Living with a SEAL: 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet

by Jesse Itzler

He just sat there all by himself in a folding chair with his arms crossed waiting for the race to start. No stretching, no prep, no fancy shoes, and no teammates. No smiling. He just sat quietly with a don’t-fuck-with-me expression on his face. His supplies for twenty-four hours: one box of crackers and water. That’s it. He laid them out next to his chair.

“Ah’ite. Let’s get into this shit. Meet me here in nine minutes. And don’t bring your cowfuck expressions.”

“Exactly. Enjoy this shit. If you want it to be seventy and sunny… it’s seventy and sunny. Just run. The elements are in your mind. I don’t ever check the temperature when I run. Who gives a fuck what the temperature on the computer says? The computer isn’t out there running, is it?”

As I start to look up, SEAL is staring at me with a blank expression… deadpan. “We’re going to stay here until you do a hundred.” WHAT? “I can’t do a hundred. That’s impossible,” I say. “You better find a way,” he says to me like a father might tell his son to clean his bedroom. “You got a shitty-ass attitude.”

Garnett fires the questions and SEAL parries them back. It’s not a gunfight, it’s more like Garnett is in the quarterfinals at the U.S. Open in Flushing, Queens, and SEAL is playing badminton at a cookout.

It’s eighteen degrees outside and we run along the Boston waterfront. It’s bitter cold, windy with a misty snow. I really don’t want to be out here, but I have no choice. I’m freezing my ass off. I want to be in my hotel room ordering room service and watching the snow from behind my window.

Three days to build a base? That sounds ridiculous. Doesn’t it take months to build a base?

“SEAL, I have a problem,” I say to him. “I didn’t bring any extra underwear.” “So what?” “I can’t run without underwear.” “Nah, bro, you can’t run without legs. It’s on.”

SEAL has two gears: idle and full out. But his idle isn’t like normal idle at all; it’s more like the moment between ignition and blastoff. I get the feeling around him that things could get hairy quickly. And yet I also have a feeling of absolute safety around him. I don’t mean my own personal safety, though there’s that too. I mean like national defense safety.

“You know what, Jesse?” SEAL says. “No, I’m not cool. I’m sick of this shit.” SEAL pounds his fist on the bed. “You’re too pretty, man. Too cute. Fuck you.”

“That’s the dumbest shit ever,” he says. “This is a gym. Gyms have mirrors.” “I know but that’s the rules.” “Well, whoever made that rule is an asshole.”

“Plan? I don’t have a plan.” “Well you do now. You’re gonna row row row your boat the fuck out of here.”

“When you think you’re done, you’re only at forty percent of what your body is capable of doing. That’s just the limit that we put on ourselves.”

According to SEAL, if my driver, Smith, was a minute late, it was because he didn’t study the routes correctly. If there was traffic, Smith should have anticipated the accident. In looking back on it now, I’m not sure SEAL was wrong.

Extreme ownership.

“You okay?” “No. I don’t feel well,” I say as I keep pace. “Fuck, yeah,” he celebrates. “Now you’re seeing what it’s like to train, Jesse. I hope you enjoy this shit.” He begins to laugh, which soon becomes an all-out cackle. “You look like a pile of spilt fuck,” he says.

“NOW? In the middle of the fucking run? On my time? Why didn’t you plan your piss BEFORE the run? What the fuck do you think you’re doing pissing now when this is run time? This isn’t piss time.”

“Nah, I just like to go to sleep hungry… so I wake up hungry. Life is all about staying out of your comfort zone.”

“You Googled them! You Googled them! Well, Google me, motherfucker!”

“What do you want, a fucking leotard? Man, we start, and then, motherfucker, we finish. That’s what we do up here,” he says. Okay then.

“This morning was incomplete. I got shortchanged,” he says. “Excuse me?” “We ran. We did push-ups. We did pull-ups. But we didn’t get our sit-ups in. It was an incomplete session.” “But I did everything you asked me to do,” I say. “Well, now I’m telling you that our shit was incomplete and it’s fucking me up. So we are going to do them NOW.” “Now? I’m in the middle of a big meeting.” “No you’re not. You’re in the middle of a break.”

SEAL greets the FedEx guy at the door. It appears Christmas has come early for him, or maybe for me. He ordered me my very own fifty-pound metal-plated weight vest for push-ups and to “increase the level of difficulty” of my runs. You’ve got to love SEAL. I didn’t even know my runs needed a higher degree of difficulty.

“What the hell are we doing? This is ridiculous. Can’t you see this is killing me?” “Relax, Jesse, you need to know that everything ends. Just do this shit and it will end.”

If I fly someplace for a weekend, I always have to check my bag. He showed up at my house with a backpack. For thirty-plus days. One backpack. We have closets full of shit we never use, millions of pictures we took that we never look at, stacks of files that collect dust. He’s a master at keeping it simple, and I have to say his simplicity looks attractive to me. I sort of want what he has, but I still want what I have.

My time with SEAL has convinced me the days of the fancy gym memberships are numbered. Things like CrossFit and street workouts are going to prevail in the future. All you really need to do is get your push-up and sit-up routine consistent, and you can see amazing results.

You can be fit without being healthy, but you can’t be healthy without being fit. Meaning… you can be in great shape on the outside, but if you don’t eat great and don’t take care of your insides, you aren’t necessarily healthy.

“It’s not what you do, it’s when and how you do it. It’s all about the conditions. Remember that.”

“Hey, SEAL, what do you think about when you run?” “Finishing.” And he does. It’s like he is able to block out all the clutter in his head and the world, for that matter, and just focus on the task at hand. Say what you want, but the dude has mastered the art of being present. There is something really cool about that.

Now I finish the first thing on my list with 100 percent focus and then attack the next.

“Now get your strength up and do a hundred push-ups before you can come in the house. That’s ten every thirty seconds. I’m not fucking around, man, this isn’t sleep-away camp in upstate Fuckville.”

I don’t celebrate victories but I learn from failures.

“I explained to them I was the homeowner and that I don’t care for motherfuckers like them on my property and that if they ever came back, I would make sure they never walked again.”

“I don’t want the same shit you guys want. I’m not looking for anything else. I’m going to do the same shit I’ve been doing,” he says, “only I’m going to do it better.”

I think about what I need to be thinking about.