Transcript of David Goggins on Joe Rogan Podcast #1080

But what they don’t understand is they don’t understand the journey that it took me to get to this point. And what got me to this point was I was just the opposite of what I am today.

I was that guy who ran away from absolutely everything that I got in front of me, but not many people knew that. I had two people. I had the I I like, the real me was, like, this very scared, insecure, stuttering, got beat up by his dad, all this kind of stuff. And then I built this fake person that walked around like my stuff didn’t stink. You know?

You know? Right. Yeah. So that was that’s kinda how I did it. And I through process of time, I realized that I was lying to myself and lying to people.

JOE ROGAN: But that it’s a a fascinating journey though because you are that guy now. Right. I mean, you genuinely are legit badass. Right. And at one point in time, you were a a legit terrified person. Yes. So what was the process? Like, how did how did you step forth?

Childhood Abuse

DAVID GOGGINS: Well, it’s a it’s it’s a long process. Right. I my dad beat the heck out of me when I was growing up. We I I was the first black baby born in this hospital called Miller Fillmore in Buffalo, New York. My dad owned skating rinks.

He owned bars. He ran prostitutes from Canada to Buffalo, New York. My dad was a big time pimp, big time anything bad about a person, big time hustler. He was American. You know that that movie was, Denzel Washington. He was that, but not that bad.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

DAVID GOGGINS: You know, he wasn’t that big, but that’s what it reminds me of. He was that kind of guy and, beat the heck out of me, the heck out, you know, out of my mom. There was an incident one time when my mom got knocked out on top of the stairs, and he dragged me down the stairs by her hair. And at six years old, I’ll never forget this. In my mind, I I was always afraid.

My whole life, I was afraid, but I had this voice, this this conscience that would always be battling me, saying, hey, you gotta get up and do something. I didn’t want to do anything. You know, I was just afraid, but I would that that voice would force me to get up and my dad, you know, I try to beat him up whenever at six and I get my butt kicked. So this went on for several years. And I have a big time learning disability because my dad didn’t believe in us going to school.

So my dad, it was about the business, the skating rink and the bar. So the skating rink opened about seven o’clock at night, and this is the time I was able to walk. So about, you know, four, five, six years old, eight, nine. And I go to this, you know, skating rink seven o’clock at night, and I worked the skating rink until ten at night. And then we would scrape the gum off the floors, and we cleaned the whole skating rink up.

And then my dad had a office, and my brother and myself would sleep in the office. And my mom would go upstairs and work the bar until three o’clock in the morning. And then they cleaned the bar up. So after all that was done with, going to school rarely happened. So when I went to school, I was all kinda, you know, my my learning disability, I had social anxiety.

I was just a jacked up kid from living in this tortured home. From the outside looking in, we lived in an all white neighborhood, and then we would travel to the ghetto of Buffalo, New York where the skating rink was at. So we, you know, we worked around mostly blacks, and I lived around mostly whites, but no one knew what was going on in that house at on two zero one Paradise Road. You know, it’s it’s crazy. But, my mom got courage to finally leave him.

Moving to Indiana

When I was about eight years old, we moved to a small town in Brazil, Indiana, and that’s when the real war started for me. And Brazil, Indiana is a small town. Great people, a lot of great people, and I say that because a lot of people get offended. And I’m going to get to the point where they get offended. There was about maybe ten black families at about ten thousand people in the town.

And in nineteen ninety five, the KKK marched in the fourth of July parade. So this was, not everybody was racist. There was a lot of good people, so the best people I knew was there, but there was also a lot of racism there. So me being one of the few black kids in that, you know, in that area, you know, it it kinda haunts you. I had stuff on my notebook, you know, racial slurs.

They had that on my card, racial slurs. This is early nineties. And, so even though I showed it didn’t hurt me, it was jacking me up. So all the insecurities I have when I was a kid with my father, I’ve moved into this area here, and it just got worse and worse and worse. And it stuff haunted me.

And that voice that I talked about, it kept talking louder and louder and louder, and I was doing nothing about it. And I decided to make moves. And I cheated all through school, and it’s it’s kinda humbling to talk about my story sometimes, and it’s, it’s it’s also embarrassing, but, it’s real. It’s who I am. It’s it’s what I am.

It’s it’s what created me. And copy from the fourth grade to the to to my junior year in high school on every assignment. And I want to get in the military. I want to join the air force, and the guy gave me an ASVAP test. It was like a watered down SAT, and I couldn’t copy on it because the guy beside me had a test a, I had test b.

The guy on my right had test c. So I looked the copy on this test, and I couldn’t copy on it. So I got, like, a twenty, And I wanted to be an Air Force Pararescueman. It’s guys that jump out of airplanes and save down pilots. It’s a it’s a special operator in the Air Force.

And my score was so horribly low that I’d retake it again. And he said, hey. I got like a eighteen the second time, even worse. I need to get a fifty out of a ninety nine. And so my mom and I, for a while, we lived in the government subsidized apartments, dollars seven a month, and also food stamps.

And we slowly moved up to a two hundred and thirty dollar a month place, But at the time, you know, we’re, you know, pretty poor. But, my mom afforded enough money for me to go to see a tutor one one hour a week. So for four hours a month, I had six months to study for my last test. I’ve only take the asterisk test, you know, the asterisk test three times. And I studied my asterisk test and passed it.

Joining the Air Force

And I got in the air force and realized there was more things in front of me. I was afraid of water. Terrify the water. And, I learned how to swim, but what gets everybody in this training, in all special ops training, is the water confidence, where they try to pretty much drown your butt. You know, all of our lives we’ve been breathing.

And they take that from you, and they want to see how comfortable you are in the water. And there’s only one percent African Americans in special operations. And I didn’t know anything about African like, a lot of them are negative buoyant, which I am, because of the bone density. I I struggled. But, six weeks into the program, there was about twenty five guys left.

I have about a hundred and fifty. I was there, and I was never I didn’t go to sleep for six weeks in the program. And I wanted to quit so badly, but I quit everything in my life. I copied through school. I wanted to prove people wrong.

And so here I am in this air force program starting to get a little more confidence, but this water was kicking my butt and six weeks into the program the doctor gave me a blood test. It was I have sickle cell. Sickle cell trait, not the anemia, but it still killed people. But so they pulled me out of training for a week, and when you go from being very uncomfortable in that water situation, and then now you’re comfortable and I’m sitting back watching the guys drown, I’m not, you know, I’m not part of the activities anymore for this week, I don’t want to get back in that damn water again. So the fear overcame me.

All my insecurities from my dad, from this small town, from everything started coming back. And even though no one knew how messed up I was, kinda create this other person who was tough, I live with this stuff all the time. So me not wanting to go back in that water, the doctor called me back up. I thought I was getting, like, a like, a medical kick out of the military. So no quitting for me.

They’ll kick me out so I can have some pride. The doctor said, no, man. We’ll kick you know, we could put you back in the training. And I was like, dang. But after a week, I’m like, you know what?

I missed one week. There’s only three weeks left. There’s a good chance, you know, I could tough this stuff out and go on. But I went back to the CO and the commanding officer of the program and the sergeant said, hey, you gotta start from day one because you missed, you know, that that week of training. And I broke.

I broke. I I I couldn’t imagine going back through that again. So I made up a lie. And I said, man, the sickle cell thing is really scaring me. It was the water.

It wasn’t sickle cell. And and I pretty much quit. Even though they gave me a medical, it I quit. So, from the age of nineteen to the age of twenty two, I went and did a job called TACP, where you control fast movers behind enemy lines. Cool job, but there’s no water.

Gaining Weight

I was afraid of the water, so I avoided it. And, I gained a hundred and twenty five pounds in that time frame. I went from one seventy five to almost three hundred, to two ninety seven was my heaviest. And I started finding things that was comfortable. And the more things I found comfortable, the more uncomfortable my mind was.

Because that voice I was telling you about, it it always was there. I was just trying to avoid that conscience. I I wanted to be left alone from that conscience and it wouldn’t leave me alone. So I got out of the Air Force and I started working for a job called Ecolab, where you spray for cockroaches at twenty four and, spraying at different Steak and Shakes, Red Lobster, whatever, from eleven o’clock at night to seven o’clock in the morning. And what changed, I came home and watched this Discovery Channel show.

Class two twenty four, I came home from Steak and Shake, I sprayed it down last, get a big old large forty two ounce shake, walk across the street and get a box of mini donuts from seven eleven. And I would drive home for forty five minutes, this big old fat guy who yeah. I worked out, but I was fat. I didn’t run, didn’t PT. I I just hit the gym.

So, driving home, turn the TV on, and what comes on is scary channel so that’s where everything changed for me. I, was taking a shower. I walked out, heard these guys, and I watched the show. And it made me reflect big time on the piece of junk that I am, and I’m exactly what people said I was going to be.

JOE ROGAN: So what was on this show that really struck home?

DAVID GOGGINS: It was, I saw these guys going in the water, so I was terrified of it. I mean, I can’t even express have you ever had a big fear? And I know a lot of fighters have fears and stuff like that, but they get over them. But a lot of us have these fears that you just don’t want to fix. And, I have a lot of them.

Reflecting on Fear and Insecurity

DAVID GOGGINS: I had a lot of them. And that’s what created the person who’s in front of you today, and we’ll get into that. But, just a scared person is what I was. And I was watching these guys going through Hell Week, class two twenty four, and these guys ringing the bell, quitting, dropping their helmet down, rolling out. A lot of guys just leaving.

And it made me reflect on my fears, my insecurities. And I saw real men, what I thought were real men, who were staying, who were overcoming adversity, who were overcoming all these different things that I had blamed so many people in my life, my dad, my mom for not being there. When I was fourteen years old, my mom was going to get remarried to this great guy. He got murdered. And then I moved back to a small town in Brazil, and everybody was to blame.

My learning disability, my skin color, me being everything. And so, I sat there for a while and I was like, man, I got it. No one’s going to come to help me. It’s me against me, period.

Facing Fears and Making a Change

And, so I had to man up. And I said, the first thing I start doing is facing every fear I have. No matter what it is, man. And these things would keep me up and people who are hearing this, they will never really understand and grasp when you face these things and so many things, how they keep you up and haunt you at night.

JOE ROGAN: I think there’s a lot of people out there that know what you’re talking about.

DAVID GOGGINS: I mean, and, so that’s what it did. And I had two options, to either be that three hundred pound guy who sprayed for cockroaches and made a thousand dollars a month. And at twenty four years old, knowing when I’m fifty years old, I can reflect on this and think about what guy I never became, or I can totally just sack it up and fail and fail and fail until I succeed. So I started calling recruiters up. I said, I’m going to go be a Navy Seal.

The Challenge of Joining the Navy SEALs

And every recruiter so there’s a weight and height. So the weight and height limit to get in the military. And I was six foot one and two ninety seven, and I had prior service, which was a big deal. So I called all these recruiters up and all of them said, hey. How tall are you?

They got into conversation to see if I was even qualified. And by the time I got to my weight, phone would hang up pretty much, like, hey. You know what? Call somebody else.

You know, try to get in the reserves. So I tried to get in the reserves. And I called this guy named Steven Saljo, recruiter up, and he said, hey, come on in. He saw me, put me through the weight standard, all this other stuff, and to get into the class I had to get into, I had to lose a hundred and six pounds in less than three months. So I was like, I can’t do that. I grabbed my chocolate milkshake and went back to Ecolab. I’m going back to work, man. This is my life.

The Turning Point

So in this job, you’re looking for cockroaches, looking for rodents and stuff like that. And this next night, I went to work, and I hit the mother load of cockroaches. And this restaurant got full of cockroaches and rodents and everything else. And I sat there and said, this is my life. I said, this is my life.

You are exactly who this is it. And I said, this ain’t going to be it for me. So in that restaurant, I quit my job, left my canister in that restaurant, my spray canister, got back in my Ecolab truck, and I went home. And I started working out like somebody. I became the most obsessed person on the planet Earth.

Building Mental Toughness

And I was basically I had to invent a guy that didn’t exist. I had to invent a guy that can take any pain, any suffering, any kind of judgment, be called names, and be able to stand in the room and say, go away. I had to build this callous mind, and I built it through suffering. I built it through downright just crushing myself. If it was raining outside three o’clock in the morning, it was snowing.

The first instinct is don’t go out there and do anything. My instinct was we got to go out there. Anything that was horrible in my life that I would normally say no, that was inhumane to most people, I had to go do it. And I started callusing my mind at this point in my life. And I lost the weight.

Achieving the Goal

I lost the weight, and I went back to recruiter. I got into that class, and I went through three Navy SEAL Hell Weeks in one year. Only got to ever be in three Hell Weeks in one year to my knowledge. The first night I didn’t make it through, the next two, I did. And, that I just didn’t stop anymore from there.

And I started realizing through this process that the mind is what you created. And I started opening different doors that I didn’t think were even there, that I didn’t think even existed. And the more doors I opened up, the more I started realizing that my potential is damn near endless. And it changed my whole mindset. So I went from David Goggins, and I created Goggins.

The Brutal Journey

And that journey is a priceless journey that is hard for me to even explain to people because it sounds so quick and easy. Like, I just lost this weight, and I went through three hell weeks. I went to Ranger School. I went to Delta Force Select Center. Whatever it is.

It was brutal. It’s a brutal journey every day, and it ever goes, are you happy? If anybody knows my life story, and I’ll try to give you a just a snippet of it, where I’m at today is in front of Joe Rogan telling you my life. To get through where I became, to get through where I’m at now, there’s nothing but pride I have for myself that I can’t really show people. Because I have this face I have this face that they see, like, are you happy?

What’s wrong with you? I’m driven. I’m obsessed. And that’s what you see. That’s it.

JOE ROGAN: People need to hear the story. This is an exciting story for people because there’s a lot of people out there that feel trapped, and they feel stuck, and they feel like they can’t do anything if this is who they are. You’re a guy who felt that exact same way, but figured out how to not be that person and be a person that you would admire. How did you what were the first steps? Like, you had some slips before. Right? Because you quit because of the water thing. Right. But then when you went back the second time, you decided you’re going to lose all that weight and you quit that job. Did you was it just straightforward from there, or were there some days where you just failed and then you picked it back up again?

The Struggles of Transformation

DAVID GOGGINS: So my first run, when I decided to lose the weight, I was, like I said, two ninety seven. I was about thirty two percent body fat. And I went my idea was to run four miles for my first run. I didn’t know how bad it’s going to hurt me. I used to run before I was fat, and I was like, I can do this. I ran a quarter mile and walked home. I walked home and sat on my couch and cried. I went to my mom’s house who was about forty about maybe twenty minutes down the road and cried and get in her couch saying, man, I can’t do this. I don’t know what I’m going to do.

I, just got somebody pregnant. My life was just messed up. I was making thousand dollars a month. My rent was eight, ten a month, and my mind just kept with me. And kept you’re not good enough, man.

This isn’t for you, man. These guys are the best on the planet Earth. You’re not that. And, what it was, and it’s kinda funny, I was obsessed with Rocky. Rocky won in particular.

Finding Inspiration in Rocky

And when I was a kid, I come home every day, and I watch this show, Rocky. And I would fast forward with the little VHS tapes to round fourteen. Round fourteen messed me up like nobody’s business. Why? The song came on.

Right? So when I bought the pull up record, I listened to the song for seventeen hours. It’s two minutes and thirteen seconds. And I’m able to visualize and dream, like, nobody’s business. And I know that I can create a vision that many people can’t, and I work for it.

So the vision I had was when Apollo Creed beat Rocky, beat him, he kept fighting. He was a dumb fighter, couldn’t read, couldn’t that was me. Couldn’t read, couldn’t write, just punchy everything about him. And Rocky beat this or Apollo beat him. He was in that corner and everybody was saying, stay down.

And him getting up him getting up, Apollo Creed raises his arms up in the air, turned around, thought he won the fight. He turns around and sees this guy getting up, and it was the face of Apollo Creed that changed my life. The face of Apollo Creed. It was like, just by that guy getting up, not winning, just by him getting up. Apollo Creed was he was his champ.

He was the best. Rocky had taken his soul. Had literally taken his soul. His head goes down. He looks at him like, who what are you?

I want it to be that. Not Rocky. I want it to be the guy that people looked at. I don’t care if you like me or didn’t like I don’t care. But I said, this guy is going to keep coming after whatever is in front of him.

I wanted that. I wanted that. I wanted that worse than anything in the world. So that is I kept picturing me falling down and getting up and every person that called me names. I was dumb.

Even myself. Even myself. I wanted to feel something besides defeat. I wanted to just go to distance. And that going to distance pushed me to a point of where now I go way past the distance.

JOE ROGAN: So you go the first day, you run a quarter mile and then you walk back home and you’re upset. How do you how do you move forward?

Overcoming Self-Doubt

DAVID GOGGINS: So, basically, what I did was I came home and I had a talking milkshake. I sat down and I gave up. I said, this ain’t going to happen, man. I could lose a hundred and six pounds and I can’t even go a quarter of mile. I started being able to take negative stuff and be happy.

And this whole I say what if a lot, it sounds corny and it sounds weak, but it’s true. One of the recruiters said there’s not many black Navy SEALs. Matter of fact, I was the thirty sixth African American SEAL in history. It’s in over seven years because of the water, you know. Right.

I mean, people get mad at me. It’s true. Just get over it. And so I was like, man, what story would it be if my fat, dumb, lying to be friends with people, insecure self, can overcome this? And that what if mentality, like, that dreamer mentality just would always fuel me.

It would just fuel me, man. What if I can be what if I can be a SEAL, man? What what if I can go from we’re in a quarter of miles. Now now I run two hundred and five miles. What what what if I can go?

What just what if I can go? And and and what if how would that feel if I’m graduating? Can I just get at the graduation thing I was talking about, two twenty four, the like the video I sat down and watched? This train officer stood up and he said to the graduation, guys are graduating buds, like eighteen of them. He said, we live in a society where mediocrity is often rewarded.

And he went on to say something about these men detest mediocrity. And I wanted to be a man that detest mediocrity. It all it got me a lot of trouble in the SEAL teams and going forward in my life because I just I started looking down on people for not going hard as. And I started to create different things, but that’s for a different day. But I just believe that, you know, my whole mind changed.

JOE ROGAN: That is a problem that a lot of people who work hard do have. You get angry at people who don’t work hard to the point where you, you know, you want to insult them. You want to smack them. And it’s really because you’re scared of seeing that in yourself. Yeah.

That’s probably the truth. That’s probably the truth.

DAVID GOGGINS: So I guess a lot of times, I would see people, and it probably was a direct reflection of who I was. And I would get mad at them, but in reflection, it’s probably just be getting mad at myself.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. That’s for me, a hundred percent. When I see people that are half assing things, I get terrified of seeing that in myself and I get mad at them. Right. And it’s, it’s not a good way to handle it.

No. You know, but it’s it’s natural because you’re just terrified of seeing that trait. Right. And it cost me. So you come back.

You do the quarter mile. Right. You walk back home. How do you regroup?

Finding Inspiration in Movies

DAVID GOGGINS: So what I did, I sat down there and I put Rocky in. I got my milkshake, put Rocky. I said, you know what? I was big time in Rocky and Platoon. Why Platoon?

I love to see people who were getting beat down and there’s scenes that just drove me. And people in my hell weeks, you know, I was in three of them. They’d always hear me singing these songs. These songs, humming these songs in torturous situations when you’re when everybody’s quitting this cold. I would be somewhere gone.

Somewhere gone if somewhere dark as shit. There’s a scene in Platoon when Elias when Barnes shoots Elias, and, you know, they think Elias is dead, and the choppers are taken off. And Charlie Sheen is asking, you know, Tom Behringer, where is Elias? Where is Elias? William Dafoe?

Oh, I found him back there dead somewhere. And through the woods, the Vietcong is chasing Elias through the woods, and they’re shooting him in his back. And all he wants to do is get to the chopper. He’s getting shot in his back. He’s getting up.

He’s getting shot in his back. He’s getting up. And you see this guy just fighting. I love the guy who just fights. And so I put these things in as reminders that you’re going to have to suffer, man.

Changing Mindset and Self-Talk

This point two five, man, this is man, you’re going to have to suffer to to to to go from this fat, insecure person to one of the best guys on the planet Earth. This journey is going to take something that is going to be incomprehensible to most people. And these different visualizations, how I visualize them in my self talk, it became so nasty and dirty that I almost liked the fact that I went point two five. So it became from being defeated to, like, man, alright. Maybe, you know, maybe the more I can go point seven five.

You know, it just became this different mindset. I turned negatives into positives. So I would I would take it like, who who would even think about doing this? So I would sit in my couch saying, who at two ninety seven who can’t swim that great, who’s scary the water, would have the balls? Who had the balls to man up, quit a job, and go, and just put everything on himself.

So it’s how I started talking to myself and putting myself in a whole different category, and that would fuel me the next day. And I just kept using that as fuel and fuel. No one would do this. No one would do this. You’re the best around.

You’re the best ever lived. And I had to I just kept fueling me with the with with the right kind of message that I needed to hear that I was never telling myself. And through time, it became reality to myself.

JOE ROGAN: So you start out on the first day and then do you start running again the second day?

Adapting the Training Routine

DAVID GOGGINS: Yeah. The second day, we’re right back after it again. But I started realizing I can’t run that far. Right.

JOE ROGAN: So

DAVID GOGGINS: what I did was I became damn near a professional cyclist with the miles I put on the bike. So I never whenever I watched TV, I had to be doing something, so I was riding the bike. I rode a bike a lot. So to to lose the first initial kind of weight because my bones were just hurting so bad. My body was just broken.

And I learned to get over that also. And I tried to swim a lot. I wasn’t a great swimmer, but putting fins on kinda equalized my body. I wasn’t so negative buoyant. So I started finning a whole bunch.

And I spent hours in the pool, hours in the pool, trying to get more and more comfortable, not because I was going underwater. I was so scared of the water that I had to live in the water. I had to become one with the water. So going to the pool used to scare me. So I went to the pool an awful, awful lot.

Progressing in Running

And then the bike got easier. I was able to run more. I went from, like, one mile. One mile was a great accomplishment. Two miles, and then from two to three was a big, and then I went from three to six.

And then, like, they have a warning order that they give people to get ready for butts. And the whole thing was running six miles five days a week. And that was my goal. And so I just kept I failed, I go back to scratch. I used some positive motivation.

I have, like, one day where I’m, like, defeated. But I started realizing this is part of the process. This is part of the journey. I had to realize this is part of my process versus just saying, like I used to, I’m just not good enough. If I’m not good enough, we always say that. I’m just not good enough, and then we try something else. I’m going to make myself good enough. And that became my mentality. I’m going to make myself good enough. And so I misunderstood a lot, but that’s that’s all it came down to.

Pushing Beyond Limits

I made myself good enough. And the days I couldn’t run that far, the next week, I would do two a days. So like, on the running. If I ran a quarter a mile, I’ll wait a couple hours. It’d haunt me, bother me.

I try to run a half mile the next time. Same day. You can do more than this. If I had to walk, I had to walk. It just became just a process of grinding and grinding, and grinding is not even a good word for it.

It’s not even a good word for it. And just just going further and further. And then when I got through running, I go to the bike. I go to the pool. If I got tired somewhere, my legs are tired, I I go to the gym.

And I developed this crazy workout where I was doing volume, like, two, three hundred reps of, like, very light weight. People always say, how you know, how come you don’t have any, like, loose skin? My workout routine in the gym became sick. It became sick. I was just doing two, three hundred reps, four hundred reps on my chest, just like for one simple exercise, the bench press.

And I rack it, get back on it, just rep it out, trying to burn as many calories as I can, build that muscle mass. And I just became obsessed with it.

Pushing Through Physical Limitations

JOE ROGAN: So when you’re doing this, are you worried at all about repetitive stress injuries or the fact that your body’s not conditioned for this? And you you’re basically taking your body where you had abused it Right. And now you’re you’re forcing it to live like an elite athlete.

DAVID GOGGINS: Right. I didn’t care. I didn’t know any better. I didn’t think about it. Wow.

I didn’t I I I didn’t know that working out that hard would mess you up.

JOE ROGAN: Did did it mess you up?

DAVID GOGGINS: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: That’s one

DAVID GOGGINS: reason why I went through three whole weeks. So I don’t talk about a lot, but, the stress of my life getting to twenty four caused me to have some serious psoas issues. I I didn’t know anything about this. The psoas muscle is what we use. It’s your hip flexor muscle.

And, basically, under stress, it starts to tighten up. And I was I stuttered for from the time I was in third grade, the time I was in seventh grade, white blotches on my skin. I was just I was a nutcase. And so the insides of me are are also getting messed up. So in this process, my psoas muscle got real tight to my t twelve.

I can show you the bump in the back of my head after this show is over, but I had I started growing this, like, large tumor looking bump in the back of my head from my body compressing. So I’m six foot one, but my muscles were, like, five foot nine because I just started just the muscle tightness for my psoas going to my t twelve, I was just getting tighter, my quads, everything getting tired from just stress, just stress in my life. So the more I stress my body with the workouts, my lower body became out of balance. So I had a bunch of stress fractures, bunch of injuries going through BUDS, and how I got through BUDS was they gave me my third time, was my last time going through Hell Week.

Extreme Measures to Continue Training

I basically put a black sock on at four o’clock in the morning, and I would get duct taped. I had I had numerous stress fractures on both of my legs because my because my body was literally, like, coming in on itself. And my legs were, like, I was I was pronating it really bad and putting stress on my stress on my shins. And so I would put duct tape. I would duct tape my feet, and I would show you the top of them where I have pressure ulcers that were the size of quarters from, you know, how the ankle joint. So the foot goes to the shin and how you move this where the tape was so tight, it just created a nice ulcer right there.

And, I just, just kept going through it.

JOE ROGAN: So you just use that tape to just support your ankles?

DAVID GOGGINS: Right. So I basically cast myself. And for the first thirty, forty five minutes, the pain was excruciating, but then it would go numb. And Woah. I would go numb, and then that’s how I got through.

JOE ROGAN: Wow. Did that do any long term damage?

DAVID GOGGINS: I’ve yeah. I’ve been out for five years. So I retired from I did twenty one years in military.

I did time in the air force, and I did about sixteen years in the navy.

JOE ROGAN: How old are you?

DAVID GOGGINS: Forty three.

JOE ROGAN: You look like you’re thirty.

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s good. That’s good.

JOE ROGAN: You really you look very young for your age.

Long-Term Health Consequences

DAVID GOGGINS: Whenever I’m stressed, I get after it. I, fix I fix whatever bothering me. So I, basically, over the last five years, everything I’ve done in my life, I did it being very unhealthy. I’d I’d never talked about it. I just kept going.

And it cost me pretty much, I was choking my insides out. Adrenal issues, tons of adrenal issues, thyroid issues, anything with the endocrine system pretty much shut down on me. A lot my organs were pretty much shutting down. And I went from a guy who could run two hundred five miles to a guy who couldn’t get out of bed, and the doctors were trying to search what was wrong. That’s why I figured out the psoas muscle.

Here’s the edited version of the text with H2 headings added, key sentences bolded, and other requested changes made:

Health Issues and Medication

No one figured it out, and I I hit it by accident. So I’ve I’ve missed two days of stretching out in five years. And so what happened was all the stuff I did to myself, the stress I was under, physical, mental, all kind of stuff, it just choked me out from the inside and doctors put me on all kind of medication. And the medication started doing the exact opposite of what

JOE ROGAN: What kind of stuff?

DAVID GOGGINS: I was on, DHEA. I was on, some different things for, my estrogen, different things for my, I was on anything to do with your with, like, like, with your endocrine system. Oh, thyroid medicine. Good god. I was on cortisol, all kind of stuff to get my stuff in.

I had, like, this lump in my throat from, like, the heart was always I I couldn’t run down the street. My body was just jacked up. Couldn’t sleep. My whole body was just down, shutting down. I could give you a lot more than that, but just to give you an example, I was dying.

Reflection and Recovery

And so I couldn’t do anything. I went from a guy who was this guy to a guy who can’t do anything. And doctor’s like, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, man. You know, your labs are this. Is it PTSD?

Is it what’s what’s going on? I knew I wouldn’t need that stuff. So I sat in the bed one day, and I realized, man, my life is over. This is it. But, it gave me time to reflect on everything I had accomplished.

I had never taken time to reflect on the kid I was to the man I am now. So, honestly, the time I wasn’t working out, it was the best time of my life because I got a chance to really reflect back and be proud of who I became. I never took time to do that. It was like one after another. Get the after.

Get after. Get after. You ain’t good enough. Get after. Get after.

And, I got halted. So, anyway, this process went on for a while. More medication. This isn’t working. That’s not working.

Discovering the Importance of Stretching

No doctor can figure it out. I’m like, I saw this doc about eight years before this happened, and he was like, hey, man. You’re so tight. I’ve never seen anybody in my life as tight as you.

You need fifty thousand hours of stretching. He threw out some crazy number. I was like, whatever. Stretching, you know, stretch stretch is bad for you.

JOE ROGAN: So You

DAVID GOGGINS: thought stretching was bad for you? Bad for you, man. Why did you think that? I read some article. You know?

I you know? Oh, you know what, man? Stretching, man. You know? I worked out so hard.

I didn’t have time to stretch, man. I was I was running a hundred fifty miles a week. I was back into work, man. I was I was getting after it, man. I was working a full time job and, stretching and doing that.

So my body was literally getting tired and tired, not just from what I was doing, but they said, oh, because you ran this. No. It wasn’t that, man. And, so I said, you know what? I’m going to try and stretch out.

So I don’t do anything for, like, ten minutes or, you know, I don’t do a six minute abs bullshit. So I started stretching out one hour, hour and a half. Long story short, man, I shave my head almost every morning, and that bump that was on the back of my head, I started realizing it was shrinking for some reason. I don’t know why because I I shaved my head back, and I was like, it’s getting smaller. Smaller that bump got, healthier I got.

Smaller that bump got, I was like, oh, hold up. What what what’s going on? That’s so weird. Muscle started getting more and more stressed out, more and more relaxed. And over a period of five years, I’m in the best shape of my damn life right now from stretching out.

Wow. That’s all it was. I went from, like I can’t even count the medications I was on. Now I’m on a very low dose thyroid pill, period.

JOE ROGAN: Do you ever do yoga?

DAVID GOGGINS: All the time, man. All the time. And I I if I were to tell somebody one thing right now, man, that that psoas muscle and getting that hip flexor opened up, because we’re all stressed out. It was it’s so much worse than others. It changed my life.

JOE ROGAN: How do you say Nick Gregordias? How do you say his last name? The, Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt from, England, the Greek fella. He has a great quote about yoga. He said yoga is a martial art you do against yourself.

Yep. It’s a great way of putting it. A hundred percent. It’s what it feels like when you’re in there. Right?

DAVID GOGGINS: A hundred percent.

Recovery Timeline

JOE ROGAN: And so you how many years ago was this?

DAVID GOGGINS: It was five years ago when you could do anything?

JOE ROGAN: And how long was there a period where you couldn’t work out at all?

DAVID GOGGINS: There was about so I always try to do something, but I couldn’t run hardly at all. I could run maybe half a mile and all that hardship would happen, and my heart would get AFib and all all kind of stuff would happen. And I started just stretching, and, also, I tried to do pull ups every now and then, but everything was just I I didn’t have the energy. I didn’t have anything. I mean, nothing was processing right for me.

JOE ROGAN: So did did you think that you had just broken your body because you pushed it too hard?

DAVID GOGGINS: Hundred percent. I I I sat back in that bed that night, and I had a lot of time to reflect. I said, you know what? I was actually kinda proud of myself in a very sick, twisted way. I I even though people don’t understand it, I had to do what I had to do.

Ultra Running Journey

And, you know, and I did it. Like, I didn’t tell you how I got into ultra running. You know, there’s a lot of things that so I I I pushed it extremely hard. I I I went way beyond what I thought was capable. Like, my first ultra race I did, I was, I was heavier.

I was in Iraq. You know, the Marcus Sotrelle, lone survivor. I was in BUDS. I was in three hell weeks, as you know, as I said a million times, and I knew a lot of guys that died in the operation. I was at free fall school with Morgan Turtrell, who is his twin brother, during the operation web wings where Marcus Turtrell is the only survivor.

I knew Marcus Turtrell well, and I was about two hundred and some odd pounds, and I didn’t run hardly at all at this time. I I was a seal, but I was like a bodybuilder. And I did elliptical trainer twenty minutes on Sunday. All I did. So I did.

I that cardio stuff. I’m a I I was never about it until this happened. So that happened, and I was like, man, I gotta find a way to raise money for these families. So I googled the I I I I found a foundation, Special Operations Warrior Foundation, and I Googled the ten hardest races in the world. I knew nothing about ultra running.

The first I’d ever run was twenty miles at one time. And so what came up was the Badwater one thirty five. Hundred and thirty five mile run through Death Valley in the summertime. I thought it was a stage race. I know people can run a hundred thirty five miles at one time.

I had no idea what you mean a stage race. Where you run, like, twenty miles Oh. Camp out and then run twenty more till you get hundred thirty five miles. Right. So I went to Ultra Runner to know Ultra Runner was.

I called the race director up Chris Kaufman of the Badwater, and he said, are you Ultra Runner? And I was like, I don’t know what that is. He goes, have you run a hundred miles in twenty four hours or less? I was like, no. But I said, I’m a Navy Seal.

I was in three hell weeks. I was a Ranger. I gave him some resume. He didn’t give a shit. He said, I don’t care.

You gotta qualify for my race. And the deadline was up in two months for this Badwater race. And, basically, he said there’s two more races you can do to qualify, and I might consider you my race. We select top ninety athletes in the world, and you’re not even ultra runner. But I I like your cause.

I like what you’re doing. He said, I’ll call him up on a Wednesday. And he goes, there’s a race on Saturday in San Diego. San Diego one day, where you run around a one mile track for twenty four hours. How many miles you can get?

If you get a hundred and twenty four hours, I will consider you in my race. I did the math. It’s fourteen some minute mile. I can do that.

Dumb thinking. I’ll tell you that right now. It was rough. Worst pain I’ve been in my entire life was this race. So I have my wife at the time, she’s now my ex wife.

We go to Walmart, get a blue lawn chair, Ritz crackers, and Myoplex. That’s what I’m going to have for a hundred mile run. So show up at the start line of this race. It was the AUA national championships. It’s like the best ultra runners compete against each other to see how many miles you can get in twenty four hours.

And I’m this big body builder looking guy with a shirt off.

JOE ROGAN: How much did you way back then?

DAVID GOGGINS: I would say I was at least two thirty. At least it may have been more. Then jacked. Yeah. I would yeah.

I was ripped up. I would I they go chest. I’ll they I I was I was jacked up. There’s a picture of me.

JOE ROGAN: You definitely didn’t look like someone who could run a hundred miles.

The Brutal Reality of Ultra Running

DAVID GOGGINS: No. Not at all. So, basically, I start running, and I get to about mile forty, mile fifty, and I’m feeling pretty good. I get to mile seventy, and it was, the the worst pain of my life. I sat down in this blue lawn chair at mile seventy, and my the Ritz crackers after mile twenty became Ritz cracker balls.

I wouldn’t hydrate and correct it. I didn’t know what to do. I was drinking Myoplex for my nutrition because I couldn’t eat these Ritz crackers, have very minimal water if any at all, and I was just dying. So I sat down this blue lawn chair, and I was watching these runners go around in this circle. I was all dizzy and light headed, hadn’t gone to the bathroom.

It’s been about twelve hours. I’m at seventy miles, about twelve hours, which is good. And I looked at my ex wife now, and I was like, I am messed up. I started seeing, like, three of her. And once my body stopped, my mind just went off.

And I had to go to the bathroom. And the bathroom was, like, it was, like, twenty feet away from me, if that and I couldn’t. And so I sat there and peed blood down my leg and started cramping up my back and with thirty miles to go. I and my feet were broken. I was just in the worst shape.

Because once you stop running, not running like that I mean, I had it run-in almost a year. I was just doing bodybuilding stuff in twenty minutes on a lift with trainer.

JOE ROGAN: No running at all.

Preparation for Ultra Running

DAVID GOGGINS: I probably ran no more than fifty miles the whole year. That wasn’t my thing. I wanted to be like Jack. You know? I didn’t want to be cardio guy.

I wanted to be ripped, big, Navy Seal guy. And, and the day before this race, it’s funny, this guy named Joe Burns who put me through my hell weeks, a SEAL guy, he’s one of the hardest guys out there. He was in the gym the Friday before I did this race, and he was doing a full body squats, deadlifts, power cleans. I said, man. You know, he he’s the guy that approved me to do this race.

You know, he gave me the approval to go do this race and signed off on it. Saw him in the gym. I went in there and did a full body hardcore squat, deadlift, and everything with this guy. Because I knew he was going to come watch me in this race. So I’ve always been about, alright, man.

You’re going to see me come in here and jack this weight, and tomorrow you can watch me do a hundred mile run. What do you think about that? So, basically, I paid for it. So at my so he came out there with my favorite thing, chocolate, you know, mini donuts because he knew my story of of my past life and brought six mini donuts out there, and I had my hat pulled down. And at mile seventy, man, it was torturous.

Mental Toughness During the Race

And with blood down my leg and thirty miles to go, I, started reaching the cookie jars, man. I started pulling off all kind of stuff. I reached in my mind. And a lot of us, when we have bad times in life, even the hardest person where we forget how badass we are during that hard time, I have a thing where I take a couple seconds to reflect on, hang on, man, you’ve been through this, you’ve been through that, you overcame this, overcame that. I don’t ever close my mind to the fact that this can be done.

And I knew I had to get up. I needed nutrition. I needed hydration. I needed to get stop being dizzy. So that’s the first thing I did.

I didn’t panic on I had thirty more miles to go to get a hundred. I thought about the process. Slowly but surely, I was able to stand up, and I was literally hobbling around this track, just walking. No running at all. I couldn’t run.

My feet were in the worst pain. It’s the worst pain I’ve been in my entire life. Nothing in any training is even comparable to this last thirty miles. And what happened was my ex wife looked at me, and she’s like, man, you’re just we we agreed I’m not going to make the time. I was going way too slow.

And at that time, at mile eighty one, something clicked that I’ll never probably be able to do again when my mind, body, spirit, soul, everything just connected, and my mind knew I wasn’t around anymore. It knew I wasn’t going to quit. It knew that guy was dead and buried and gone. And I was going to die out here on this Walmart. For for whatever reason why, I was going to get through this.

I didn’t give a damn. It made no there there was no crowds. There was no trophy at the end. There was I wasn’t even in a race in my mind. There was it was nothing.

It wasn’t about nothing. There was no nothing. It was a bunch of people who didn’t know who I was, and it was me against me. And I used all these different dark places to start bringing out light and just going deeper and deeper. And it run the next twenty miles.

Completing the Race and Aftermath

I I ran a hundred and one miles, and I ran the next twenty miles, ran at about a ten thirty pace. And I did a hundred and one miles in eighteen hours and fifty six minutes, sat back down in that blue porta potty, now my chair that I got from Walmart, and that’s when the body realized I was done. And this great feeling came over me, but also the worst pain in my life. I that’s when I took a humongous on myself, literally, like, a log up my back, pissed so much blood down, and my wife was she was a nurse, and she was freaked out. I couldn’t get up.

I couldn’t stand up. She backed this Camry on the knoll of the grassy area I was at, and we were both lifters at the time, so she was decently strong. I put my arms around her neck. She got me to the back seat of the car, let the window down, kinda smelled like horrible. And I had this console on it because it was November in San Diego, so I’m sitting there jackhammer in the back of this car.

And she was terrified. I need to get the doctor. I need to get the doctor. So I said, just take me home. So we lived in the second story or or the second deck of this, apartment complex in in San Diego.

I got to the first deck. So I I get a car and I could stand up, but but with my arms around her neck. So I was just leaning down because I was going to pass out. Got to the sec or I got to the first deck, went down. Just couldn’t stand up anymore.

Got around her neck, worked up my way up the, railing, got her my you know, you know, got her around her neck again, walked to the kitchen area, which is right in the front door. I was laying on the Poncho liner. Crap was everywhere. I managed she helped me manage to get into the into the tub, and it’s like dirt was coming out of my penis. This looked horrible.

Just just the gross thing in the world. It’s the worst pain I can ever, ever, ever be in in my life. And the craziest thing I tell you a story because right now. I’m not sadistic. I’m not crazy.

People may think that. They might they may want to put a title on me after hearing me because it makes them feel better. Because they think, wow. This guy must be some special or just crazy dude. No.

I’m a guy that came from nothing. Anybody’s capable of doing stuff like this. Anybody. And I sat in that tub. She’s put the water on me.

She called my mom up, and my mom was dating a doctor at the time. The doc the doctor said, you need to get him to a hospital now. She came back in. All I want to do is call Chris Carson on the phone and raise her up your bad water and say, I did it. So she said, I’m thinking to the doctor.

I said, no. Let me sit here and enjoy this pain. She said, what are you talking about? I said, you know I go, I need to go to the doctor. I realized that.

But I never thought it was humanly possible to do what I did. I went seventy miles. And at seventy miles, I was dead. I was at a hundred percent what I thought what I thought was a hundred percent. I went thirty I went thirty one more miles after being in the worst physical shape I’ve ever been in in my life.

And all the all that pain and suffering and thing was going through my body, and I sat in that tub and and and the waters hit me. It was the most amazing feeling of accomplishment, and I want to be numb. I don’t want people to give me drugs in in the numbness, pain. I wanted to I did this. I over and as crazy as it sounds, it was the most amazing moment of my entire life to overcome such to come from this kid who was mentally torturing himself and was tortured it’s all to this kid to this guy now who was able to overcome such amazing odds and obstacles.

Preparing for the Next Challenge

And I called Chris Carlson, the race director of Badwater, and he said, the idea of a twenty four hour race is to run twenty four hours. You only ran nineteen. And he put doubt in my mind that he wouldn’t let me into Badwater. So a month later or so, about a month and a half later, I went to this race called the hurt one hundred. So how is it my race in Hawaii, twenty six thousand feet of cars?

JOE ROGAN: That was all he said?

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s all he said.

JOE ROGAN: That’s so crazy.

DAVID GOGGINS: He I mean, he he’s a hardcore dude, but he didn’t know how messed up I was. Right. And he said he didn’t say, well, you know, he like, he didn’t say no. I’m not going to let you in. He put enough doubt in my mind and say, man, I gotta do more.

So I was broken I was broken bad. And, like,

JOE ROGAN: how long did it take you to recover physically?

Unexpected Marathon Performance

DAVID GOGGINS: The funniest thing about this, I don’t tell the story very often. I had signed up for I’m getting to that answer. It’s right now. I went on deployment, and me and my wife and my mom signed up for the first Las Vegas marathon down the strip of Las Vegas. And that incident happened, so I ran a hundred miles before I ran a a marathon.

Two weeks later, roughly, December fifth, was this marathon that we all signed up for. I couldn’t walk. I could not walk. I was messed up. So ten days or two weeks after this hundred mile in one race I did, this marathon, December fifth, Las Vegas.

I said, you know what? It’s the first one I can’t run. Maybe I can walk with my mom. So I tried to go out to this little knoll around our grassy area in San Diego. I tried to run.

Laser broke. I said, I can’t even I’m jacked. Can’t do anything. So I said, you know what?

Maybe I’ll watch you guys do the marathon and I’ll cheer you guys on, whatever. And I said, I’ll try to rock with my mom. December fifth happened. That gun went off two thousand five. Fourteen days after, I broke myself off, and I qualify for the Boston Marathon and ran a three zero eight.

That’s crazy. And what’s funny about it, I know people here say, even when I tell you this story, I drop I I want to drop so many names. Google it. Look it up. I don’t give a.

Like, it almost seems like I’m making my own story up. It does. It almost seems like it to you. It it does. We like, I can I tell if I were to hear somebody like, let’s say I look to, you know, look to your Joe Rogan’s podcast?

I I heard some black dude from Brazilian and talking about, this happened, this happened, three hell weeks, ran to school, ran a hundred miles, broke my feet, broke my body. I’m like, this mother, he’s the biggest liar on the planet. Ain’t nobody doing that. Even when I tell my story, it almost sounds like some some made up.

JOE ROGAN: Crazy is you ran a hundred miles before you ever ran a marathon. Right. Then you didn’t run again at all, and you still qualified for the Boston marathon. So you ran a three zero eight Right. For the first marathon you ever did

DAVID GOGGINS: Never did.

JOE ROGAN: Two weeks after you ran a hundred miles

DAVID GOGGINS: Right.

JOE ROGAN: With no training and nothing in between.

DAVID GOGGINS: But it gets better than that. You can see my training log that I actually posted up. So that’s when I started training for the hurt one hundred. So, basically, what happened was after that, I had about four weeks.

JOE ROGAN: What does it feel like to run that three zero eight if you could barely walk?

DAVID GOGGINS: When that gun went off, something went off in my head, and I didn’t feel that much pain at all. Afterwards, I did, but something happened where I was like, the gun went off and that thing came back. Like, alright, man. What if because I I I wanted to qualify for Boston. That was my goal.

But I was I was jacked up, you know? And I and I and I didn’t run as much as I should have at all over my, Iraq training. I hit the weights. And but my job but but my goal was when I signed up for it a year early, I want to qualify for Boston, which is a three ten fifty nine. And I was like, what if you can qualify for Boston, man?

You should run a so what what helped me out? I just ran a hundred and one miles. What is twenty six miles to me now? So the mindset going into it was like, I ran seventy five more miles in this. So I I use it to my advantage.

Training for the Hurt 100

So after that happened, I ran with my feet pretty much broken. I I I would go to the, physical therapist and they had this compression tape. Compression tape helped because my feet were pretty bad off. And I would run seventy, eighty, hundred mile weeks, and then I went to the hurt one hundred, racing Hawaii, twenty six thousand feet of climbing over a hundred miles, probably one of the top five hardest hundred mile races in the world. I wasn’t even a a a real runner.

Yeah. I I banked a lot of miles by the last the last, what, two and a half, about two months, but I want a runner. Went out there and got through the race. Did in thirty three hours with the ninth place finisher. Not many people finished that that year, and I qualified for Badwater and got in.

And I went on to lose weight and train hard, and I got fifth my first year and went back my second year and got third.

JOE ROGAN: When you say you went you lost weight, like, what were you eventually weighing?

Weight Loss for Racing

DAVID GOGGINS: So I went to the race about one ninety.

JOE ROGAN: So you lost quite a bit from your bodybuilding time. Right. That’s over a short period of time. Right.

DAVID GOGGINS: How did you lose all that weight? Once again, I I just worked out hard. I stopped taking my protein so much. I got off I was on this stuff called, Nitrotech. And I I got off all the protein stuff.

I just started I stopped hitting the weight so hard. And I just became, a running fool. Became the black forest gut, man, pretty much. Pretty simple, man. That’s what happened.

JOE ROGAN: Now when you say you were using compression tape on your feet and that your feet were jacked up, what was the extent of the injuries?

Foot Injuries and Adaptations

DAVID GOGGINS: So, basically, because of my pronation that I never figured out because of my psoas muscles, I always had issues with stretch fracture shin splints. So I put a lot of pressure on the inside of my ankles. And so that there’s this tendon that goes up the backside of your I don’t know if it’s your your fibula or the backside of that of that little bone on the backside of your foot. It goes right up beside that right alongside that bone. And that thing was just so flared up on both sides that even this flexi, my foot was just killing me.

So I realized when you can you know, when you cast that thing up, casting my feet always helped me out because it it it locked my foot into a position that wouldn’t make me pronate as much. So between the casting of that and if if you watched the Badwater video of two thousand six, you’ll see me crossing the finish line with this compression tape literally, like, flying on my ankles because I went to the race with compression tape on my ankles. And so, basically, I have that on my, you know, on my ankles. I had inserts in my, you know, in my shoes and also this wedge on the back heel of my left foot so then it would keep me from pronating that heel so much. So I I had all that on just to go around.

And I ran my ass off and went to Badwater two thousand six and with, compression tape on my feet and walked a lot, but I got third place.

JOE ROGAN: Do you always run with regular running shoes?

DAVID GOGGINS: I do. Yeah. So now I don’t have those issues anymore. All the stretching has opened my body up to where you know, how it should have been. So my alignment is pretty good.

It’s not perfect. So now I just run-in regular running shoes now. You know, no more compression tape. No more none of that stuff. So if you see now, if you look down there, you’ll see the compression tape, and you’ll see my ex wife here in a second taking the compression tape off of me.

She’s doing it right now. See it right now? Yeah. She see tape? Yeah.

So that’s the tape right there that I had to wear every day of my life to run. Wow. So as you see, the story may be kinda unbelievable, but there’s some proof right there.

JOE ROGAN: Man.

DAVID GOGGINS: So that’s how I

JOE ROGAN: so painful.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yeah. I was pretty messed up. As you see right now, I’m trying to get up. Oh, man. Yeah.

I’m I’m pretty destroyed right there.

Ultra Running Achievements

JOE ROGAN: What is the most amount of miles you’ve ever run?

DAVID GOGGINS: At one time? Yeah. Two hundred and five and thirty nine hours. Wow. Yep.

Nonstop.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. I’ve had quite a few people on. I’ve met quite a few people now over the last year or so that have run, Ultra’s, Courtney Dowalter. You know who she is? She won the Moab thirty

DAVID GOGGINS: Yeah. I heard about her. Forty rather. Heard about her.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. She, she beat all the men by twenty two miles, something like that. Some crazy thing. She was first place winner. She beat everybody else.

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s

JOE ROGAN: sick. Second place winner. And with her, I mean, you would never believe it. When you talk to her, she seems so normal. Right.

She drinks beer and eats nachos and eats candy.

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s ultra runner, man.

JOE ROGAN: She’s just silly, and she’s fun. Yep. And there’s no demon there. No. Like waiting to meet a demon.

Right. You know? I’m like, where’s your demon? Right.

DAVID GOGGINS: Like, how are you

JOE ROGAN: getting through that? Her demon’s a quiet demon. Right. It’s it’s there. It has to be there.

DAVID GOGGINS: There’s something there.

JOE ROGAN: It has to be. There’s no other people that everybody I know that that can do that as a demon.

DAVID GOGGINS: A lot of us don’t want to admit the stuff.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. We got them. Oh, a hundred percent. It has to be. Yeah.

So when you do this and you you qualify and you you do that race in Hawaii Right. They just let you in after

DAVID GOGGINS: that? No. So the race in Hawaii, yeah. I actually called the race director up, and it wasn’t like a big time, like, I had to have one hundred mile race, I believe, which

JOE ROGAN: I had. And So you don’t one hundred mile, you did the Boston marathon or you did the Vegas marathon?

DAVID GOGGINS: Yeah. So I did the hundred mile hundred mile the the Vegas marathon, went to hurt one hundred, did that hundred miler. And all

JOE ROGAN: this is in a very short amount of time.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yeah. So November was the first hundred miler. December was the twenty six miler in in, Las Vegas. January was the next hundred mile in Hawaii. You know

JOE ROGAN: how crazy that is? Like, say, if I was your friend and I called you up on October twentieth, and I go, hey, man. How many times do you run? Like, I run every now and then.

Intense Race Schedule

DAVID GOGGINS: See something crazy. I don’t know if you can pull it up or not, but if you can pull up my race schedule for two thousand seven, just pull up David Goggins race results. You’re going to see something real crazy in a second. This ain’t this is good. And and and I gotta show you proof because why?

I know my story doesn’t make any sense, but just look at the dates of these races, and we’re going to show it to you in a second. It’s, just look at the hundred miles and fifty miles back to back weekends, how many weekends there were between races. So if you look right here, you can’t really see it. So if you look at two thousand seven, you gotta go all the way down, keep on going. Two thousand seven.

See all those races there? Two thousand okay. Get you right there. So hundred miler Hawaii.

Oh, Jesus Christ. Two weeks later, three weeks later, another one, that’s fifty miler. Fifty miler, a month later. And you’re looking at, what, fourteen days later, another fifty k. Fifty miler, a month later, then you look at less than a month, another fifty miler, fifty three miler in June, July was another one hundred miler, Badwater was literally Badwater was a month after I did that hundred miler, hundred and thirty five miler.

Leadville was less than a month after Badwater. The Plain one hundred was three weeks after Leadville. Angel’s Crest was two ten days a week after that hundred miler. The Bear one hundred was, what, thirteen days after that hundred miler.

And then I ran the two hundred it said two hundred and three point five, but I didn’t run two it’s two zero five miles around there. But what’s not in there was that McNaughton race I did in two thousand so that hundred and fifty mile race, I also did in two thousand seven that wasn’t lifted. So that was just my two thousand seven year. That’s insane. Yeah.

So do you think that is what messed your body up? No. No? No. Because I I still run the same mileage now.

Impact of Navy SEAL Training

What messed my body up was hell week. Really? Oh, yeah. You don’t go through three hell weeks in one year. So I so what happens when when I realized that my body is really jacked up was I went I was a big time squatter.

Love squatting. And I went through the first hell week got messed up. Second hell week, I got all the way through. Then third hell week, I got all the way through. And my third hell week, we had a guy die on Thursday.

And then that hell weekend and I graduated How did he die? Pulmonary edema. It was a called name was John Scop. Cold as hell week. The Pacific Ocean is never warm.

And it rained the whole time. The whole time it just rained, and he, pretty much just drowned in his own fluid pretty much. We were in the pool doing some evolution. He sunk to the bottom. His temperature was hot.

He he missed a lot of hell week for getting pulled out for different stuff. He went and quit, and, he ended up dying in hell week. But, yeah. So, anyway, after hell week ended, I want to go back to the gym. You know?

So second phase happened, dive phase. Like, I could get back in the gym, start jacking my weight. I love jacking weight. And I realized I couldn’t squat. So I went from squatting a lot to I couldn’t even squat the bar because my lower back was all messed up.

I was like, I don’t know what’s going on. It was because this this muscle so in Hell Week, your hip flexors are so and I went through so many of them so fast. And so the hardest part of BUDS, I went through three times. Not not the hell week part. That’s one of the hardest parts, but it was the initial part of the what everybody sees on TV.

The log PT, the surf torture, the dad gone boats over your head, all that stuff. I went through that person three times in one year. And, over a period of time, my hip flexors got so tight that, it just jacked me up. It jacked me up for my hip flexors. So so always being so cold and so stressed out, and everything led up to it.

But this really was the part that I noticed I could squat before Hell Week or before my first time going to BUDS. After after BUDS, I couldn’t I couldn’t squat anymore.

JOE ROGAN: Do you just think it might just be because your body was exhausted?

DAVID GOGGINS: No. No. I I for twelve years, so I would I would go back and tough it out. Like like with Joe Burns, he would squat. And so I said, I want to I want to squat with Joe Burns. But I just couldn’t squat because that that muscle was attached to your t twelve.

JOE ROGAN: So what was it doing to? Is it locking up?

DAVID GOGGINS: It was just it was just pulling. So it made my hips feel, like, I I I couldn’t sink my ass. Oh, okay. I couldn’t sink. So it’s incredible pain.

And then with the weight pushing me down and then trying to push up, the pain was just it’s just too much. So it’s all this is all range of motion issues. All range of motion issues. Yeah.

The Importance of Stretching

JOE ROGAN: Wow. That that’s an important thing for my friend, Cam Haines, who doesn’t stretch. He’s another friend of mine who runs ultra races. He ran that Moab two forty. He’s run the, Bigfoot two zero five. He’s run a few of those. Right. I know he’s listening. Go stretch, dude. Yeah.

Support, man. Yeah. Well, especially if you’re working that hard. Right? If you’re doing that much.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yeah. You’re you’re definitely locking up.

JOE ROGAN: He could barely touch his toes.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yeah. That’s not a good thing.

JOE ROGAN: That’s not good. Right? No.

DAVID GOGGINS: No. It comes back to hurt you inside pretty soon.

JOE ROGAN: Now how flexible are you now? Because I would imagine you’re probably a ballerina at this point because

DAVID GOGGINS: you’re just knowing your brain. I’m trying to get there. I’m trying to get there, so I stretch every night for, like, two hours.

Misconceptions About Flexibility

JOE ROGAN: There’s a thing that people say that it’ll always piss me off, like, because I’m pretty flexible. They say, oh, you’re naturally flexible. People have a natural threshold. They’re like, no. They don’t.

Like, a doctor told me that. I go, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m like, you don’t know what you’re talking about because most people don’t push themselves past that pain that stretch pain.

DAVID GOGGINS: Right. People want to put a title on you, man. It’s easier for them. Oh, you’re just natural.

JOE ROGAN: Exactly. You’re natural. Exactly.

DAVID GOGGINS: No. You don’t work hard enough.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. People built like chimps aren’t usually flexible. Right. You have to you have to force yourself to do that.

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s right.

JOE ROGAN: And, I know it because I had a friend, my friend Tom Rodagna. He was a football player. Jack, big, thick dude. Uh-huh. Terrible flexibility.

He was taking Taekwondo with me. Right. And over the course of a couple years, I saw that dude eventually develop a full split.

DAVID GOGGINS: There you go. And he just did

JOE ROGAN: it through his mind. He just was everybody else is done training. That guy would be on the mat, constantly stretching, always working out. Because he had built his body up so strong

DAVID GOGGINS: Right. From

JOE ROGAN: all those years of squatting and lifting

DAVID GOGGINS: Yep.

JOE ROGAN: That he just you know, he was all tense. Everything was just like this. Super powerful Right. But all, like, very tense.

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s why I stopped you know, that that’s why I never stretched because I want that strength. Yeah. Yeah. You want that tight muscle, but, no. I don’t think it it’s stupid.

Stretching and Physical Performance

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. I I think you’re not supposed to stretch before you do big physical activities because I think it does, like, weaken you somewhat, but I don’t think being flexible overall makes you weaker.

DAVID GOGGINS: Not at all. Yeah. Not at all.

JOE ROGAN: Well, it certainly doesn’t for martial arts because you need that flexibility to have leg dexterity to be able to

DAVID GOGGINS: kick. Right.

JOE ROGAN: It’s gotta be fluid where it’s not tightened up by the restriction of the motion

DAVID GOGGINS: of your body. I get it. It’s the truth.

JOE ROGAN: I just think people are for whatever reason, and I I’m a I’m one of those I’d I’ve drone on too much about yoga. I’m like one of those vegans. It’s like, you gotta do it, man. Right. Just try it.

I get annoying, like, a born again Christian or something.

DAVID GOGGINS: It’s like I’m getting that way now, man. I’m getting that way now.

JOE ROGAN: For anybody who does anything hard, like, you know, if you do anything, like, with weight lifting type shit or martial arts type shit where it’s just everything’s explosion. It’s lifting. It’s heavy. It’s push push push. Right.

Yoga just will balance your shit out.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yeah. It will. Yeah. It will. It really

JOE ROGAN: will, man. And there’s all these people that resist it. Like, there was some article recently that was something along the lines of hot yoga is just trendy nonsense. I read that. And then even in the article, it talked about that there might be some benefits in terms of, like, the strengthening your arteries, and they didn’t even mention heat shock protein.

There’s a study going on right now. I believe it’s at Harvard.

DAVID GOGGINS: Right.

JOE ROGAN: One of my friends was telling me about it where they’re, they’re trying to find the benefits of ninety minute hot yoga classes because they think it might mirror the observed benefits of sauna, which they already know for a fact, has big benefits because of your body producing heat shock proteins to deal with the heat. Right. That’s all about that sauna in here, man. I go in that all the time.

DAVID GOGGINS: Well, no one can tell me it doesn’t work.

JOE ROGAN: It’s big.

DAVID GOGGINS: It’s proof positive. It changed my life. That it wasn’t a medication or this or a it was stretching.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

DAVID GOGGINS: It was yoga stretching. All that stuff combined changed it.

JOE ROGAN: Well, I just think it balances out your body in those static poses where you’re just holding the pose, and it just and it works you out in a weird way. Hundred percent. You just don’t get lifting weights or hitting the bag or anything. You’re just not gonna get that that kind of working out.

DAVID GOGGINS: I can’t agree with you more. It’s so difficult. That’s so crazy. Your ass off. You’re in a bunch of housewives and shit, and you’re like, this is like the silent struggle.

It’s humbling. Nobody knows. No. It’s humbling.

JOE ROGAN: If you see, like, two doorways, right, and one of them is, like, CT, Ali, Fletcher’s super pump, iron attics gym, which is hard work. Right. And then right next to it is the yoga studio. You’re like, well, once you get done with all that hard work, you’ll go over to that yoga studio. No.

There’s two different kinds of hard work going on.

DAVID GOGGINS: It’s no joke. Two different kinds of hard work. Yes, sir.

Current Health and Heart Surgeries

JOE ROGAN: So what do you do now in terms of, like, you got over this five years ago. You’re in this bad situation when your body’s not working right. Now everything’s working great again.

DAVID GOGGINS: Well, I I had two heart surgeries also. Woah. Yeah. So, you know What was wrong with your heart? So I had a hole in it.

So, you know, you’re not supposed to have a hole in your heart and be a seal. And it was Were you born with it? I was born with it. It went undetected and me pushing so hard. So in two thousand nine, I was trying to finish race across America, and, I I just couldn’t go anymore.

Another pitfall in my life was the hole, and I was pretty much off active duty seal for three years. Yeah. You know, I had two hearts with them. Them trying to fix so the hole was significantly large.

JOE ROGAN: Like, how big?

DAVID GOGGINS: They they they say it was as big as a quarter. I’m like, how the hell is it big as a quarter? Yeah. That’s that’s a pretty big hole in your heart because they had two helix patches. I’m like, that’s impossible.

The the helix patches, they’re in my heart, so the two stents

JOE ROGAN: what is a helix patch?

DAVID GOGGINS: It is like a a little mesh, very

JOE ROGAN: Like what they do for hernias, like something

DAVID GOGGINS: like that? Maybe something like that. So they went up to my femoral artery, and they placed this patch, but They

JOE ROGAN: go through your artery?

DAVID GOGGINS: Yeah. They went to my femoral artery. Yeah. Like with a camera? Yeah.

With the Woah. So what but no. The camera was down through my throat. Woah. And they put this catheter through my femoral artery that went to my heart.

They they went and they took this helix patch. They they placed it in there, and then they found out six months later that the hole wasn’t covered up enough yet because the hole was I mean, and the helix patch was very damn big. So so they put and then they go back in there in two thousand ten.

JOE ROGAN: How does the how does the patch adhere to your heart?

DAVID GOGGINS: I guess your heart heals around the patch.

JOE ROGAN: But how do they stick it

DAVID GOGGINS: in place? I I guess they put it where the hole’s at

JOE ROGAN: Uh-huh.

DAVID GOGGINS: And then it kinda, like, inflates Oh, wow. Where the hole is at. And then that that thing goes in there, and then it kinda covers the hole, and then the heart so there’s two things in my heart right now that the heart just kinda covered up. Woah.

JOE ROGAN: Okay. So here’s the there you go. Jamie’s got a a an image of it for us. Woah. Yeah.

So so it’s attached to this little probe. Right. And then they put it over the area where the injury is. Wow. That’s insane.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yeah. Atrial septum defects that I had. Atrial septal defect. So, basically, everything I had done, I had done for medicine. Oh, shit.

It’s crazy. They could do? I’d be done. That’s so crazy

JOE ROGAN: that they could do that.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yeah. So I was out for, I was off active duty for three years, so I stuck I was in a a recruiting area for three years trying to get back on active duty, and that’s that was that was my life for three years now.

Recovery from Heart Surgery

JOE ROGAN: So they put that patch in

DAVID GOGGINS: Yep.

JOE ROGAN: And now your heart’s a hundred percent?

DAVID GOGGINS: It’s a hundred percent. It’s a hundred percent. Wow. Yeah. That’s incredible.

Yeah. I was, losing, you know, blood, and I was just I was bad off.

JOE ROGAN: Which is amazing that you were able to do all that with a hole in your heart.

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s what the doctors were saying. You know? Because they didn’t know how to seal. So when I went in, and the doctor that found the hole, he like, so they gave me EKGs, all this stuff. Once again, man, you it’s after I ran, like, two hundred five miles.

You know? Right. Like, man, you’re in great shape. I’m like, man, I just don’t feel good. Like, walking up the stairs is making me jacked up.

Discovering the Heart Condition

So the doctor, doc Shrek, he’s like, you know, gave me EKG. Just go to the doctor, get an echocardiogram. So I’m in there getting echocardiogram, just chilling out in there, and the guy’s talking to me. He has his little wand in my heart. We’re bullshitting about stuff, and he when people get quiet, that’s not good, man.

So he’s in there. Just had his wand in my heart chilling out. Hey, man. What are you doing? Hey.

Hey. What’s going on? I’m like and he says, I’ll be right back. He goes and gets a doctor. Doctor comes in, puts a thing on my heart.

The doctor gets another doctor. Now I’m just freaking out. I’m like, okay. Because when it comes to your heart, you know, it’s a big deal. So they come back in and say, hey.

We can stop the echocardiogram. I mean, they talked to you out in the hallway. You have a hole in your heart. And the guy didn’t know that I was, he knew I was a Navy guy. I don’t think he was a SEAL because not many black guys are SEALs.

And he had a conversation about, you know, we gotta fix this real quick. I said, yeah. I mean, then I came up that I was a SEAL. He said, man, you could’ve died jumping. You could’ve died diving.

You could’ve died in all this stuff. Because basically, the hole in your heart, if it gets plugged with something, like anything, like, you know, let’s say you get a bubble from diving or something like that, you’re going to die. Right. So I I I call it luck. I call it luck.

Wow. So I, I got through two surgeries. They put me back on. I I lost

JOE ROGAN: They give you the first one. Yep. And then how when did they realize that it’s not not good enough?

The Bubble Test

DAVID GOGGINS: So they take you back in. You gotta get a bubble study. A bubble test. So they so they, like, literally send bubbles that way, safe bubbles that way to see if the bubble goes through your heart. So they have this this, echocardiogram again, and they hook you up, I think, to IV or something like that, and they throw these bubbles through your heart.

And they see if it goes through. After six months when it should have been healed up, the bubble went through. So they had to tell me then, hey. We gotta you know, you’re not you’re not good to go. So I had to take a year before I’d have another surgery I wanted to take Because that patch had to be completely completely healed before they can go back in.

JOE ROGAN: Time you knew you had a hole. Right.

DAVID GOGGINS: So so then you had a hole because of the heart surgery.

JOE ROGAN: Right. But all this time, like, when you’re waiting for it to heal, you know you have an extra hole.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yes. I knew I have a hole.

JOE ROGAN: Yes. What were you allowed to do with your body then?

DAVID GOGGINS: Well, at that time, they go, you know, do how you feel comfortable. And so, you know, the the hole is not going to kill you right now, but you can’t dodge, you can’t jump, you’re pretty much wasn’t still anymore, so I was a recruiter for a period of time. So basically, I was crazy about that. And before my second surgery, I was actually training for Delta Force. I was I I wanted to go to Delta, and I was rucking, ruck running a lot.

And before my second

JOE ROGAN: Ruck running mean you’re running with a pack on?

DAVID GOGGINS: Yeah. A pack on my back with some weight on. How heavy is the pack?

JOE ROGAN: Fifty, sixty pounds. And you run with that on?

DAVID GOGGINS: Well, you’re supposed to hike or hump, like, ruck humping. Right. I ran with it Because I went because, you know, I that’s what I did. Right. So the day the day of the day of heart surgery, I did a ruck run.

Jesus Christ. Because I knew I was going to be out of commission for a while. So man. I gotta get my last one in, dude. Jesus Christ.

Recovery and Ultra Walking

So all I could do I have my I have my training logs. After my second heart surgery, all I could do was walk. So I became an ultra walker. Wow. Took to walk my ass off.

And I over a period of time, it took a year for that thing to heal up and heal. You know, my first bubble study after my second heart surgery came back negative or or positive. The the bubble went through again. Oh, no. And they would have crack me open.

Oh, man. But over that period of time, my heart healed around that thing nicely, and I passed the second bubble test.

JOE ROGAN: So the first bubble test was how long after? A year?

DAVID GOGGINS: It was so the first bubble test after the first surgery was six months.

JOE ROGAN: And then you had to go through a full six months after that for it to totally heal, then you have the second heart surgery. Right. And when does the bubble test fail after the second heart surgery?

DAVID GOGGINS: It was about six months. Jesus Christ. And they said and the doctor looked at me and said, you know, I’m sorry to inform you, man. We’re going to have to crack your chest open the next time we’re really getting there. And so I sat back thinking this could be a third heart surgery.

And then,

JOE ROGAN: That one. They said we have

DAVID GOGGINS: to wait for six months to see if this thing’s going to close-up. Right. Then I came back thinking, man, I’m about to get cracked open, and that bubble got pinned up, man. Wow. Didn’t go through.

JOE ROGAN: Maybe force it through with your mind.

DAVID GOGGINS: I know. Right? Hold

JOE ROGAN: that bitch up. When you’re visualizing

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s it, man.

JOE ROGAN: Something to visualize. Mhmm. Holy shit, man. That is crazy. Yep.

It’s crazy you went on a rock run with a hole in your heart too.

DAVID GOGGINS: Well, I did it for several years. I said I must have keep on going, man.

JOE ROGAN: That’s amazing. Now after all is said and done, everything’s good now?

Current Health Status

DAVID GOGGINS: Yeah. Everything I mean, I’m sure something must have popped up in my ass and I have to do that. You know? Everything’s good right now. I’m always waiting for the next thing to pop up, and I hang out the same way.

I I also attack it. But, yeah, as of right now, I’m in the best shape. I’m forty three years old. Just turned forty three, February seventeenth. I am in the best shape of my life.

I’m not knocking on wood because life Life comes at you, dude. So Right. knocking on wood. Come at me.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, I would think that you would be a go to guy for injuries.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yeah. Like, if anybody had them all, dude. I’ve had them all. I’ve had

JOE ROGAN: them all. When you broke the world record for chin ups, didn’t you rip your arm apart?

The Pull-Up World Record Attempt

DAVID GOGGINS: Pull ups. Yeah. So if you pull up the picture, man, there’s a picture of my hand. You’ll see. I don’t know.

JOE ROGAN: What is it? Pull ups are

DAVID GOGGINS: So pull ups are here.

JOE ROGAN: Hands out.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yeah. Hands out.

JOE ROGAN: And chin ups are hands forward.

DAVID GOGGINS: Right. Hands forward. So I fell three I fell twice before I finally got it the third time. And, I the first time I ripped the shit out of my forearm, and then the second time, you’ll see there’s a picture of my hand, and it it’s a third degree burn. So that’s my hand.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, Jesus, man. What in the is going it looks like you got bit by a wolf.

DAVID GOGGINS: So what’s funny about that is you see that, that doesn’t create after one pull up. So if you can imagine the pain of because, you know, you have one contact point. That’s it. Mhmm. You’re like running, you can overcome it because you have these big giant legs and

JOE ROGAN: Right.

DAVID GOGGINS: It’s it’s different. When you have these little fragile punk ass hands touching the bar, you

JOE ROGAN: Right.

DAVID GOGGINS: Imagine four thousand thirty pull ups. How many times you’re coming on that bar or coming off. Right. And I weighed two hundred and seven pounds at the time. So I was I was a bigger guy.

I’m at one ninety five one eighty five now. So I was almost I was twenty two pounds heavier. So I was a lot bigger than I am right there. Bam.

JOE ROGAN: You look pretty thick.

DAVID GOGGINS: Get that shit, man.

JOE ROGAN: So you were doing it in

DAVID GOGGINS: sets of five? Sets of five. So and as you see, you have these different people who are witnessing you. You have to have your your your number there to make sure that you’re, you know, qualified for the Guinness Book of World Records. That’s fourteen, fifteen.

I have a I have a long way to go. I have another four thousand and fifteen pull ups to go. Alright? Jesus Christ. So yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And how long did you do this over? Twenty four hours?

DAVID GOGGINS: It was seven. So I broke it at seventeen. Wow. And I was over it.

JOE ROGAN: What does it feel like in the last chin up?

DAVID GOGGINS: You know what? Actually, there’s a video that we have, and, I was chasing this guy named Steven Hyland. So this guy named Steven Hyland had the record. And the video is my last three posts before I broke the record. I’m talking so much shit to these.

I’m like, hey. You thought I was going to get it, I told you, ass. I’m coming after you. I’m here now. It’s just me talking shit.

Reflecting on the Pull-Up Record

It’s a cool video, but I felt, I felt nothing. I was just happy I have to do more. I did sixty seven thousand pull ups in nine months Geez, that’s gross. In training for a record for four thousand. And the failures, so I did the first time in September, failed miserably on this day, so I did two thousand five hundred and eighty eight or something like that, failed miserably for millions of people.

Two months later, November tried again, failed again. Two months later in January nineteenth, I finally got it. So after I got it, it wasn’t like I’m happy. It was like, I ain’t gotta do more pull ups anymore. Roger that.

That’s all it was. I had to check that that off, man.

JOE ROGAN: But you were doing them when I got here today.

DAVID GOGGINS: You know what? Because now it’s a party, dude. It’s a party, man. I don’t like doing them, so we could get some we could get we’re going to knock some out.

JOE ROGAN: You don’t like doing them, so you gotta do That’s my whole life. Isn’t it like someone someone gets drunk on a certain whiskey, like, if if they smell it, they’ll get disgusted? Like, like, Jagermeister or something like that. They smell it and they’ll

DAVID GOGGINS: Right. Is

JOE ROGAN: that what it’s like with you with Chen With

DAVID GOGGINS: a lot of things. With pull ups? With a lot of things. With a lot

JOE ROGAN: of things. Yeah. Right?

The Discomfort of Training

DAVID GOGGINS: I don’t like running. I don’t like and people don’t believe it, but, you know, I was I was a big guy twice in my life. So here’s the reason why I just don’t like running, man. It hurts. It’s brutal.

It sucks going out and I’m going to be gone for two hours or I’m going to be gone for thirty nine hours Right. Running on a one mile track. I’m not crazy, man. This sucks.

I mean, you know, people put me in this category of, you must be some crazy guy who loves it. No, man. No. That’s why I do it, though. That’s the only way to couch your brain, man.

It’s the only way to get hard in my people take these classes on mental toughness. Like, even Sealz, he had a class about visualization, self talk, eat an elephant one bite at a time, breathing control. Yeah. I’d roger that. You gotta put yourself in a hellacious situation.

The Reality of Mental Toughness

It’s a lifestyle. How are you going to react? How are you going to react? Like, all that training goes out the door when you’re in the cold water and you’re miserable, and it’s the first hour of a hundred and thirty hours of hell week, and that first wave goes over your head, and you’re the coldest you’ve been in your life, and your mind goes from hour one to hour one thirty, all that self talking stuff, dude, you ain’t think about anything about getting out of here. But if you live this on a daily basis and you know how to calm your mind down, the self talk will help.

All that stuff will help. But usually, we react. We have pain. We have suffering. We react.

And we react about get out of here. We gotta go. It’s those people who are able to control that feeling of flight and say, no. There’s a way through this. It’s not going to be here forever.

I’m not cold right now. I went through three of them. I’m not cold now. I’m in a nice warm studio with you. You gotta think about that.

It’s just going to end. It’s going to end, but we don’t know that. We don’t think that. At that time, it is going to last forever. And then you get to sit back on Friday with everybody walking across the, you know, back on the grinder, all the sixteen, seventeen, eighteen guys that graduated Hell Week.

And you get a chance to watch these guys victorious. And then you get the chance to think about that. You take that hot warm shower, first thing that comes to your mind is why did I quit? So what keeps me going? I quit several things.

I know what’s on the back end of quitting. It’s a lifetime of thinking about why did I do that. And I ain’t doing that no more.

JOE ROGAN: There’s something about talking to a guy like you that a lot of people hope that you’re going to say some magic thing that’s going to click in their brain. Everybody just change who they are. Like, what is it? What is the thing? That’s why people go to these self help conferences, and they take these classes, and they hope that someone’s going to say something that changes the way their mind works.

DAVID GOGGINS: It’s hilarious to me. It is it’s kind of hilarious to

JOE ROGAN: me too. But what what is also hilarious is that what you’re saying is that you have to do those things. You have to suffer. You have to live in it. You have to be comfortable in it.

DAVID GOGGINS: And then maybe some of that stuff will help you

JOE ROGAN: a little bit along the way.

Theory vs. Experience

DAVID GOGGINS: Period. And I went to I was, when I was a SEAL recruiter, I got invited to MIT. Smart ass people there, man. I’m not that. I’m just a gueranable dumb knuckle dragger.

And, there was this guy there. I forget his name, but he was, like, the top head head guy. Old white guy, you know, all all geniuses out. And we were on this panel, and they were asking us all these questions about the mind, mental toughness, and stuff. He was answering them.

And I wasn’t answering many questions. I’ll never forget. He was just answering them off of theory. Mhmm. He never put his ass in stuff.

You read a bunch of books, and you think that you know how the mind works and stuff. I had gone through hell since a kid and then all the way up until now.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

DAVID GOGGINS: So I know so that theory is bull. Yeah. There’s a lot of good stuff out there you can read from people, but I had lived hell. And when you put yourself in hell, that’s the only time you can figure out how to get through that. You can’t you can’t read somebody else’s book about some theory on how to do stuff.

Some guy who sat up in their nice warm office and wrote some book with a nice cup of coffee in their hand. No. I want to see that guy who immersed himself in hell, and he thought about quitting and leaving and and his wife and his kids and why am I here? Is this is it worth it? All this crazy stuff is still said and found out a way to get through it.

So basically, that’s that’s the bottom line of it all. We all want to read about how we can quickly get somewhere. That’s why the six minute abs and all of a sudden stuff’s so powerful. You may get some results from it, but they’re not permanent. The permanent result comes from you I say it all the time.

You have to suffer. You have to make that a tattoo on your brain So when that hard time comes again, you don’t forget it. You may forget it for a second, but you can go back in the cookie jar, I call it. It’s a it’s something that we’ve all endured. I call it the cookie jar, and we often forget how hard we are, but you gotta reflect back.

Take take a couple seconds to reflect. I’ve I’ve been through this. I’ve been through that. And then remind yourself, I’m a bad. And then you can get through that stuff.

But if you don’t believe it, you haven’t endured stuff, you’re just blowing smoke, man, and you’re not going to get through anything.

JOE ROGAN: What was this guy saying? Like, what what was his theories that he was throwing out there?

DAVID GOGGINS: His theories was about I I forget exactly what it was. Was it something about what what the mind does under stress and how we can’t. He said how we can’t do something. And I did it. I did what he said we couldn’t do.

JOE ROGAN: Like, what was he saying he couldn’t do?

Challenging Limiting Beliefs

DAVID GOGGINS: It was something about if you’re born if you’re born a certain way, somebody if you’re born a certain way, you can’t become this way. It was totally saying that with who I am now, like, I had to be born with some, not genetic power or some some gift from God, but I had to have some kind of special gift. Had to have some kind of special gift. And I forget what set me off, but it was that we had to be to to to be somewhere, you had to be born with it. What was the concept?

And I know what I was born with, and I know the battle that I had in my mind. So when he said it, I just sat there looking at my face, and somebody in the crowd asked me a question. And I totally contradicted everything he said. And I was like, no, man. I mean, I know for a fact that you can be this messed up dude, like, really messed up dude, and with the right mindset.

It it it it it sounds so easy with the right mindset. Doesn’t sound easy. It it it I

JOE ROGAN: know what you’re saying. It sounds very simplistic answer.

DAVID GOGGINS: Right. You can. You can. But you have to go into those dark chambers that we often shut off, and you gotta open them up. You gotta open up and fight that demon, get in there, talk to that, say what’s up.

And we often take the we all like to take this four lane highway, the easy highway. Has has signs. It has restaurants. We all love that four lane highway. We always step over the shovel.

And all I did was I picked up that shovel, and that shovel, I made my own path. And you may have big boulders and stuff. They may be getting towards it miles of the road faster than you. But going through this path of life, this journey over here that you make yourself that’s incredibly difficult, what comes out the other end of that is some glorious stuff that you can’t even explain to people. And we’re afraid.

Bottom line is most of us, even the people who have all these theories and stuff, it’s easier to accept the fact that I’m just not good enough. I wasn’t made to do that. And, yeah, some of us can’t be LeBron James. But I tell you right now, man, we can do a lot of stuff when it comes to this purer guts and willpower and getting through stuff. We have a lot more with a lot more than what we think we have.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. The problem with a guy like that with his theory is his theories are based on results, And those results are based on human beings. And most human beings, there’s certain people that are born with certain gifts like a guy like LeBron James. Right. I have physical talent.

You know, Jon Jones in MMA. Obviously, physical talent. But there’s when you look at someone who’s super successful, you always assume that it has to be because of some sort of physical gifts, because people look at themselves, and I’m sure this doctor, this old dude probably had, like, a little gut and probably Exactly how he looked. Little tiny arms and weak shoulders and probably thought, well, there’s certain people that are just mesomorphic and probably broke it down all these scientific terms. Right.

You know, they they they just have a a fast twitch muscle fibers, and they’ll say all this crazy stuff that is true at the very highest levels of the winners. Right. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t become that. No. It just means that it’s too painful for most people to go through.

So very few people ever get there. So if you look at the actual results, he would be correct. He’s not. But he’s not correct because he doesn’t take the shovel.

DAVID GOGGINS: Exactly. That’s that’s the moral

JOE ROGAN: of the story. There’s not some easy lit up street like path with nice smooth roads.

Maintaining the Edge

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s right. It’s a difficult where you’re going to fail and you’re going to be in your head. You’re going to be saying I’m not good enough. And it’s how you get through that. It’s how you get through that on a daily basis when that thing is saying, man, I’m forty three.

I’ve done so much. You start to become civilized. The refrigerator gets full. You start getting making money, and you start I’m not getting cold anymore. I’m retired.

Once and at forty, people shouldn’t be playing basketball or football or or or being you start to believe this stuff, and it becomes in your mind. Like, there’s people who are retiring, you know, at forty something years old or or thirty something years old. At forty three, I’m still putting hundred mile weeks, still doing thousands of pull ups, do thousands of push ups because I’m not allowing myself to become civilized. The worst thing that can happen to a man is become civilized. You lose that fight.

Never Settling

DAVID GOGGINS: You lose that why am I doing this shit? I’m good. You ain’t good, man. You ain’t never arrived. And that’s just my mentality. You may have more, but you never arrive. You want to be uncommon amongst uncommon people, period. Uncommon amongst uncommon people is one of

JOE ROGAN: the greatest ways to put it.

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s it. Like, if you’re the if if if you’re, like, for me, what what got me in trouble with the Navy SEALs is I wanted to be one so bad, so bad, I fought my ass off. And I saw them as uncommon people, very uncommon. But once you become a Navy SEAL, you’re all Navy Seal, so guess what happens? You’re common again.

I wanted to be uncommon amongst uncommon people. I wanted to be the guy I don’t care if you like me. I don’t care if you don’t understand me. I didn’t give a. Once I went through this journey, this path of life, you ain’t got and there’s a whole bunch of guys that don’t like me.

I don’t give a. I’m a warrior. Period. There’s a lot of guys that have been a lot more combat than me. A warrior is not always that.

A warrior is a who says, hey, I’m here again today. I’m here again tomorrow. I’m going to be here the next day. I’m fifty years old. I’m still getting after it.

It’s a person that puts no limit on what’s possible. And that’s what got me in trouble a lot. That’s why I went to Ranger School as a SEAL. That’s why I tried to go to Delta Force twice. You know?

Seeking Discomfort

I’ve been I’ve been through all these different training programs because I was looking for in the military, what I saw is in the training, these people get their ass handed to them. After they get out, a lot of them get civilized. I always wanted to go back into training. And where I was at, I wanted to go back to war. And the war was in that training program where you see guys who can quit, guys who are brutal, guys who are suffering, guys who are you go so as a seal, you don’t volunteer for Ranger School.

I did. I put in seven shifts, got turned down. My eighth get, you know, got accepted. I went at twenty eight, twenty nine years old. And they go, why did you go?

Because I started becoming civilized. I started becoming complacent. I I I need to get my ass kicked again. And when you go as a SEAL going down to you have no rank in Ranger School. You could be a major.

You’re just Joe Brown. You’re nobody. And you’re not eating. You’re not sleeping. So I always would put myself I would immerse myself in shit like that.

Even I recline the ladder, and I intentionally fall back down that to say, alright, man. Getting soft, dude. Getting soft. Kick your ass again. And I you know, it’s kind of the process.

JOE ROGAN: Did you find resistance from that amongst other guys that that didn’t like to make that you were making them uncomfortable? Because that is something that people there’s a natural instinct that people have when someone’s working harder than them to somehow or another diminish that person?

Embracing Individuality

DAVID GOGGINS: Well, I know that a lot of guys don’t like me for a lot of reasons, and I realize that. I am a guy that doesn’t care if you like me or not. And, when you’re an alpha male and you’re against other alpha males and we eat our own. Alpha males eat their own, and I love that shit. Let’s go, man.

I want to eat hey, man. I’m all about that kind of mentality. But I would sometimes take it to another level. Now I wasn’t part of a of a good old boy network. I don’t want to be part I I want to be David God.

I for for too long in my life, and it and it got me in trouble. For too long in my life, I wanted to be accepted. Growing up, I lied. I did what I could. If if you like UFC and I didn’t, I love it.

I love it, man. Let’s go watch it, man. Be my friend. Be my buddy. That weak ass shit.

I found out through this path of life, who is David Goggins? Who am I? So going through all I did it alone. There was no trophy on the wall and the mantle. That trophy’s in my brain.

No one helped me get there. No one paid my bills. No one did shit for me. No one ran those miles. Lost that weight with me.

Look. I suffered on my own and developed this man who said, it’s who I am, man. A very competitive, ultra competitive dude that taking what you want, man.

JOE ROGAN: I call that personal sovereignty.

DAVID GOGGINS: Exactly. There’s not

JOE ROGAN: a lot of people that have that.

DAVID GOGGINS: Ask me. There’s a

JOE ROGAN: lot of people that change who they are depending upon what people want from them. And that’s that’s me. Yeah. That’s important, man. And most people struggle their whole life to find out who they are.

Struggle their whole their whole life to find out what defines them, what they actually enjoy, and what they don’t.

DAVID GOGGINS: You start putting yourself in situations that suck, you’ll find yourself. Yeah. You’ll find it real quick.

JOE ROGAN: That is the thing. Right? And that’s one of the things that I’ve I’ve gotten from paying attention to you is that you you what you’re preaching, what you’re talking about is finding yourself through struggle. That’s it.

The Value of Struggle

DAVID GOGGINS: It’s the only way to find yourself. You don’t find yourself if you like bench pressing and you bench press all the time, what are you finding out? If you like to swim, that’s all you want to do is swim, what are you finding out? Put that you know, people always people talk about triple down on your strengths.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s the weakest shit in the world. No. Triple down on your weaknesses.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

DAVID GOGGINS: Find out something about yourself. You already know the the good shit. You already know the happy shit.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s why on my on my Facebook page, why don’t you talk about good times? You know how to get through that shit. You don’t need a you you don’t need no one to tell you how to get through it’s happy. Right. That’s easy shit.

Right. I’m I’m going to tell you how you can help yourself get through the times that suck. Real life. This is real life. Ninety percent of your life will suck.

Ten percent will be happy. You may be lucky guy and have a lot of money, have a great ass woman, all this shit. Trust me. One on one with that guy, he’s missing something. His life still sucks because he had to face something that bothered him his whole life.

Something is still eating that up. Almost everybody. Everybody. Eating you up. But maybe you found a good way, how I did growing up, on how to ignore that voice that’s saying, you ain’t facing some shit.

Period, man. I’m not special. I just stopped listening. I I I listen to that voice. It’s why I talk so aggressive.

People say, man, do you believe in God? You cussed so much. When I say, it’s it’s it’s letting you know what I’m thinking. If I try to make it all pretty and shit, that’s not what my life was. It was a violent, violent struggle daily to get where I’m at today.

I’m not going to water it down. I’m not going to water it down. Shit wasn’t fun. It ain’t fun today, but

JOE ROGAN: I’m happy. Don’t you think that your happiness is probably elevated by the amount of pain that you’ve gone through? A hundred percent. So the amount of suffering that you understand, the amount of pain that you’ve gone through makes you appreciate the happiness and the the beautiful moments with much more intensity.

Embracing the Struggle

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s what weak people miss about my story. Weak people hear this soft kid. Oh my god. He must be miserable. Oh my god.

What the hell is wrong with him? You’re missing the story. You’re not listening to the story, man. Look what I overcame. If that doesn’t put some badge of honor tattooed in your brain for the rest of your life, you can die today talking to Joe Rogan.

You’re missing the story, man. Am I happy? What did you think? Don’t miss it. Don’t misunderstand the passion in which I speak for not being intensely happy, happiest person in the world.

But I’m not done. So I’m not going to speak to you like, oh, man. Everything is great. No. I have a lot more shit to do.

A lot more shit to do.

JOE ROGAN: Well, this is in the same use of the word that you used, the warrior’s mentality, the warrior’s life. Right. This is this is the way that you can keep balanced and sane Right. And and keep a good grip on who you are.

DAVID GOGGINS: Period. And, like, there’s a quote that was said I don’t know who said it, but it was a great quote. This guy said, going into combat, going into war, out of the hundred men that go into war, ten shouldn’t even be there. Eighty of them are just targets. Ten do most of or nine do most of the fighting.

One is a warrior. And it’s a true quote to life. I saw it going through training. I saw it everywhere I went. There’s so many people who just show up to life that shouldn’t even be around.

And there’s few people who do all the work. I wanted to be part of that nine, and I’m working towards being that one. And that’s just how I live my life.

Current Focus and Goals

JOE ROGAN: Now what are you doing with your life these

DAVID GOGGINS: days? Right now, I keep the same I’m very routine. I get up every morning. I run. I go to the gym, and then at nighttime, I stretch out.

I am, just trying to develop a business. Costing me a lot of money trying to do that. I’m just getting out. I’m a I’m a introvert, so I never want to get on social media. I I’m I’m not big on that.

I’m I’m I’m big on being with yourself. I believe all these cameras and phones and shit, it it takes you away from the most powerful thing in the world, which is your mind. So I try hard to continue to grow that. I’m I’m trying to break a record again. I’m trying to cross Death Valley as fast as possible at top of Mount Whitney.

And, I’m constantly trying to put goals in front of me, but the biggest thing is I’m trying to find more of myself. And the only way I can find more is to silence the world out as much as I can because it’s it’s it’s getting busier every day. It’s getting faster. And the faster it gets, the more you are missing who you are. So I trap my own mind a lot and say, look, man.

I put my phone away. I put shit away, and I go dark. I go dark a lot, and it’s because I have to find out I’m on a journey of life, and we all have a different journey. And I want to be in my pine box, and I believe your spirit lives forever. Have to.

It’s too powerful. No way in hell that thing just dies when you die. I want to be able to look back on my life when I’m all dead and be so proud of myself forever. This is all temporary shit to me. I want to be forever proud of who I was as a man and change who I used to be, the liar, the insecure guy, the guy who can whatever.

I want to be proud. And if I die now, if I die at eight, if I die at ninety, a hundred, I want to look at myself and say, proud of myself.

JOE ROGAN: Don’t you think that also, like, we what we’re saying that because you’ve gone through so much struggle, you appreciate happiness, true happiness? Do you think that you appreciate discipline because you weren’t disciplined? Do you think you appreciate the hard work you put in because you used to be weak?

The Power of Self-Discipline

DAVID GOGGINS: Yes. I appreciate self discipline. Yes. I never had and the crazy thing about what you know, you say that I have a come wake me up at thirty o’clock in the morning and say, hey. You gotta get your shit in.

I had no trainer. I have a a nutritionist. It was this self discipline that I had to survive. To not survive, if I was weak, to to to to thrive. No one said, hey, man.

You’re two hundred ninety seven pounds, man. I’m going to help you out. I’m going to help hey. Hey, man. You’re you’re not smart.

I’m going to I’m going to help you out. I I had to work at all this shit. I had to overcome, and and it it it it self disciplines everything. If you don’t have it, I I don’t look at you right because I know you’re capable of more. It’s not discipline so much for me.

The Importance of Self-Accountability

DAVID GOGGINS: It’s all on you. It’s all on you. The self part is what’s big. We need someone to hold hold people accountable. That shit, man.

That shit. We we count on people too much to get us through shit. And we look to our right, we look to our left, we’re looking for help. And if you can build that self, you can build that total accountability in oneself. And it’s not about being selfish.

I’m trying to create a better me, so hopefully people who are hearing this are taking it the right way can say, I can run a mile. Ain’t nobody running two hundred and five miles, doing fourth, or being in the city. Ain’t about all that shit. Shit doesn’t matter. I want you to see how far you can go.

And that’s all it’s about yourself. And that’s where it all comes from.

JOE ROGAN: Well, listen. I guarantee you’ve already done that. What you experienced from watching that television show and what what got you out the door, what got you to sort of take the first steps to change your life, what you experienced by watching Rocky, what you those those moments of inspiration, those are critical for people. They need to know that someone’s done something, done something that’s greater than they what they could imagine themselves doing, and they want to take a step towards trying to be better. Right.

That that that that inspiration is gigantic, and sometimes it comes across as corny. You know, people read too much of it online. It it becomes it drowns out. You you lose it. The meaning gets lost.

Authenticity vs. Social Media Posturing

I mean, there’s a and there’s a lot of posers. There’s a lot of people out there that are they’re pretending that they’re trying to offer up inspiration or a true honest account of their experiences, but really what they’re trying to do is say something that’s going to get likes. Right. You know, they’re trying to say things that they think people are going to go, yeah. Double high five.

Right. You know, there’s a thing that people are doing where they’re just trying to just get social cred.

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s it. That’s what social media is, man. I’m a I’m a I’m a paint you the picture of my fake life. Right. Right.

Right. I paint you a picture of my real life.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

DAVID GOGGINS: Period. Like it or not, man.

JOE ROGAN: But that that real life is fuel for people. Right. It’s fuel for me. I mean, I’d I’d I love that shit. I live off

DAVID GOGGINS: of it. There’s a lot

JOE ROGAN: of people that I follow online, and you’re one of them, that I can get something out of that. I could watch a a short clip of you talking. I’m sure clips of this podcast, people are going to play these clips and go for crazy runs afterwards.

DAVID GOGGINS: Right. Well, I hope so.

JOE ROGAN: There’s nothing. You don’t even have to hope. It’s going to happen.

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s good. That’s good.

Building a Brand with Integrity

JOE ROGAN: What is this business you’re doing?

DAVID GOGGINS: Well, it’s my own Goggins LLC. Basically, I I’m investing in myself. I’m investing in myself, and I hope that this story is can can change somebody’s life. Not to be me, because it ain’t about me. And I and I I I try to be as real as I can because we’re all suffering in this world.

We’re all hurting. And I try to take away all titles you want to give me and let you know that I did not come from that shit. That’s why I have to be so authentic and so real about my own insecurities, my own faults, my just being a messed up person. I’m I’m I’m not the best at anything. I’m not I’m not gifted.

I’m just driven. And, it’s all about trying to share that message with people. This is all about, you know, I I speak to a lot of people and, that’s that’s what I do now.

JOE ROGAN: And how are you doing it as a business?

DAVID GOGGINS: I do some motivational speaking, but, you know, right now, I’m not really trying to make a lot of money. I’m just trying to build the brand as authentic as possible because I don’t want to build it too fast because my my biggest fear in life is people can rewrite through a that’s not real. I do it all the time. Like, a lot of people have these great quotes and they and they and they mass produce. I can’t mass produce something, man.

Right. And they and they have these great quotes and shit, but are you living that? What you just quoted and how powerful it may sound, are you getting up every morning? I’m not working out, whatever. Are you really getting the after are you just talking to motivate people?

Right. And And I don’t want to be that guy.

JOE ROGAN: Or you’re talking to pretend that you’re

DAVID GOGGINS: really taking after it. And a lot of people make this big money over here on the side, which I haven’t made a lot. And they they they talk this shit, and they’re off this until it’s gone. Right. They’re not authentic at all, man.

You go it’s all this shit. Right. And I I read it all. I’m like, man, this guy is bull bullshit. Right.

Bullshit, man. Wake up, get after it, live what you’re saying, and then it comes people can see when I talk the reason I talk so dispassionate, because I’m reliving my life. I’m reliving this morning when I got up. I didn’t want to do that shit. I’m reliving everything I did, and I can’t speak to you, like, all calm and shit.

Shit sucks. It sucks, man. So whenever I start talking about, like, after this podcast, you’ll see, man. God, you’re so calm right now. What is wrong with you?

I’m not going back through that shit, man. I’m not I’m not going back through the the suffering and shit that it took to become who I am today. So I’m slowly trying to

JOE ROGAN: build this brand to the

From Motivation to Driven Obsession

DAVID GOGGINS: point where I can slowly, hopefully, make people from motivated to driven, because motivation is crap. It’s shit. People right now, maybe listening to this shit, they’ll be motivated to go run. If it’s cold somewhere where they’re at, a lot of my friends will shut that door and go back inside. That’s motivation.

It comes and go as how you feel. If you and your wife are good, if you and your kids are good, if you’re good at work, you’re motivated. I like a whose life has imploded, ain’t got shit in life and says, still gotta get after today, man. That’s what it’s about. So that’s when you move from motivation to driven to obsessed.

And I want people to realize once you get to this person over over here, the driven obsessed part, you’re unstoppable.

JOE ROGAN: This commitment that you have to authenticity is one of the reasons why people are connected to what your your message is. That’s one of the reasons why what you’re saying, you don’t want to grow too fast. You don’t want it to be bullshit. You’re terrified of that thing. Just like we’re talking about with weak people, you’re terrified of seeing that weakness in yourself.

Right. You know, we all see that. We’ve all seen motivational things that are bullshit. We’ve all talked to people that are talking, and you realize there’s nothing really that they’re connected to they’re not really connected to their words. Their words

DAVID GOGGINS: are just a bunch

JOE ROGAN: of words they’ve pieced together because they sound like something that someone who’s, you know, enlightened on the subject would say. Right. Yeah. It doesn’t it doesn’t doesn’t connect at all. So your struggle now is to try to figure out how to stay you and get the message out, but still be fully connected to that message.

Patience and Minimalism in Business

DAVID GOGGINS: Right. That’s you know, and it’s not so much a struggle because I’m not really about I’m not driven by the business. I’m not I’m not driven by trying to be I I I make a very small salary from being retired from the military. That’s all I need. So I’m not fast to, I’m a I’m a minimalist.

Give me a backpack of ground to sleep on and a pull up bar and a some running shoes and a a subway sandwich or some shit, and I’m straight. So it’s, I believe in patience. I’m a patient dude. I can watch a piece of grass grow for twenty years because I know that it it’s just how you get somewhere in life. By being that monk like mentality and being able to watch something grow very calmly, patiently.

And that’s all I’m doing right now. It’s not about money. It’s not about people knowing me. I don’t care if you like me. Whoever wants to hear this is out there.

It’s out there.

JOE ROGAN: So your your your goal is to grow this?

DAVID GOGGINS: Right. Slowly. Very slowly.

JOE ROGAN: And your goal is to grow this in order to impact people? Period.

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s it. It’s not about me. What

JOE ROGAN: do you get out of impacting people?

DAVID GOGGINS: It’s a good question. I don’t I don’t get anything out of it. I’m a

JOE ROGAN: tool. But you must get something. There must be personal satisfaction. There must be a connection to those people. There must be it must be enriching to you.

Sharing the Journey of Self-Discovery

DAVID GOGGINS: It’s hard to connect with people because there’s there’s quite a few now that are coming in. Right. It’s it’s my duty. It’s my duty to share my it’s kinda like it’s somebody who, discovered a new earth, you know, and and discovered the people on it in in in the water source and the food source. I’ve discovered a whole another part of your brain that a lot of people don’t even know about.

It’s my job by being a on this journey and being a discovery person, being and being the person that maybe I didn’t discover this part. I discovered a very important part that I haven’t met many people that have discovered this part. I’m sure there’s a lot out there. But it’s my job now to take these weak people in the category that I was in and say, uh-uh. Stop reading the bullshit.

Stop listening to the bullshit. And if if my story of success can impact somebody, it is my job, it’s my duty to share the story. As much as I’m not really fond of it, I I I’m not I’m the kind of guy that wants to sit in the room and just be me. Just be me alone, by myself. It’s who I am.

But I have to get uncomfortable and tell people all this shit. Do you think it feels good to tell people about it? Out of fourth grade reading level in high school, I stuttered. I lied to people to be their friends. It doesn’t feel good.

It doesn’t feel good at all. But maybe someone’s doing the same shit, and maybe they can realize, wow. That was a piece of shit. And he now is a Navy Seal, retired guy, and runs these miles, and was two hundred ninety seven pounds, and pathetic, and wow. And people say, why are you talking so it’s the truth.

I was a pathetic, man. People cannot say that to themselves. It’s we have to choose these great magical words that that makes that that make people feel good. Tell yourself the truth. If someone calls you fat, they may be bullying you, but you might be fat.

Someone calls you dumb, it’s mean, but you might be dumb. It’s life, man. Take it for what it’s worth and change it.

JOE ROGAN: And that terrible feeling when someone does tell you that you’re fat, you can use that as fuel.

DAVID GOGGINS: As fuel. Period. And that’s all this is about. And and and where it goes, if it goes somewhere and and whatever, you know, I don’t give a shit.

The Forty Percent Rule

JOE ROGAN: Well, you said something that I think of when I run, and it’s that most people quit at forty percent.

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s it. That’s my forty percent rule, man.

JOE ROGAN: I love that quote.

DAVID GOGGINS: My forty percent rule, man. And I, I I really developed that through my heart surgeries, and I developed that through that first hundred mile run. And I thought I had given a hundred percent. When I was on that chair at mile seventy, I was messed up. I thought I’d given a hundred percent.

And to go that last, I’d go, man, there has this I wouldn’t even near a hundred percent. So I came up with this thing called the forty percent rule. It’s basically where you it’s like a car. You put a governor on a car. And let’s say the car can go one thirty.

That governor stops the car at ninety one. And you’re driving thinking, man, I want to floor it, but I can’t go I I can’t go any faster. We do that to our brain. We put a governor on our brain. It’s like we feel pain, discomfort, suffering, all those words that we hate to say because we’re in this happy, peaceful world we live in now.

We stop. We slow down. And if you can get through these different barriers and gain five percent, two percent, three percent, that forty percent becomes sixty. That sixty percent becomes seventy, eighty, and ninety. And then you’ll hopefully one day near a hundred.

I don’t I don’t know many people who probably add a hundred. We I mean, we think we’re there, but there’s so much more.

JOE ROGAN: Isn’t a hundred a dust door, though?

DAVID GOGGINS: I I love that. I think it’s true. I think that’s a hundred percent true.

JOE ROGAN: I think when you were laying in that tub, you’d knocked on a door.

DAVID GOGGINS: That is that is a hundred percent true. No one has ever that is a hundred percent true. I didn’t give a hundred percent in that hundred and one mile run I did for the first time. So that’s the scary thing. That’s the scariest thing in the world.

I didn’t die.

JOE ROGAN: You probably gave ninety nine point nine nine nine nine nine

DAVID GOGGINS: nine and died over your life. I guarantee I guarantee it.

JOE ROGAN: Man, dude, I don’t know how to end this any better than that. So let’s just wrap this up. If people want to find your stuff, what what’s the best place to to go and look for it?

DAVID GOGGINS: I’m just at david goggins, man. Social media on Instagram, Facebook. I don’t tweet that much stuff out because I’m I write these I write messages, and I always link it, you know, on on Twitter to my Facebook and Instagram, but it’s just at David Goggins.

JOE ROGAN: It was an honor and privilege, brother. Thanks a

DAVID GOGGINS: lot, man.

JOE ROGAN: I really, really appreciate it.

DAVID GOGGINS: Thank you.

JOE ROGAN: David Goggins, ladies and gentlemen. Go after it, you. Come on.

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