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The Silvercore Podcast explores the mindset and skills that build capable people. Host Travis Bader speaks with hunters, adventurers, soldiers, athletes, craftsmen, and founders about competence, integrity, and the pursuit of mastery, in the wild and in daily life. Hit follow and step into conversations that sharpen your edge.
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Travis Bader: I'm Travis Bader,
and this is the Silvercore podcast.
Silvercore has been providing its
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in the outdoors for over 20 years.
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If you'd like to learn more
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visit our website at silvercore.
ca.
You want to lose weight?
Overcome anxiety, have a physical, mental,
or emotional challenge you want to crush.
I'm joined today by a special
warfare combat crewman.
Who has dedicated himself to helping
countless thousands understand
and achieve peak performance.
He's a coauthor of building the
elite, the complete guide to
building resilient special operators.
Welcome to the Silvercore
podcast, Craig Weller.
Thanks,
Craig Weller: Travis.
Thanks for having me.
Travis Bader: Totally.
Well, I've, I've been looking
forward to this one for a while.
You know, when we were chatting back
and forth, he said, you know, I'm,
I do a lot of work with the military
and, and helping people achieve their
goals, getting through selection.
And, you know, a lot of these programs,
they'll have a hundred, 200 people
come on through and they're all
vying to be selected and they'll have
an attrition rate of like 60 to 90
percent of these people being cut.
Yet the people that go through
your program that you've helped.
Consult who read your book, which
is essentially the Bible to being
physically, mentally, emotionally fit.
Um, they've got a 90 percent success
rate, over 90 percent success
rate, which is just mind boggling.
And the one thing that you threw and he
says, well, you know, your audience, the
outdoors people and you know, hunters, I
can help them with their buck fever too.
So I thought, well, that'll be
an interesting one to explore.
Um, yeah, so I figured we'll talk
about a few different things.
Uh, I'll hold up the book here.
If anyone's watching it, as opposed
to listening to it, here's a book.
It's available.
You can get them on Amazon.
They've got a Kindle edition.
They've got a, they've got a, uh,
soft cover, which I've got here.
Apparently, apparently you've
got a hard cover, Craig.
Craig Weller: Yeah, it's
out of stock right now.
The last time we did a print
run, they just couldn't make
hardcovers for whatever reason.
So they're all soft cover right
now, but the goal is to keep
those big ones in hardcover.
Travis Bader: Nice.
Well, I'm looking at it right now.
Apparently it's such a hot commodity.
The hardcover version,
Kindle edition, 3568.
This is on the canadianamazon.
ca, paperback 182.
16.
Have you seen what the
hardcover is going for?
Craig Weller: Isn't there one on
Amazon for like a thousand dollars?
Travis Bader: Uh, no, 5, 710
dollars and 99 cents right
now for the hardcover version.
That's
Craig Weller: weird.
Yeah.
I've seen a few of those.
I, uh, yeah.
You better, you better jump on those.
The next time we do a print
run, we're hopefully going to
be able to get more hardcovers.
Yeah.
Travis Bader: Well, clearly people
find it valuable enough that it's a
commodity that they feel that they can
go onto Amazon and they can sell it
for over 5, 000, almost 6, 000 for it.
And when I say it's like a
Bible of, of being mentally,
physically, emotionally fit.
It's a roadmap.
Um, but let's back up.
Let's talk about you.
Enough of me talking.
How did you get into this?
Tell me a little bit about your
background and, uh, uh, why you decided
to dedicate so much of your life to
helping others achieve these goals.
Craig Weller: So I was in the
special operations community.
And if you looked at my background,
I Like while I was going through the
training pipeline, I shouldn't have been.
Um, I grew up in a tiny town in
South Dakota, didn't have access
to a swimming pool, didn't know
how to swim when I joined the Navy
and volunteered for selection into
a special ops unit and decided I
just figure it out along the way.
So I learned how to swim while
I was in the selection pipeline.
Um, and statistically that I shouldn't
have made it like, like the odds
of me being successful there were.
Tiny.
Um, and it took me a total of two and a
half years to make it through a pipeline
that normally takes like six to nine
months for most people, probably if
you factor in bootcamp and all that,
um, maybe a year, uh, I was about two
weeks from graduating my first selection
course and I failed a time swim.
Got rolled out.
So I was a SWCC, a boat guy, um,
special warfare combatant crewman.
That's what I was in selection for.
They rolled me out of the SWCC
program, being my swim buddy to a
BUDS program, which is SEAL training.
Um, as an experiment, we were the first
two that they had done this with, but
they saw that we were far enough through
training that we had the mental raw
material, we weren't going to quit.
We just didn't know how to swim.
Um, and I was at that point a year and
a half in, and the only, you know, The
coaching I had besides from, besides,
aside from the minimal amount that I had
to pass the screen test by seven seconds
on my last try was just try harder.
Everyone, all the instructors who
saw me struggling in the water just
told me to put out more, to get,
to get fitter and, and try harder.
And once I rolled into the BUDS
program, they had an actual coach,
like a performance coach who knew
how to teach people how to swim.
And it changed my life.
Like the guy who watched me swim, me and
my swim buddy, we did, I think it was a
thousand meter swim test the first day.
Uh, we simulated the
swim that we'd failed.
So we swam in boots and camis for a
thousand meters and I got out of the
water and he told me that it was my,
or my parents fault for raising me
in South Dakota instead of somewhere
with water and that he could fix it.
And he gave me probably 10 specific,
measurable, quantifiable things that
I could do better And then he gave
me immediate feedback on that while
I was swimming two hours a day, two
miles a day, roughly in that pool.
So, you know, roll my torso like this, put
my head in this position, bend my arm like
this, do all of these specific things.
Instead of trying harder, he
gave me ways to do it better.
And within two months, I had failed
that the swim that I failed when I got
rolled out of my first selection course,
I failed by a minute and two seconds.
And within two months of
coaching with this guy, I passed
that swim by over 10 minutes.
Um, two more months in that program.
And I was one of the fastest guys And it
was just because I had the fitness and
I needed the skill and I got the skill.
And so I went from there back
into the SWCC program, graduated
finally after two and a half years.
And I'd always been interested in
human performance kind of stuff.
And that selection environment
specifically, uh, made me really
interested in what it was that
made some people successful and
pretty much everyone else not.
Like, I, I literally saw thousands of
people show up, try, and usually quit.
Um, and, and the factors that made
them quit weren't just physical
skill or physical ability.
Uh, because of physical ability was the
factor that I never would have been there.
And the same held true for a lot
of the other people I saw graduate.
They weren't the best athletes, you
know, they weren't the gifted college
water polo players, the D1 athletes.
They were like farm kids.
Um, they were people that just weren't
going to give up and they, you know,
put together the skills well enough
to make it through when they had all
those other like non cognitive traits.
But I was really interested in how
all those things came together.
And in helping other people do
that, um, so that other people who
have the basic raw materials could
be successful in those programs.
Because it's a massive waste of,
of lives, of manpower to have
people show up who have the pieces.
They just need small amounts of skill
or the right coaching, the right
process, and they can be successful.
Um, and the way those programs
work a lot of, in a lot of
cases are basically a lottery.
Like, You're either lucky and
you show up having had the right
background and the right skill
training from some other setting.
Like you went through a college
swim program or whatever, and
you have it or you don't, but
it doesn't have to be that way.
And it can be systematized and
you can know all of the, the
capacities or skills that you need
to make it through these processes.
And you can develop them.
Like every single one of them
is knowable and learnable
and developable, developable,
Travis Bader: developable.
It's a perfectly common
Craig Weller: word.
Yeah.
And, and so that's what we set out to
do is just identify all of the pieces
and how they work together as a system.
And, and how can we assess where
somebody is and where they need to go.
And if you give someone a long enough
timeline and they're willing to go
through the work, they can do it.
Um, you know, like that's
another thing that people that
we train that are successful.
They're successful because they
usually spend multiple years
preparing for one of these courses.
They treat it as professionals.
They treat it as part of their job
and the people who are not successful.
I mean, we get emails
from them all the time.
They're like, I'm going to special
forces selection in two months.
Should I try rucking?
Like they're.
They're, you know, like they, they treat
it as a tryout, not, not a job interview.
They think they're going to show up and
it's the, the sword in the stone myth.
Like they're going to show up and just
have this special thing, this sparkle in
their eye that the cadre will recognize.
And they'll, they'll have something
that wasn't really due to their work.
It's just something that's innate to them.
And that's not how it works.
It's.
Either you've done the work and
you've done the work intelligently
or you haven't, and that's all that's
being tested in these, these courses.
Um, the thing is that that simple thing is
also very hard, like just doing that work
for one to two years before you show up.
Is really daunting.
It's boring and tedious and it's not fun.
Um, and that's what ultimately separates
the successful people from the not, you
know, like how much they're willing to
pay to get the thing that they want.
Travis Bader: You know, it's
gotta be pretty encouraging
for somebody to hear that.
That there is a path that they can take.
It's not like they're just born
with a certain gift and I'll be it.
There's going to be people who
have backgrounds and abilities
that they might be born with, or
maybe you have been nurtured into
them that might give them a leg up.
And there might be some that
their abilities that they're born
with or how they're nurtured,
which may play against them.
But the fact that there is a roadmap
in place that can get nearly everybody
with the, uh, basic physical aptitude
and cognitive abilities to be
able to, uh, meet a higher level.
That's gotta be encouraging.
Craig Weller: Yeah, I think so.
And, and background does matter, you
know, if, if you've spent your entire
life playing video games on the couch
and you decide you want to go be a green
Bray, you know, In a year like you've
got a you've got much more work to do.
But yeah, it's not it's not magic There's
a knowable process that more or less
anyone can follow if they're willing
to do the work And I think while it's
encouraging I think that's also the part
that some people will have a hard time
with knowing that what they have to trade
Is a lot of work and that that part in
itself The simple but hard thing is right
in front of them and that that is tougher
to deal with than I think a lot of people
recognize like most people that's why
you see magic six week training programs
and like shortcuts and People trying to
find dumbo's magic feather, basically
it appeals because I think culturally
there's a strong allure for shortcuts
for, for like the special thing that
will save you from doing the hard thing,
but there's really no, easy way to do
a hard thing well, you, you either pay
the man, you do the work or you don't.
And a lot of the people that
are failing are failing because
they've tried to work around it.
Like they've tried to
go around the hard part.
Um, you know, like there's nothing
that there's no shortcut that keeps you
from, or that you can substitute for
walking with a backpack for three hours.
Every couple of times a week, you know,
like it's, it's simple, but, but it takes
a lot of commitment and it's something you
have to do when nobody's watching, nobody
cares, and nobody's telling you to do it.
And that's, that's what separates people.
Travis Bader: One of my mentors once
said to me when I was griping and
moaning many years ago about how
difficult something was and man,
everyone else seems to have it easier.
I think it was my early twenties
and he looks at me and just laughs.
This is Travis.
One thing I've learned is that nothing
worthwhile in my life has ever come easy.
And that's always stuck with me.
And I know that if I'm doing
something difficult, there's something
worthwhile that comes out of that.
Even if that's just the mental
fortitude or the experience of, uh,
being able to deal with difficult
situation, a difficult situation, um,
nothing worthwhile ever comes easy.
And the other thing that I, uh, kind
of strikes me that you're talking
about when I, I started my company and
I'm looking at hiring people and I've
got a bit of a selection process and
criteria that people are going through.
I look at their CV.
And they've got five pages of, um,
door breacher, pistol instructor,
uh, night ops, like all, all of
these great looking things that
would make them well overqualified
for a basic firearms instructor of
what I'd be looking for over here.
And I'm like, holy crow,
this person's got it all.
This is fantastic.
And I'd sign them up and
I quickly realized that my
selection criteria was way off.
Because these skills can be taught.
And what I should be looking for
is the core values that their
mother should have taught them.
And I changed how I selected people.
If they had those core values that
were a good fit, and they also had
all those accolades, fantastic, right?
But I would start ranking these
core values higher in the selection
process, even if they didn't have
those basic teachable skills,
because I'd just spent a bit more
time with them from your standpoint.
What are some of the core values that
you would be looking for in somebody who
you would say would make a successful
candidate for any one of your selection
programs that you're training them for?
And what are some of the values that you
can start sussing out after a while as
maybe being detrimental to an individual?
Craig Weller: Hmm.
Um, it's going to take me a
second to walk through that.
That's two different things.
So that's two questions.
The first thing first, I want
to have a story about this.
Um, there's an old story From the udts the
underwater demolition teams, which are the
precursor to the seals um where they had
an initial screening test to allow people
into the program like that's evolved now
into what they call the pst where you
Run swim and do some pull ups and stuff.
But at the time they had them do a
thing where they Jump into a pool and
carry a bucket of rocks across the pool.
So you carry it a little ways,
come up, take a breath, go back
down, carry it a little ways
more and get it across the pool.
I think it's a 50 meter pool.
And they had a guy do this, who just
jumped in and trucked the thing all
the way across the bottom of the pool.
Set the rocks down where he was
supposed to, came up on the side of
the pool and, and almost unconscious,
gasping for breath, like trying
to figure out where he was again.
And they yelled at him for not following
instructions because he was supposed to,
like, walk a ways, swim up to the surface,
tread water, breathe, go back down, swim.
You know, swim, carry, swim.
And like, what are you doing?
Like you didn't follow instructions.
And he said, I don't know how to swim.
But this actually, in retrospect, this
story got me, this is what screwed
me up and got me into the Navy.
And they're like, Oh, well,
we can teach you how to swim.
Welcome to the program.
And that's how it worked.
Like they saw someone who was tough
enough to do whatever he had to
do to accomplish this task, even
if he did it somewhat incorrectly.
And they knew that he was coachable
and trainable, but he had those like
fundamental characteristics of basically.
Tenacity you're willing to
sacrifice his body to keep going.
Um, and that's one of the things
that we look for You can there's a
few different ways to Categorize it.
One of the most crucial is an internal
locus of control meaning that someone
thinks that they Are steering the ship,
like they are in charge of their position
in the world and that they have the
ability to change their circumstances
and control their course in life.
Um, someone with an externalized
locus of control thinks that
the world happens to them.
And you can hear that, like, we do an
application for our one on one clients,
uh, and this is one of the things that
we look for, like, the application
is deliberately onerous, it's, it's a
pain, it's very long, the questions are
annoying, um, and some of what we're
looking for isn't even necessarily, like,
the specific answers to the questions.
But how they perceive the world when
they answer them and also just their
willingness to go through the amount
of work that this application requires.
Um, and we'll, we'll see it in
people's language when they say,
um, I got a knee injury, which
means the injury happened to them.
You know, it came from somewhere
outside of themselves where someone
says, I hurt my knee or I injured my
knee that implies that they were in
control of that process They could
have done something differently.
They could have understood a variable
They could have trained differently
moved differently done something that
was within their control, but they
didn't and they hurt their knee It means
that they're in control and they have
an internal locus of control where the
person who said, you know, it happened
to me I failed this thing because
My knee got injured when it's like
something that comes from the outside.
We'll see that trend.
People pretty clearly skew one way
or the other towards internal or
externally and external locus of control.
And if they're heavily externalized,
that means that they're not likely
to control the things that they can,
or they're not likely to work on
the things that they can control.
Um, and that they're going to feel
like a victim of their circumstances.
And they're less likely to
engage in active coping versus
just, you know, Passive coping.
So active coping means that you
solve or you address problems or
you solve problems by making them go
away by facing the problem directly.
Passive coping means you make a problem
go away by avoiding or ignoring it.
Um, so somebody kind of turtles
up and just hopes it goes
away and works itself out.
Um, passive coping is immediately
in the moment, less stressful,
um, because you're avoiding.
Direct confrontation with the stressor.
Um, you're avoiding a challenge,
but the challenge doesn't go away.
The problem doesn't go away.
You just push it off into the future and
it usually compounds and becomes worse.
Um, So you can see that in someone's,
uh, nervous system and their, in their,
the nature of their stress responses.
When someone actively copes with
a problem, they'll have to engage
with a stronger sympathetic
response, like a threat response
or an engaged challenge response.
And in the moment, they'll have
a higher stress response, like
their heart rate will be higher.
That just means, you know, That they're
more actively engaged, but as soon
as that stressor has passed or the
challenge has passed because they've
dealt with it, they'll also have a
more restful or relaxing baseline.
So that person who has been actively
coping with their challenges
throughout the day now sleeps better.
And when it's time to have dinner with
their family and shut down and relax,
they do that effectively, where the
person who's been coping through their
day by avoiding and ignoring things.
And hoping they work themselves out,
um, all of those program, problems
are still on their shoulders somehow.
They're still lurking in the background
and that person is going to have
a higher baseline stress response.
So they're a little more sympathetic,
a little more stressed at baseline
when they should be resting,
when they should be sleeping.
They don't dip as much, their heart
rate doesn't come down as much when
they sleep, um, because they're.
Keeping their problems in their
lives, like they're carrying, they're
like basically filling a giant
trailer behind them of their problems
and carrying it around with them.
Um, we also look at just fundamental
conscientiousness, which is
basically doing the right thing
when the right thing is hard.
Conscientious people tend to be on time.
They're prepared.
They think through all of the factors
that affect the outcome they're going for.
Um, so they're not the person
who's constantly running out of
gas, um, that always has an excuse
for something, you know, uh, and
they're also a little more prone to.
Feeling stressed because they think
about and actively deal with all of
the little things in their day Like
the guy that you know, that seems
like he's always a little bit high.
He's just never worried about
anything I it'll be fine.
You know, he shows up 20 minutes
later But he just does like screwing
up doesn't bother that person.
They're they're kind of sloppy
That's that's someone who's low in
conscientiousness and that's One of
the fundamental, uh, behavioral traits
in a, it's called a big five profile.
So we have openness to experience
conscientiousness, extroversion,
agreeableness, and neuroticism.
And for someone looking to do a special
operations role, the two that matter
primarily are conscientiousness and
neuroticism or emotional stability.
So someone who is highly neurotic
is generally kind of emotionally
unstable and prone to a high level
of perceived or imaginary threat.
Um, they become, they're more, they're
a lot more prone to anxiety and they
get stressed out easily where someone
who's really emotionally stable, uh,
tends to stay calm under pressure.
They retain control of
their frontal cortex.
They're able to think through challenges,
um, and rationally even when things are
Loud and noisy, uh, where someone who's
lower in emotional stability or higher
in neuroticism, uh, tends to kind of
fly off the handle a lot more easily.
And the other ones, introversion,
extroversion, it matters a little
depending on the specific field.
Um, so green berets, uh, stereotypically
work in teams and they have
to go work with foreign units.
And Integrate or embed themselves
with all kinds of other people.
Uh, extroversion is useful there,
but if you're going to be say a
scout sniper and you have to be okay
in your own head for a long time
and good at maintaining vigilance
when you're bored, uh, introversion
is a strength in that setting.
So that one is variable.
Um, agreeableness or antagonism is the
other side of that is basically your.
You're, uh, how much you care about
making other people mad or how much
you care about the feelings of others.
Um, so people in the special
operations community tend a little
toward the low side, but not
usually not so much that they're
terribly problematic, uh, socially.
If you're highly agreeable, you're
like super into people pleasing,
you're kind of a flag in the wind
that gets pushed around by whatever
social circumstances are around you.
You don't hold your ground, even.
When you know that you're right
about something, but it's going to
be painful to hold your ground, like,
uh, highly agreeable, people will
give up their own opinion or their
own beliefs in order to go with the
crowd, go with the flow, um, which, you
know, being very socially adaptable.
At that emotional level can be useful
in some settings, but generally not
in a special operations role and the
people you see who were really good at
being sort of that social chameleon in
a special operations role usually are
doing that cognitively, not emotionally,
meaning they don't necessarily have
high levels of empathy, uh, like, like
emotional empathy, but they have very
high levels of understanding cognitively.
So they can still read what
other people are feeling.
And do what they need to do with
that information, but they're
not always feeling it themselves.
They're the gray man.
So they're, yeah, yeah.
So, um, what was the other, I think
that actually covers them all.
Travis Bader: Well,
that covers a fair bit.
So it's interesting when you talk
about, um, uh, the internal locus of
control, uh, going back to the beginning
there and looking at people where
things happen to them or whether they
feel that they've got that control.
I've always kind of, you
know, I've looked at it.
If somebody is at a certain point in their
life and they want to do something else
and they want to achieve something higher,
and they say, I can do this myself.
Well, that's an ambitious
individual, right?
If they feel that it's within their
control, if they figure it's up
to other people to get them there,
well, the boss has got to recognize
me and give me a raise or the
government's going to have to ABC.
See.
Well, that person's entitled, right.
And I've always tried to make that
distinction between the ambitious or
entitled individual, how they want
to both want to achieve something,
but they have two very different
ways they want to go about it.
Um, and.
The thing about conflict that you
said there, and I've heard it said in
other places, and there's something
that I hold close to my heart.
Conflict avoided is
conflict amplified, right?
If you avoid conflict, I just know in the
future, it's going to be harder for me.
Whenever I have something of conflict
that I see come up, I learned from
another mentor of mine, who Just be
blunt about it and remove that emotion.
And if it's, let's say a verbal conflict
or an emotional conflict, just say,
Hey, here's what I'm seeing right now.
And don't try and dance around
the issue and attack it head on.
Cause you want to, here's
what I'd like to achieve.
Here's what I want to get to,
but I can see that in both a
physical standpoint as well.
It's kind of like that.
Um, uh, what was that old parable of the,
uh, the farmer who, uh, He's looking for
somebody to help him out on the farm.
And, and he, uh, this guy comes along and.
He says, well, do you
have any special skills?
And the guy's like, well, I
can sleep through a storm.
He says, well, what do
you, what do you mean?
Like, that's a special skill.
He's like, yeah, yeah, I
can sleep through a storm.
All right, I'll give you a shot.
Right.
And come on in.
And anyways, he's got the guy working
for him for a couple of months and sure
enough, a big storm comes in one day
and the windows are banging and the
farmer and his wife gets up and they
run out to check on the livestock, but
all the livestock squared away, right.
They run to check the batten
down all the hatches and.
Everything's all battened down.
He's like, Oh, I get it.
He can sleep through a storm.
He's conscious conscientious
enough right in the here and now.
To look after all of the little
things that should things go
sideways in the future, he doesn't
have to worry about him anymore.
And that, that's another
one that I've always got it.
Everything's taken care of on the farm.
The, uh, husband and wife, they go
back to bed, everyone has a good
night's rest because although.
Like you're saying, higher level of
consciousness will have maybe, uh,
more neuroticism or thinking, if I
don't do this, then this could happen.
I better make sure this is squared away.
And that could lead to, and correct me
if I'm wrong, but that could lead to
a higher levels of anxiety in the now,
but very likely lower levels when it
comes time to sleep, lower levels in the
future, you know, you have it squared.
Craig Weller: Yeah, yeah.
So if you have someone who is highly
conscientious, but also neurotic,
then you have that combination of
they're aware of all the problems
and all the things that can go wrong.
Um, but it, Really, it's really
emotionally stressful and they
probably aren't engaging in active
coping and doing like what that guy
did and preemptively taking care of
all of these variables that matter.
Um, there's a good amount of
research on willpower and, and on
what we perceive as being willpower.
And one of the key findings in it is that
the people that we think of as having
great willpower because they're really
effective in their day to day lives.
Uh, aren't actually using willpower.
They're, they've already set up
the structure around them, and
they're using different behavioral
systems to take willpower out of
the equation, so they don't have
to force their way through the day.
Like, they don't have to grit
their teeth, slam a pre workout
every time, and, and like, bare
knuckle their way through the day.
They have all these systems and
structures in place, so that doing
the right thing becomes easier.
And, and they're just kind of following
the path that gravity takes them down
where the people that we see as having
lower willpower often are exercising
a significant amount of willpower, but
they're just fighting uphill the whole
time because they've created systems and
structures around themselves where they're
naturally pulled out of the, or away
from the direction that they want to go.
Um, so it's, it's like you're
describing, like, I, I've, I'm
going to steal that parable.
That's a really good example.
Travis Bader: Well, you and I,
so a friend of mine, Sean Taylor,
XJTF2, you know, Sean as well.
And what does he say?
He just.
Puts his program in and
then runs a program.
And that sounds like what
you're saying, right?
Is this willpower?
No, it's, it's my program.
I just, I set it and I run it.
My decision branching tree is narrowed.
Does this work with my program
or not work with my program?
If it doesn't work with it, then I don't
even have to think about it anymore.
Is that, is that one way of looking
at what you're, you're saying there?
Craig Weller: Yeah, that, that would
be that combination of emotionally
stable and conscientiousness.
Um, so like Sean is okay with, and
he's so good at this that it doesn't
even enter his thinking most likely,
but the things that would detract him
from doing what needs to be done don't
really factor into his daily life.
Like he's just going to
do what needs to happen.
And, and move forward and, and other
people with a different structure,
uh, who haven't practiced that kind of
discipline of just consistently doing
the right thing, um, are more easily
pulled away by whatever distraction
they have or whatever comfort they
need to keep or, you know, um, the
normal things that kind of bury us all.
And Sean is a really
interesting example of that.
Basically being a modern Samurai and, and
just building his whole life around some
kind of pursuit of excellence, whether
he's running a coffee shop or writing a
textbook or being a special operator, like
he's always been very good at focusing on
those things and, and making them happen.
Travis Bader: Do you have a
background in statement analysis?
Cause when you're talking before
about looking at how people answer
these questions, the knee injury
happened to me or vice versa, do
you have a background in that?
Um,
Craig Weller: Uh, kind of actually,
we've never talked about this.
Um, I, I've done some work, I have
to dance around this a little with
the intelligence community in,
uh, detecting deception, um, and
a few different methods of that.
Um, I was part of a, uh, study
grant learning methods of,
uh, I think I can say this.
Um, vetting beliefs was the name
of the study, which was, they
wanted to know if someone said, I
strongly believe this, uh, to know
if they were being truthful or not.
And we've done some work.
Some of it is public.
Some of it is not on different
methods of detecting deception.
And some actually, the Most effective
versions of that often involve just
basically that statement analysis.
Um, computers are actually usually
better at it than people and
they're using pretty simple methods.
Uh, type token ratios are just
unique word counts and things
like that can be very telling.
Um, in a deceptive
versus a truthful person.
And a big takeaway from all of that
work is that we're not good at it.
And the people who think they're
good at it are usually not.
They're usually terrible.
Yeah, they're the worst.
Travis Bader: Usually they spend so
much time pre rehearsing that their
tells become just blatantly obvious.
Craig Weller: Well, it's, there's that,
but also the other side of it, the
detecting side, um, people who think
that they have a lot of experience.
experience.
And that makes them good at
knowing when someone's lying.
Um, that gets into the whole field of
research on, uh, developing expertise
on how expertise actually works.
Um, and expertise requires an
accurate, immediate feedback loop.
Uh, most people don't have that,
especially people who are trying to decide
if someone's lying or not for a living.
You often don't know if you are
correct, but over time people
develop these pet theories.
And, and they feel like they
have instincts, but they've never
actually validated their instincts.
So it's like someone, if you had someone
who's been shooting for 10 years, but
the entire time they've never known for
sure if they hit the target or not, they
just, they've been shooting for 10 years.
So they think they're good at it.
There's a very good chance that they could
have developed terrible habits and, and
like weird superstitions and things that
don't work for them at all, but they've
never had an objective feedback loop.
To validate or course correct them
and steer them in the right direction.
Um, and that's true in
a lot of occupations.
So like the medical field, for instance,
um, a lot of people, depending on the
medical specialty will actually get
slowly worse at their jobs over time.
But the exceptions to that are the people
who have immediate clear feedback loops.
So surgeons, if you're a surgeon and
you screw up, you know it immediately.
Because your patient bleeds out
or, you know, like you see a tissue
damage or something like that.
Um, but if you're say an x ray tech and
you're diagnosing cancer on an x ray and
you miss that diagnosis, like you didn't
see something that was there, you have no
way of knowing that you're probably not.
Following up with that
person three years later.
Uh, so, so you don't necessarily have
a feedback loop that makes you better
at your job or, or refines and retains
the skill that you have over time.
Uh, and that's true in a lot.
I mean, that's true in the
physical fitness industry.
When you see people who are
like, I've been training
people for this for 10 years.
Like.
It doesn't necessarily
mean you're good at it.
It just means you've had one year of
experience that you've repeated 10
times and you've developed pet theories.
Travis Bader: Yeah.
I've said that numerous times that people
in the past, Oh, I'm a 10 year, 10 years
of experience in whatever it might be.
No, you've had, you know, one month
of experience, 120 times, right.
Or one year of experience,
10 times over, right.
It's, uh, there's a difference
between those two things.
Craig Weller: Yeah, you think of
everyone driving on the highway next
to you, like, uh, most of them stopped
getting better at driving maybe a
year after they got their license.
Like there, there was initially a learning
curve, but then we all do this thing.
It's called the hypothesis of par
hypothesis of tolerance, where we decide
that it's good enough and we go from
conscious development of a skill into
automated execution of that skill.
And at that point we no longer improve it.
And the point at which we
do that is very arbitrary.
Like, so there are people who
are really, really good drivers.
You know, like you've seen drift car,
race car drivers, people like that.
And then most people who have been
driving a car for 30 years, haven't
gotten better at it in 29 of those years.
And, and that's entirely up to them.
Uh, but, but if without an effective
training model or a process to make
them better, it's never going to happen.
Travis Bader: Do you, so with that
background and basic statement
analysis, like I remember as a
kid, my father was a detective and
he'd bring home different files.
And one of them I was reading through
and They was at a hospital and there was
a theft that had happened and they gave
the same form to everybody to fill out.
And, you know, to try and spot the person
who's lying by reading just one form
was difficult, but when you read them
all together and their, uh, entirety and
compare them against, there's one that
really, really stood out from the rest.
That was a person, you know,
what would you do if we found
the person who stole, right?
What kind of punishment would you have?
And people are like, people are like,
Well, they should be fired right away.
They should do this.
And one of them says, well, you
should find out why they did it.
And, and maybe they had a good reason.
And if they pay it back, then maybe
they can that beside all of the other
people are like, nope, it's wrong.
Fire them really helped it stand out.
So I got interested in statement
analysis at a younger age.
I've done both.
Basic interview and interrogation and
advanced interview and interrogation
course through different police agencies
and companies out of the States.
And you're right.
Um, detecting deception is a, uh, uh, is
a difficult, a very, very difficult thing.
And even the pros get it wrong a fair bit.
Um, But as well, I apply that to just
interactions with people, just looking
at, uh, at how we work together.
And I try and apply that same sort of
principle and just getting, getting
reads, I guess, on people, uh, it,
does that form part of your process?
Process aside from your questionnaires
and going through, or are you looking
at both statement analysis and, uh,
physiological responses to stressors
and what you're doing with them?
Is that a part of it?
Cause this is going to lead into another
question, but I'll let you answer this.
Craig Weller: Like, is there a alongside
something that we could kind of hard code?
You know, like we could rate
statements for internal versus
external locus of control or whatever.
Are we integrating just a felt sense,
like a kind of an instinct toward, um,
to some extent, yes, I think we do.
Um, generally we're able to, uh,
justify that using those criteria.
Um, we have that discussion every
time we have a new applicant for
coaching and there's four of us.
Who kind of pick and choose who, through
who we're going to take, who we're not.
And each person basically makes their
case for this is what I've seen.
You know, this is where I
think he's a good candidate.
This is where I think they're
not going to be a good candidate.
Basically, this is this person's
probability of success with good coaching.
And, and we do, there's kind
of an instinctive thing.
Um, I can think of, there
was one recently where.
Me and Jonathan, both were just kind
of immediately annoyed by this person.
And it was even, it was somewhat
hard to even articulate why.
Um, and, and three out of four of
us were like, ah, no, I'm good.
I don't, I don't want to, I
don't want to work with this guy.
And then one guy was
like, he seems coachable.
I think it's going to be a challenge,
you know, like I, it'll be a challenge
to get him to, to think better, to,
to kind of like turn his life around.
And I'm going to take this challenge on.
And it was.
It's a complete waste of time.
Um, the guy wouldn't follow his program,
didn't engage with it, quit within a week.
Um, you know, he had to chase him down.
It wasted everyone's time.
And in that case, I think we had
a few hard criteria on things like
conscientiousness or even just a
person's ability to like express
themselves intelligently as a factor,
like how well they can communicate
in written language, assuming that
they're a native English speaker.
That's, uh, that can be a big tell because
you're also looking at conscientiousness
and baseline intelligence there when
you see that, um, but, but something
about that guy was just a felt sense.
Um, and I, I think we all kind of
generally, for all those reasons
I just described, try not to go
too far into that, um, relying
solely on like a gut feeling.
gut instinct kind of thing, because
that can be easy, that can easily be
wrong if you can't also like hard code
a reason for that sense, you know, um,
but we've been doing it for so long
that generally our felt sense, like
our initial instinct is matches up with
what the hard criteria would be anyway.
Because you've
Travis Bader: received that immediate
feedback feedback or somewhat immediate
feedback from repeated trials.
Craig Weller: Yeah.
Yeah.
So we've had the feedback loops to
like, uh, calibrate that felt sense.
Um, like we've been doing this
for a long, long time and we've
had a lot of repetitions on it.
And we do have pretty good feedback on it.
Like in this guy's case where he was
like, I think he might be coachable.
I'm going to see this as a
challenge to, you know, help
this guy get his life together.
And basically the feedback loop that that
guy got was we just turned down other
people because we didn't have coaching
slots who probably would have been
more willing and able to do the work.
We shouldn't have taken that guy, um,
because he wasted all of our time.
Travis Bader: You can always
take the Tony Robbins approach.
He's got a, uh, somebody wants
personal coaching from Tony Robbins.
He's going to charge you an arm and a leg.
He's going to make it hurt because if
someone's willing to pay that amount
of money, They'll be willing to put
the work in required afterwards.
It's just theory.
Anyways, maybe, maybe not.
Maybe they just have a bucket of
money and they can throw it around.
Craig Weller: Possible.
Yeah, that is possible,
but it is a good filter.
Um, which is kind of tragic, you know,
because we, we deliberately work with
a market that is comprised of people
who generally don't have a lot of
money and we adjust our pricing in to
account for that, uh, knowing that.
You know, like if you're a 20 year old
kid trying to get into special operations,
like you're not throwing around a ton of
cash Um, so like the coaching that we do
if we were working with like executives
or something like that would cost three
or four times as much um, but There is
that thing where you've where anyone
regardless of like their financial status
Values more what they pay for or values
what they pay for to a greater degree So
if you give something away Even if it is
someone, you know They just lost their job
or whatever, and they can't pay for it.
And you, you start comping them a couple
of months of training or something like
we've seen over the years, it is often
true that, um, if you don't charge people
something enough, that it hurts at least
a little, they're not going to value
it, which is just a tragedy kind of,
because there are people where like, I'd
honestly prefer to not charge them knowing
how much it hurts them to pay us when
they're like in a tough financial place.
Um, And we do that sometimes,
but it often doesn't work out
because people stop valuing what
they're, what they don't pay for.
I give,
Travis Bader: I had a, uh, it's, it's
still something I struggle with is
value valuing myself appropriately.
Uh, I tend to give a lot of things
away for free because, uh, the other
side of that is if I charge 'em what
I think I'm, should be valued at.
I mean, like you say, that could be,
that could be a, a difficult situation.
Um.
I I look at, uh, in, in the same way,
if you, someone does something really
nice for you, let's say they go out
and they buy you a coffee and you turn
around and you buy them, give them $10
or five bucks or whatever the coffee
is worth, you can diminish their
sense of giving and they can diminish
their, uh, gift that they give to you.
But if you turn around and give
them a gift, you know, uh, in return
flowers or something else, right?
They can say, Hey, I feel appreciated.
So that's one thing that I've always
struggled with because I, you know,
not wanting to be the receiver of
gifts, but on the value side, there's
one story that I can tell that
has always cemented it in my head.
I had a fellow come in
Swiss guy, older fellow.
Came in back in the days before
it was silvercore training and
it was silvercore gun works.
And I was doing gunsmithing for
barber car companies across Canada
and fix and to work for police.
And then every Joe Blow who had
a gun would bring something in.
And anyways, this guy comes in.
He's got a barrel, he's got an action.
He says, I want this barrel
cut, crowned, threaded.
Uh, I want a muzzle brake put on it.
I want the other side threaded
to fit into the, into the action.
And I want it chambered.
And he had some tight specifications
and I want the whole thing Parkerized.
And he's got this whole laundry list
of things that he wants done on it.
So I go through and I started doing
this work and I'm like, Oh, this old
guy, he's made a point of telling
me that he's an old pensioner.
And so I, what am I going to charge him?
And I go Brownells in the States has got
a high, low of what gunsmiths charge.
And I just went on the
low side of everything.
And some, I just crossed off
and I gave him a smoking deal.
Anyways, he gets his rifle.
He looks at it.
Hey, thanks very much.
See you later.
Oh, okay.
Fair enough.
Comes back a week later, another
same type of action, another barrel.
He says, I want another one done
up, but I wanted the exact same
thing done, but in a different, uh,
chambering, a different caliber.
I'm like, now the guys
has taken advantage of me.
I'm thinking, right.
So I, I go through and I go to the
Brownells list and I go on the high
side and I charge her everything.
He came, he looked at the work
and he turned around and left,
he went back to his truck.
And I'm like, oh man, he's mad.
Cause he looked at the bill.
He looked at the work and it's
a lot more than the last one.
And I warned him ahead of time.
I'm not going to be able
to give him the same price.
Anyways, he came back and he put
these white gloves on and he picked
it up and he holds it up to the light.
And he says, no, that that's quality work.
I did the exact same thing that I did
for him the week prior on this other gun.
I just charged him more and that paid off.
Perception of the value for
getting charged more is always
stuck in the back of my head.
Craig Weller: That's a good,
that's a really good example.
That's like having run a bunch of
gyms and stuff that is a really common
thing to struggle with is like when
you're running your own business.
Um, But yeah, it's, uh, it's a good
example of how that psychology works.
Uh, crucially you are really good at
what you do, so you can back that price
up with the quality of your, your craft.
Um, you know, there, there are certainly
people where that's a mismatch, but.
But yeah, it is, it is a good
illustration of that concept.
Travis Bader: So people who listen to this
podcast, if they go back a few, they're
going to see what I did with Sean Taylor.
He was one of the plank holders.
He started up GTF too.
They probably also listened to the
collective of which both you and I have
been on on a number of times in the past.
And of course, Sean and Chance
are on there all the time.
For those people who know who we're
talking about, and even for those who
don't, who want to go and check out the
collective or listen to the past episodes,
Sean Taylor, how would you look at him?
If you're looking at statement analysis,
you're looking at gut feeling, how
would you kind of break him down
from an analytical standpoint for
why he's been able to be successful
in the areas that he has been?
And if you were to provide
advice to him, what would those
areas be to put you on the spot?
I
Craig Weller: don't know if I'd
have any, I don't know if I could
have any advice for Sean that,
that he's not already doing.
Um, He, if he fits that exact profile of
highly conscientious, like, like he's the
guy who can sleep through storms for sure.
Um, emotionally stable.
And in his case, I don't know
all of the details on this.
I've talked to him a bit of like
the books and the ideas that
have influenced him over time.
Um, I know he got into Bruce Lee's
stuff a long, long time ago, like his
philosophy writing and that kind of stuff.
Um, but he's made a conscious.
Practice of learning and internalizing
concepts through experience.
Um, so, you know, like any concept
that we talk about, like toughness
or discipline or whatever, um, the
words themselves don't really mean
anything unless they're informed by an
experience that you've had, that you've
navigated with those things in mind.
Um, like until you've lived it, you,
you don't really know what it is.
You just know the words that describe it.
And Sean has done a very good
job of living all of those things
so that they are who he is.
They're not just things that
he knows or words he can say.
They're who he is.
And I think that's one of the things that
distinguishes Sean from most other people.
Is everything that he would, any
value that he would express, um, is
basically matched one to one by what's
on the inside and what he's done or
what he does on a consistent basis.
Like there's no mismatch between
his externally expressed values
and the way that he lives his life.
Um, and that's a pretty rare thing.
And he fits that whole profile.
You know, he's fairly agreeable
to the extent that he needs to be,
because I think he's a sociable guy.
He's pretty extroverted.
His cognitive style is fairly
externally oriented and broad.
He, so he's, he sees like a big spider
web of interconnected ideas around him.
And he's, he's kind of thinking
outside of himself a lot.
Um, but he can shift internally as well.
And he's very introspective.
Um, so he's just kind of agile mentally.
He's a really interesting
guy in that sense.
Um, I don't know what
advice I would give him.
I don't think I have any, honestly.
The dude is like, how old is he?
Like he's in his sixties.
He's more ripped than most
20 something crossfitters.
Like he's, and he's, he's
just like a good dude.
It's yeah.
I don't, I don't know if
I'd have any advice for him.
We, so you got those meals, right?
We sent you the base camp kitchen.
He got them too.
And his tasting notes were like.
He like a sommelier , he sent
them to, to jen, the chef.
And he, I think he mismatched a label.
He read something, he read the
wrong one, but his tasting notes,
he was noting the mismatches.
He's like, there's
something spicy in here.
There's nutmeg.
I know there's nutmeg, but I
don't see nutmeg on the recipes.
And when you hit the low,
the base notes in this.
And the, it was like, it was incredible.
Like the guy is basically a
professional food taster somehow.
And I'm guessing that comes from having
run a coffee shop and like being, you
know, like really into the nuance and,
and tasting quality there is probably
where that at least was refined.
Who knows what else he's been up to.
I think it comes from
Travis Bader: wanting to do a job well.
And if he's going to do it to provide
the best bang for the best job that he
can possibly do in, in that process.
I think that's what it comes from.
I know.
Craig Weller: Yeah.
Yeah.
Cause I told him like, you're
hired, you're the new executive
vice president of tasting things.
And his response was just like,
just excellence in what I do, like
excellence in everything I do.
And I think that's it.
Like, like he understood the assignment,
like we're sending you these meals and
we want better feedback than it was good.
You know, you know, I ate it
and I was full, like it, it
was exactly what we needed.
And yeah.
Travis Bader: Well, we, uh, had the.
First one today.
So I'll, you'll be getting
some notes on that one.
And, uh, um, my, uh, my wife's a chef and
so, uh, going to be getting, getting some
notes from, from that perspective as well.
It just, uh, that's
Craig Weller: helpful.
Yes.
That's what we need.
So
Travis Bader: she's a red seal chef
for, um, previously in a previous
life now she's doing, um, a lot of
work with Silvercorp since we got
to a point where we needed her help.
Um, uh, cool.
So.
You know, you talk about mental toughness.
A lot of people say, well, that, that,
what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
And I used to, uh, Subscribe to that
school of thought way back in the
day, when I was a kid, Oh, sure.
The tougher it is, it doesn't
kill me, makes me stronger.
Maybe, maybe not.
Maybe it just keeps compounding
on top of you, and if you don't
have ways to deal with it, you get
beaten down further and further.
And so at some point I had to figure
out some ways to be able to, uh, you
know, Build processes for myself to,
like, you talk about that trailer that
you drag behind you to put things in
the trailer, drag it to where they need
to be, let them off and keep on going.
And so I can, uh, uh, get further.
Um, what, what would you suggest for a
person who wants to be mentally stronger?
Are there some steps that you would
point a person towards to, uh,
increase their mental strength?
Craig Weller: Hmm, um, Yes.
Some of it will depend on a personal
profile, because the recipe isn't the
same for everyone, so you'd have to,
oops, you'd have to understand where
you struggle, what specifically you
struggle with, and, and then work
to address those things, because
that can be different for everyone.
Um, one thing that's, commonly
misunderstood is that, uh, like,
first of all, the concept of
toughness is a lot more limited
than some people make it out to be.
Toughness is essentially goal fixedness,
which means you're just going to keep
badgering away at something until you
accomplish it or it kills you, but that's
The problem is that it can go both ways.
Um, so toughness should be paired
with adaptability and an intelligent
approach to what you're doing.
Um, like there's that saying, if
you're going to be dumb, you better be
tough, but it, it would be better said
that if you're going to be tough, you
should be smart as well, uh, otherwise.
Toughness is just going to kill you, like
you're just going to keep doing something
wrong over and over, doing it the
unnecessarily hard way over and over until
you figure out a better way to do it.
Like you could think of me swimming,
like I was mentally tough, trying
harder and harder to swim really badly.
When all I needed to do was do
it better and, and more toughness
or more fitness wasn't going to
help me out of that situation.
Didn't you almost drown?
Oh, I, yeah, repeatedly.
Drowning was like a, like a weekly
event, almost like I lost consciousness.
In the water several times.
Um, I would get these terrible
migraines cause like the long
swims might take 90 minutes and
I'd be hypoxic the entire time.
Um, so I'd have like these
terrible headaches from 90 minutes
of hypoxia, which is probably
really bad for your brain.
Um, it's not showing on you
Travis Bader: yet.
We'll see how you age.
So far,
Craig Weller: we'll give it time.
Yeah.
Um, but one, another, another piece
of that, like the, you know, like how
do I become mentally stronger thing?
Um, I think you actually touched on
this, the idea that, what was it?
Problems suppressed, a problem
suppressed is a problem.
Amplified.
Amplified.
Yeah, it's a really good expression.
Emotions or emotional health are an
integral part of being more resilient or
tough or whatever you would say because
if you're getting through life by numbing
and ignoring emotions, they're going to
come back and they're going to be stronger
and you're not going to have the skills.
To handle that.
Um, and even, even reasoning
or like decision making happens
with the aid of emotions.
Um, if you look at someone who's
trying to make a decision without
any input from emotions, you're
looking at a person who's pretty
significantly on the autism spectrum.
And that's what that does.
That's, that's where that decision making
comes from, where they're overwhelmed
by everything because they don't have
an emotion that helps point them in the
right direction and shortcut that process.
And even when we're detecting danger, um,
we're recognizing patterns, most of that
happens subcognitively or emotionally
before we're consciously aware of it.
Um, so being able to integrate emotions
into our reasoning, um, whether we're,
you know, Solving a problem at work,
learning how to write code, or, you know,
like we're navigating social situations
or trying to decide whether we should
quit the selection course or not.
Um, being tuned into your emotional
state and able to monitor it objectively
and recognize what you're feeling,
categorize it accurately and respond to
it appropriately is an important skill.
And it's one of the things that we're
currently working on more with our The
clients that we have, um, because we're
in a place where we can physically
get pretty much anyone where they need
to be given a long enough timeline.
And we can give them cognitive skills
that help them navigate situations,
which are a key piece of, of, you know,
resilience or toughness or whatever.
Um, things like segmenting, uh, are
really important, which is where you
break a task down into the smallest
manageable pieces you need to.
So in a really tough day in selection,
you might only think about doing the next
five pushups or running the next hundred
meters or whatever's in front of you.
Make it to breakfast, make it to
lunch, make it to dinner, break
your day down in that sense.
And there's a paradox in there as well
where compartmentalization can be a
useful skill when you're using it to
acknowledge and recognize a negative
feeling, a negative emotion or something
that sucks that either you can't do
anything about at the moment or it's
unproductive to address it at that time
because you have other things to do.
So you're terribly hypothermic
because you've been sitting in
cold water all day or all night.
It's terrible.
You recognize that it's terrible
that you're really cold.
You also recognize that it doesn't matter
There's nothing you can do about it.
It's not going to kill you and you
have other things to do So you just set
that aside you just like set aside that
hypothermia and you put it out of your
mind You may put away Negative emotions
at that time, you know, like you feel
some self doubt or something You can
just put that in a box set it aside for
now because you have push ups to do you
have something else to do the problem
with that is if Compartmentalization
or numbing becomes your go to
method all of the time, constantly.
And you're doing it with things that
don't go away, that aren't transient.
You know, like it's, it's useful when
you're hypothermic at midnight and
you're gonna be warm the next morning.
And then it's fine, but it's not useful
when it's something that isn't going to go
away and you're going to have to continue
dealing with it without the ability to do
so because you've never directly faced it.
Um, so one of the, one of the
things that we have people do is
just work on, on that, the ability
to recognize and understand their
emotions and to be able to sit with
them without suppression or avoidance.
And in order to give themselves, um,
like a better view of the landscape,
so to speak, so that they're able to
navigate those things more effectively.
Because once someone has the fitness, once
they're not just failing the screen test
to get into a selection course, or they're
missing the run cutoffs or whatever, um,
the reasons people quit in these really
difficult courses usually come down to
either I don't feel like I belong here or
other people don't feel like I belong here
and I believe them and then they quit and
they go away and that perception is very
fluid and it has very little to do with
their objective performance in the course.
Um, we've seen people quit who
were out of like right at the
end of the selection course.
This was, uh, one outside of the U.
S.
Um, It's maybe a three week course they
had two days to go And they quit because
they felt like they just weren't good
enough like they didn't belong there
They shouldn't have been there and then
they learned afterward that out of the 20
some guys left They were number two like
physically in every performance metric.
They were the second like top performer
they were definitely going to make it if
they just Um, and, and that perception
of, I don't belong here, other people
don't think I belong here is it's, it's
in your head, it's on you and people
have to be able to deal with that and
the factors that are going to impose that
because these courses are designed to make
you believe that because that's one of
the main things they're testing is your
ability to retain your own self belief.
Or your own intrinsic drive in
circumstances that are entirely
discouraging and entirely designed
to take that away from you.
And if you have someone who still
believes that they're capable of
moving forward and that they deserve
to earn their place, when that entire
system is trying to break them down and
take that belief away from them, then
you have someone who's very strong.
Um, but that comes down to a lot
more than being good at exercise.
It comes down to knowing yourself
and knowing your motivations and
knowing what matters to you and
who you are and basically that
you are, that you are allowed or
you're entitled to earn your place.
Not that you have a place that you're just
owed one, but that you deserve to earn
it, like that, that you can work for it.
And it's yours if you fight for it.
And that's where, The fit people who
are otherwise qualified tend to break.
Um, it's just, they become
emotionally discouraged.
Travis Bader: So those
would be emotionally based
decisions that they're making.
And yeah, like so many people, like,
how do you differentiate between
running away from something or running
towards something that's more desirable,
being able to differentiate I'm
quitting because I, I can't handle it.
I'm just not good enough.
People don't like me too.
I'm quitting because.
There's actually a better
path for me to go forward.
And that's one of those things that
people rationalize in their head, right?
Oh no, it's not because
I wasn't good enough.
It's because I can do
better work over here.
Like that, that's a tough
piece of the puzzle.
I got to imagine for not only for
the individual, but for you to be
able to be working with, with people.
Craig Weller: Well,
and, and it can be true.
I mean, that's, that's true.
Part of what these courses are doing.
Like if you're in the middle of all
that chaos and pain and like, people
are yelling and you're doing pushups
and, and you just realize like, like,
that's kind of what your job's going to
be like anyway, like that's something
that a lot of our people who have
graduated and moved on, we talked to
them after about what their job is
like and what they wish they had known.
They're like, the hard part isn't over.
Like these selections
are designed this way.
Because this is what the job is
like, like, you're still going to
be cold, wet and miserable as a
professional, like with that pin
on your chest, it's not going away.
And so if you're in that environment
and not just because of the
physical discomfort or the emotional
discomfort, but you're just like,
this lifestyle is not for me and I
would much rather do something else.
Like I have skills or capacities or
interests, things that I'm good at
that fit in a different box than this.
Then then leaving that course is the
right decision and you should go do that.
Um, but like you said We're really good
at rationalizing our excuses and you can
see people doing it over time because
usually quitting People build up to it.
They they kind of they test out their
story, their narrative, their excuses,
and, and, and make it okay in their head.
They'll test it with their
friends a little bit.
Um, and, and they build
that rationalization.
Uh, and if, if it's just that, if it's
just like giving yourself a comfortable
reason to give up on yourself on
something that you actually wanted, but
you're not quite willing to pay for,
then, then, I mean, it's still a good
thing that you're not in the course
because that's not the kind of person
they want in those courses, but, um,
I'm kind of, I'm kind of losing the
thread here, but it is a useful,
it is, it is a useful thing to
know those things about yourself.
Travis Bader: Well, it's one of the pieces
of the puzzle, which when you brought up,
you know, modern day samurai, I remember,
uh, I think you know him as well.
Speaking with him, one of the
early podcasts I did with him.
And I, he's talking about the whole
emotional aspect to training in
jujitsu training as a, um, he was
head of BC emergency response team.
And, and I look back to, um, like, uh, my
father, when he was training, he was in
charge of the, uh, Vancouver's emergency
response team for a number of years.
And I didn't see.
From my perspective, any emphasis put
on the emotional side and listening to
Seb talk about this, they can, uh, the
older eras, it seemed to be all about
physicality and all about, uh, uh, mental
grit and toughness and perseverance
and it sucks, but we're pushing it
through anyways, but the emotional
side was just completely ignored.
And I said, well, this is kind of
cool that it's being addressed.
And so I was like, well,
when was it forgotten?
Right.
I mean, this is always a piece
of the puzzle going back hundreds
and thousands of years was the
emotional side to the warrior.
Um, are you finding a resurgence
in the desire for emotional balance
in special operator training?
Uh, or is that, uh, something that's
always just kind of been there that other
people like myself just haven't seen.
Craig Weller: Uh, there's
always been a threat of it.
Um, it, it depends on the community a bit.
I, I think it's always been
there within certain people.
Um, but we're seeing a resurgence in it.
I think now because we're
post GWAT would be the U.
S.
term for it.
Like we're post all these 9
11 forever wars and we just.
Destroyed our special operators for 20
years, throwing them into endless combat
deployments over and over and over.
And we're seeing the guys that
are coming out without physical
injuries are often still not okay.
And there's a growing awareness.
That if you want to have a functioning
home life, if you want to have functioning
relationships, if you just want to feel
okay with yourself, um, that you have
to take care of those pieces as you go.
Uh, and I, I think that
awareness is, is important.
It's been driven by multiple decades
of failing to do so effectively,
and us seeing the negative results
of that, of people who either burn
out within their community, or they
leave their community and they can't
really function that well anymore.
And it's because they stayed
good at exercising, but they
let everything else die off.
And We've, we've realized that we could
do better at that, that we can have people
who are not just physically fit and good
at exercising, but that are also still
emotionally fit and capable of being
good family members and good friends and
socially okay and okay with themselves.
And, and, and there is a
shift toward that, I think.
The selection courses are also changing
a bit in most cases where they're looking
a little more at the complete person.
Um, a lot of times I think if, I think
even Sean's early days, some of his
courses were largely based on just
surviving short term physical brutality.
Um, and you can get people
through with a particular
personality type who can do that.
Um, but now they're starting to look
a little bit more at the whole person
and how they're going to interact
with the team, whether it's going
to become a criminal later on, you
know, like these kinds of things and
the selection criteria are different.
So there are courses now
where a lot of people.
can make it through physically, but
they're still not going to be chosen.
They're not going to be selected.
And that's going to be based on
some kind of social dynamic thing.
Um, how they do in an interview,
how they do in a contrived social
setting, um, places where their
sociability and emotional health, even
just interviews with a psychiatrist,
um, are going to factor into
whether they get the job or not.
So even for people who don't
particularly care about it.
Uh, they're recognizing that it might be
necessary for them to get what they want.
Yeah.
So they're working on
it just for that reason.
Well,
Travis Bader: wouldn't a higher level of
psychopathy predispose an individual to
maybe be a little bit, uh, uh, further
along the, uh, the, wouldn't that allow
somebody to be able to approach these
challenges a little bit more easily?
Craig Weller: Yes,
depending on the challenge.
Yes.
Um, the really, the courses that
really rely on physical brutality,
I think do skew a little more toward
sociopathy or psychopathy possibly.
The, I'm not well versed enough in some
of the diagnostic criteria for that.
I think psychopathy, uh, isn't
really its own DSM category.
I think you'd mostly put.
Those characteristics under sociopathy.
But the, the courses, Bud's in
particular, um, SWCC is somewhat similar.
It's modeled after Bud's, um,
relies pretty heavily on just.
Physical brutality and and physical
perseverance and those can skew
more towards sociopathic types or
or people that are very very good
at compartmentalizing for a short
amount of time relatively short amount
of time and it does not Emphasize
social dynamics for the most part,
and often not in a very positive
way when there are social dynamics.
Like there are things in say buds where
there's a lot of shuffling, um, people
trying to game the system and get into
the right boat crews and put the perceived
weaker people into these boat crews or put
the stronger people into their boat crews.
Like there's a lot of like social
shuffling in kind of a Lord of the
flies way, um, but not in the way
that say SF special forces selection.
Emphasizes like sociability and group
dynamics and your ability to communicate
as a leader and and they put a lot
more emphasis on peer reviews And
things like that where they tend to get
people through who are a little more
emotionally balanced where some of the
programs that rely more exclusively
on brutality as a Selection criteria.
Um, some, some level of sociopathy is
helpful in those, and that doesn't even
necessarily mean that it's a bad thing.
Like you can, like you can have that
personality type, which is basically
the ability to withdraw your emotions
from a situation until it's over.
Um, and, and.
Do pretty well.
Like you also see that in surgeons,
uh, in trauma medics in executives.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Where like some level of
psychopathy or sociopathy can
be an adaptive or beneficial
personality type in those settings.
Like if you're a trauma surgeon and
you're taking, like, you're working
on like a gunshot wound and you're
covered in blood, like if you allow
the emotional stress or the emotional
implications of that situation, like
you just saw this Like wounded person's
loved one hand them off to an ambulance
or like, you know, if you're a trauma
medic, that might be what you're seeing.
Um, if you allow that to cloud your
decision making or stress you out
so much that you can't think well
and do your job and keep your hands
steady while you're doing a surgery,
like you're not going to do your job
well, or you're going to burn out.
Um, a lot of those jobs.
are very prone to vicarious trauma,
where you start to absorb the
weight of the trauma that you're
processing and dealing with.
And if you can't just shut that off and
turn it away, same with, you know, trauma
work or if you're some kind of social
worker dealing with that kind of thing,
if you're in law enforcement dealing with
the worst parts of society, if you can't.
Set that aside, like if you're an overly
empathic, like warm empathy type person,
like you're gonna start carrying that
weight and it's gonna break you down.
So, so some level of what you could
term sociopathy or psychopathy can be an
adaptive thing in those cases where people
are able to go emotionally cold and just
do the things they have to do to manage
the situation effectively until it's over.
Problems arise when that personality
You know, and then that person doesn't
have a good home life, isn't good
with friends, you know, like they're
just not a happy person or not enough,
not a functioning person in society.
But the ones who are good at it can
basically turn that switch off and on
and do what they need to do when they
have to, and then they can be, you know.
You know, a warm person outside of that.
Travis Bader: So when you say turn
off, would that be where, when you
mentioned before having somebody
sit with their emotions without
suppression or avoidance, would that
be part of the turn off process?
Craig Weller: Yeah, afterward.
Okay.
So if you think of the active coping
thing, like maybe in the middle of
a trauma incident, you know, there's
blood spurting out of an artery.
People are screaming, you just have
to go cold and follow the checklist.
Like trauma is basically following a
checklist of, Stop the bleeding, start
the breathing, plug the holes, package
for transport, you just, you just do
that cold, but then afterward, you should
be able to emotionally process that and
sit with it and be okay with it, or,
you know, make yourself as okay with it
as you can be, um, because if you cope
with that after the fact, in what should
be like the, the restful or restorative
moments where you're recovering from, um,
The stresses that you just went through.
Like if you still have to rely
predominantly on suppression and avoidance
as your coping mechanism in those non
threatening, non time pressured restful
moments, um, then you're going to end
up carrying a lot of baggage and you're
going to be incapable of dealing with
the, the fallout of that over time.
Travis Bader: How would somebody, or how
would you coach people to be able to sit.
With those emotions without
suppression or avoidance.
And is that where these somatic
experiences that people talk
about are allowed to process.
Craig Weller: Yeah, actually, something
like the trauma releasing exercises,
uh, can be really useful for that, um,
where there is a physical component
to processing and releasing trauma.
Um, some people will use exercise
for that if they can also maintain
some sort of like internal
awareness of what they're doing.
Um, there's a psych that we
work with, a Canadian named Dr.
Krista Scott Dixon, who, she works
with a lot of our clients and she
has them go through some of those.
Kinds of things like trauma releasing
exercises, which generally just
involve like shaking or moving
um allowing yourself to kind of
like physically Um, I guess trauma
would be the way to phrase it.
It's something you'll
see animals do as well.
Um, you can find YouTube videos
of, say, like a gazelle getting
taken down by a cheetah.
There's several of these where, for
whatever reason, the animal still lives.
They go completely, like,
deeply parasympathetic.
Still, like, that full trauma response
where they're barely conscious,
um, and then the threat goes away.
I think in one of the videos like
another predator chases off the cheetah
and the gazelle lays there for a minute
and then you see him start doing like
this really deep breathing, like, like
pumping their ribcage and then they
start like this full body tremor shaking,
like kind of looks like a seizure.
And then they, they slowly get up and
they shake while they're standing and
then they're good and they run away.
Um, but that's like a physiological
means of processing trauma
and humans do that as well.
Like mammals generally do it.
So there's that component.
Um, and then I think the other
component, which is some of
this gets outside of my depth.
This is where we often
refer to an actual site.
Um, but the other side of it is, I think.
Uh, being able to just articulate name
and allow or accept your emotional state
as it passes or as it works through you.
Um, one of the things that we've found
with, with people that can be really
helpful is, uh, the ability to identify
a broad range of emotional experiences.
Um, a lot of people, the people
Need this the most are often really
limited in the types of emotions that
they're able to feel and describe They
basically have angry or hurt or sad.
Travis Bader: Yes,
Craig Weller: and and that's it.
But you can google like there's an
emotion wheel There's a bunch of versions
of them where maybe you're frustrated
annoyed irritated There's all these
different gradations of emotions that
we can experience and and one of the
things that we'll have people work on
is just uh to be able to more accurately
identify The emotion that you're feeling
to not even do anything about it.
Just sit with it recognize it and
understand it and try to uh connect it
to the physical sensations in your body
because most emotions have a physical
physical component of some sort.
You might feel like a warm burning
sensation in your stomach, or you might
feel flushing in your face or whatever.
Um, and if you can learn to link those
physical sensations to the felt emotions,
um, then you'll usually have a better
vocabulary of emotions at your disposal.
And you're able to kind of calmly
sit with them and just allow them
to be until they go away, until
they work their way through.
And in a lot of cases, you, if you're
someone who's dealing with, you know,
like your job involves trauma or
something like that, um, or you're just
dealing with like a highly stressful
work environment or one of those things,
working with a pro, like working with
an actual psych is a useful thing to
do to help you navigate that process.
It's, you can think of it as
just having another coach.
Um, but, but we've been
integrating that a lot more into
the work we do with our clients.
We're working with.
Like an actual PhD psych is part of their,
um, like training process to just sort
out whatever it is they need to sort out.
And then we try to have that
kind of person available for
the active or operational guys.
A lot of the commands have
them on staff now anyway.
Um, but for the ones that don't, uh,
we can make referrals to the people.
You know, to people who can
help them and work with them.
And they're people that,
that, that get them, you know,
that makes a big difference.
Like I have a friend who's yeah,
I have a friend who's a psych who
works with a lot of soft guys.
Um, and he's like, most of these
people won't do a therapy session,
but they will go shooting.
So I'll go shooting with them.
And then we'll, we're like loading
rounds into a magazine or something.
Like we're just sitting
there in the idle moments.
He'll start chitchatting with them and
he'll draw them out and, you know, Get
them to talk about the things they need
to talk about, um, but he does it in a
way that is not, like, he, he approaches
them from where they are, like, you know,
like, as kind of one of them, and, uh, he
understands them, like, he gets, you know,
Who they are, where they're coming from.
And he's not annoying about it.
And it works really well.
I've
Travis Bader: been asked to speak
with a, uh, a group of, um, aspiring
psychologists, uh, at a university
in, in the States of California.
Actually, I'll be doing a web chat with
them next Monday and, uh, uh, yeah.
The, the teacher reached
out to me and we're talking
about a few different things.
And I said, well, I don't know, one
of the areas that I might be able to
bring value in having seen different
strengths from an early age, being
diagnosed with high level ADHD and
all the fun stuff that goes with that.
Is the compatibility of the individual
who's going to be dealing with the, both
the compatibility of the, the talk doc in
the, uh, in the patient, because I took
it from a very oppositional standpoint.
I didn't want to tell anything.
And I was, I looked at each interaction
as a game and it wasn't until I
found one person or one person
found me who was somewhat compatible
that I actually learned something.
And I spent so many years actively trying
to fight learning anything or bettering
myself because I viewed it as a, um,
uh, as something to be oppositional
about, I don't need this help.
So when you say finding that compatibility
scale, I think that's massive.
And that's one of the things I'm going to
be talking about with them next week too.
Craig Weller: Yeah, it's, it's big.
I think for anyone who's, you know, We
actually have messages from people who
are going to go be attached to a soft
unit, like as a psych, as a, like a human
performance person, as a nutritionist,
you know, and one of the key messages.
Keith pieces of advice that we give
them based on, you know, like how
we've experienced it and how our
clients experience it is to live the
lives that these people have, to some
extent, like try to understand their
experiences and their, um, perspective.
So like we did an interview with a
guy who works with a special forces
unit, uh, currently stationed in
Germany and he would go and do, he's
like their performance guy, strength
coach, and he would go and do their
land nav training with them and.
You know, do the rocks, do the heavy
work, like walking around, sleeping in the
rain, sleeping on the ground for multiple
days, not eating hot food for a while.
Like just to, just to understand
how much their job sucks.
Um, and to kind of show them that.
He's willing to be there alongside them
or experience the same, at least some of
the same things that they experienced.
And I think that's one of the
reasons he does well as a coach.
Um, if you look at like the engagement
rates that he has and the number of
guys that choose to work with him,
it's much higher than it is at a lot
of other commands where they're kind
of in their own box and they're like,
you go do your silly thing, being cold
and wet and, uh, we'll see you later.
And, uh, a lot of those.
Those people, those consultants or
whatever you'd call them, professionals
don't have nearly as much engagement
because in any, any of these units, it's
all voluntary, whether they work with
the trainer, the psych, the nutritionist,
and if they don't feel like that
person gets them and understands them,
they're not going to work with them.
And in a lot of cases they don't.
Travis Bader: Um, you talked about
the gazelle there and it seems like
it kind of brought us full circle to,
excuse me, you talked about the gazelle
there and it feels like it brought
us full circle to something that.
We were talking about at the beginning,
which was buck fever and how to deal
with something like this, the anxiety
and the physiological response to,
uh, the excitement or the stress.
Uh, and even if people don't hunt,
I'm sure that same sort of thing can
be applied to tests or performance
anxiety, or I should imagine
there's going to be some form of
a similarity between these things.
Um, how, how would you suggest
that somebody approach?
Craig Weller: So if you compare the
shooting skills of a special operator
to a conventional person who has a good
deal, less training, um, one of the main
variables, or one of the main things that
makes a special operator, Good at shooting
isn't the peak of their performance.
Like obviously they're accurate
and they're good at shooting.
Um, but it's how little
they degrade under stress.
Um, like in a combat situation or
shooting in general, uh, It's like
problems happen or skill is expressed
under stress and the people who are the
best at it just don't degrade because
in those scenarios, people usually like
their shot groups go from the size of
a soda can to the size of a Frisbee.
Uh, it expands outward.
You get shaky, you make small mistakes,
you do dumb things repeatedly.
Um, basically stress
turns your brain off and.
To a lesser extent than in a combat
setting, hopefully you're, you're seeing
that in like a buck fever scenario
where a lot of the fundamental motor
skills that a person has are suddenly
less available or less reliable.
And they're losing their
cognitive function.
Like they're losing their executive
function or their ability to process
what's happening and kind of have
a, like a meta perspective, like
their, their ability to see what's
happening and do something about it.
They get more lost in the moment
and on repeatedly looping a
behavior or something like that.
Um, so there are two aspects to that.
Um, one of them is just improving all
of these fundamental skills, uh, uh,
to a high enough level of skill that
they can be automated and relied upon.
So we talked earlier about how we
all kind of arbitrarily relegate a
skill to good enough at some point.
And at that point, we no longer
really become better at it.
So one of the first steps here is
to just become a really good shooter
and all of the other skills that
are involved in hunting, which you
probably know better than I do, um,
I'm assuming camouflage stillness,
not making noise, that kind of stuff.
Um, is knowing these things well enough
that you can automate them and they're
good enough to get the job done.
Like they're, they're.
They're where they need to be.
And they can also degrade a
little and they're still reliable.
So that's also like fundamental
trigger control, all your
safety kind of stuff as well.
Like that's where a lot of
problems happen too, is you haven't
practiced those kinds of things.
And now people are accidentally shooting
themselves in the head underwater.
Um, so the other side of that, once
you have developed a skill well enough
that it can be automated at a high
level, um, is, you To go through a
process called stress inoculation or
stress inoculation training, where
you're not really improving the peak
of the skill, but you're improving
your ability to retain and recall
or execute that skill under stress.
So you're becoming a little more
like that special operator who's shot
group doesn't really open up even when
their heart rate is pounding, even
when they're stressed out and there's
a whole bunch of things to process.
Um, there are.
A lot of other components to that as
well, it kind of supporting things
like just your aerobic fitness is a
supporting factor in that because it
helps you affect your cognitive function.
Um, but primarily you want to start
integrating stress inoculation
into your training by understanding
and managing your stress response.
Well, executing a skill.
So you go from say, shooting on a static
range to introducing physical, or to
the extent you can a little bit of
emotional stress and your, your goals
as you do that are to recognize and
understand your own stress responses.
So we go back to the stuff
we talked about with like.
The emotions wheel and understanding like
the physical symptoms of a given emotion.
In this case, you're experiencing, you
could just tag it as buck fever, but
you're also feeling some kind of pressure.
Like you, you try to, um, identify
the physical sensations of what
it is that you're experiencing.
So you recognize that
your heart rate is racing.
You can hear your pulse
pounding in your ears.
You feel your blood pressure go up.
You feel your chest rising.
You feel sweaty palms.
You feel all these things like.
And the better you get at that, the more
rapidly you'll be able to recognize those,
or the earlier in the process, you'll
be able to recognize them, which means
the earlier you'll be able to start to
mitigate them or do something about them.
So once you can recognize the patterns
of your own stress response, um,
you want, and you learn to control
them or learn to like, Kind of
get ahead of them a little bit.
Um, you want to start integrating
strategies to help mitigate them, which
usually come down to some kind of,
uh, verbal mantra, a physical ritual.
Like maybe you go through the same
thing in checking your safety,
checking your magazine, checking your
whatever, doing, uh, maybe you're
checking distance on your scope.
Um, I haven't been hunting since I
was a kid, so I don't know all these
things that well, um, but you want
to, you want to learn like the little
physical rituals you're going to follow.
Um, and then the things that you're going
to do to specifically mitigate or regulate
your stress response, which often comes
down to breathing and your thoughts.
So, thoughts make feelings and
whatever happens in our minds is
going to happen in our bloodstream.
So, identify Again, it's going to
be pretty individual, but identify
whatever thoughts are present
in your mind when you're in that
stressful moment, when you're about
to make this high pressure shot.
Um, are you worried about missing?
Are you worried about you
just wasted this entire trip?
Are you worried about wounding the
animal, having to chase it down?
Which I remember having to do
once when I was a kid, and I
swore to never do that again.
Um, all of those things, learn to
identify those things and then.
And then do something about them.
So depending on what the specific
thought is, learn how to redirect
that or recalibrate that.
So if you're looping negative thoughts,
like in yourself, talk about, I'm going
to miss, I'm going to screw this up.
I'm going to waste this trip.
I'm going to embarrass myself.
Um, learn how to replace those
thoughts because we can't really
attend to more than one stream
of conscious thought at a time.
So if you can have something
else where you recognize that.
Um, that stream of thoughts or that
stream of self talk is probably preceded
by some kind of physical symptom.
Um, you know, like the sweaty palms,
erasing heart rate, whatever your
thing is, you can get ahead of it
a little bit and you can start to
replace those thoughts that negative
self talk spiral with something else.
Um, in my case, like in selection,
I would often just use song
lyrics or a short little mantra.
Um, you can come up with whatever.
Small ritual or set of self talk
helps you to stay focused and
avoid that negative like doom loop
of, I'm going to screw this up.
I'm nervous.
What am I doing?
You know, kind of thing.
Um, or it may be the stress response
is so strong that you're not even
sure what's happening in your head.
Like you've kind of, you've moved
fully through the spectrum into more
of a parasympathetic shutdown state.
In which case you need to kind of bring
yourself back out of that and get a
little more like active and functional.
Um, those are the people who
have a freezing response.
So, you know, like you see somebody
who's about to take that shot and
suddenly they're just deer in headlights
and, and nothing's really happening.
Um, that's the full on,
on freezing response.
And you have to bring those people
back, which is often going to
start with breathing because,
uh, thinking isn't working out.
So at that moment, you want to lock
them into something that's more
physiological, which is going to
be like retaining a deep conscious
breathing, and like good exhales, and,
and managing something physically that
will hopefully then carry over into,
um, Better regulating your autonomic
nervous system and your thoughts.
Um, there's breathing is, is one
of the most common things that is
helpful for that alongside like the
motor skill rituals of, you know,
checking safety, checking magazine,
checking all the basic stuff.
Uh, if you, if you've ritualized doing
all of that, doing all of the steps
that lead you toward making an effective
shot, knowing, you know, like knowing
what's behind your target, knowing
what's in front of your target, knowing
who's behind you, all of those things.
Um, like if you ritualize all of those,
you can also more or less let them go and
know that those are happening and that
even though you're kind of stressed out
and on autopilot, they're happening in
a way that they're supposed to happen.
So that comes down to your training.
Um, so basically you're learning
to recognize your stress responses.
You're learning to do something
about your stress responses.
And then once you're doing that, you're
going to gradually increase the difficulty
of that or the magnitude of the stressor.
So.
With, with, say you have a given
person where just having them run
a few hundred meters of sprints up
and down the range before they go
and shoot is enough that they're
going to completely throw the shot.
Um, in that case, you'll,
you'll grade the magnitude of
the stressor to a shorter run.
Maybe they run 50 meters
or a hundred meters.
It's just enough that it makes it
hard for them to make that shot,
but it's still generally manageable.
And that's one of the key things.
To bring into this is, um,
you want to earn success.
You want to struggle, but succeed.
So the magnitude of the stressor that
you're adding in your training needs to
be adjusted to the level of your skill
and your ability to manage that stressor
and still be generally successful.
So if you just blow somebody up.
And you have them go sprint a mile and
you slap them five times in the face.
And like you completely mess them
up and they just can't function.
They can't do this thing.
Then they're not improving.
They're not training.
They're not like developing
a useful skill set.
So you need to adjust the magnitude
of the stressor that you're
imposing just to the level of earned
success or desirable difficulty.
Um, so like in a traditional weapons
range, just physical stress is the easiest
thing to add where you're just going to
blow them up a little bit with sprints.
You have them run 50 meters, 100 meters,
whatever, to where the shot that they
normally could make without a problem.
Say it's a 200 meter
shot with a scoped rifle.
Um, now they've just.
Finished sprinting.
They just did some burpees.
They've dropped down into
position and now they're going
to shoot and they're shaking.
They're breathing hard They're their
thoughts are a little more jumbled
because they're stressed out and when
your heart rate's really high sometimes
cognitive function falls And now they
still make that shot, but it was harder
their shot group opened up just a little
bit You practice that a few times.
Maybe you're doing this over days
and weeks as well But you just keep
moving You The magnitude of the
stressor, the things you add to make
that stressor increasingly realistic.
Like at some point you add their friends,
mocking them from behind while they're
doing it, you do whatever weird social
pressure thing might be a factor.
You teach them the specific
strategies to mitigate that.
Um, and then you just keep ramping
it up, but you keep, you're
continuously doing it to where.
Each time you step up the stressor, their
skill or their ability to mitigate that
stressor has increased concurrently.
So it's always getting just a little bit
harder while they're getting just a little
bit better at managing that hardness.
And eventually you can
physically wreck them.
You can cause social stress by maybe
they bet a hundred dollars on the shot.
Uh, their friends are making fun of them.
They're someone's squirting them with a.
Water gun from, you know, like you're,
you're adding all kinds of distractors.
You put a dummy round in the rifle so that
they, their first shot misfires, like you
mess with them as much as you need to.
And they still perform those
motor skills effectively.
Um, they're able to identify,
recognize and manage their self talk
so that, you know, if they get into
that downward spiral of I'm going to
screw this up, I'm gonna embarrass
myself in front of my friends.
I'm, I'm wasting my time.
Like they're able to recognize that
before it takes over and shut it down.
Um, you just.
Basically find all of these
things that can go wrong.
You identify how specifically they're
going to go wrong with this individual.
Like if it's in their self talk, if
it's in their fundamental motor skills,
if it's in whatever you give them
strategies to mitigate that, and then you
increase the magnitude of the stressor
as their skill steps up concurrently.
Um, that's basically how
it happens in the military.
We, we impose stressors
in a different way.
Like there's a lot more leeway in
the military to torture people.
But, uh, that's basically it.
A lot of the reasons that people like
special operators are really good at
shooting is just because they've done
basic things over and over and over
under increasing levels of stress.
And they've learned to manage their stress
response while they were doing them.
And eventually you get someone
who's just kind of unflappable.
No matter what's going on around
them, like it's dark out, it's
cold out, the wind is blowing, it's
raining, your boots are full of sand,
whatever it, none of it sways you.
Um, but you have to do it in stages
and you have to do it, um, where
you're earning success each time.
You can't just overwhelm someone.
I really,
Travis Bader: really appreciate
that systematic approach in your
answer, which matches the systematic
approach that you take through
your book, building the elite.
Yeah.
Uh, it just, it's a blueprint it's
essentially from E to Z of what a
person needs to do in order to be
able to be the complete guide to
building resilient, special operators.
And I, it, it really is that.
So we've, we've talked about a fair bit.
Is there anything that we've missed?
Is there anything that we
should be talking about that
we haven't talked about?
Craig Weller: Hmm.
We talked about stress inoculation.
I think, uh, did we cover stages
of motor learning kind of stuff?
We didn't.
No.
Okay.
So, so that ties in really It meshes
with the stress inoculation concepts.
Um, so we learn in a sequence.
Um, if you remember, say, learning
to type, um, any basic skills,
like typing is a common one.
That's where a lot of the research is at.
When you first started typing, uh,
you had a very high error rate.
You made a lot of mistakes.
It took up, All of your mental focus
to just type a word out and you were
probably very slow and deliberate like
hunt and peck one letter at a time.
You thought about the letter
A, then you thought about the
letter B, and you worked it out.
Um, that's called the
cognitive phase of learning.
So you're, you're learning kind of the
basic rules of how the thing works.
And then you're learning the smallest
possible pieces of how to put it together.
So you can think of how that would
happen in like learning to shoot as well.
Like this is where the magazine goes.
This is when it's, this is how you know
that it's facing the right direction.
This is a safety.
These are the basic safety things,
you know, like finger off trigger,
all the kind of stuff that you
have to know with a weapon.
Um, and at first, when you give
someone that it's very slow.
Okay.
Like they're all of
their attention is on it.
You are making the training environment.
It's where, uh, you're setting it up so
that a mistake is acceptable and safe.
So at first someone's learning to
handle a safe, like a clear and safe
weapon when they're, when they're
putting their hands on it, they're
figuring out what the buttons do.
They're learning not to put their
finger on the trigger when they're not
supposed to, so that if they make a
mistake, because it's likely that they
will, they're not going to Push around
through something like they're not
going to accidentally shoot someone.
Um, as you go, as you start learning,
you start to automate those things.
They just become part
of the process for you.
And they're no longer as fully conscious.
And you move into what's called
the associative phase, which is
where you start to see things
in bigger chunks or patterns.
So that's where the amount of
cognitive focus comes down because
some of those skills are automated.
So when you're typing,
you're maybe no longer.
Um, And so, um, in the past, we were no
longer going letter by letter, now you
can type out an entire word or even entire
sentence without really thinking about it.
It just happens.
And you can be distracted or
you can think a little more.
You can talk to someone for a second while
you're typing without losing your spot.
Um, you're putting together the bigger
patterns and you're integrating things
that you were previously doing one by
one are now a bigger chunk of behaviors.
So, the way a person You know,
on holsters, their weapon puts
a mag in all of that has their
finger in the right place, weapons
oriented in a safe direction.
All of that just happens because
they've drilled each single step
of that a whole bunch of times.
And now it's just one automated chunk.
Um, and that's where you can also
start adding more complexity.
So now they're on holstering, loading,
checking clearance, say if they're
doing the things that they need to
do, and it just happens in there.
Now they're adding other steps.
They're moving towards an
obstacle or they're, they
have multiple weapons, maybe.
Um, they're, they're
making it more complicated.
That's the learning
stage for the most part.
That's where you're, you have a conscious
feedback loop and you're trying to
increase the number of things that you
can automate at a high level of skill.
So maybe you're simultaneously, you maybe
have multiple targets, maybe you have
dummy rounds or like deliberate failures.
You're practicing failure drills.
Like that's another big part of, I don't
know how much it comes up in hunting,
probably not as much, but like with
military weapons training, you're You
know, you're dealing with failures, you're
dealing with misfires or stove pipes or
whatever goes wrong so that you can very
quickly handle it and just keep shooting.
And the people who are really good
at it, a misfire doesn't matter.
It doesn't slow them down at all.
Uh, where with novice, you know,
like suddenly they push the magic
button and nothing goes bang
and they don't know what to do.
And they're stuck.
Um, but as you get better and better,
you can handle more of those deviations.
You can handle more disruptions
and you're consciously working
on all of those things.
Like maybe you're working
on specifics of your shot.
So you're working on not anticipating
recoil or milking the trigger or doing
whatever thing you might mess up.
And you're doing that
with a feedback loop.
So, you know, you're doing some kind
of drill to know if you anticipated the
recoil or if you milked the trigger or
if you did whatever, um, and you're,
you're getting repetitions of that.
Like I did in the pool, like
I was trying to bend my arm a
certain way with each stroke.
And if I did it wrong, some guy
in a blue shirt would tap me on
the top of the head and tell me I
screwed it up and to do it better.
And you do that in loops.
Um, eventually you hit that phase, the
hypothesis of par, the hypothesis of
tolerance phase, where all of those
things that you were working on and
consciously improving are automated
and they're just part of what you do.
Um, if you're watching a really
good shooter, most of what they're
doing is now just fully automated.
The, the thing that's in their head is
basically shoot this course, respond to
the dynamic targets like do the thing
and everything else that's happening,
their trigger control, their, their
failure drills, all of that stuff
is well below what they're used to.
It just happens.
Um, that's the autonomous phase.
That's the third stage of motor
learning and the that's, that's
where you want to be for performance.
So you're out on the hunt.
You're, you know, like you're shooting
this animal that you've been, you spent
years training to, to do this thing.
You've done all this weapons training,
or you're in the military, you're on
a deployment, you're doing a mission.
Like that is where.
All of that skill development, like
learning how to manage your emotional,
your stress responses while you're
executing these motor skills, like all of
that has been developed in the cognitive
and associative stages, and now it's all
automated, and you're Um, that's where
you want to be for performance, but once
you're in that stage, you're no longer
proving because you're not conscious of
how you're executing that skill, you're
not breaking it down into smaller pieces.
You may not be paying as much
attention to the feedback loops.
Um, you may have internalized those
feedback loops well enough that like if
you're in a performance setting and you
suddenly realize you anticipated recoil
or your breathing got off or something
happened, like you might be able to
also automatically correct those things.
Um, but typically our
performance environments are
not learning environments.
We don't.
Display a skill and develop it at
the same time We practice something
and then we perform or we develop
something and then we display it And
and those two things are distinct.
You can't really do both at once so
being in that Or that slow, clunky
cognitive phase, which even as a
good shooter might come up if you're
on a new weapon system, using a new
optic, shooting a new course with a
different style, something like that.
Like you might still be in that slow,
step by step, kind of the crawl phase.
Like you'll see, In the military
shoot house, people like doing CQB
go through this stage, even as really
experienced professionals where they're
literally walking and very slowly
doing each one of the things they're
going to do is they're in the room.
Um, you have to go back into
that stage in order to pick up a
new skill and then refine it and
distinguishing between those stages.
Determines how much you're going to
learn and how many new things you're
able to learn because if you automate
skills and you stop thinking about the
components of them and how to make those
components better, if you go from the
associative phase to the autonomous
phase too quickly, and then you just
go and you're just shooting to shoot,
you're shooting to see what you hit.
You look at your score, you're happy
or sad, you move on with your day.
You're not getting any better
if you're just going through
the motions and doing the thing.
So if getting better at it is part of your
goal, then you need to bring yourself out
of that automated stage, the autonomous
stage of motor learning to where you're
again, consciously thinking about the
individual components of that skill, where
your limiting factors are in that skill.
And how you can improve them
with a lot of repetitions with
an immediate feedback loop.
So you're working with a shooting coach,
they're giving you a specific thing to
focus on that is a limiting factor for
you if you're anticipating recoil, if
your failure drills aren't very good,
or whatever it is you're working on.
You have a very specific thing
that you're trying to do better
and you're doing it with feedback.
So you know what you're trying
to do and you know whether
you did it right or wrong.
And you run that feedback loop as
many times as you have to until
you can't get it wrong anymore.
And then you can go back to the autonomous
stage and go shoot for funsies and
just see what kind of score you get.
But if you're trying to become better
at it, you have to bump yourself
up and down through those stages.
And the people who get stuck, who've
been shooting for 10 years and
haven't got better for eight of them.
I have automated those skills and
they've just been shooting, um, without
going back into those associative,
like learning based stages where
you have a conscious practice, a
mental model, and a feedback loop.
Travis Bader: Craig,
that's absolutely amazing.
I really like, honestly, I
could talk to you for hours.
You have so much information and
I know you're going to be back on
the podcast again, I'm going to be
putting links where people can find
your book in the, uh, in the bio.
Um, Thank you so much for being
on the Silvercore podcast.
I really enjoyed this chat.
Craig Weller: Thanks.
I had a good time.
Thanks for having me.