How To Become A "Sheepdog," Grappling With Weapons, Making Yourself Harder To Kill, Are There Fringe Navy SEAL Smart Drugs & Much More With Tim Kennedy.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

And we're sitting here watching these things happen, frustrated, like, why can't one of us be sitting in the movie theater when some prick walks in and starts mowing people down. Tens of thousands of people like you that have situational awareness, their eyes up with a weapon, knowing that my family and those around me are going to be safe and protected because I'm here. Think about that for a second. I get to make you do whatever I want you to do and you don't get a say in it.

Help. Performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. All right, folks, I got a pretty cool dude on the show today. His name is Tim Kennedy and he is definitely a unicorn. You learn more as we get into this show. And right up the alley of this show, I actually mentioned towards the end of the show, but I'll tell you right now, there is this new, it's like a documentary series, it's called End Game. And this podcast that you're about to hear is all about preparedness. Not for necessarily like a coming great reset or economic collapse, but more just like what to do if somebody pulls out a gun at Walmart or attacks your loved one or if the alarm goes off in your house at night and you're not sure what to do or you know, how to, how to grapple effectively when someone has a weapon. Like, it's actually a really, really practical chat we have, as is the sheepdog course that Tim Kennedy puts on. But this other thing, this documentary, I mean, it's everything from, you know, how to invest in the stock market right now on, you know, hedging with gold and silver and crypto and real estate, to like home remedies that you should have available on hand from professional herbalists, to how to set up your home for fuel, heat and power, to like homeschooling. I'm on the documentary. I talk about unschooling and preparing your kids to be more creative thinking, independent, resilient, stress proof thinkers of the future. It's actually a really, really cool series and I wanted to tell you about it because if you dig today's episode, you'll dig this series. It just came out. At least at the time I'm putting this out. I actually just got through all the audios myself. I tend to access documentaries like this and then I buy them and downlo the audios or download the videos, then I convert them to audio. I have this Little app called YouTube to MP3, so I'll convert it to audio and just like listen to it while I'm walking and stuff. But this one's called Endgame the Coming Collapse and How to Survive It. You can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com endgame if you want to access all those videos and download them or watch them. I think it's one of those things where it's free to watch them all, but then if you want to buy it and download it and have access to it forever, you pay to get them. And I think they're worth having so you can tuck them away for your next hike so you can learn how to be a little prepper yourself. Well folks, if you noticed perhaps by following me on Instagram, that my wife and I were recently immersed in this really actually pretty cool three day close quarter combat and firearm and personal defense and situational awareness course called Sheepdog Response. Sheepdog Response. We took it over in Post Falls, Idaho and during the course we had hours upon Neither of us have a big Jiu Jitsu background. Our boys have rolled for years, but neither mom or I have joined them too often. But hours upon hours of grappling and close quarter combat and kind of like Jiu jitsu with weapons and situational awareness and firearm training a whole lot more. I put a bunch of photos up that we took along the way if you guys want to kind of check out how sore and beat up we were at the end, but also a little bit more prepared for any curveballs life might have thrown at us. And I'll link to some of our own takeaways if you go to the show notes for today's episode, which you're going to find because they're named after my guest today in honor of my guest today. BenGreenfieldFitness.com TimKennedy that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com TIMKennedy is where you can access the show notes for everything that you hear on today's show. Because I was so impressed with the course that I wanted to get the founder of Sheepdog, the guy who came up with this crazy idea, Tim Kennedy himself on the podcast to talk about it. And if you don't know who Tim is, you should. Tim has a really extensive background that I'll barely scratch the surface of, but he's a retired American mixed martial artist and also a current soldier. So he was a fighting professional for like 15 years from 2001 until 2016. And he fought all over like UFC, Strikeforce, HD, net fights and even some of these TV shows. And was one of the few fighters to simultaneously serve in the United States army while also fighting professionally. And along the way he worked in television hosting and producing and of course as an entrepreneur himself with enterprises like this Sheepdog response. So his army background is that he completed basic combat training and then Ranger school. So he served in the Special Forces. He served on operational detachments Alpha. He was a sniper, a sniper instructor, the principal combatants instructor for C Company. He deployed at Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom. He's still at active Ranger qualified Green Beret, Special forces sniper. He's toured in Iraq and Afghanistan, I'm sure plenty of other clandestine locations around the globe. He's kind of like a, like a real world Jason Bourne, so to speak, if you want to think about Tim that way. Although I don't know if you describe yourself that way, Tim, or if you align with Matt Damon at all. But also before I, before I get into Tim, if you guys want to watch some of his TV shows, he's got some cool TV shows too. Like he hosted a History channel series, Hunting Hitler. And then he also host hosted this cool show on the Discovery Channel called Hard to Kill where he explored the day in the life of all these different dangerous occupations around the world. And he has some other TV appearances too. He's been Deadliest Warrior, Ultimate Soldier Challenge all over the place. So we're lucky to have him on the show again. The Shownotes are going to be@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Tim Kennedy. Tim, welcome to the show. Man.

Oh my man, what an intro. I always want to caveat any of that stuff, especially when you start insinuating Jason Bourne comparisons. Well, if Jason Bourne was ugly, he had Harry and he had more similarities with an ogre or a troll than Yahtzee.

Yeah, that's right, that's right. But, but you, you hunt too, don't you? Are you a bow hunter?

I hunt all of the hunts. To include bow hunting, yes. Spear hunting, off horseback with a lance, from a helicopter, with a knife. Yeah, yeah, we get silly here in Texas.

Yeah, you can do that in Texas is one of the few states where it's actually legal to spear hunt.

Isn't is. There's a lot of places that you can spear hunt, man. When you look at something, it's essentially a bow and arrow. If you can bow hunt, I'm using an arrow that weighs 20 pounds that has the head of, you know, like a javelin. You know, it is, it is definitely the most humane way to, to hunt, it just takes a very crazy high skill level. But when we're hunting pigs in Texas has way less to do with the process or it's about eradication because there's so many. So it's, it's just a way to get creative and have fun. When you're killing four or five hundred pigs a year, it really just comes down to what are some other creative ways that we can kill these, these assholes.

I hear you. I bow hunt down in Hawaii, but I hunt those pigs for meat. I mean, those things are feeding on avocados and macadamia nuts and under mango trees. Their meat is just like nutty, rich, fatty goodness. And I've eaten on some Texas pigs before too, and there's not a real comparison in terms of flavor, but I can see hunting them for pests being handy. But the spear hunting thing is interesting. One of my friends actually got in big trouble. He lost his Under Armour sponsorship. I, Josh Bomar, because he did. Yeah, yeah, Black bear with us with a homemade spare up in, up in Canada. You could, you could probably Google this and still find some of the videos that might still be up there. But huge outrage over Joshua threw javelin. I think in, in high school or college, taking down a black bear. And it was, it was very controversial. People thought it was an unethical way to, to kill an animal. But if you saw the size of the spear and the size of Josh, you might, you might differ with that opinion.

I definitely differ with the, I mean, anybody can have a controversy about anything. But I thought that was an incredible hunt. I thought it was a humane kill. You know, the skill level involved in that, the dedication of time that he put into it. You know, what you're seeing is like a 30 second video of what it has been a lifetime of work. It's like watching the UFC fighter fight a contender, fight for the title, and he loses and you're like, oh, what a crappy, you know, piece of trash fighter this dude is. And you, you fail to notice that he's been doing this for 20 years. That led up to this crescendo of a mom. And then you pass judgment on 30 seconds or inversely, the champion who won it, and you're like, yeah, of course he's the best. And you forget about all the hard work that he put into it. Was no different with that hunt, you know, like that, that. I thought that was an extraordinary hunt.

Yeah, well, 30 seconds carefully edited by YouTube trolls. So, yeah, it's sometimes not all it appears, but that's actually not entirely what I want to talk to you about. I really, really wanted the folks who listen to the show to hear about Sheepdog because it was pretty sick. It was a very, very cool special weekend. And my wife and with a lot more confidence and, you know, I went from really having no clue how to practice in dry fire with my, with my weapon to how to, how to roll to, you know, just the way I walk across a parking lot is, well, I guess thanks or no thanks to you changed forever. Because I can't necessarily relax while walking into the grocery store now. And I'm looking right and left and assessing the entire situation and the escapes and exits, but it feels right to be able to think that way and know how to think that way. And, and I'm curious if you could explain to folks like what, what Sheepdog is and why you made Sheepdog first.

I'm gonna like applaud you that you're definitely, you know, the goal of a course is at the, the club. At the completion of it, you can't learn in three days all the things. So I've been doing this for 25 years as a professional. And then before that, I grew up in a household with my dad, who was a narcotics officer that was part of tax forces that were stealing planes full of cocaine from Pablo Esco. We had a red phone in the closet and I would answer it and the guy, you know, to get bonafitis on my dad would, you know, if the dad was a regular police officer and working regular hours, you know, he shouldn't be available during the day. So if he's calling during the day. So there was this like, script that we had to go through about how to answer where my dad was and who he was and what he was doing. And it just to add levels to my dad's, you know, covert cover, you.

Probably grew up petrified about, you know, sneaking a cigarette into the backyard.

Oh, no, this. This sharpened and honed my trade craft. Tr I still got away with stuff that most kids didn't get away with. With a dad that was trained to.

Do this, one of the only 10 year olds in the neighborhood smuggling. Smuggling narcotics in a, in a condom in your butthole?

Yeah, not literally, but yeah, kind of. You know, at 8, my dad was like, hey, I need you to go into this parking garage and find out if you can break into this yellow Camaro that's in there and trying to find out whose name is on the registration because you didn't have a warrant to get in There. And I was like, oh, yeah, sure. Like, not even think. As this is at 8 years old and now with a son that's 6. It blows my mind that these things were happening there. But, you know, at the end of three days, you are on a trajectory, and I'm complimenting you and applauding you. Like, not everybody takes ownership of the process.

Well, you wouldn't be complimenting me if you saw my draw speed.

You're aware of it, right? And that's like a big part of it. And as you're walking into the grocery store, like, you're saying, and you're seeing all these things around you right now, it's conscious thought, but the more that you do it, the less time you're going to have to spend on it. So to answer your question, what is sheepdog response? Sheepdog came from Colonel Grossman. He wrote some great books, one of them on killing. But this was a metaphor, a parable about three different groups of people. One is the sheep. They're just regular, everyday, living our life, not in a derogatory way that I think the left and the right use the word sheep, sheep, but just. Just people living right. They're going to eat grass, they're going to make little sheep, and they're just living a regular life. And then there's the predators, the wolves that are looking for the weak ones of the society, of the herd to go of the flock, to go and kill, to provide, you know, in some wolf instances, just satisfaction because they don't even need the meat. They just want to kill. And then there's a sheepdog. The sheepdog has way more in common with the wolf. It has canines. You know, it has a digestive system that's designed to. To process meat. It can. Has all the predatory skills of. Of a wolf. It has a musculature of a wolf. It has the bone structure of a wolf. But the thing that separates it is it. It loves the sheep. And the sheep, its flock is. Is what it is, is. They don't. They don't even know why. But that is their sole purpose for existence is to protect the flock. And that is the name, but the process came from. You know, I'm a Green Beret, and when I was over in Iraq and Afghanistan, I'm fighting the worst, what I thought was the worst dudes on the planet hunting down, you know, we were, as part of the task force that killed Zarqawi. There's bin Laden, leader of the Taliban, and there's our Qawi Leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Okay.

And I was part of the task force that killed him. And we're over there. And while I was over there, there were shootings happening in the United States, school shootings, active shooters. And it was like, it was gut punches where I'm like, man, I'm over here doing this and I'm walking down the halls that are filled with giants, you know, like just absolute heroes. Barrel chested freedom. I mean, I argue that if you pulled out a knife and slit one of these guys arms open, red, white and blue would just pour out of their arms.

They've got that, that, that, that Navy SEAL stash. What's the, the handlebar.

Yeah.

Cannonball shoulders.

You know, these jaws that just look so stoic and the little clutch chins, you know, their eyes are just, every look they make is blue steel. I'm joking, but I'm not because this is just how all of them look. And we're sitting here watching these things happen in the United States and frustrated, like, why can't one of us be there? Why can't I, Tim Kennedy, be sitting in the movie theater in Aurora when some prick walks in on the preview, the debut of Batman and starts mowing people down like, why can't I be in the theater on that night? Untrained. Nobody that doesn't know anything about really how to do violence. And you know, before the door opens, he throws in a flash of a flashbang or a gas grenade and I'm like, yay, the fight's on right for you.

That's fun. What most people would find terrifying, what arguably someone who may have been through a sheepdog course might at least be able to keep somewhat of a head on their shoulders about like you, you wanted to be able to put people in those type of situations. But there weren't. There weren't thousands of views.

Yeah, but there weren't. But now four years into this. So that was, that was the inception is can I so a Green Beret, first and foremost, we are our force multiplier. So you, the taxpayer pays me, the Green Beret, to go to places behind enemy lines and train friendly forces that believe the same thing that we believe in, you know, democracy and capitalism. And we know they don't like terrorists. You know, we're going to go over and find friendly forces that want to fight the Taliban and we're going to help them and empower them. And if, like, if I can do that overseas, why can't I do that in the United States? So we came Back with this new vision of, I'm going to empower the American people. You know, if you go back to 1773, 1774, a tyrannical government was like, we're going to tax you on this, T. And we're like, no, you're not. We're going to do what we want. And all of us are a bunch of. Of studs that carved our existence out of the wilderness, and we're gonna fight you for it. And then we have a revolution. That's the beginning of who we are as rebels. But every individual American was a badass. You know, like, they. They're gonna fight bears in the wilderness with a knife. You know, we're talking about Josh jumping out with a spear. That was just like a Tuesday, right, For a lot of people.

Mel Gibson, the patriot.

Yeah. And not an exception, just the American. So then, not that we're a soft society now, but we have had it so good for the past 70 years that we forgot what it looks like to be worried and to be scared and to have to struggle. And what a great blessing that we've been so fortunate as a country. But now, you know, there's wolves knocking on our doorstep. There's. There's predators that are prowling in the wood line looking at us. And in countries that are our peers that want to do evil to us and that they're empowering people here to do evil. And then we have this disgusting, weak coward of the. I'll call him a serial killer. Whether it's an active shooter, a school shooting, the serial killer that is looking for the opportunity to, you know, kill as many people as he can for whatever reason. I don't care what the motivation is, whether it's a radical Muslim or a crazy Christian or, you know, a depressed kid. Like, I want to address those issues and hopefully prevent them, but I also want to be ready for whoever that person is whenever they walk into that Christmas party in Ventura and they start trying to shoot people. We have now trained 9,000Americans, and next year we're going to train another 20, 100. And every year following, we're going to add to that. And there's going to be tens of thousands of people like you that are dry firing, that have situational awareness, that are walking into a grocery store and not looking at their. Not looking at their phone, both their eyes up with a weapon, knowing that my family and those around me are going to be safe and protected because I'm here.

Right?

And that was the beginning of shoot dog response.

Yeah. And it's kind of funny because. Well, it's not funny, but it's, it's meaningful that, you know what I discovered? I think the first night of that course, we were watching some videos. You know, it was one of the few times when we just got to sit around for some class classroom time. That was a. I think it was about a three hour long situational awareness course. And they showed us a video and I became starkly aware of my own lack of situational awareness when they showed us this video that I thought was a cheesy commercial about a guy and a girl going out in high school. You know, it was them writing love notes to each other and him, like carving something in her desk and passing notes back and forth in class and kind of standing around near the cafeteria chatting. And at the very, very end of the video, this dude, one of their fellow students, barges into the big room in the school where they're standing with a gun and proceeds to begin with a school shooting. And then they play the video again. And the entire video that you thought was a commercial for a dating service or something, if you pay attention in the background you can see this same kid as the couple is visiting the library. He's in the background, he's got a laptop open to some gun channel. And in another video, he's like drawing violent imagery in the background during an art class or something. And then you get to the end of the video and you're like, holy cow. If you actually know what to look for, then you can identify these type of people and hopefully shut down a situation before it becomes violent, preferably. But man, when I was sitting there in class, I felt like a dummy. When they played that video again, I'm like, how do I not even see stuff like this? Because I like to think that I hunt. I've got some nature awareness going on. You know, I meditate. I'm not one of those guys who's always sucked into the screen on my phone. But man, that was an eye opener for me. And then we proceeded, and I would love for you to unpack this a little bit over the next few days to actually take that situational awareness. And I'm fine if you want to explain to people what that is or take a deeper dive into that as well. But we took that situational awareness and then proceeded to learn a whole bunch of cool skills. And this might rabbit hole a little bit, but walk, walk us through what kind of like a typical sheepdog course looks like. If someone registers and shows up just.

Like a piece of beautiful music written by Rachmaninoffer, Beethoven, Handel. The big moments are the opening, the crescendo, and the close. So we front load a sheep dog response course with what we think is the most impactful block of instruction, which is the situational awareness. Ben, as you learn the OODA loop, the observe, orient, decide, and act the thing that takes the longest, you might be the fastest out of the holster, and you might be the best fighter, and you might have all the skills with all the equipment. You have the coolest gun, the coolest knife. But the thing that takes the longest is your brain's ability to process what's happening around you. You know, when you look at the Boston Marathon bombing, a guy in a black sweatshirt walked up to the finish line of the Boston Marathon. He set down a backpack, and in that backpack was a pressure cooker. And that pressure cooker, obviously we know what happens, but around there, how many people. Do you think Ben saw what was happening there? How many people saw him set down that backpack?

10, 20, 30, if that.

They couldn't process what they saw.

Right.

Like now, having seen pre assault indicators and understand. You know what I think is called the Gift of Fear. A great book by Gavin de Becker where he talks about.

What'd you call it? Gift of Fear.

Yeah, the gift of fear. He just talks about. We have forgotten and we have lost so much inherent skill. You know, that sixth sense. I'm not sure if you have kids. You know, there's times where my kids will, will be around somebody, you know, like, hey, you know, go say hi. And they're like, I don't, I don't want to go say hi. You're like, okay, don't go say hi. I don't know what it is that my kid sees in that person. But they haven't been culturally, the construct of society hasn't taught them that whatever that is inside of them, that fear, that that's not okay. They're still acting and responding in it. And. And I'm like, okay, absolutely.

Or your, or your dog.

Yeah, 100%. Well, we have that stuff. We've just, we have just be. Society has tried to dole it. Society has tried to tell us that it's not okay to profile. It's not okay to look out and be like that person that's sitting in the parking lot underneath the, the, the lamppost that has no light bulb and he's watching people come in and out of the store. There's probably nothing wrong with him. As a matter of Fact, I should feel empathetic and sympathetic to whatever trouble that person has had in their life. Try and, you know, ignore that that's happening when in truth we should recognize that that is a potential threat. And that if my wife is getting into her car without, you know, without me being there after shopping and she's, you know, opens the door, unlocks it and that person gets out of the car and gets in the car behind her, right behind her and says, hey, drive us to the secluded area and whatever happens to my wife is going to happen. And she saw all the pre assault indicators, but she intentionally ignored them. And a lot of times we try and talk ourselves out of it. So that situational awareness component is why we start the course with it and that is why we hammer so hard on getting your brain to work.

Yeah. And it's not like situational paranoia. Right. It's because that's what I was afraid of when we were going through all that. I'm like, I'm never going to be able to just walk into a cocktail party and relax again. But as you referred to a little bit earlier, you briefly alluded to this idea of competence and just that idea of being almost unconsciously competent when you walk into a room and even your subconscious just spinning away and able to process potential threats, potential exits, potential people that aren't acting the way that you might expect a normal person to act in a situation like that. So it's not as though you are paranoid. I never want to give people the impression this is about, about, you know, walking everywhere, biting your nails, looking fearfully around. It's more just like being freaking aware.

I actually think it's freeing. I pity people that live in fear and they're living in fear because they, they don't have the skills. And the first skill is that situational awareness and then obviously all of the other ones of defensive tactics and, and what are the tools that I'm carrying? But I mean really, like, if there's something that I'm worried about, I mitigate it with a measure so then I can continue to live. Right. I, I of course worry about my children and my teenage daughters that are, that are in college and what can I do and try to protect them from? You know, a third in, in college. A third of women are sexually assaulted in college. A third. So like what, what are measures that I can put in place to try and protect those young women as they're going through, you know, a great phase of their life to make sure that they're protected here at home, when I'm traveling, what can I do to make sure that my wife and my one year old and my six year old are safe? And it's not so that I'm living in fear, it's so that they can live with freedom and no paranoia, that they can just be comfortable and know that they're safe. And I think safety is one of the key motivators of why we do these things. It's so that you can live free.

Yeah. Now there's a couple of times I might rabbit hole a little bit here and ask you a few practical questions. So just so someone can wrap their head around the idea of, of someone who's been trained as a sheepdog with situational awareness, say walking through Walmart. You mentioned just a few minutes ago about kind of like what you have on you, like if, if you Tim Kennedy and you might be an extreme example, I suppose, but let's even just say the average sheepdog having gone through your course were walking through Walmart in addition to being situationally aware what do they actually have on their body or in their, in their bag that if shit does hit the fan would allow them to react as an appropriately, a trained sheepdog.

It depends on where we're going. So if we're using Walmart as the example, I change and tailor the stuff that I carry depending on the permissiveness of the environment that I'm going to go into. So if I'm going to Burkina Faso, Africa as a contractor or in a military capacity, I might have a few more things than I would if I was going to be hanging out in Germany, a very permissive, friendly place to Americans that like tourists. You know, similarly, if I'm in the United States and I'm in the, you know, Texas, if I'm going to barbecue joint on, in, in Lockhart compared to Southeast Austin, clearly one of them is totally permissive that I have very little to no worries about. And the other one, I might take some planning to mitigate some of the potential threats. You know, going into Whole Foods compared to Walmart or a Waffle House at 2:30 in the morning, you're going to have totally different groups of people, you know, at Whole Foods at 11am you're going to have a whole bunch of moms that dropped their kids off at school a couple of hours ago. They're now doing the shopping for their families and an hour from there you're going to have a bunch of working people that are coming in there to grab some food for lunch. So Understanding the social patterns in what we call a pol, a pattern of life and what is the normal thing for, for what's happening there. And then identifying the outliers. The outliers could be potential threats. And so if I'm walking into Walmart at 3:00 in the afternoon, that's a pretty permissive environment, you know, compared to walking into Walmart at 11pm at night where I'm going to have a different group of people that are going to be there. And some of the things that I have with me, I work in law enforcement. I am a special forces sniper and a Green Beret. I don't, I don't have a time in my life where I don't have a gun with me. And I have tailored my life that I can always have a gun with me. I thankfully have never had to use it in the United States.

That gun is, is, is it holstered at your size? Use like a, like a chest harness.

Or sometimes it's in a fanny pack. I'm in Texas. It's hot as, it's hot as heck here right now. So like for example, right now I'm wearing like stretchy rogue American Apparel shorts that I just got done working out in and a T shirt. So it'd look weird if I had a gun in my, in my pants.

I actually don't know why you're wearing shorts or pants. During an audio podcast, I always opt out.

That's wisdom. So a fanny pack I can carry into the gym. I look pretty normal here in Austin. That is, is pretty relaxed, you know. But then last week I was, I was having to be downtown as in kind of dress clothes. So I had it inside the waistband holster that I was carrying like in the front over my left right hip. I'm right handed, you know, I have a light on the gun with a red dot. I have good ammo. I have a backup magazine. I have a tourniquet.

Yeah, that was actually one thing I learned was that was the tourniquet. That one took me by surprise. I never just really thought about the value of having a tourniquet and how many extra minutes that can buy you or someone else if there's anything from an accidental discharge to an intentional firing. Can you just give people a brief idea of why you'd want to walk around the tourniquet?

I think 80% of the people that died in the Las Vegas shooting, they bled out. So they had an extremity wound and they went into shock because of the loss of blood and they ultimately died that number that 80% of the people that had life savable injuries to a tourniquet. If there were that many number of tourniquets there, there would be that many more people alive. So with a big blood loss type wound, a car accident, a skill saw, a chainsaw, a gunshot wound, all of those things, you bleed a lot and the amount of blood that you lose in what could be 15 to 20 seconds is almost impossible to recover from. It's blood that you need to keep inside of you. And a tourniquet stops that blood from getting out. So I keep a rat's tourniquet and regular North American rescue tourniquet on me all the time. I have little tiny kids, I have a one year old, I have dogs, even my six year old is pretty tiny. And the tourniquet doesn't really work a regular one. So if they and they have a lot less volume of blood than we do. So the amount of time and the amount of blood they can lose in volume is so much less than what we can lose. So the tourniquet is the easiest solution to keeping blood in the body. And it is so fast, there's a hole and there's blood coming out of it. I throw a tourniquet above it and I tighten it until the blood stops, like that's it. The science is proven. Medically it is absolutely no damage can be done with the tourniquet. All it can do is good. All it can do is save life, keep blood in the body. So there's no reason. And even though like I think I'm a pretty slick gunfighter, I'm always ready for whatever's going to happen. The number of times that I've had to use my gun or a knife here in the United States is, is a big O0 the number of times that I put a tourniquet on somebody or I've been present with an accident. Like we're in the dozens. Two days ago I was driving back from Bastrop, Texas into Austin, Texas and it had been raining here and a car lost control, it swerved over, it hit the railing on the right hand side and then flipped over two lanes and slid against the center divider. Thankfully it stopped there and didn't go into oncoming traffic. And it happened right in front of me. This was two days ago, 48 hours ago. And you know, I have a full medical bag, my truck, I get out, I run up and you know, everybody's wearing seatbelts. Thankfully it was a pretty soft hit and you know, they Kind of like slid into that railing and then, then rolled over. So they. Their airbags didn't even deploy, you know, And I get there and they're upside down and I'm getting thumbs up already. I'm like, this is gonna be easy. And I pull them out and everybody's fine. But like, that was 48 hours ago. It could have been so much more catastrophic and so much more deadly. But I had stuff with me that regardless of what would have happened, I would have had all of the things necessary to be able to preserve and protect human life. And that's the mission of our company, is to preserve and protect human life.

Plus, with the tourniquet, you always have the ability to do blood flow restriction training on the go if you need to get in a quick body weight workout. So it doubles up. You know, what's funny is I actually used to travel. Well, I still do. I travel everywhere with these blood flow restriction bands and so kind of sort of had tourniquets on me just because I use them for workouts. But now I have the, you know, that little. What's the name of the tourniquet you guys recommend? It's like this little black one with the twist device on it.

Yeah, that's the North American rescue. I think they call it the tq.

That's the one I keep in my fanny pack now. And that, that was a good tip. Something I hadn't thought about. And yeah, I mean, you guys kind of tell people how, you know, what to have in your glove box, what to have in your bag, what you have in your. In your. In your fanny pack, if you're one of those weird folks. And then, you know, after going through all that, we also did a ton of rolling, you know, and like I mentioned in the intro, I'm not a guy who has done a lot of Jiu Jitsu. My wife's never done anything. And, you know, Jiu Jitsu seemed to be kind of like the preferred form of self defense maneuvering that was really focused upon during sheepdog training. And I think probably 75% of the people there had never rolled. But again, we spent like eight hours over the course of the weekend learning the bare minimum. Almost like feed you through the fire hose Jiu Jitsu training. But why that form of training for a sheepdog response course?

I'm a black belt in Jiu Jitsu. I'm a black belt in army combatives. And having done this violent stuff overseas in a lot of different capacities, I get to pick where the fight happens with Jiu Jitsu. So you've been to Protector One, which is the level one kind of intro course. Protector two is predominantly on your feet, so we teach all striking. But the reason we Start in Protector 1 with the ground is if you can't dictate where the fight's going to happen. The fight's going to happen, wherever the fight's going to happen. I get to pick where the fight happens. The fight can happen right here on the concrete. It can be on the ground. I can pick you up and I can carry you over to the car and do it on top of the car. I get to pick where the fight happens. And if you look at all the UFC champions, currently, every single one of them has a wrestling and Jiu Jitsu background. Even though some of them are knockout artists that some of them love to, you know, put their heavy hands on somebody and get the biggest, huge, gigantic knockout. And the gift bonus from Dana White, all of them, first and foremost, are grapplers that then get to choose to stay on their feet. I'm going to use, like, a Chuck Liddell as an example or an Anderson Silva, you know, two of the most famous champions of the ufc, and everybody knows them for their fantastical knockouts. You know, these just big, huge left hook right hands from Chuck or these crazy kicks. You know, these vicious elbows and knees from Anderson Silva. Jon Jones, you know, like an. You know, the maybe arguably the greatest fighter of all time. Currently, all of them are grapplers first, and all of them were collegiate level wrestlers, all of them black belts in Jiu Jitsu, and then they're able to go knock everybody out. But if they don't get to pick where the fight happens, then the fight, like, if I had to fight Anderson Silva and or Mike Tyson, am I going to walk up to Mike Tyson and touch gloves and be like, all right, Queen of Marks Berry rules. Let's do this.

Depends how high he is.

But, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna shoot a low single, I'm gonna put him on his ear, and then I'm gonna grab a brick and smash him in the head. But I get to do that because I have the skills that. That can choose how the fight is going to progress. And that's why we start. I think that Jiu Jitsu is a superpower. You learn how to control your own body. You get to control somebody else's body. That sounds so simple, but think about that for a second. I get to make you do whatever I want you to do physically, and you don't Get a sand.

And you know, as, as you guys taught in the course, a lot of these fights wind up on the ground and, or the, the ability to be on the ground can sometimes allow you to resolve a situation with a little less violence. You know, such, such as a blood choke that puts one to sleep very quickly but doesn't actually result in a great deal of damage aside from, you know, getting them into a held position until say like the cops show up or additional support shows up. And I mean, it's not a completely non violent form of submission, but it seems to also be something that allows you to kind of shut down a potentially threatening scenario without necessarily straight up killing someone. I might be wrong with that assessment and maybe that's not why you.

No, you're absolutely, totally right. It is this martial art, it's called the gentle art. And when you look at the founders of it, Helio Gracie and the guy that I got my black belt from, Hoyler Gracie, they are not built like me, right? They don't have these scarred, heavy, chunky hands. They're kind of petite built men. And they designed this style of martial art to be able to neutralize a bigger, stronger person. And then when you add guns and knives into the mix, it becomes obviously more deadly, but it becomes even more important that you're able to control somebody else and be able to control what they want to do with their body. That is, like if they're going to try and grab a gun or they're going to try to pull out a knife, you're able to control that. You're going to allow it to happen or not, but it's your choice. When you look at police officers and when they're trying to get cuffs on somebody, they're just getting their butts kicked. I pity them because like, if they just had a little bit of jujitsu, it would be so easy, you know, they wouldn't have to hurt somebody, they wouldn't have to shoot somebody, they wouldn't have to hit somebody, you know, wouldn't have to escalate. They get to do anything they want. You could save life with the skills of Jiu jitsu. If you have to shoot them, you can. But more importantly, like, you can save not just your life and the lives of everybody behind you, you can also save the bad guy's life. You know, that might be something. They might be in a phase that 10 minutes from now they're gonna bounce out and not be depressed or not be all hyped up on drugs and they're gonna be like, oh, my God, what have I done? And now they're gonna spend the rest of their lives trying to, you know, make up for the mistake that they made in that moment of fear or depression.

That's a good point, because, like, on the first day, Tim, when we were like, you know, shrimping and doing guard retention and, you know, working on like, chimera and triangle choke and everything, I appreciated it and it was interesting. But really the second day where we were doing that, but each of us had like a knife tucked away or a gun tucked away. That's where shit seemed to start to get really real. Because, you know, I can try to put somebody in an arm bar, but if they're able to quickly yank a Glock out of their back belt and just, you know, pop a cap in my head as I'm, as I'm trying to maneuver their arm, it's game over. And so that, that was super interesting for me. Going from here's what rolling around the ground looks like to here's what rolling around the ground looks like. When something's really on the line and there's, there's weapons and you're trying to keep track of a knife and, or a gun at the same time, you're to trying, trying to submit someone. And it kind of got me to thinking. And I wanted to ask you about this because whether it's jiu jitsu or anything else, you know, I know that you guys have a lot of real practical instructors. Like, I think the guys at our course, I think there was a seal, there was a Ranger, a couple of firearm safety instructors with a great deal of armed forces experience, and then two professional jiu jitsu fighters. And what I wanted to ask you was, are there a lot of firearms or close quarter combat techniques or trainings that are taught that are like this but aren't practical or applicable in the, in like the real world, so to speak. Like, I'm sure you have some examples of fighting that looks good on paper but doesn't work once the fight hits the streets.

Oh, man, you're just trying to get me fired up now. Yeah, there's a whole bunch, you know, like that traveling snake oil guy, you know, that's coming, and be like, hey, if you take this, the snake oil, and you rub it on that wound of yours, it's going to miraculously heal you. Oh, you have diabetes.

Cool.

Drink the snake oil and it's going to make you be better. Oh, you have cancer. Drink. There's a lot of that on the self defense martial arts side where you have charlatans, they're charlatans, they're fake pastors that don't know anything about preserving and protecting human life. They've never done real violence, but they curate, they editorialize what they're going to show you so that it looks cool. You're at the wizard of Oz. There's a guy behind there behind the curtain that's playing with the handles that just makes it look crazy and impressive. When in truth it would never work. And it will never work. And we, and he knows that it will never work. And there, there are dozens of martial arts and there's thousands of people that teach that those lies, if you don't practice that martial art against to fully resistant opponent, it's not a real martial art. So if you're going to go and do a technique and that person is going to let you do it, like that's a kata and a kata is in martial arts, it's like a pretty dance that you never have to do against somebody that is going to try and stop you. It's just a rehearsed series of beautiful things that look cool. And I don't want that in martial arts. I want something that's going to save my life and save my family's lives and save everyone else behind me. You know, when I look at some of the krav magazines and the taekwondo's and even some of the karate's, while there are some good Krav Maga schools that do have jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai and boxing and wrestling and CrossFit all in there. There's also the ones that's like, no, all you have to do is kick to the groin and poke them in the eye. And I don't know if, when you're in Idaho, if like Trevor Prangley, if you rolled with him, sometimes we'll have, we'll have people from these styles of martial arts hearts and we'll tell them, hey man, do whatever you want. You can do anything. If you want to try and kick me in the groin, if you want to bite me, if you want to try and poke my eyes out, I want you to try and do any of that to us because I want you to understand that none of that works and it's going to get you killed. And even worse is all the people that come into your building to learn from you, you're, you're teaching those people how to die. You're none of they're not going to be able to do anything. And then at the end of it they're like, oh my God, I'm a horrible person. I've been lying to everybody and taking their money for the past however long they've been running their school. So yeah, fully resistant, resistant opponent. You have to have somebody that doesn't want you to do what you're trying to do to them and they're going to try with all of their heart to stop you. So that's judo, that's Jiu jitsu, that's wrestling, that's, that's Muay Thai, kickboxing, Hawaiian Kenpo. Yeah, all of those. You do that, you practice the moves against somebody that is going to try their hardest to not let you do it.

You know, we came out of all that close quarter combat and then the afternoons we actually drove, we shifted locations and drove out to the range and it was a lot of like 3 yard, 5 yard, 7 yard. This was sheepdog one. So it was all handgun initially without the magazines loaded. Just learning how to handle our guns and then eventually just a ton of shooting and ducking and even like running and moving with our weapons and learning how to handle in close range. A lot of these real world firing scenarios. And you know, one thing that came across my mind that I'm sure it's a question that you must have gotten in the past, I would imagine, but I'm curious what your response would be, because I even know people probably jump into the comments section of this show and ask it, like, do you ever get people complaining that you're just enabling or empowering people to be more violent? And what I'm getting at here is like, you know, kind of like that whole vigilante justice, that's, that's the word I'm looking for. Like, are you concerned at all about a whole bunch of vigilantes running around doing what technically, you know, police officers or the executive branch of the government is supposed to be doing? Like, do you ever get, get feedback that you're just equipping people to be more violent? Once you take all these folks who are hot under the collar after Sheepdog course and they're, they're heading to Walmart with their, their handgun and their tourniquet.

That's a great question. Well, one, the executive government is not supposed to do anything. I wish they didn't even exist. But the empowering the individual, you know, a capable society is a polite society. A trained society is a polite society. You know, a man that has the ability to do violence, but doesn't that is a kind and gentle man. A man that doesn't have the ability or capability to do violence. That man is useless when it comes to protecting and preserving human life. So what we find, and often, depending on the group here in Texas, I'll even address it flat out, like, you know, if you have any other motivation here besides to be a protector, if you have any other motivation besides to be a sheepdog, then we're gonna find it out while we're here. You know, it'd be very difficult to hide that motivation while you're sweating and struggling and on the range. I don't think people are as clever as they think that they are when it comes to hiding motivations. When they're in total red or black freakout mode, adrenaline dumps. When they're fighting for their lives over a gun and a knife. And Tim catch, Kennedy is laying on top of you holding that knife and slowly covering your mouth and nose while he's looking at you in the eyes. Like, I'm gonna know what your motivation is for being there. You know, are you there to protect your family? So, yes, we do worry about that, and I'm not gonna give the backside of what we do, but we. We have a whole bunch of different background systems that we use that, you know, ministry safe like that churches use to run backgrounds on people. Social media, where we can take quick little snapshots and I can search.

Okay, so. So when people register. Because I was wondering, though, like, that first day when we were standing around, everybody's got a gun, and I walk up and I've got, like, 20 strangers around me that rolled into my head, can I trust these people? You know, all these people with firearms in close quarters, Is there a potential for, like, one bad apple to be in that crowd? Because I don't recall that. I did, like, you know, a huge background check or biocheck when I registered for the course. But then you guys are doing that on the back end.

You gave us all the information from the individual that we need to do it. Yeah. So, yeah. And in the waiver, you do sign that we can look into you. So. But then we don't put a big exclamation on that. And then somebody could still come in there and not to again, again, show you behind the curtain, but when you're giving that orientation, while that person was up there talking, do you remember looking around? So that was the first time that all of the instructors which were present there on night number one got to see the people that were attending the course. Do you remember seeing the instructors kind of on the outsides of the room.

Yep. Looking. Looking at all the Idahoans in their beards and every, every single person there had driven up in a black Dodge Cummins.

Yep. And human instructor. Do you know that all those instructors have guns on them?

Mm, yeah.

Yeah. And all of us are standing on the outside of the room looking in at the new attendees. Even though we've run background checks. We don't know you yet.

Yeah.

And we're, you know, and there's. Do you remember the instructors coming up and talking to specific people and like, hey, where are you coming in from? Like, what made you take the course?

Oh, geez, man, now you're making me feel bad. I thought people were just interested me, you know, in me as a super interesting individual. They were scoving me.

You are really, really, really, really interesting. But they were also doing their job, which was situational awareness. And we do it on both ends, so we do it before you arrive, which is the pre planning portion, which we covered in that first block of instruction. And like, we do the same thing with the individuals that are coming into our courses. And then, then hands on the act of it, where then we go and profile even further or we're talking to somebody. You know, if there's an outlier, you know, like the girls got a little extra attention, you know, in Idaho, obviously, if they're, let's say a black Muslim was attending that course, like that's an outlier. They're. Absolutely. Would I expect that here in Austin? Of course. And would they be welcome? Absolutely. Would they be in Salt Lake City? You know, a Muslim community there in California, absolutely. You know, but in Idaho, Post Falls, not a big community of black Muslims living in that area. So if there was a guy in that course, would probably walk up and talk to him like, hey man, what, you know, what brought you to this course? First of all, welcome. So proud that you're here. And you know, we get a little bit of insight as to who that person is, what their motivations are. You know, then we find out, as a matter of fact, yes, there is a mosque there. And you know, they have been concerned because there's been some, some weird, you know, alt right people present at their building. I want that person to be trained. I want him to be able to take and protect his flock and his community. So I want to empower that individual to do that. You know, we don't, we don't preface in that mission statement in that protective preserve in human life. It's like, hey, this is only for like white Christians or this is only for like straight men. You know, this is like.

No, I mean, like this is for everybody. Even in the Idaho course. I mean, there were six year old grandmas down to, you know, my wife, who's a homemaker, who had never, you know, touched jiu jitsu or even the handgun she's owned for two years in her life. To me, who, you know, pretends to be a badass on social media but, but really has decades of learning to do particularly around firearms and combat. And then there were people who were just like dead shots out in the range but had never rolled before or people who were black belts but had never touched a gun. And so, yeah, it really spanned the gamut even in Idaho. But that's interesting that you guys do those kind of background checks. That actually makes me feel a lot better, I'm sure. Answers some of the questions people might have asked. And then I also wanted to add ask you because I think this would be really cool for folks to hear. Like, it's all good and well to talk about this stuff, but tell me a story about, about an actual sheepdog attendee. Like, like an actual person who actually took what they experienced at this course and experienced some kind of an incident where they use their training. Like, can you think of a, of a, of a good one?

Oh my God, man. So I could tell you hundreds and hundreds of these.

Oh, well, tell us one at least.

Oh, man, the. I'll get. Can I give you two? Yeah. Okay. So we had this young, this young woman attend. She's a deputy in Louisiana and she is, she is cute as a button. She. And bless her heart, she has that, that sheepdog protector in her first. She's a small statured human, she's a female. And she's chosen a career that is not forgiving, especially in an area of the, of the United States that is even less forgiving to be a woman or somebody that's small in stature. She shows up, she learns how first time ever her department had never showed her how to use a tourniquet. She attends the Protector one course, she attends a Protector two course, and she attends our ttrc, our medical course. She attends all of them. We find out that she had come out of pocket because her department wouldn't pay for anything. So then we ended up giving her some scholarships to come to the other ones. She goes back to her, the prison that she works at and a guy is trying to kill himself with a shank that he Smuggled into his room. She goes in and he's like, okay, this is my way to get killed by a cop. And he attacks her with the shank. She fights him covered in blood. She wrestles the shank out of his hands. Then she subdues him and gets a tourniquet on him and saves his life.

Wow.

And she learned the fighting portion, the tourniquet portion, and the kind of controlling situation. She understood exactly what was happening there, that this was somebody that wanted to die. And how do I save this person's life?

And she was already a trained cop.

Trained is law enforcement. Lots of departments have different requirements, and I think this is a dangerous assumption. Law enforcement does not, especially in the current era of defund the police. Law enforcement does not have the training that they need. They don't have the budget to train. They don't have the time to train. So our law enforcement are. Their hands are tied behind their back. They're under trained, they're underprepared, they're underfunded. And then we're like, hey, go out there and deal with the worst of society. And it's no different. Where she came from, they had no training budget. She was not. I will say she is not trained or was not trained. When she came to us, she did not know how to find fight. She had the spirit, she had the heart. She did not know the medical training. And then she brought that back to the unit. And we've had people from her unit come to us since then. So that's one impressive story. And Courtney, if you're listening, you're amazing. You're a hero. And then another one just got this week, just two days ago, three days ago, I'm driving back from the range. And I'm not saying I was reading an email while I was driving, but this email, it was one of our protector one students, our level one students. And he was at a birthday party like a Chuck E. Cheese. It wasn't a Chuck E. Cheese, but he described it like a Chuck E. Cheese. When he walked out to the car to get something, he saw that there was a guy standing outside of the entrance, and he was just kind of like watching people come in and out. And so he goes out to the car and gets something. And then a young lady walks out of the car, out of the building, I think, to go to her car as well. And he confronts her. He's like, hey, man, you know, can I have some money? My car broke down. It's right around the corner. And she's like, No, I don't have any money. He's like, well, can you come give me a jump? You know, I just, I think this. The battery's dead. And he's trying to lure this woman out, away from this building, this party out around the cult corner. He's just a dad. He's not. He's an untrained. But he just attended our course. But he saw the guy, he understood the outlier situationally awareness wise. He identified that this could be a potential threat. He saw that interaction and normally he would have. He said he would have avoided that potential confrontation. But immediately he turns around, he walked back up. He's like, hey, what's going on? And he doesn't do the tough guy thing, like, hey, bro, what's your problem? Leave her alone. He totally diffuses the situation. I'll say kind of a brave approach coming from position of humility where he was talking to the. He didn't know the girl and he's just talking to this woman. He's like, man, you know, we just wanted you back inside for this other thing. And the guy's like, hey, man, like, what's your problem? He's like, oh, I don't have anything at all. Did you need some help? And the guy's like, yeah, man. Now the guy's kind of getting agitated because he realized his easy score, whatever his motivations were just dematerialized. So the two of them walked back inside and the girl was kind of unaware what was potentially happening. And she's like, well, thanks for. Thanks for that, you know, Are you gonna go help him? And he's like, yeah, I'm gonna. I'm gonna actually go call the police is what I'm gonna do. And she's like. And then it kind of dawned on her what she had just agreed to, that this woman had just agreed to a stranger to go out into a dark parking lot around a corner and help a guy jump start his car. So they called police and of course the guy takes off running. The guy emails. He's like, you know, that would have gone 10 years ago. I probably would just fit fist fought the guy. Who knows if he has a gun or a knife. Yeah. But my, My ca. My cavalier bravado of me being a savior would have got in there or I would have never even seen what was happening because I would been so ignorant of the potential threat of existed there.

Yeah, yeah.

And I. I could give you hundreds of these stories.

They showed us a video of a. Of a girl who had been getting bullied by one, one of her classmates at school. And one of her other classmates actually whipped out a video when this happened. But when he came up to bully her and actually put hands on her, her, her father had been training her using a lot of these sheepdog techniques and she, she literally did, did a couple of jiu jitsu moves on the guy. I think she actually wound up taking, taking a knee to his face. And then, you know, she, she had her, I think she had like, you know, her kids running shoes on or whatever and she was just boom, out of there. You hear the teacher in the background saying, get that girl. And the bully's just like laying there on the ground, has no clue what happened to him. And you know, of course I know that will upset some people about, about some, some girl, you know, messing up a guy's face at school. But, but ultimately, you know, I watched that. I'm like, man, if that was my daughter, that's, that's what I want my daughter to be able to do if there's a bully actually physically assaulting her at school rather than her just, you know, having no clue what to do or how to handle the situation. So yeah, they showed us a lot of, a lot of cool, cool anecdotes at the course. And again, if you guys are listening in, I'll, I'll link to the course. You can read more about it and everything, everything in the show notes. But Tim, I know that our time together today is limited, but I had a couple of fun questions I wanted to ask you just rolling around my head. Do you have a couple of minutes?

Of course.

Okay. All right, cool. So I'm not going to name any names, but I've gone down and done Mark Devine Seal Fit course down in Encinitas and even come down as one of the instructors later on and helped out with the course and hung out with a lot of I guess so called operators and special folks, horses and seals and rangers. And it seems like a lot, a lot of you guys are kind of like operating on an entirely different level. Energetically, like mentally, like even just like pupils dilated full on, like aware of every last little thing that's going on in a very like energetic, alert, you know, how many cold brews did you just drink, bro? Type of way. And for me being in like the kind of the supplements and nootropics and smart drugs type of industry is part of what I do. I've always wondered if there's some kind of a special, you know, MK Ultra esque fringe Supplement or smart drug or secret compound that guys like you take to give you an extra edge. I mean, because there's of course, the, you know. How'd you sleep last night? I asked one of my instructors and he said, I'll sleep when I'm dead, which I hear a lot. And so I'm just curious, like, do you guys have any, like, special tools in your back pocket? And you can plead the fifth if you want, but I'm just curious, not.

In the way that you think I'm gonna say yes. We've been. We've been shortwired, we've been hot wired, we've been short circuited. So in the selection process, whether you're a Green Beret, going through Special Forces selection, your mar sock, you're a Navy seal. All of our selections are very similar. They're looking for people that can also go black, where we can consciously choose to. I can lay in this water for as long as you. I will make you bored of you trying to make me endure pain because I just won't even acknowledge that I am in pain. So we can consciously short circuit our own brain, right? And then when we get into the training portion of it, they start selecting, hand selecting and shaping the way that we are going to behave. We're going to respond and we're going to react. Time is this existential concept that is removed from our life. Like, it doesn't matter if I have to hop on a helicopter at one o' clock in the morning and I have to work for the next 72 hours. All that matters is I have to do the thing that they're asking me to do and successfully meet the end state of that mission. Nothing else matters. All that matters is success. Like gender, race, sleep, food. The only way that those matter is if they enable and facilitate me to be successful or their detriment and a liability. And when we carry that into the entrepreneurial mindset where we get to construct our own environment, you know, I'm very sorry I wasn't present with you in the course, but all the time people ask me that same question, like, what are you on, dude? And I'm like, man, I am on life. Like, I don't need to sleep. All I want to do is work. All I want to do is hammer it. And it is the sweetest satisfaction to see everybody fall off into the fringes of this unsuccessful failure when, man, I'm just getting started, you know, like. Like 9 o' clock in the morning and people are showing up to work and I'M like, bitch, I've already been working for four hours. Yeah, you're like, welcome to my world.

That's one of the most useful things I've taken away from hanging around with guys like you is it rubs off. Like I get up about 3:45, 4:00am most mornings now. And granted, you know, I'm doing some woo woo meditation, gratitude, breath work, journaling, you know, I'm easing my way into the day. I'm not getting up and crushing the kettlebells right away. But man, I mean when you get to 10am and you've lived an entire day that most people are just getting started, there is something empowering and kind of confidence inducing about that. And the other thing I like about your reply is, you know, a lot of people who are kicking around the idea of maybe like you know, getting one of those, you know, super duper cold pool, you know, setups outside their office or their home or doing something like that that shifts the body into a lot of like a cell shock syndrome for short periods of time. I mean, that's one of my secrets, honestly. I have a 32 degree ice bath right outside my office, maintains 32 degrees year round and I get in that thing every afternoon, sometimes just a minute. But you do feel remarkably more resilient to, let's say an argument at a dinner that evening when you've done that earlier in the day, no matter what kind of substances you might have floating around in your body. So that's interesting to know that you don't have a drip IV of LSD going into your veins, but you just, you forge yourself to be harder to kill and more resilient under stress using, using training.

Yeah. If you can consciously choose to do these unimaginable, like it's not painful, it's not damaging you. Right. But if you're choosing, you know, I always tell the guys like my teammates that I work with, you know, like if you were, if you were choosing to have dirt in your eyes, your hands dripping with blood, when you're swinging kettlebells and you go to drinking, grab your pistol and the callus on your middle finger, which has been rubbed raw from the trigger guard of your rifle, you know, starts to, that callus falls off again and you know, the sweat is dripping in your eyes and that feels like a regular comfortable afternoon. How easy is everything else that could happen? Yeah, you know, like whether it's an argument at work or you know, a problem with one of your kids teachers that is so easy to solve, you know, because You've already put yourself by choice, voluntarily through the hardest moment of the day. You did it to yourself. So anybody else, like, they can't bring what I can bring to myself. I know I'm way more medieval to what I can do to me than anybody else can do to me.

Yeah. So, like, yeah, you know, admittedly I do like to, to chalk up my hands quite a bit before I, before I draw, just in case, you know, you guys should add that to the bag. Just, just a little bit of chalk, you know, and when, when everything goes crazy at Walmart, you got to make sure that you're getting rid of the blisters or at least alleviating the potential for them to form. You know the other thing I wanted to ask you, just because this looks so cool that, you know, this hard to kill show that you did, what was the, in your opinion, like, the most dangerous or I guess impressive to you occupation that, that you were able to encounter as part of filming that show?

I never thought the, like, when you think about ski patrol, I was like, oh man, these guys, ski patrol, they're hanging. Yeah, they're like up in Tahoe, you know, like hanging out, drinking, you know, trying to hook up with the, the seasonal mamas that are popping in. But then you see behind the scenes where they're doing avalanche training, where they're using dynamite dropped out of helicopters to, to cause avalanches. The physicality I had to do, I pride myself, like you do, to be a pretty physically fit person. And I did their PT test, which is a, which is a must pass event. There's an elevation change of about 5,000 meters and you have to do it in so such amount of time you have to have a medical pack with you and you have to do it in your ski boots. I was dying trying to get this done. I didn't have time to acclimate to the, to the altitude. So I think we were going from like 8,000 to 13,000ft. And you have, you know, and I failed the test and I don't fail a lot of physical tests. And there was like this 26 year old girl that just, she blew past me in this test, like, and she was like, hey, how you doing? And I'm like, if I had a heart rate monitor on, I was definitely in the red. You know, mentally, I was just totally broken. And she was just having like a casual conversation. Like it was a Sunday afternoon, we're about to have a cup of tea. I was like, this is, this is. I hate you. I'm gonna throw you off this mountain. Come here. If I could catch you.

Wow. And what was her career?

She's ski patrol. She's one of the.

Wow.

The Avalanche Recovery Team, which is a fancy name for ski patrol.

Wow. That's crazy. But you did like bull riders, like modern flight training, like just a whole gamut of dangerous occupations and you just jumped in there with them.

Yeah. But when you think about a bull fighter, you're like, oh, right, that's a tough job. There's a dude hopping in there. So there's a degree. My expectation was met, you know, when I got hooked by a bull and I got thrown up in the air and tried to get trampled on. I had to go, you know, I brought my A game. When I'm doing an experimental test pilot or a bush pilot helicopter. Okay. You're going to lock me in the fuselage, the cockpit of a plane. You're going to cover it with avgas and set it on fire. Okay. You know, Tim's in. I'm in the zone right now. When you tell me I'm going to go be a ski patrol. I think there was a degree of pride and ego that I brought with it. I was like a 25 year old. Could be ski patrol, right? Like, I'm a Green Beret. You know, I've fought in wars, Afghanistan, Iraq. I've killed bad dudes. And then I got there, I was like, oh my God, this is really hard. I was just surprised and humbled, of course. Humiliated.

Wow. Well, it's a fun show. I'll link to that in the show notes. For anybody who wants to check out Tim on that show, it's@Bengrinfitness.com TimKennedy but you know, just something I wanted to finish up with because I was thinking about this the other night, that this was like five nights ago, the alarm in our house went off and you know, and this was the first time it gone off since I'd taken the sheepdog course. And you know, in the past I've woken up and been probably a lot more stressed than I was. This last time, the gun rather than being locked, you know, in this case, the. Just the. Actually it was my wife's Glock, rapid recoil and just her own personal gun. But it had been, you know, up until we took the sheepdog course, like locked in the upper section of the closet by her underwear with the mags over, across from that in a different part of the closet. And you know, then all the, all the rest of the guns, you know, because we got. We had a, you know, a cult carbine and some hunting rifles and a couple of home defenders and everything just kind of locked away in the safe. But in this case, I mean, I won't, I won't say where it was, but the gun was literally within arm's reach. The mag was within arm's reach. I mean, within 10 seconds I was at my door feeling very confident with the handgun in my hands, knowing what to do, knowing I was capable of firing, you know, and firing accurately should a situation arise. You know, I went through the house. The basement door had blown open because the kids hadn't locked it up after they'd been playing in the basement before bed and shut everything down and put the gun away and went back to bed. But it felt really good. Kind of in the same way that I feel super confident walking across a parking lot now, knowing that when the alarm goes off in the house, I know what to do and I have what I need to have. It's a cool feeling. I guess my only complaint, Tim, is that sheep really aren't that stupid. I've also hunted sheep down in Hawaii and they've got freaking sentinels and, and like intelligence outlets and. And, you know, I've hunted sheep for like four days before trekking around unsuccessfully in sheep land. So maybe you should have gone with like a sloth or a, or a panda or. Or a more stupid animal, man.

I mean.

Yeah, I'm saying sheep are. Sheep are pretty smart.

Yeah. Yeah. Especially real wild. Real wild ones.

Yeah.

The domesticated ones are a little bit more tame. Yeah, you're. You're definitely right about that. That.

Yeah. Well, this is such a cool course. I'd have been remiss not to get you on the show afterwards because I got so much out of it. I love to share cool experiences I have with my audience and I know they like to be prepared. And for any of you who wants to check this course out, you can go to the sheepdog website. I'll link to everything Tim and I talked about too, like books like Gift of Fear and also, by the way, a fantastic documentary I'm going through right now called Endgame. Like a survival and prep documentary. It's got like 20 different, you know, long form interviews on there put on by, by my friend named Jeff Hayes, really good documentary filmmaker from Revealed Films, that. That'll be a cool resource for you guys as well. That one's called Endgame, and I think for any of you who got lit up by this show, you would enjoy that. Series, so I'll put that in the show notes and, and just, just everything for you to be able to dig more into Tim, what he does. Look, look for a sheepdog course in your area. They're worth traveling to also, in my opinion. And you can find all that@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Tim Kennedy. Tim, I want to thank you for giving your time and coming on the show, for sharing all this with us and for helping a heck of a lot of people to be a lot more prepared and hopefully making this country a safer place.

I really appreciate it, man. You have an open invitation. You got to make it one of the Texas courses that I'm, that I'm physically teaching. Not that I'm a better teacher than the guys, the staff that are teaching because I think they're all so extraordinarily gifted. But there's definitely a different vibe when I'm there. And the ones that we do here, Some, some that you need to hit are the Singleton Security and the level two course, the Protector two.

That's in Austin.

Yeah.

Okay.

And it's like, how do you clear a house by yourself? You know, when the alarm goes off, you grab your gun. You know, with risk mitigation and with my. There's a lot that's going on at the same time. And so you already did a Protector one course, which is a prerequisite to come. And. And I teach. I usually am one of the teachers for that. So I would love to see you and love to train with you, and it's absolutely my pleasure talking to you and thank you for your time.

Awesome, man. I'd love to do it just because, you know, just in case there's an avalanche. I also know the. That I'll be safe. So. All right, well, folks, thanks for listening in. And until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Tim Kennedy of Sheep Dog Response signing out. Shownotes are at BenGreenfieldFitness.com Tim Kennedy, K-E N N E D Y have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen. And to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate, because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.

Sa.