those were foot races. You know, the 45 Dry was also across, you know, just the, the pine forests and a lot of miles. And then, then you get into team tactics, and the team tactics means that you're carrying heavier machinery, heavier machine guns and, and stuff. So there's tripods. There's more ammo. At this point, it's, it's blanks in training, of course, but, you know, there's, there's larger machine guns. There's a SAW. There's, you know, there, there's stuff like that which someone has to carry. And so you're, you're dispersing the load a little bit across the team, but everyone's rucks get a lot heavier. So call it 85 pounds, right? And you're, you're patrolling much more slowly. You're learning what a wedge is. You're learning how to do ambushes and raids, and, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're getting to an attack point, and you're setting your rucks down. And, and then you're, you're going and you're going lighter to attack a target. And then you're, you're going back to your rucks, and then you're egressing with your rucks back on
- PAPeter Attia
And tell me about what the sacks looked like because presumably, you know, when you're carrying all of these trimmings, you've, you've gotta be strapping them on. So, so what does the base pack look like?
- JMJason McCarthy
I mean, the big green army ALICE pack. I mean, and it's, you know, everyone-
- PAPeter Attia
How much volume and how many liters is it inside roughly?
- JMJason McCarthy
You can f- like all of them. It's enormous.
- PAPeter Attia
Okay.
- JMJason McCarthy
And it's, it's, it's a really, really, really big pack. I mean, I don't know, 80, 90 liters. I mean-
- PAPeter Attia
Okay
- JMJason McCarthy
... it's really big. And it's, and it, it doesn't go above your head, so it's not like the big hunting packs or whatever-
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah
- JMJason McCarthy
... that you would see w- that, that goes above. It's, it's kind of on your shoulders. And then you also had this, it's called load-bearing equipment, this kind of, uh, like, almost like a vest of sorts, and it would have a, a belt on it where you would store other stuff, magazines and stuff like that, which kind of prevented you from using the hip belt on the ALICE pack, which was, you know, you just kinda get used to. And-
- PAPeter Attia
So you've got that big pack on your back. With or without a chest strap?
- JMJason McCarthy
Without.
- PAPeter Attia
And then no hip belt because you're u-
- JMJason McCarthy
There's kind of a hip belt, but it's not really a load, it's not a load transfer. And, and that's, that's also true in kind of, you know, the real world. I say the real world of, of, of combat. I mean, you have stuff on your front that you need. Putting all these straps and stuff, this sternum strap and hip belts and all this stuff, I mean, that's fine if you're gonna insert over a mountain to get to your target and then drop your ruck. Like, maybe you need to do that, but if you're carrying stuff on any type of an urban assault or anything like that, I mean, you have ... Like, I had my pistol, my chest rig was right here on my, on my chest, right? My, my m- aim at my, uh, magazines for my M4 were right here. Like, I'm not gonna unclip my hip belt so I can then get at my, my ammo. That's, that's not in line with the priorities of war. Like, you wanna get that ammo as fast as you possibly can.
- PAPeter Attia
So all of that load is on your shoulders.
- JMJason McCarthy
Yes, until you get into to what I talked about with the 125-pound i- insertion and stuff, and at that point it's, you're doing everything that you can to carry that load. Like, you're trying to just change it up so that the blood can flow to different places once you ... 'Cause if you jack it down on your hips, great, it'll give your shoulders a little bit of relief, and you jack it down on your shoulders, it'll give your hips a little relief. The blood, you can kind of feel it coming back to life. It's just such a great feeling as that happens. So you're just kind of adjusting it constantly.
- PAPeter Attia
So the 125-pound exercise, tell us what that was again. You were parachuting with that l- with that pack.
- JMJason McCarthy
So you jump in with that, which is, it, it's a team effort to kind of waddle to the, to the airplane and get on the airplane and kind of collapse back and sit down, and then you hook up, and then you're, you know, you're, you're jumping into, you know, the, an airstrip in North Carolina.
- PAPeter Attia
From what elevation?
- JMJason McCarthy
Not, not too high. I mean, I don't know, 800 feet, 1,000 feet. I mean-
- PAPeter Attia
So the, your parachute's coming open immediately.
- JMJason McCarthy
Yes. Well, so it's, it's not a HALO jump. So it's a static line jump, which basically means that y- y- you have your, your, your backpack at that time is your parachute, and you hook up into the side of the plane. It's like what you saw in Band of Brothers, one of the greatest series ever created. You see them hook up, and then as they're going out, the parachute deploys immediately. And your, your rucksack is off your belt, and it's dangling in between your legs. The issue is you, I mean-
- 51:51 – 57:27
How Jason trained in his off-time and stayed mentally prepared
- PAPeter Attia
So what workouts would you do on your own when you were at home for a month to stay in shape?
- JMJason McCarthy
So on base, I would go and park at the, uh, I would go and park at one of the gyms, which were always-- There's tank trails everywhere. It's kind of a thing. And so I would go on long rucks of varying degree of weight, right? And, you know, you're, you're also doing things like how do you harden your feet and keep them hard? Like Cliff Notes version is start out with, uh, thin, thin socks, right? If you develop any hot spots, wring those socks out or trade your socks and, and keep going, right? And, and don't let it develop until it gets blisters. But the hot spots will eventually turn into calluses if you treat them correctly. And when you go out into the field with calluses, I mean, man, you start getting blisters. Blisters have no kind of bearing on your physical performance other than that they go straight to your brain, right? Like this is so much pain. And you just start to think about it, and it consumes you. So you have to start to think about, "Well, how do I prepare my feet for this? How do I do this?" And so I just put a lot of miles in, and then I would do these mad dashes into the gym. I've never actually loved going inside of, of the gym. So I would put headphones in. I mean, this is back in the sort of r- you know, uh, ephedra-laden universe of, you know, pre-game, when pre-game was really pre-game workout. And I'd go in there just like a madman and just... I didn't know what I was doing, right? I mean, this, this was long before CrossFit started, you know, midway through the Q course, and that was an interesting thing. It was, you know, sandbags and pull-up bars and stuff like that. That was-- it's part of the training, though. And one of the guys came down. There was-- had these two instructions. It was Razor and Blade, right? Like awesome call signs. And he's like, "Man, there's this new thing called CrossFit. It, you know, and it is awesome high intensity training, and this is what you need to be the heroes that your country demands of you at this point. It is so good. It is so fast. We're gonna do one CrossFit workout, and then we're gonna go on a ten-mile run or a ten-mile ruck, and then we're gonna come back, and we're gonna do another CrossFit workout. That's how good it is," right? And it's like, "Awesome. I'm in." And it was so simple. It was sandbag. I mean, and you got everybody in, in this dirt field just rolling around in it, and it's, it's like, "Don't cheat yourself, man. Look around and see who's-- see if anybody's cheating. If they're cheating, you do not want to serve with them." I mean, that is motivation right there, you know? And so there was just this culture of, I mean, it is iron sharpening iron all the time, and you're around it all the time, and you start to, to, to just live like that. It's, it's, it's animalistic in a, in a good way. And, and so yeah, on my own time, sure, I would-- I swam a lot. I mean, I dedicated myself to becoming the best that I could be and, and 'cause I can control those variables. I can't control unconventional warfare. I can't control the, the problems that they're gonna give me. I can't control my perfect reaction to this or that. It's unknowable. I don't know what these things are going to be. But I know that I-- the best thing I can do is to set myself up for the, the optimum physical response that I have to anything. And I found that at times where I found some of the doctrinal things that they were teaching us to be a, a huge challenge to me. I mean, linear ambush versus an L-shaped ambush. Like, why are we doing this? I remember asking that question, and it was like, "Why don't you low crawl for the next hours until you come up with a good answer for that question?" And it's like, "Okay, got it. No more questions." Right? College boy, right? And so, like, some of these were really hard.
- PAPeter Attia
[laughs]
- JMJason McCarthy
But I found that I could make it up to the team by just being in great shape and carrying more weight longer and doing it with a smile on my face. And so that was the variable that, that I controlled. So I took up a lot of swimming personally. I, you know, at that time I was-- there was this, uh, kind of this hippie street in Fayetteville, North Carolina, called Hay Street, and there was this yoga studio down there. And I told nobody that I was going and doing... I was doing yoga every day when I didn't have-- when I wasn't out in the field. And I was doing it because I, I wanted to not get injured, because the volume of work and reps and just, you can feel it. You're getting sore, and it's, it's a thing. It's just a lot of weight and miles and reps and how can I set myself up for success? And so I started doing, getting my ass kicked by these, like, older ladies at this yoga studio. And I was in there and, you know, they probably knew I was in the Army, but I was trying to kind of camouflage that of, of sorts. I, I didn't want to talk about it by any stretch. And I was doing that just to kind of give myself a c- a, a little bit of an edge. At least for me, I thought it was an edge. And, and I think half the battle going into anything is to go in confident. If y- if you've cut corners, you know it. That's the thing. You, y- you know, the cadre's gonna find out, but you know it, and that burrows inside your brain. And then when something doesn't go your way, you start to play the what if game. That what if game is so dangerous. But if you've, if you've done what you can do and you show up ready, then, you know, the outcome is gonna be what it's gonna be. And, and so I was committed to that process, and I really am, am grateful that I had that opportunity to kind of see what I was made of, uh, according to a standard that I had nothing to do with establishing.
- 57:27 – 1:04:32
Jason’s difficult decision to leave the army, and the challenges many veterans face returning to civilian life
- PAPeter Attia
When did you finally serve? Did you-- When did you go into the field?
- JMJason McCarthy
So I joined up in October of two thousand three, and I earned my Green Beret in May of two thousand six, and then went to 10th Special Forces-
- PAPeter Attia
First of all, that's just, that's two and a half years.
- JMJason McCarthy
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
I mean, that's unbelievable how long that takes, right?
- JMJason McCarthy
Yeah, it is. There's a lot of... It's a lot of training that I got. It's part of the reason why-- I mean, I, I know how much I owe. You know? I'm not talking about taxpayer dollars, although I'm grateful for those. I'm, I'm talking about, like, the, the amount of knowledge that I got from the people who had gone and done amazing things and, uh, with, with, like, a human spirit that is burning so brightly. And for them to share some of that with me throughout my, my training and just to breathe some of that same air, I mean, I just feel like I owe. And, and, and I owe at least what they gave me and, and more. And, and so that was, I mean, sacred, sacred time for me. And then it got even more sacred when I got to my team. And, and, uh, you know, we deployed in two thousand seven, and we were in Iraq. And that was a really nasty time in Iraq. I mean, the surge was going on. Lot of, lot of guys and, and girls were dying. And it was... You know, I was not immune to questioning my own decisions and mortality and why did I do this and, and all of that. And, um, and then i- did make it through, obviously, and then, you know, came back and went on a tr- uh, we served in Stuttgart in, out of, uh, Germany. And then we also went down to Mauritania, the Islamic Republic of, and did, you know, work by, with, and through some of the partner forces down there for a period of time, which was great. And then I got out in late two thousand eight.
- PAPeter Attia
What determines when you're gonna get out?
- JMJason McCarthy
So my contract, my initial contract was five years. And what I expected was... You know, I, I remember these, these primarily men that, that served in, you know, say, World War II and stormed the beaches of Normandy. I mean, most of them served for a couple years, and they were gone for a couple years, and then they came back and they resumed a, a, a life. And they started, and they started businesses or they, you know, worked for a company, and they did these things. And I kind of, I never had the opportunity to really talk to somebody about what it was like or, or I didn't, wasn't able to even ask the right questions, even if I could have. But I thought that that's kind of what it was. I thought it was gonna be a, "Hey, check the box and go do this thing and serve your country and come back," and, you know. Then, then now, now I'll be ready for McKinsey and Goldman Sachs and pick your bank or your consulting firm, and now I'll be ready for my, my regularly scheduled life. And, and but this service to our country, it, it changed my heart in the process. And so that was the, that was the hard part about when it was time to kind of transition out. I mean, I had a five-year contract.
- PAPeter Attia
And what were the options if you chose to renew that? Could you have stayed right there in the field?
- JMJason McCarthy
Oh, yeah. I mean, and I-- You, you finally start to get good at what you're doing. You're not just trained. You've actually done. You've actually applied your training. And it's one thing to train for war, and it's another thing to, to fight in a war. And, and I don't mean just physically. The, the physical reactions are pretty straightforward To, to a, a large extent. I just mean the, the actual emotional contemplation of your own mortality and how do you function, uh, against that. Like, what are the quiet moments like at war when, you know, someone on another team dies or when, you know, your flag's at half-mast because, you know, an IED struck someone in the next town over, or whatever it might be, and how do you process that? And if you don't process that, you, you don't know what it's like, and, you know, so that's why, you know, going through that, I, I know what that's like, and it's not, it's not great. I also learned how to kind of draw strength and, and draw strength from my team and trust in my training and, and kind of fight through it.
- PAPeter Attia
What do you think it says about that processing that, if anything, speaks to the relative differences that people experience when they leave the military? In other words, um, when you think about whether it be PTSD or lesser versions of that, um, do you think that that has anything to do with how one processes grief in the field?
- JMJason McCarthy
I think that there is a... I mean, I, I think first off, Tribe by Sebastian Junger is a fantastic book-
- PAPeter Attia
Yes
- JMJason McCarthy
... on, on this. It's one of my, one of my favorites, and he is just a national treasure to me. The way that he has-
- PAPeter Attia
I agree
- JMJason McCarthy
... has brought so much of my thinking forward on this as well. It's not necessarily the problem of the soldiers, it's the problem of society and it just being so disconnected, and when you go from this, this culture that you're living and breathing in with these guys that you, you love, and I, and I, I mean love, and you're just so much a part of something that matters. You matter to them, and they matter to you at a very deep level, and then when you're, you know... your families matter to each other, and you're, you're motivated by the mission and service. You wake up, you know that you're doing good, and it feels really, really good, and when that infrastructure goes away, and there are other components to that infrastructure. I mean, the army and the military, I mean, everything's kind of taken care of. You know, there's housing allowances or there's housing that you stay in. There's chow halls. There's like, everything is just kind of i- i- it just kind of works, right? And you're in that, and you're allowed to focus on being a part of a team. And so my transition was, was extremely hard, and it's, you just lose a sense of identity, but practically, you lose kind of a structure. You lose a purpose. You lose friends.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah, I was gonna say, how many of your, uh, call it brothers really, 'cause that's probably what it is. How many of your brothers did you go from speaking with and seeing every day to not having contact with outside of the occasional phone call?
- JMJason McCarthy
That's right. Y- uh, all of them, basically.
- PAPeter Attia
So n- n- no one else you were close to was leaving at the same time in reasonable geographic proximity?
- JMJason McCarthy
No. Absolutely not. And, and I think that's a very-
- PAPeter Attia
That's probably normal.
- JMJason McCarthy
That's normal. That is the norm because, you know, you go back to where, where are you from then?
- PAPeter Attia
And now you've been five years completely removed from any of the normal structure of society. Your friends who you were probably close to before you went in have moved on. They've gotten married. They've had kids. They've been promoted.
- JMJason McCarthy
They've been at that bank for five years, and I've been, you know, [laughs] doing something different, and,
- 1:04:32 – 1:20:34
Jason’s struggles after leaving the army: loss of identity, feelings of shame, and the how he overcame a period of despair
- JMJason McCarthy
you know, I think there's y- I, I felt like I was quitting. I felt like I had-
- PAPeter Attia
When you left-
- JMJason McCarthy
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... the military, yeah.
- JMJason McCarthy
I mean, 'cause they went right back to Iraq, you know? And there was a... like I, I, you know, whatever was going on Iraq didn't matter, going on in Iraq. That, that's not what mattered. What mattered was this team that we had and our ability to serve together, and we were safer, and we were more effective, and we were, you know, better able to carry out our mission together. And, and so, you know, when someone removes, is, is removed from that, and, and this is, this is natural. I mean, people come and people go no matter what. But to do it of my own volition felt like I was quitting on my team, and that was a lot to kind of process because then, you know, there's the practic- the practical side of, well, you're giving up a job. You're giving up an income. You're giving up purpose, identity, and, and just the structure of, okay, you wake up, you do PT, physical training, in the morning. You go for a run or a ruck, or you lift weights, or you do whatever. I mean, there's a lot of camaraderie that comes out of that. You feel a lot better. And, and so I started to reject all of the things that I thought I didn't love about the army, the structure of, "Well, I'm never, I'm never doing PT again. Never gonna wake up early again," right? "I'm, I'm not gonna, you know, everything's gonna be just efficient-
- PAPeter Attia
[laughs]
- JMJason McCarthy
... and, and, you know, so optimized, and I'm in control of my destiny all the time now." And, and I think that, you know, for that, quote, "freedom," y- I gave up a ton. I mean, the freedom to, to, to go it alone is like, what's the point? Like, make sure that that's what you actually want. And, you know, it took me a while to kind of rebuild, uh, a group, a, a team of, of friends or people that I wanted to do stuff with. It took me a while to be kind of vulnerable enough to let anybody in, so I wasn't just kind of robotic about the whole thing because, like, I, I really didn't want to talk about the army at all. You talk about in your book, like s- like you would run away from diet questions. I would run away from army questions, right? So, you know, like grew my hair out and like, you know, would basically had a series of, if not half-truths, just full-on lies about not in, uh, uh, you know, just, "No, I didn't serve there. No, I like, no, I wasn't in the military. Let's talk about something else. I've been, you know-" ... filmmaking or I've d- I mean, it was just for my own kind of just because I didn't wanna talk about it.
- PAPeter Attia
Why do you think that was?
- JMJason McCarthy
Because I felt like I had quit.
- PAPeter Attia
So there was shame.
- JMJason McCarthy
So there was this deep, this deep sense of shame that wh- why would you get out when you're winning the Super Bowl, you know? Like, from this high mountain, like the opt- I mean-
- PAPeter Attia
So did you think about going back?
- JMJason McCarthy
Yeah. It's, it's, it's... I very much thought about going back, and the, the personal side was, was very complicated. My, my wife, who I married a year and a half into my time in, in the Army, we had grown up together, went to high school together. Finally knocked that cowardice as well. Like, things come in twos, so I joined the Army, and I told the girl finally that I loved her. And so we got kind of, the courtship was handwritten letters from basic training, [laughs] you know? And we eventually got married, and I told her about what I was doing before I joined up, and she eventually applied to the CIA and applied as a language instructor, and they were like, "No, no, no." And so they made her a case officer. She went to The Farm. She graduated The Farm and became a case officer I think five days before I became a Green Beret. You know, got put on a smoking hot plane to Darfur to help work on that issue, like, right after she graduated, and then was posted in war-torn West Africa, Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, for three years after that. So I was at c- Fort Carson, and then I was in, you know, Iraq, and she was in West Africa, and then I was in Mauritania. She actually visited me in Mauritania while I was there from-
- PAPeter Attia
Were you married at this point?
- JMJason McCarthy
Yes.
- PAPeter Attia
So was part of the reason that you left to also be with your wife?
- JMJason McCarthy
Yes, and I was gonna go join Ground Branch. I was gonna go back and finally join where Mike Spann had served in the paramilitary side of, of the CIA, and now I knew the people. You know? I mean, it's-
- PAPeter Attia
And you brought the skill.
- JMJason McCarthy
A- and I had, you know, quote, checked the box, and I, you know, I was very... I mean, I cried when I was driving out of Fort Carson. You kinda, they, they, you take a razor blade to your, your base pass. It's on your car, lets you kind of slide through a certain g- uh, uh, entry point so that you don't have to stop and do the same security as if you're a civilian, and you turn that in, and then I've cried all the way through Kansas, going back home to Florida to get on a plane to fly to Africa, and I was like, "What is going on?" You know, I just did not foresee that happening, and it was this very kind of loss of something. Like, it was a grieving process. And, you know, our, I, it's just at that point, Em and I had been married for almost five years and never lived together. I mean, that doesn't work. And so the, the thinking, like, she can't join the Special Forces, but I can join the Agency. I mean, having at least one boss of a company is, is easier to coordinate, and that was naive as well. I mean, that was s- it's really, really hard to make that stuff work. Those tandem couples, it's, it's nice in theory, but really someone has to be willing to kind of take a, a backseat, or else both suffer or both kind of are compromised in their careers.
- PAPeter Attia
So what happened when you got to Africa?
- JMJason McCarthy
It was about what you would expect. It was not perfect. You know? There was this kind of skip to the end and sat phone calls on top of a, you know, a bunker with mortars coming in to, you know, my wife in Africa on, you know, meetings of whatever she's doing down there and working 100 hours a week by Wednesday, and we had kind of just grown apart. And it was, I brought all of my baggage with me, which was I'm, I've given up everything to be, to be there. She, you know, was used to working and working and working. I mean, you know, case officers are measured in scalps, meaning how many people do you get, do you recruit that are, that are assets? And, you know, the harder you work, just like anything else, the harder you work, the more you'll achieve. And, and, uh, you know, the more you fish, the more fish you catch, right? And so, you know, she was, um, it's, like, hard to incorporate me into that. I didn't have a job, right? I couldn't really work there. The embassy had openings. The, the opening that they had was for a janitor, and I, like, I've plent- spent plenty of time cleaning the head. You know, I'm not above it, right? At that point in my life, I did not have the, I did not have the self-confidence to sort of, enough to say, "Okay, I'm gonna go from a Green Beret to being a, a janitor at the US Embassy in, in Abidjan." I, I just, I couldn't stomach that at that time. So I, I mean, I was back, shoot, I was there two months, and then I flew back and sleeping on a buddy's couch in New York, and, you know, we were trying long distance stuff kind of, and we met in Morocco. You know, the things that you do to kind of salvage something that's in the crash and burn phase of, of its, of its time. And, you know, I mean, there is a happy ending to this. Like, we, we did get divorced, yes. She came back to the States. We did get divorced. [lip smacks] Um, years later we got remarried. We have a great family, and we're very happily married, and I can't imagine life without her, and it, it certainly... That, that's the greatest failure of my life, and I don't, like it was-
- PAPeter Attia
What, what's the failure?
- JMJason McCarthy
Divorce from the, the, the girl that I loved my entire life and, you know, not making that work.
- PAPeter Attia
Do you think it could have worked? I mean, in that first, in that first version.
- JMJason McCarthy
I mean, uh, hypotheticals are a very difficult thing to sort of answer. I mean, there, there are scenarios where it could have worked. I mean, it was kind of hanging on by a thread, and then it wasn't, and then it's hanging on by a thread, and then it wasn't. I mean, the fact that it does work now to me is proof that yes, it could have worked.
- PAPeter Attia
Maybe. It's possible that it works so well now because you both lost it.
- JMJason McCarthy
It's very true. That's, that could also be true. It's, you know, uh, but I, I will say this, that I was used to doing pretty well at things, and it, it, going through that, I don't wanna sit and rationalize something and say like, "Oh, it's all good that this failure happened," right? I j- I just wanna say that the, the silver lining to it was it made me a lot more compassionate. It made me a lot more understanding that you don't know what people are going through, so be kind. It's, it's, it's a good thing to be kind to people. You just don't know. Because at that time, I mean, I have my whole new set of, "Oh, how are things going?" Like, "Oh, yeah, they're going great. Thanks. Let's move on, talk about something else." So then I just stopped seeing people and kind of became a hermit, and it was me and my dog and a country song and, you know, a bottle of whiskey, and that was not a healthy phase in my life at all. So 'cause then I'm out of the Army, I don't have a job, I don't have prospects for a job. I, you know, don't have a marriage anymore.
- PAPeter Attia
How are you supporting yourself?
- JMJason McCarthy
So I mean, I had a little bit of money saved up, and I was, um, I just didn't have a lot of expenses.
- PAPeter Attia
And, and presumably you could have... I mean, I'm sure you had a GI Bill. You could've gone back to grad school. I mean, did any of these other ideas entice you?
- 1:20:34 – 1:36:06
The origin of GORUCK
- JMJason McCarthy
GORUCK was in the background of, of all this. Emily had actually had the idea for it in West Africa. It was like, "Hey, you should do the GORUCK thing," because I had built her a go bag, right? Full of supplies and stuff for her to put in her car and one to put at her house, and it was just in case.
- PAPeter Attia
A go bag is a bag that when everything goes wrong, it's the one thing you grab.
- JMJason McCarthy
It's what we would put in the trunk of the Humvee because if our vehicle's disabled and we have to fight, we need more bombs and ammo and water and radios and batteries and all that stuff. It's just more supplies, and that's a good thing when you're, when you're fighting. It's-
- PAPeter Attia
Do you have a go bag at home right now?
- JMJason McCarthy
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
What's in it?
- JMJason McCarthy
Uh, it's mostly medical stuff. I'm gonna have some, some weapons as well, um, but that's, that's mostly for... I mean, what scares me or what I'm cautious about are these times of whether there's hurricanes or-
- PAPeter Attia
Mm-hmm
- JMJason McCarthy
... power outages or these kinds of things where it becomes lawless and, you know, everybody jumps on I-10 or I-95, and then people are running out of gas, and it's how long does that last? Who knows? And that, those are the kinds of things that kind of concern me. And-
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah, I think a lot of people, um, don't remember what happened during Hurricane Katrina, which-
- JMJason McCarthy
Mm-hmm
- PAPeter Attia
... people probably remember there was a real kind of delay on the part of the federal government in getting aid in there. And I don't remember the exact number of days, but it was surprisingly short as to how long it went from no power, no food, no water to complete lawlessness and violence. I mean, very short.
- JMJason McCarthy
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
Like, you're talking four or five days.
- JMJason McCarthy
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
Um, and you could make the argument that that's the most compelling reason for self-armament. Um, it, it's not the home invasion, right? It's not the, like, I'm in bed and someone breaks into the house.
- JMJason McCarthy
No.
- PAPeter Attia
It's the total societal breakdown that comes with a natural disaster or something like that.
- JMJason McCarthy
Yes. I mean, you're more likely to hurt someone that you love. Most people are more likely to hurt someone they love in this kind of there's a robber in my house situation. Just give them everything.
- PAPeter Attia
Yep.
- JMJason McCarthy
I mean, w- th- these are only things. This doesn't matter. Like, the idea that you're gonna shoot someone cold in your hallway, I mean, you have to be extremely well-trained, and you have to be able to target discriminate and make sure it's not a bad guy and ma- I mean, is this your first time in that kind of situation? If so, you're stressed. Like, go, go shoot with a heart rate of 160 sometimes. See how you're doing. It's hard. You know, in the middle of the night, you've just been woken up. Like, that's not, those are not my deep, dark fears. What I-- the worst case scenario are the natural disasters and, and stuff like that. So, you know, yes, we have a go bag, and we have a, a med pack in the back of our truck as well and stuff like that. You know, and our office is a safe house. We have a lot of stuff there too and a big safe and all that kind of stuff.
- PAPeter Attia
So you're making her a go bag and-
- JMJason McCarthy
We were trying to figure out what I was gonna do when I, when I was-
- PAPeter Attia
Got it
- JMJason McCarthy
... there in, in Africa. And she's like, "Oh, you should do the GORUCK thing."
- PAPeter Attia
But where did that name come from, GORUCK versus-
- JMJason McCarthy
So Go... I just kinda started calling it a go ruck to her. Like, a go bag, a go ruck, that, that was just what we, we called it. I mean, we had a, uh, an SOP, a standard operating procedures, for what would go in our go bags. I probably still have it somewhere, but I haven't looked at it since I was in Iraq. And, but I tailored it to what we had there, and I just used an, a, a surplus bag, an extra bag that I had brought with me. It's like, "Now you have this-"
- PAPeter Attia
Mm-hmm
- JMJason McCarthy
... right? Just in case. And it's better to have just in case and know where it is. And so what she meant by that was take the Special Forces way of life, and then I built, you know, one for her boss there and another person at the embassy. It was like, okay, well, I can fill a year doing this. That's fine. Upgrade people's home security and teach them a little bit about what to do just in case. And it just, the, the language was a barrier 'cause it's French. The, you know, the import/export business of using diplomatic pouches to send stuff to populate people's go... I mean, it just, it's... Building a business from scratch in West Africa as a diplomatic spouse was, I mean, your, your marriage better be on perfect ground, and you better be in there for the long haul. Like, the smash-and-grab year that I was gonna have doing that, like, was, would not have worked, but the idea sort of endured. And so I moved back, and I was just kind of still searching for something to do. I needed a hobby, and this became a hobby. And so I was like, "Oh, well, these bags are too military. I don't want anything to do with the military, so I need to make them less military but still awesome like the ones I had in the military." And so I put an ad in Craigslist New York City for a backpack designer and, you know, got a bunch of people that wrote in and found this couple that was in Bozeman, Montana, and that started a year-and-a-half -ish process of, of working with them on a couple prototypes, and then that led to incubating-
- PAPeter Attia
What were the specs that you gave them?
- 1:36:06 – 1:48:50
The GORUCK Challenge
- PAPeter Attia
[laughs] So tell us about the GORUCK Challenge.
- JMJason McCarthy
So it was led at... First it was led by me, you know, current and former Special Forces, and it was, "Hey, meet me at 10:00 AM at the, you know, on, on the beach in San Francisco. Details not forthcoming." Like, bring, you know. And-
- PAPeter Attia
And you were doing this through Facebook?
- JMJason McCarthy
Yes. Facebook, and then Tough Mudder had it on their site for a while. We were partnered with them for about a year until maybe we became a little too successful or something. I'm not sure. But that kind of faded, and... But then b- the hardest thing to do is go from zero to one. And so how do you... Y- you have this great thing, and, like, how do you break through? How do you do it? And I had so many other partnership talks and, you know, US manufacturing partners and all this stuff, but this was the one that ended up working because it, it, it gave me kind of a platform to fall back on what I knew, how I had been trained, which is, goes back to, again, how much I owe.
- PAPeter Attia
And so you would just travel around the country spontaneously popping up for a GORUCK Challenge?
- JMJason McCarthy
Like Tyler Durden.
- PAPeter Attia
Mm.
- JMJason McCarthy
Fight Club with backpacks. And so, you know, the overhead was me flying out there, and, you know, the business model was pretty simple. The, the cost of the Challenge was half the price of the rucksack, and you got to keep the rucksack. So if GR1 was $295, it was. The price to enter this event was 147.50, and you got to keep the ruck. And in the first ones, I brought your bricks for you, and I brought duct tape, and, you know, it was just like Here you go. Now make them disappear. They go in the rucks. And, and so just did that city after c-
- PAPeter Attia
How many people are showing up to these?
- JMJason McCarthy
The first ones were 20. I mean, the second one was six, and I had to beg four of the people to show up. So there was some element of I was taking pictures, and people were really responding to this 'cause it was, it was a very challenging thing. It was, it, it was not, there was no published route, there was no published course, there was nothing.
- PAPeter Attia
And typically, how long would a route be when you showed up to a place?
- JMJason McCarthy
So we, we kind of developed it over time, and I started bringing in some of the buddies that I'd served with, and it started out as five hours. That proved to not be long enough. It, the, the Tough, which was our original event, the Tough Challenge, it, it ended up settling in at about 10 to 12 hours, and we have all different kind of lengths now. There's a 24-hour version. There's a three-hour version and a six-hour version and, and stuff like that. But it's a team building event.
- PAPeter Attia
How, how is, how is the weight determined?
- JMJason McCarthy
So if, so it's, we've kept the same thing since the beginning, which is if you're 150 pounds or over, you have 30 pounds, and if you're 150 or under, you have 20. And in the early days, it was bricks, so six bricks or four bricks, and you had to put those in, in the rucks, and it was me or the, the, the Special Forces, uh, cadre going along with the group the whole time. So there was, it was not, there was no separation. It was a pure team event.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah, so, so how... I mean, that's... Okay, that's not a lot of weight, but it's enough weight that for somebody who is not necessarily in great shape, this is a hard thing for them to show up and do.
- JMJason McCarthy
So it's a lot more weight when you're doing Indian runs for, you know, what we call Indian runs. I don't even know what you call them now, sorry. It's, it's, uh, you know, 10 miles of that. So you line everybody up in, in rows of twos. You, you slap the ruck of the person in the back, and they sprint to the front.
- PAPeter Attia
That's what you guys do for the whole challenge?
- JMJason McCarthy
Well, that was part, and then you're stopping along the way and doing, you know, physical training. Now, it got more, and it, it gets a lot heavier when you start ripping logs out of forests and carrying them down Fifth Avenue, which we did. It, you know, you find a-
- PAPeter Attia
So, so again, my point then is even more dramatic, which is these are not things that people show up to do when they just wanna start to get in shape.
- JMJason McCarthy
No, and that was the exact idea. This was meant to be just this-
- PAPeter Attia
This is finishing school.
- JMJason McCarthy
This... Yes. This was meant to be an extreme-
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah
- JMJason McCarthy
... rite of passage, that you would show up, and you would, you would-
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah, I got it
- JMJason McCarthy
... you would do. The same way that how is confidence, how do you get confident? You, you earn it. You do really hard things, and you show yourself what you're capable of 'cause you can't cheat yourself. And so it started out as this thing, and people were just blown away. I mean, sitting in the parking lots or wherever their cars were or wherever when we were done, and people are just exhausted and so proud of themselves, and they're, they've made friends with these people that they had nothing in common with. I mean, we didn't care if you're, you know, Black, white, young, old, male, female, gay, straight, civilian, military. Didn't care. Ruck up and follow me.
- PAPeter Attia
So how many of these were you doing a month?
- JMJason McCarthy
I mean, it was every weekend, and so I would f- I would go somewhere, and I'd do a route recon Friday, and that was, you know, hours and hours. Like, where am I gonna find a log? Where's all this other stuff that I can do? What's closed? What's open?
- PAPeter Attia
And would you already post the start time the week before?
- JMJason McCarthy
Yes.
- 1:48:50 – 1:52:24
The company's evolution from event organizer to manufacturing specialist, spurred by the growing interest in rucking as a form of training
- JMJason McCarthy
And that, that was the foundation.
- PAPeter Attia
So it wasn't until COVID that basically the idea of using rucking as the training came about, if I heard you correctly?
- JMJason McCarthy
No. So it started much earlier than that.
- PAPeter Attia
Oh, okay.
- JMJason McCarthy
So people started asking, "How do I train for this?" And I was like, "Doesn't matter. Just show up and take your licks." Well, then they started to self-organize. They started to form ruck clubs around the country where they would just meet up, and people would go for rucks together. I'm like, "That's insane. Who does that?" You know? I mean, well, I used to do it, but, you know, that's insane for you to do it, right? And, and so they started to do that. And then they became kind of social clubs as well. It finds out that, you know, people are looking for... People are looking to be part of something bigger than themselves. They wanna be... They wanna find friends that wanna go do stuff. Not everybody just wants to doomscroll. Not everybody wants to... Like, going to bars is fine, but going for a ruck and then, then going grabbing dinner with the people that you, you know, that you talk to about your life and what matters to you, and you listen to what matters to them, that stuff is hugely important. And those are the lessons that I learned in, in SF, in, in Special Forces, and that's just what we saw from the community. And so it became this groundswell of, okay So people wanted to self-organize. I mean, if those are easy tea leaves to read. You know, this isn't me inventing something. This is people saying, "We want to do this independent of this company called GORUCK." And, and that is such a amazing thing to have happen. And so then we started building around that and saying, "Okay, yeah, let's-"
- PAPeter Attia
'Cause at this point, the company makes... The company is an event running company that provides a pack.
- JMJason McCarthy
Yes. We developed... I mean, it took two and a half years of figuring out how to develop the packs. We, we had, you know, internal sewers as well. We have a repair department called SCARS, which is where we offer our lifetime guarantee. I mean, we have the DNA of a manufacturing company as well. We just also have the energy of our own events company.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah.
- JMJason McCarthy
It's, it's kind of a weird thing that we still wrestle with a little bit. I mean, I, I don't, uh, on some existential level because I can't imagine a world without both, but it's, it's unusual. Usually a manufacturer will sponsor a race or-
- PAPeter Attia
Right
- JMJason McCarthy
... an event series or whatever, or, you know. But we developed this kind of both from the ground up out of necessity. And so it sort of turned into, "Okay, well, how do I train for this?" And then it was, "Okay, well, you know, what else can we do?" And so we started to make longer events and harder events and heavier events and, and lighter events and shorter events because you don't always want a 24-hour event like this or a 12-hour event like this. And so then it sort of started to be, "Okay, well, let's live that life." And then we have Rucks, and we developed the Rucker, which was a s- a pack specific for, for rucking, which removed the laptop because you could put a, a ruck plate in the laptop compartment. But what we found was if you do that at a GORUCK Challenge and you drop your ruck and the iron meshes with that zipper right there, it's gonna break it, and there's nothing we can do. No matter how well we build it, you can't do it. The zippers are the weak part in almost every piece of gear, no matter the gear. So we always use the best zippers, but you can't, you can't endure a crush load against a zipper like that. And so we, we removed that as a, you know, as a failure point for rucking and training and, and the Rucker was born. And so then we had cast iron plates, and we've been messaging that for a while, almost a decade.
- PAPeter Attia
Got
- 1:52:24 – 2:06:52
FAQs about rucking: packs, weight, rucksack vs. weighted vest, chest straps, and more
- PAPeter Attia
it. So let's talk about the training 'cause this is where I think people, you know, who've listened to this podcast or, you know, heard me talk about it, I, I mean, I've become a real fan of this. Um, and I've talked about how I, I sometimes I almost don't even include it in my tally of weekly exercise. If I'm adding up the number of hours in a week that I'm exercising, it's almost an afterthought to include the ruck, even though the ruck is, is a, is a great source of exercise. But I often talk about how I, I sort of do it as... I don't know. I think it's kind of like mental health for me, um, because it's the only thing I do without any other input, right? So if I'm in the weight room or on the bike, I'm either... On the bike, I'm listening to a podcast. If I'm in the weight room, I'm listening to music or something like that. But this is something where I'm decidedly never carrying a phone. Um, so I'm either just alone in silence, or I go... I'm doing it with, with a friend or my wife or something like that. Um, and I, I've really, really fallen in love with it, and I've yet to bring somebody on a ruck with me who hasn't kind of... If they haven't fallen in love with it, they've certainly come to appreciate why this is, this is a great thing to do, and they've gone out and bought their rucksack and things like that. But certainly I get a lot of questions, and so I, I kinda wanna go through some of these with you. So I guess the first question is, do you need a rucksack, a formal... 'Cause I have a Rucker 4.0.
- JMJason McCarthy
Yep.
- PAPeter Attia
My wife has a Rucker 4.0. Um, we have a spare Rucker 4.0 in the garage that if you come over, we basically have three packs to rotate, tons of weights to slot in all different permutations. But somebody listening to this says, "Man, I don't wanna spend 300 bucks on one of these things. Can I just use my backpack?" Seems to me the answer is clearly yes. You're just... It's just a little more convenient to use, uh, to use one of the formal packs that you guys make. Is that fair?
- JMJason McCarthy
The answer is clearly yes. You are correct. And I think, you know, look, the last thing I ever wanted to be was the Willy Loman of backpacks. I refuse to do it.
- PAPeter Attia
[laughs]
- JMJason McCarthy
I'm just not... That's not why I was put on this earth, you know? And, and so I think that people should be more active, myself included. Let's be more active. And so try whatever you've got. Don't wait on this, this purchasing funnel about, "Well, I, I'm gonna deliberate this because it's expensive, and I'm gonna wait and wait and wait. And maybe someday I'll buy it and do this." Don't do that. Go find a backpack. You have one at your house. Put 10 or 20 pounds in your back or whatever you want. Put a bag of rice. I don't care. Put some water. Go walk around your neighborhood. Cinch it down, make it kind of as tight as you can. And I'm reluctant to tell people to put too much more weight in it because that's where it gets more uncomfortable. And once you add too much more weight to something that's not built for rucking, it just... It's uncomfortable. It becomes a bad ride. And so then you're like, "Well, I hate rucking," right? And you can find a bunch of people that hate rucking, right? It's usually people that served in the military that, you know, carried a ton of weight, that got no sleep, that had to dig fighting positions when they got there. And, you know, it's, like, wrapped up into this whole kind of universe. I'm talking about 20 pounds, 30 pounds for pick your mental health, physical health, social health if you're talking to your, your wife or a friend or a, or a loved one. Start there. Don't give yourself any excuses that you have to go buy something because, because you have what you need to go get started right now.
- PAPeter Attia
My kids use their backpacks and schoolbooks.
- JMJason McCarthy
Great.
- PAPeter Attia
They'll come with me with... They'll... And it's just so cute to watch them load up as many books as they can put into their backpacks.
- JMJason McCarthy
That's great.
- PAPeter Attia
Um, okay, let's talk a little bit about some of the parameters around weight.
- JMJason McCarthy
Yep.
- PAPeter Attia
So what guidance do you offer to... Let's start with A person who is not that fit, but they're listening to this and they're like, "You know what, guys? I'm gonna give this a try." But they're not an athlete.
- JMJason McCarthy
Yep.
- PAPeter Attia
They're not, they're not capable of, you know, Herculean tasks at the moment. They can walk around. They could put in 10,000 steps of, you know, but, but that's about the extent to their fitness. How do you start this person out?
- JMJason McCarthy
I mean, 20 pounds, try it for a couple miles.
- PAPeter Attia
Okay.
- JMJason McCarthy
I mean, it, it, it's one of those things where you, the-- this is completely different from running in th- from the standpoint of if you are walking as part of your daily life, that is the same movement. You're, you're not doing this thing where there's all this different gait and, you know, new things with your Achilles or with your, the way that you land or foot strike or heel strike. It's so much simpler than that. It's just carrying a little bit of weight, and the thing is, is that your shoulders will get a little bit sore the first time. That's good. That's, that's how they get stronger. And so it, this should not be some crazy thing where you start out with, you know, a third of your body weight or more and you wanna really see what this is all about. I mean, start out simply. Go for a walk and see... I mean, it's so great to be outside. It is so great to, to kind of the sunshine and the wind and, and all of that, that that's, those are additional benefits. If you wanna start on your treadmill, start on your treadmill. That's fine. You'll get the physiological side of it at that point. But this is so simple. I mean, you'll, y- you get a little sore. If you wanna go a couple miles, great. Go a couple miles. Come back and try it again tomorrow.
- PAPeter Attia
And what kind of guidance would you provide as you escalate the weight and/or if you're a person who's already kind of fit and wants to add this in?
- JMJason McCarthy
So there are some, some variables here. There's the speed that you, that you ruck, and there's the weight that you carry and, you know, and then there's the distance.
- PAPeter Attia
And the, and the elevation, I suppose.
- JMJason McCarthy
And, and the elevation and all of this. And so, you know what I mean? This is y- you have to kind of listen to yourself or what are your goals in this. I mean, if you're training up for a hike, this is a great thing to do. If you're training up for a hunt, this is a great thing to do to just baseline, right? Baseline your, your fitness like that. And I mean, I just, I don't think there's any reason to go out of the chute too hard. I didn't. I mean, I started out with minimal packs and basic training, and that's kind of was the-- I mean, 45 dry was by the time I'd done a little bit of this and, you know, it's 45 on 200 pounds is still less than 25%. I mean, we're not talking... And I was in really good shape otherwise. So there's no shame. Nobody cares. I mean, it's like if you come to my driveway and you work out or we go for a ruck, I don't care how much weight you carry. If you ask me, "How much should I carry?" it's like, okay, great. Well, like, let's talk about your specific situation. If you're used to doing, you know, if you're used to carrying weights or if you're used to squatting a lot or if you're doing the things that, that are gonna kind of prepare you to carry weight, then great. Try 30 or maybe 45 if you're really fit. If-- There's no shame in start out with 30, go for a couple miles. What's the worst thing that happens? You're like, "Oh, I wanna make that a little harder." Th- there's, that, there's no problem there. It's just getting out is, is, is kind of part of the joy without such the, the pressure about, well, what's your bench press and your deadlift? How much exactly can you do? Just simplify it. Just simplify it all.
- PAPeter Attia
What about the, um, differences between a rucksack and a weight vest? So I used to use a weight vest to train for hunting trips, so I would put, you know, again, put, put it on my shoulders and go up and down hills with that. Um, but I know you've thought a lot about the ergonomics of this. So, so what are, what are some of those differences?
- JMJason McCarthy
Yeah, and it was fun to see you and Dr. Huberman going back and forth on this a little bit. I think he had spent more time with a weight vest and, and, um, that actually inspired Michael Easter and I to go even deeper into weight vest versus, versus rucksack. So a- an important thing is that weight vests are vital to the success of soldiers and police officers and those who are in those kinds of dangerous jobs. And so there's a component of train like you fight. If y- you need to be comfortable in a weight vest if, if your job requires you to wear a weight vest to do things like stop bullets. That's really important. What I will also tell you is that people that wear weight vests have typically terrible posture because of it. It is just kind of a compression downward that doesn't really open up. Like, there, there, there's less-- In order to breathe better, you have to kind of create this, this cavity of air in, in the front of your, your belly, which the more fatigued you get, the, the more that you do that when you're wearing a weight vest. And so you're kind of hunching over a little bit. It's, it's not good for what I would personally say you want your spine to look like this. If you can, you know, Dr. Starrett would say, "If you can-- You have to own your breath to own a pose." Well, rucking is no different. If you can own your breath, it means your shoulders are back and you can take a really deep breath while you're rucking. And, and so the, the, the weight vest is also, you know, it looks a little different than a rucksack. You can't quite blend in quite as well. This is getting into the aesthetics less than the, the physiological response. But the rucksack is more comfortable, and, and I say that from not the standpoint of I'm trying to, to live more easily. [chuckles] I say that from the standpoint of I can put my shoulders back. It's posture corrective for me, so it rolls my shoulders back when I cinch it down tight, which for me works well to maintain solid posture that is the opposite of, say, uh, lower back or neck curvature forward, which is more likely when you don't have that on your, on your back.
- PAPeter Attia
Now, one of the things that I remember from when we went out for a ruck, uh, last year was that you didn't use the chest strap which comes on the rucksack, and you weren't using the hip belt, which is an attachment you can buy for 20 bucks or something. Um, I've played with both of these. I also do prefer not to use the chest strap. I find it actually makes it harder to breathe.
- JMJason McCarthy
It does.
- PAPeter Attia
And so I actually prefer to have it wide open, which means there's a little more pressure on my shoulders, but that's a worthwhile trade-off 'cause I have unrestricted breathing. But I do quite fancy the belt. Um, and I just recall you weren't using either. Is that just a throwback to your days of the use case you referred to earlier, which is, "Look, in the military, I wasn't gonna wear a belt 'cause it would get in the way of me grabbing a magazine"?
- JMJason McCarthy
So I did grow up like that with my rucking, where we just didn't use hip belts. And you know what I mean? For a hip belt to f- there's a but coming. And, and the but is for, you know, the fit for me, when you start to transfer the load around your, your hips, it, it kind of reduces some of the stability that I have with the weight and the way that my shoulders go back-
- PAPeter Attia
Mm
- JMJason McCarthy
... and the way that I breathe. Now, when you get into very heavy loads, hunting-style elk loads or, you know, heavy military ammunition loads or something, I mean, I found that there's a lot of value in just alternating how you're doing it because you want the blood flow to go certain ways, and there's-- even when it's a shoulder-only carry, there's little tips and tricks to kind of just flex your shoulders around just a little bit so that you can get the blood flow to go there even a little bit more. Um, but I just, it's just not a comfortable thing for me, and so I don't, I don't use it. And what you find is that for the load to actually transfer can be at odds with how much you cinch the rucksack down.
- 2:06:52 – 2:13:54
Commemorating Normandy: GORUCK's plans for the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings
- PAPeter Attia
And so for you nowadays, how many events do you lead in a month typically or in a year now?
- JMJason McCarthy
I don't lead a lot of events. I do a lot more of-- I mean, I have people over to my driveway every weekend when I'm home, and, you know, people come over from the community, or we run events, uh, you know, out. Like, what it means to be a GORUCK event has certainly broadened. We've decentralized a lot of the, "Hey, work out like this. Bring the people together in the parks. Bring the people together in your driveways. This doesn't need to be so complicated, and go for rucks in wherever y- you wanna go." And, and so I, I do that a lot, but I, you know, mmm, I don't know. I probably only lead 20 events a year now.
- PAPeter Attia
You led one in Normandy, didn't you?
- JMJason McCarthy
I did, and we're going back next year in, in May and June for the 80th.
- PAPeter Attia
So tell me about the one you did. Was it for the 70th?
- JMJason McCarthy
We went for the 75th. So we have different kinds of events. The, the one that my wife and I did together, it is, it was a 75-kilometer ruck only, which, which was, uh, about 50 miles, and it started at Utah, and it ended at Omaha. And when you... And, and it passed through, you know, all the things that you saw in Band of Brothers, the cities, Pointe du Hoc.
- PAPeter Attia
Did you do it on the beach, or did you do it above the cliffs?
- JMJason McCarthy
You can't do it on the beach.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah.
- JMJason McCarthy
So you've got to go around to the cities and, and, and then around the kind of inlet, and then you come up, and almost at dawn, we were at the German cemetery, which is black tombstones, and you, you walk around, and, you know, it's, it's obviously it's, it's one thing to know that we were on the The side of right and justice, and God bless those, those men and everybody in our country that, that had any part in that war because we did right. You walk around that German cemetery and you see 16, 17, 18-year-old kids that are buried there. I mean, it's, it's just another perspective that you get from seeing that, especially s- that far in. And then you go to Pointe du Hoc and you see where the Rangers scaled that wall against-
- PAPeter Attia
Yep
- JMJason McCarthy
... those machine gun nests right there. I mean, I, it's just the amount of sacrifice that's gone into this. And then, and then from there, we handrailed the final piece from Pointe du Hoc to Omaha, which is my favorite rock on planet Earth, and it took us to, to Omaha, and then the American cemetery is there, and I, I think that's the most American place on planet Earth. And-
- PAPeter Attia
It's amazing
- JMJason McCarthy
... and I get goosebumps thinking about it right this second, and it's, it's something that to see what that, what they had to endure for that to happen, it is mind-blowing. And, you know, think not only of, of their passing, think of the glory of their spirit. It's in the, it's, it's at the American cemetery, and it's, it's hard when you're there 'cause it's a very solemn place, but man, there was a, there was a lot of glory of a lot of spirit there.
- PAPeter Attia
So you'll be doing an 80th anniversary there?
- JMJason McCarthy
We are. We're, we're running a lot of different events. So there's, uh, an 80-kilometer, roughly a 50-miler, again, probably the same-ish route, and then there's, you know, a 26.2, put on some 12-milers, do some commemorative hero workouts. We'll do some of our challenges of different lengths. We'll put on some scavenger hunts. We'll put on some stuff for the kids. We'll do... You know, so we have two chateaus right on the beach pretty close to Pointe du Hoc, and we'll be running stuff out of there. We have this really crazy long endurance event as well called GORUCK Selection, which is patterned after Special Forces assessment and selection. It's the toughest endurance event in the world. Its pass rate's sub 1%. It's the only event where we try to get people to quit. And so we're doing-
- PAPeter Attia
What is that event?
- JMJason McCarthy
It's 48 hours. It's, it's, uh, late May next year. We're doing it for the first time overseas. It's gonna be at Normandy. And it is, uh, it's, it's the dark side of GORUCK. But, you know, people ultimately wanted the, the, the biggest test they could possibly find. And so, you know, there's usually either... This past year, one, one person finished. The year before, zero people finished. The year before that, one person finished. And so it's, it's kind of a people come, and it's, it's aggressive. So that's the first event that we're kicking off with, and then we get into the, the more fun stuff that's, that's there.
- PAPeter Attia
80K doesn't sound like it's just pure fun stuff. I mean, that sounds pretty challenging.
- JMJason McCarthy
It's actually, that event is my favorite event to do as a participant. You have to put the miles in, you know, to kind of train up. I did it the first, the first time we ever did it, we did it in DC, and it was a torrential downpour. And man, I, I went in with a little bit too much pride, like, "Oh, I've been rucking for a long time." And you, you have 20 pounds, so you end up having 25 plus your stu- you know, including your stuff and, and I was like, "Oh, no, I'm, I'll, I'll, I'm good." You know? And man, I had to go to the well to pass that thing, and it was under 20 hours. I mean, it... You're rucking. You're not shuffling. You're not ruck running or anything like that if, if you wanna hit that kind of time hack. But the, the beauty is just it, it does kind of wear you down. It's, it's longer than you want. It's harder than you think. The 40-mile mark is about where you're like, "I'm ready to be done." But it's great to get the time with the person that you have there, and you get this, this... You know, what you'll find over the course of these kind of longer events is that it's, there's highs and lows for all of you, but they don't come always at the same time.
- PAPeter Attia
At the same time. That's right. Yeah.
- JMJason McCarthy
So you're there, and you need someone's help, and they help you. They just lift your spirit up a little bit, and, and then you in turn do that for them. I mean, it's like, "Hey, I got some M&Ms. You want some?" I mean, that can change your whole life, [laughs] you know? Just amazing. And so it's, it's little stuff like that, and it really brings you closer to, to the people that you're there with, and that was, that was a great, great experience. I don't know that we'll do it this year 'cause it's, it's a couple-
- PAPeter Attia
You won't do the 80Ks?
- JMJason McCarthy
Personally, I d- I, I think we'll probably-
- PAPeter Attia
Oh. Oh
- JMJason McCarthy
... choose, Em and I will probably choose a shorter distance only because we have a lot of events to also put on.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah, yeah.
- JMJason McCarthy
And that, that takes you out of commission for a couple days. [laughs]
- PAPeter Attia
And you do this right on June 6th?
- JMJason McCarthy
No, we do it in... We're there for basically two weeks prior.
- 2:13:54 – 2:22:37
Footwear for rucking, and how GORUCK got into the footwear business
- PAPeter Attia
Let's talk about footwear for a second because-
- JMJason McCarthy
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... um, this is something where, um, you guys have started to take this, you know, as kind of something you own now. Um, why, why, why do you guys make footwear, and, um, why do you think that the footwear you make is, is, is really good? By full disclosure, I, I wear your footwear, right? So I'm wearing, um, uh, what's the one I wear? It's-
- JMJason McCarthy
The Ballistic Trainers?
- PAPeter Attia
Ballistic Trainers is what I wear. I love both the high top and the low top. Um, about an eight-millimeter drop.
- JMJason McCarthy
That's right.
- PAPeter Attia
Supportive. Um- I have found, at least I found prior to wearing these, that I was destroying shoes. Like, I, there are certain minimal, minimalist shoes that I like, um, but, but I just felt I needed more support. But, but say a little bit about why you guys have taken the innovation in footwear really seriously. I mean, it's... You're, you're almost a footwear company at this point now, aren't you?
- JMJason McCarthy
We are.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah.
- JMJason McCarthy
So the-- an important thing happened was that I met a guy named Paul Litchfield. Footwear is, is a lot of dark arts. I mean, you cannot... The process of building footwear, there's a lot of chemistry involved, and there's a lot of dark arts. You can't do this. Uh, you can put-- You can sew a rucksack. You have some sewing machines and a cutting table. You can sew a rucksack together. You can iterate a million times. You can do this. Footwear is just way more complicated with lasts and molds and foam chemistry and all this stuff. And so, you know, I, I met Paul with Emily, uh, a long time ago when he was still at Reebok and, and he was running the advanced concepts group at, at Reebok at the time, and he had invented something called the Reebok Pump and, and been a shoe dog, you know, one of the, the foremost shoe dogs of, of his generation and still, and has sold over a billion pairs of shoes. So, you know, that's a lot, and there's a lot of expertise that comes with that to help navigate the dark arts, because getting into your own kind of, "Hey, I'm gonna start a shoe company because it sounds sexy," is a great way to build terrible product. Because you have to liaise with the factory and get the molds built, and, and there's just a lot that goes with it. So important was that we had someone who's a real expert, and I'm, I'm a really aggressive product tester. I hate everything till I kind of accept it, if you will, right? And then great art is never finished. It's only abandoned, right? And so there's always this kind of relentless pursuit of excellence, but you have to have somebody who is just dogmatic in their beliefs, that knows what they're doing, that is an s- subject matter expert, that has dedicated their life to this as, as a profession. And so without that, was unwilling to get into the footwear business. The reason why footwear is so important is that if you lined up 100 people who have spent-- who are masters of the ruck, most of them at this point would, would come from the Special Forces community, and you said, "What's more important, the rucksack or the boot?" I don't... 90-plus percent, if not all 100, will say the footwear. And the reason why is because when that goes wrong, it is just excruciating. I mean, Napoleon lost because of, you know, foot problems, right? I mean, you can lose wars. You can lose everything based upon the f- the feet of your, your soldiers. And if they're not doing well, it's really hard to do anything. You just, you're living on your feet all of the time. And so it turned into this kind of, yeah, we had some footwear in the military, and we were always just modifying it to make it more like a sneaker, but still supportive. And, you know, there's all this stuff in the civilian sector about, okay, well, minimalist and, and all... Like, you cannot go through the training that we went through in minimalist stuff. Your feet just need more support under that kind of load. And, and, and so we just kind of took the most beloved shoe in the military repertoire, which is the jungle boot, and we started there, and we made that ours. That, that was the, basically the boot that I wore in the Special Forces qualification course. We stripped away the weight. We, you know, we added tread that was lightweight that would still work with that, that, that most importantly will provide the support for your feet for all of the miles, and it lets you scale up the weight and the distance. And, you know, because this is GORUCK, we, we want stuff to last forever. I mean, it doesn't, but we want it to last forever, and that's how we build it. And, and so that's just in our ethos, and we're uncompromising about that. So we were unwilling to do it unless we could build best-in-class, world-class product, and we wanted to solve a real-world problem, not just a stylistic problem like, "Oh, this is gonna be a cooler looking shoe." That's a terrible problem to solve, right? The problem is you live on your feet and you're carrying weight of, of any amount, volume, distance, whatever it might be, and we need to build something around that. And, and that's, that's a harrowing task because there's all-- now there's all different facets of how people carry, and is it off-road or is it, you know, on trails? How did people grow up, you know? I mean, you look at how Born to Run kind of ignited that, the Vibram FiveFinger, which I call the FiveFinger death punch at, when I would see it at events, 'cause people would just destroy themselves when they would wear these because they're so unsupported with so much weight for so long. And, you know, people just don't know, and they, they, they are looking for answers. It's like, what's gonna work? And if you're carrying weight or you're living on your feet, you need supportive footwear. That's the deal.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah. I love my minimalist footwear, but, um, I have learned, I would say the hard way, that, um, that rucking is not the time for it. Um, my daily drive's about 50 to 60 pounds and, um, the, the amount of foot problems I was, I was having, especially someone like... I have very hypermobile feet, so that makes me, it seems, even more susceptible to injury on uneven terrain with that much weight. So, um, yeah. What... So, so maybe talk about the ballistic trainer versus the boot. Like, you have a couple of different models. How would you help somebody navigate those?
- JMJason McCarthy
Yeah, we do. I mean, you know, people do make decisions based off of how things look or how simple they are. I mean, we, we come from a Special Forces background, so we have stuff that's... The boots are inspired by, you know, our jungle boots that we used to wear. We just sort of stripped them down, you know. And then the ballistic trainers started out as kind of a, you know, the best garage gym shoe on the planet. And, you know, there was a little bit of, "Hey, how do we solve a problem that you can lift, push, p- pull, drag sandbags or barbells or stuff as well, but this is GORUCK, so you need to be able to ruck in them as well. And, you know, at that time, CrossFit had started out with a really minimalist drop for lots of different reasons, but, you know, I, I don't think many of them very good over the long haul. And we came in with an eight-millimeter drop shoe and said, "This also happens to be the best shoe for CrossFit," but for, for us, it's also the best garage gym shoe, and you can ruck with it and live, you can live in your feet with this ballistic trainer on as well. And, and you know, the, the drop does matter, so basically the, the, the rucking offset or the, the heel lift as it might be, and, you know, that's how you prevent things like shin splints and-
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah, and it keeps the Achilles a little bit safer. You take a little bit of that strain off it.
- JMJason McCarthy
The thing is, is that you can argue philosophical positions forever, right? Like, you, you should have a stronger Achilles and a stronger shin and a stronger foot, and the word should is not really very useful.
- PAPeter Attia
[laughs]
- JMJason McCarthy
The thing is, is that people grew up how they grew up, and there's a lot of asphalt, and people weigh what they weigh. And the more that you weigh, the more strain you're putting on your feet with every step, and how do you walk and, you know, all of those things. And so yes, I think it's important to, to actually strengthen your feet as well. You know, walk around your house barefoot. Do whatever, right? But when it comes time to perform and you have a lot of weight, you need to, you need to support... Your, your foot has three arches, and you need to support them all over a lot of dynamic movements, y- you know, pavement, uneven terrain, whatever it might be, and there's a lot that goes into doing that successfully. And so those-- the, the stuff that we build is designed for that.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah. I, I do most of my activity barefoot, but I don't do... You know, I, I, I take care of my feet when I ruck and when I do kinda my heavier carries and stuff like that, so that, that makes a ton
- 2:22:37 – 2:31:48
How to avoid the most common injuries from rucking, and the benefits of rucking for VO2 max, strength, and sleep quality
- PAPeter Attia
of sense. What are the most common injuries you see in people who ruck, and what are the steps that you recommend people take to mitigate those?
- JMJason McCarthy
I mean, you see a lot of... I mean, if you do it at lighter loads, you don't see a lot of injury, and you've seen this proven in Special Forces training. I mean, the number one cause of injury is running, and there's no close second. You know, lifting is number two, and marching is way down the list, right? I mean, if you-- The injuries that you'll see are usually from people that start too fast too soon with too much weight.
- PAPeter Attia
Mm-hmm.
- JMJason McCarthy
So slow down, reduce the weight, listen to your body. If you start to get shin splints, they're not gonna get better from doing more of the same thing, you know? So yes, you can ice and rest and do all this stuff. You can also just reduce the weight and, and the distance and the, and, and the time and, and put the variables that are like that. I mean, I... You know, look, my standard-- I have a 45-pound plate. I carry it often, right? It's, it's by the door at, at my office. It's by the door at my house. If I walk the dog, I ruck the dog. If I'm, if I can take a phone call outside, I put the 45-pound plate on, and I go walk around, I go walk around the neighborhood, and I take a, a phone call. Lets me kind of, you know, squeeze a, a few more hours out of the day that I don't have to dedicate to just fitness, you know? Um, some days I don't feel like doing that much, or some days I want a little bit more, and you just have to listen to yourself. I mean, look, if you start running with weight, you're putting a lot more strain on yourself, so make sure that you're physically able to do that. And you know, there's a middle ground that's a shuffle that is-
- PAPeter Attia
Mm-hmm
- JMJason McCarthy
... really, really interesting to me. And when I wanna do a little bit more and I don't want my knees to feel like I just went on a long run and I just try to keep my feet as low to the ground as possible, and I just move them as fast as possible, and I j- I just kind of shuffle, and my heart rate goes up a lot more. And you can really accelerate that pretty quickly. Now, the faster you go and the, the more that you gallop, the greater risk that you're gonna have of injury. So most people walking with 20 or 30 pounds, you know, you're, you're not really gonna see a lot other than shin splints if you're unready. If your Achilles starts to hurt, then dial it back a little bit. Get a little more ready or, or look at supportive footwear. If your shoulders are sore, right, then, you know, decrease the weight, or if it's, if it's a good sore, then that's them getting stronger.
- PAPeter Attia
Yep. I always find that in the winter I just ruck less 'cause I-- it's, for whatever reason, I, I enjoy the heat more.
- JMJason McCarthy
Mm-hmm.
- PAPeter Attia
So I have less motivation to go out in the winter. And I always find that when I really ramp up volume in the summer, that first week, I feel it in the shoulders again.
- JMJason McCarthy
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
But as you said, it, it's easy to distinguish a good sore from a bad sore. This is a this-is-foreign-to-me sore versus this is a this-is-causing-an-injury sore.
- JMJason McCarthy
So if you get too much weight, what you'll start to do is you'll start to lean your body forward, your upper body. You'll pivot at your hips a little bit too much-
- PAPeter Attia
Mm
- JMJason McCarthy
... while you're doing it, and you're doing that because you're trying to put the weight over your stronger muscles, and you're, you're kind of cheating. And it's kind of, you know, how Arnold talks about, "I don't care how many push-ups you can do. I wanna see you do 10 perfect push-ups." Like, master the movement first and then get into the miles and, and, and, and all that.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah.
- JMJason McCarthy
Like, do the movement correctly, and remove the ego a little bit about how much weight that, that you have, especially if you're starting, until you get comfortable or know what you're capable of and, and keep good form while you're doing it, and you're gonna reduce the risk of really anything. So that's kind of really a critical thing, 'cause if you start hunching over and stuff, you're kind of not... You shouldn't be doing that.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah. For someone starting out, what would be the frequency you would recommend they do it if they're starting out at a modest weight? Would you put any limit on it?
- JMJason McCarthy
I mean, it's so much is subjective around, well, what's their step count and, you know, do they work out otherwise? I mean, try a couple miles a couple times a week. I, I don't know. I really don't-- I probably need to just have a more strict, "Hey, this is exactly what you should do." But if you tried two pounds at 30-- two miles with 30 pounds and you're like, "Okay, that was cool," I mean, that's 30 minutes of your life.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah.
- JMJason McCarthy
I mean, you can do that a lot. You can-
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah, I think at light enough load, it-- the, the, you know, once you're in a cardio zone two or below, there's really no limit to what I think you can do in terms of frequency.
- JMJason McCarthy
I mean, yeah, so you're, you're the expert. What do you... I mean, that's y- that's my feeling as well.
- PAPeter Attia
I d- I, I never... So, so people always ask me, "Hey, Peter, when you're doing your ruck, is that a zone two workout for you?" And the answer is no. It's a zone one, zone four. But it's, it's never just-- I'm never just a steady state heart rate of 130 to 140. At least I just haven't-- The only way I can do that is the ruck shuffle.
- JMJason McCarthy
Mm-hmm.
- PAPeter Attia
So remember how we do our ruck and we end up at that track-
- JMJason McCarthy
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... at the school?
- JMJason McCarthy
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
There I can get into zone two. If I do a shuffle, I can titrate the speed of the shuffle to zone two. But walking here and there, my heart rate's either pretty low or pretty high when we're going up those really steep hills-
- JMJason McCarthy
Mm-hmm
Episode duration: 2:47:47
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