EP 175 — Craig Weller: Facing Real Life Challenges: Lessons From Elite Soldiers
Spirit Gym with Paul Chek
Paul Chek
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 8 February 2022
⏱️ 219 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Many people take on stressful challenges by going with their gut, but those on-the-fly tactics often don’t work, especially for soldiers trying to stay alive in the battlefield.
Former U.S. Navy Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewman (SWCC) Craig Weller shares a different, mentally-focused approach to managing stressful situations by tapping into your emotions and why the ability to withstand high amounts of pain just isn’t enough in this very tactical Living 4D conversation.
Learn more about Craig, his book, Building The Elite, and the courses he offers at his website. Follow Craig on social media via Instagram at Building The Elite and Precision Nutrition.
Show Notes
- Craig had to learn to swim to qualify to become a SWCC. (8:02)
- Motivational slogans won’t help you improve your performance. (11:06)
- In the special ops community, soldiers have a deeper understanding about the difference between hurt and harm. (25:20)
- “Panic is the first stage of death.” (31:45)
- Bootcamp doesn’t fix people with emotional problems. (45:31)
- Many soldiers wanting to be a SWCC or Navy Seal are terribly unprepared. (50:48)
- Stress inoculation training. (1:00:09)
- Successfully adapting to stress requires specific skills, objectives and purposes, not merely withstanding pain. (1:13:34)
- Single-minded toughness vs dangerous stupidity. (1:24:42)
- “Rational decision-making must involve emotion.” (1:33:59)
- It’s very easy to develop flawed gut feelings or instincts in the absence of negative feedback. (1:51:36)
- Do you have 10 years of experience in a career or 1 year of experience repeated 10 times? (1:55:52)
- The importance of normal jaw development. (2:14:53)
- People won’t feel the effect of eating highly processed, unhealthy foods for 10-15 years. (2:27:20)
- Craig’s tips for managing stress better, including the 3-minute rule, segmenting and sleep. (2:32:13)
- Relying solely on willpower over structure and a better system doesn’t work. (2:40:58)
Resources
- Drownproofing
- The work of Antonio Damasio
More resources for this episode are available on our website.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | it's important to keep in mind that we're always training more than muscles. |
| 0:04.0 | So if you think of that workout, like maybe you're going to go do an aerobic capacity thing for two |
| 0:08.7 | hours, like that physiological adaptation is going to stick around for three weeks maybe and it's going to fade. |
| 0:14.3 | It's going to go away. |
| 0:15.6 | In any workout in isolation physiologically doesn't matter that much. |
| 0:19.1 | It's the overall trend your pattern that matters, but you're also at the same time training that skill of |
| 0:25.6 | perseverance, of doing a hard thing when the right thing is hard, of when the weather is |
| 0:31.9 | super shitty, when you could have any opportunity to make an excuse and quit and feel okay about it |
| 0:36.8 | You're developing the ability to push through and do the hard thing anyway and that that mental pattern of what you do in a difficult moment what |
| 0:46.1 | choices you make is going to stick around a lot longer than that isolated |
| 0:51.4 | physiological adaptation |
| 0:52.8 | and it's a lot more important in the long run. |
| 0:54.9 | Because if you have someone who's got great physiology, |
| 0:57.4 | but they give up as soon as it's hard or it's raining |
| 0:59.6 | or their feet hurt or whatever, like they're screwed. |
| 1:01.8 | They're not going to make it anywhere. |
| 1:03.0 | Welcome to live in 4D with Paul Check. Today's guest is Craig Weller and he talks with |
| 1:09.6 | Paul about facing real life challenges and lessons from elite soldiers. |
| 1:15.0 | Craig is a former US Navy Special Warfare Combatant crewman. |
| 1:19.0 | He is also certified under Department of State's Worldwide Personal Protective Service too, |
| 1:25.0 | and has spent nearly two years on the high-threat protection team for the U.S. Ambassador to Baghdad in Iraq. |
| 1:31.0 | Along with Jonathan Pope, he co-founded Ethos, Colorado Training Center, a full-service |
... |
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