Take Advantage of Quiet Time – Jocko Willink

next question yeah let’s do it okay i hurt myself significantly throwing a roundhouse kick recently abdominal hernia at the site of an old appendix surgery i trained mma five days a week sometimes more multiple times a day for two years until last week when he got that injury but now i can hardly sit in the chair without pain and surgery is two months out and who knows how long recover recovery will be before i can train again what i’m asking is what should we as martial artists and men do in times of forced hiatus and injury what do we do when there’s a quiet but we miss the storm well one thing with injuries injuries are going to come and you cut wood you get sawdust you train you’re going to get injured that’s what’s going to happen i mean it’s just uh that’s just this is the law this is the law of the land the number one thing to remember is and this is something that’s really hard when you’re super active and you’re super fired up and you’re training all the time when you get injured and you get sidelined you feel like it’s never gonna go away it feels like it’s not healing and you’re just like oh man this i’m doomed so the the injury is gonna go away now obviously for some guys for some for some actual soldiers or warriors that have been wounded in a permanent way that’s that’s different and those guys what they do is they learn to adapt you know they learn how are they going to get through this how they can adapt their life how are they going to roll with one leg how are they going to do pull-ups with one hand uh jeff real you know jeffrey al yep we were doing burpee pull-ups the other day i was putting the mma classes through it if you don’t know jeffrey al awesome guy awesome fighter awesome jiu-jitsu player he’s born without one hand i had the guys doing burpee pull-ups black belt by the way yeah black belch and he had uh he has like a little hook he can put on there to do pull-ups and i guess the thing was falling off and so he just threw that thing to the ground and he was just hooking his his forearm over and then the other hand was grabbing he’s doing pull-ups yeah i mean if if jeffrey al can just jump and do we did i don’t know six rounds worth of burpee pull-ups or five rounds worth of burpee pull-ups and he crushed it no one has any excuse so guys that they get some kind of a permanent injury they get wounded something like that happens okay you got to adapt to it you got to figure out what you can do but the injuries the the basic injuries the daily injuries the the temporary injuries that is normal from training that that’s you’re gonna get them and so of course oh you got an injury good right it’s a little injury be thankful it’s not something worse you know i’ve i’ve had you know a blown out ankle i’ve had a torn mcl and you know what do you do what do you say when you tear your acl or your mcl you say okay awesome it’s not my acl it’s not my meniscus you know the the mcl will heat itself what do you say if it’s your if it is your acl okay great that’s one that can be repaired with surgery so none of these problems are permanent right so be thankful you don’t have a permanent injury and even though it seems like it’s gonna take forever like homeboy here who’s got two months before he even gets surgery and then how long is it gonna take it seems like it’s going to take forever i had neck surgery right that’s a blip on the right i don’t even remember how long it took it was a long time i mean it took months to heal from that i don’t remember that what did i do during that time i did other exercises i figured other stuff i watched youtube videos i figured out other moves you know that’s what i did so i guess youtube wasn’t around i was watching dvds jiu-jitsu dvds yeah vhs tapes so what do you do number one stay active right you know move do if you if you can’t move your body all work your forearms strength right squeeze a tennis ball one of my buddies blew out his knee what is it the triple threat he did acl pcl meniscus boom heel hook right didn’t tap got to tap to the heel hook people got to tap to it yeah got caught in hilo didn’t tap blew his blue it all apart he was in a he had to get him all reconstructed so he we had a dummy remember the big dummy we have at the gym we had a big one it was 120 pounds and he would lay on the ground his knee is in a full his legs and a full straight brace won’t bend at all he would lay on the ground and and lay next to this dummy and he’d just pull it from one side of himself put it on the ground on the other side himself pull it back to the other side back to the other side back to the other side so he’s getting this motion of sort of turning on the ground this massive core strength and when we when he finally recovered it was powerful and you know when he would turn underneath you said you got some got some strength there so you got to figure out what you can do you know if you can’t roll box if you can’t box lift if you can’t lift stretch and get that flexibility working in some area that you’re not flexible whatever you’re gonna do stay engaged stay active because i think i’m definitely a believer in the active rest you know what i mean when you just go okay i’m injured so i’m just going to sit on the couch and watch tv no wrong answer run away from that tv you got to keep moving because that keeps your blood flowing and it keeps getting gets more blood more circulation more healing goes to this area that’s injured so do that and if you but you know still you’re still gonna have more time in your day right so what are you gonna do i’ll tell you what you’re gonna do get a guitar right learn to play guitar write a book build a website take pictures learn a language read more books expand your brain right expand your mind when your body needs a little recovery when your body’s injured make yourself smarter make yourself better free your mind and so the bottom line the question was what does a man do when there’s quiet and i’ll tell you what a man does when there’s quiet he takes advantage of it right so take advantage of it get smarter get better in other ways and when the body comes back you’ll you will be better yeah that’s a good way to to put it like take advantage of it like actively because a lot of times like where the problem comes about i know this because when i tore my bicep that’s right i meant i went here i was watching her out yeah yeah i think you yeah i was wondering i have a picture of you laying on the ground yeah that was messed up i think you sent me a smarmy text too something like that no that was for something else but same day though nonetheless what where the problem comes when you miss the story you miss the action is you’re harping on it it’s almost like you have this hope like oh it’ll be soon or maybe the the doctor said nine months but maybe i could do it in four kind of thing you know just that mindset where you you kind of in a way gotta admit to yourself okay i’m i’m out right now i can’t roll right now i can’t train mma two times a day five days a week i cannot do that you gotta admit that so what did you do did you work on your video editing skills during that time oh man that was i think that was before or so would you do i forget i don’t know but i’ll tell you you did not take it i’ll tell you what i didn’t do is is hard on it yeah you moved on you figured out what else you can do yeah exactly right i was always into working out and stuff so i would do other stuff like legs and stuff work your left arm all right yeah yeah actually my left arm is still bigger a little bit nonetheless i think that that’s that’s a good little jump start is don’t harp on it don’t um you got to admit to yourself that you’re you’re out you’re injured right now so and then how you said take advantage of it dang that’s good i wish i would have known that actively take advantage because there’s so much advantage to be taken yeah there’s all kinds of time you have yeah man i think about all the time that i spend in the gym and on the mats i mean that’s a bunch big chunk of time now like with with reading for example i got back into reading and um look i look at it this way where as far as books go books that exist any information in the whole whether you’re interested in it not interested whether you can understand it or not all the information of the world is accessible yeah right now more than once more than any time ever all different angles different aspects of everything it’s just out there and you have more time now take advantage of that actively actively