let's talk about standards uh first starting with physical standards and let's actually get back to the program just briefly um you mentioned the five-day-a-week program a while ago i saw you put out um it's a fit test basically that's designed to be done anytime no preparation after you've done uh it's gbrs is your program i'm gonna sign up for this this is not a promotional i'm just gonna do it i'm gonna pay full price i'm gonna insist on paying full price like everyone else and doing this because i turned 50 in about a week and i want to stay fit going forward and um let me see if i got this right it involves a broad jump some pull-ups and push-ups would you walk us through what the test is and what the program actually provides um because i know a lot of people listening are already exercising and are attached to their program right guys are like they want more lower bicep rear delt step but this is different this is about all around functional fitness at any age men or women so what's the program so we started that program is like a recovery from injury right i'm just trying to maintain a high standard i've i've had a high standard physically since i was 17 right i've gotten better i've had really really high points and low points coming back from injury but i wanted something to be able to maintain a high standard and we got out you start working with swat teams seal teams every team in between firemen and everybody else and it's such a physical component that cannot be ignored but so many people in the 80s 90s even early 2000s like good is good enough like you ever seen the show rescue me dennis leary and a bunch of guys a bunch of firemen in new york and they had the fat firemen big handlebar mustaches you had the young guys and you see all this stuff and now if you look at the majority of firemen they look like professional they look like crossfitters like they're in shape because they understand we've got so much data on human potential and how to get there nutrition sleep recovery training protocols and they realize that you are your first lifeline your physical vessel is the thing you can get in the airport through tsa i can get in the white house i don't need to bring any tools with me this is a really really good tool and it's always with me if i keep it at a high level so we're going through here and you know the majority of the military screen test and swat teams it's all body weight push-ups pull-ups running seal teams and special operations swim test and that's about it you'll do o courses and some other stuff but the majority of it that's just what it is well it's not reality you don't walk around there's no way in you don't walk in in a pair of board shorts and weigh in you're wearing body armor helmets you know pano night vision it's a lot of heavy stuff you have to carry so you're always under an extreme load but the physical standard was so high as a tier one level i mean the entire force is but you have to maintain such a high level because everybody else is around you so when i'm looking at all these guys swat team guys if you had a physical standard every swat team in the country held if the lowest dude on team could pass this test the top guys are at the super elite level you're so well rounded you can solve anything physically and that's one of the big things in the military you never want to have to say no can you 25 guys get up over this mountain and assault that target by zero four in the morning if if it can be done physically we can do it no matter what we'll find a way move heaven and earth we'll get it done it's really really hard to make a good decision on the back side when you are so physically taxed because no decision you're ever going to make is without being under extreme duress if we elevate the physical standard we can make better mental i mean we can't we can make better decisions through mental clarity when we're not just sucking wind also true very much so in civilian life right everywhere like emts i mean business entrepreneurship school teachers everybody right if you're not physically labored you can make better decisions so that's the whole goal i don't care if you're a 45 year old fireman that has an extra 35 pounds of weight on you or if you're a 19 year old kid who's in their prime if you have to run up 10 flights of stairs carrying that hose when you get to the top execute a good decision the guy whose heart rate isn't at 180 is going to make a better decision they just are and we all know it so let's set a standard that you know i don't care if it's wednesday if it's two o'clock in the morning on a saturday if you spring out of bed and take this test you should be able to pass it no matter what now what level are we trying to adhere as high as humanly possible if i hit the elite standard right now in three weeks i should hit the elite again if i start to taper off why lack of sleep poor nutrition you know just really crazy op tempo i'm in the red the whole time okay maybe i need to take a couple days off get back on my training plan to maintain that high level but we do a broad jump so power output on the floor in a dynamic fashion landing proprioception so just have people stand on a line jump as far forward as they possibly can and this the the lowest standard is your height your height right so if i'm six foot tall i should be able to broad jump past six foot what's the next level up from that one foot one foot past your height yep so seven feet would be you know middle of the road okay if i can jump eight feet that's really the standard like for me i'm trying to get to a 10 foot broad jump like i want to hit 10 feet and i want to hold that as long as humanly possible and you can swing your arms no running start but you just swing your arms forward jumping your arms jump feet low to the ground dynamic fashion and i always tell the guys in reality you are not going to have time to negotiate the obstacle you are not going to be able to run up to that ditch and stop and look at and go okay i need to get i need to back it up a little bit you're going to have to go as a cop chasing this kid down this city park you're going to have to scale that eight foot fence right now not look for a step stool not oh what can i climb on get over this you're going to have to hit that thing at full value and go up and over it you should have the physical ability to do that so we have a broad jump and a lot of people vernon has a really good thing about monkey bars like everybody was swinging on monkey bars when you're a kid in a certain point in adulthood you stop doing it but you'll look at your kid nine years old swing a monkey bar she's like oh you're doing it wrong do it this way i'll jump up there and show them if you haven't been on monkey bars in 40 years expect to be humbled really really fast it's like you lose it use it or lose it it's going to happen so we're always trying to test ourselves like what is going to make me a dynamic participant throughout the whole process broad jumps a really good expression we have that in the seal teams we had a legacy test it was a bodyweight bench press nfl it's 225 bench press it's not fair for me to give 225 to a kid that weighs 160 pounds or 140 pound woman or 50 spend one yeah your body weight though and we go minimum standard 10 repetitions 10 repetition single set with your body weight that's minimum standard 15 next level up 20 plus is elite if you can bench press your body weight 20 times you are in top tier this is full range of movement bar touches your chest you press you're not all the way to straight arm all the way 20 reps on that pull-ups with no weight and we do that because so many guys have so many injuries so many shoulder injuries and if your technique isn't there and you're dropping out of the hole i don't want you to dislocate and jam up a shoulder so pull-ups are in there we have a farmer's carry how many pull-ups sorry the uh 10 15 and 20 plus so 10 with your body weight 15 is the next level up and then 20 plus is elite okay and in a perfect word we do it with weight in the seal teams we add weight to it but for everybody if you can do 20 straight dead hang pull-ups you're at the top physical game there's lessen no kip uh chin clears the bar chin clears the bar yeah we do a farmer's carry so with your body weight so if you weigh 200 pounds you have 100 pound dumbbell in each hand you get up and you walk it as far as you can i'd have to look at the exact feet measurement but i think the elite is almost 300 feet 275 and 250 somewhere around there and it's not an easy thing to do but we work so much grip for the pull-ups and everything else like grip matters we say that a lot it's very hard to climb up a caving ladder on the side of a cruise ship when it's underway your grip's the only thing that's going to get you there so we really put a lot of focus on gripping firemen need it cops need it if i'm trying to if i'm trying to manipulate a full-grown man through time and space against their will your grip is a key factor man you ask anybody who grapples when somebody who grapples and you know how to use it grabs a hold of you you instantly know you're in a world of hurt you grab some ncaa wrestling he grabs a hold of you the first thing you feel is his hands oh no i'm just grabbing a hold of a grizzly bear right now this is not going to be good we need everybody to have that same strength also someone's got to open the pickle jar exactly gotta be able to open the pickle jar but when you pick up that weight everything's in your core's in there your posture really matters upright i've got to be able to control my breathing ocular focus where am i looking and then how long can i hold on to this i've got to keep a rigid frame i can't lean over and let it take control of me i can't lean back i've got to be present throughout the entire movement and then just push so we've got that we've got a trap bar deadlift we use the trap bar because the majority of guys in that career they've already got some injuries stacked up and we actually put 45 pound bumper plates to pull from a little bit of an elevation because i've got a really long torso and the big thing we push in that program is we want you to be able to train 52 weeks out of the year there is no off season for a fireman there's no off season for a SWAT team guy there's no off season for an army ranger and if you get jammed up in the gym and i've done it really bad the mission doesn't care you have to go anyway and now you're not at 100 and the entire patrol in you're thinking about your lower back and if you're going to be able to be able to perform on target we can't have that we're trying to increase your confidence never decrease it so that's why i pull from that that is one and a half times your body weight is the minimum standard for how many repetitions five one and a half times your body weight okay and then two times your body weight i think it's two and a half times your body weight is the elite for a set of five you know you can obviously do more i think i did a set of 12 in that video but it's just can i pick up double body weight under control without slamming on the ground proper form in control the entire time so we add in all those so the broad jump the farmers carry the body weight bench the pull-ups the trap bar deadlift and we have an 800 meter run we also have a plank for time so a minute and a half two minutes no it's two minutes two and a half minutes and three minutes just in the forearms planking however you want to hold it and we were going to do sit-ups originally but sit-ups is such a hip flexor dominant position because i have that long torso if i don't anchor my feet 50 sit-ups is really really hard for me and how do you gauge it are your hands interlocked behind your back there's a whole bunch of ways to cheat it it's very hard to cheat a plank but your core is so important and that's something that vernie got me doing i had a lot of lower back injuries as we all do i started walking around with my core at like 40 to 50 flexed all day every day my lower back issues went away instantly so i walk around with a little bit of tension all day long just imagine walking around the pool your shirt off a little bit of tension your abs and it protects my lower back so we always say be an active participant throughout the entire movement i'm never gonna let my core go to jello because my lower back will spasm everything is locked in everything is in control my intensity is there my focus is there and i blocked out all the stray voltage so we get through that and then we do an 800 meter run i wanted to do 400 meter repeats do a 400 stop as long as it took you to run execute another one in the same amount of time well the swat team they have an 800 meter run we're like well since you already do it i don't need a guy that can run a marathon i need a guy that can throw a 200 pound guy over his shoulders run him up 10 flights of stairs and make a good decision so being a marathon runner while it might be great for you it doesn't really give me everything i need i really need that hybrid athlete and that 800 meter i didn't realize and i talked to everybody who's a distance runner the 800 is brutal it's too fast to fully sprint and you can't slow down because that time metric i think is 3 15 3 minutes and 245 to be the elite so i think i'm in like the 240 range right now but i haven't ran it since i snapped my hip other than sprints i don't distance run because it hurts my hip too bad but i'm able to get through it i've got a laundry list of injuries and we did that entire test cold war we basically wrote it down and the whole thing when i sit down with vernon i was like i need something to drive to i do better when there's a target goal on the wall like two years ago was a 400 pound bench press i have never been able to bench press 400 pounds i've missed it every time my shoulders were all blown out and i was like with all the injuries i want to press 400 pounds one time before i hang it up forever retrain the entire year hit 407 re-racked it now what i need to hold a high standard what is it well if i was on a seal team or a swat team and every dude could pass that test we have a physical dynasty because not everyone can but it gives you something you look at me and it's like i've got a laundry list of injuries dude i'm on the wrong side of 40 right now i've never taken my foot off the gas and neither should you you're 22 years old you should be running circles around me and if you're not just because you don't care enough like no one has slapped you that's the whole concept of be a pro everything i'm doing is putting me in position to be the best version of myself because the team deserves it everything i do everything i say everything i represent should be putting the group in a better position and for us because it's such a dangerous job your physical readiness it can't be ignored that is the one thing that everyone should be able to count on