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

by Jesse Itzler

Steak, fish, fruits, vegetables, you name it—it goes down the hatch. Everything except dessert. “Why would I want to waste the calories?” he says.

I fight through the fucked feeling and we do ten push-ups on the minute for twenty minutes. That’s another two hundred down. It’s easy to write “two hundred” on paper, but it’s another thing to do them.

If you’re hungry, run faster. You’ll be home quicker. —SEAL

All you really need to do is get your push-up and sit-up routine consistent, and you can see amazing results.

I have another philosophy. 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.

I also believe being in really good shape takes a combination of many components. For starters, you have to be strong, but you also have to be explosive, flexible, capable of running stop-and-go sprints and running long distances. You need the full package.

He says, “We have five miles left. If you are hungry, run faster. You’ll be home quicker.”

SEAL says to me: “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.

I am learning how to be more present. It’s primarily because I have to. If I don’t, there is no way I will be able to finish the tasks at hand. I just go one step at a time. One rep at a time. And when I’m done, I worry about the next step or rep. I’m finding that there’s some crossover to my life as well. Now I finish the first thing on my list with 100 percent focus and then attack the next.

He wants me to “understand myself better.” He wants me to “feel the isolation.”

Know what’s important to you and protect it at all costs. —SEAL

pull out all my notes and “to do” lists from this past year and take some personal inventory. I also make my annual donations and send out our holiday cards. It feels good to close out the year.

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

This proves to me that if you push the body, the body will respond.

With fitness there’s never a finish line. You can always do better. For me personally, I guess I probably have thirty or forty years left on earth. And how many of those am I going to be young enough and healthy enough to do things? I want to experience the best stuff I can. I’ve never jumped off a cliff—I should just jump off a cliff because I’m only here once. That’s how I approach things now. That’s how I feel about things. That’s how I live my life.

A thousand push-ups is something I could never have imagined doing. It just shows that repetition and consistency equal results.

If you don’t challenge yourself, you don’t know yourself. —SEAL

I don’t think like that anymore. Just get off the couch and do it is what I remind myself. SEAL would never say, “Fuck it.” He’d get off the couch and do it. Regardless of the time, the temperature, or how tired he was.

My perspective on time has changed too. I got so much more done when SEAL was here. I was much more efficient. Now if I have to drive a few hours in the car to get somewhere, I do not get frustrated. Rather, I think about how lucky I am to be sitting in a warm and comfortable environment. It’s weird, maybe I became more present or maybe I’m more appreciative, but whatever it is, I view time differently. Maybe it is a newfound patience or maturity.

My will to not stop or quit has also changed… both in training and at work.

Our minds sometimes tell us little lies about ourselves, and we believe them. We think we can’t do this or that. It’s not true.

One of the most emotional speeches I ever heard was Jimmy Valvano’s at the ESPY Awards. Dying of cancer, with only months to live, he told the audience these important words. “Don’t give up,” he said. “Don’t ever give up.”

“It’s about protecting what you have,” he said to me about being a SEAL. He might have been talking about defending democracy or freedom or saving us from terrorism. But I think he was talking about protecting something closer to home.

But maybe the most important thing I learned from SEAL was the level of appreciation he has for difficulty. The harder the training, the more courage it took to do and the more satisfaction was derived from it.

Coasting is for “pussies” as SEAL would say and it’s when you dig deep that you feel the most alive.

learned that by constantly doing things that are hard and making myself uncomfortable, I improve my ability to handle obstacles. I get comfortable being uncomfortable—and that’s real mental toughness.

I’ve created an environment in my head that makes me want to keep going even when things get ridiculously hard. In these situations, I have trained myself not to quit, but to attack. Thanks, SEAL.

I created a SEAL mantra in my head… Come on, motherfucker, come on… I put it on loop.

“George Foreman gave me great advice. When I told him my husband ran 100 miles nonstop he said, ‘Sara, don’t try to understand a man like that. Just love him.’” —Sara Blakely,