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Living with a SEAL: 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet
Entrepreneur Jesse Itzler chronicles his month of living and extreme fitness training with a Navy SEAL in the New York Times and #1 LA Times bestseller Living With a Seal, now with two bonus chapters.Entrepreneur Jesse Itzler will try almost anything. His life is about being bold and risky. So when Jesse felt himself drifting on autopilot, he hired a rather unconventional trainer to live with him for a month-an accomplished Navy SEAL widely considered to be "the toughest man on the planet"! Living With a Seal is like a buddy movie if it starred the Fresh Prince of Bel- Air. . .and Rambo. Jesse is about as easy-going as you can get. SEAL is. . . not. Jesse and SEAL's escapades soon produce a great friendship, and Jesse gains much more than muscle. At turns hilarious and inspiring, Living With a Seal ultimately shows you the benefits of stepping out of your comfort zone.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published November 3, 2015
About the author
Jesse Itzler
4 books214 followersJESSE ITZLER only eats fruit 'til noon, loves Run-D.M.C., and enjoys living life "out of the box." In fact, he doesn't even have a box. The author of the New York Times bestseller, Living with a Seal, cofounded Marquis Jet, the world's largest private jet card company which he and his partner sold to Berkshire Hathaway/NetJets. Jesse then partnered with Zico coconut water, which he and his partner sold to The Coca-Cola Company.
He's a former rapper on MTV and wrote and performed the NBA's Emmy Award-winning "I Love This Game" music campaign and the popular New York Knicks anthem "Go NY Go." When he's not running ultra-marathons, eating vegan food or being a dad to his four kids, Jesse can be found at the NBA's Atlanta Hawks games, where he's an owner of the team. He is married to Spanx founder Sara Blakely.
He's a former rapper on MTV and wrote and performed the NBA's Emmy Award-winning "I Love This Game" music campaign and the popular New York Knicks anthem "Go NY Go." When he's not running ultra-marathons, eating vegan food or being a dad to his four kids, Jesse can be found at the NBA's Atlanta Hawks games, where he's an owner of the team. He is married to Spanx founder Sara Blakely.
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August 4, 2015
At one point at BEA I’m pretty sure this book was sitting on a table for Hachette’s Christian imprint. I might be mistaken though.
I don’t really know why I picked this one up. I remember showing it to Karen and saying something like, look it’s a hipster who lives with a Navy SEAL for a month. I was thinking some kind of Perfect Strangers / Odd Couple type thing.
I almost left the book at BEA when I was culling from what my greedy hands had grabbed and I was trying to figure out how I could physically transport all the books Karen and I grabbed from the Javits Center back to Woodside. The book was actually in a pile of books I wasn’t going to take, and then I decided, what the fuck, I like reading about people doing crazy shit to themselves (I’d since read what the book was actually about, but still somehow missed the blurb on the cover, I’ll get to that at some point).
Then even more surprising the first evening I had the book in my apartment I started reading it (the first two books I started to pick through that first night were both non-literary books. I’m not sure if and when I’ll actually get into say the new Jonathan Franzen (answer no-time soon, I gave it to my sister in case she wanted to be read it during her summer vacation).
If you are like me you probably don’t know who Jesse Itzler is. He’s not some hipster, apparently. Imagine that my snap uninformed judgments aren’t always correct. In the early 90’s he had a dream to get on to Yo! MTV Raps, and he succeeded with the song (this came out in 1991, the year I’m fairly certain was the absolute low point for all popular music, it was an awful year), “Shake It Like a White Girl”
This is what he looked like as a rapper:
He then went on to start a company that allowed wealthy people to have the luxury of flying in a private jet but without having to own their own jet, sort of like a timesharing for Lear jets. He made a lot of money with that and some other ventures and according to the internet is worth somewhere around $100 million dollars today. Along the way he married Sara Blakely who (I’m pretty sure this is how the story goes) didn’t like the way her ass looked in a pair of pants one evening, so as a solution she took a pair of pantyhose cut the feet off of them and when she wore these footless pantyhose under her pants it made her ass look great. With this insight born of derriere dissatisfaction, a pair of pantyhose, some household scissors and $5000 dollars Blakely created Spanx (which Itzler says men have probably never heard of (he’s right I never did! until I had learned about her (which I didn’t do for the first time in this book)) but which to women is like the Michael Jordan of women’s underwear (I can only guess at this point he is correct)). Sara Blakely is now worth around a billion dollars. She’s probably one of the biggest modern day success stories that doesn’t involve creating a computer or a website.
I’m going into who these people are because they are definitely not hipsters, and they also aren’t people who necessarily would need to let a stranger into their house on this kind of insane month long adventure.
The Navy SEAL I don’t think wanted his name used, so he is just called SEAL. Itzler first comes across SEAL when he takes part in a team rely ultra-marathon. The objective of the race was for each team to run for 24 hours straight, trading off runners every 20 minutes (Itzler’s team had six people on it, so you can figure out how much running that is for a day). SEAL was at the race, but where as everyone else was part of a team taking part in the 24 hour race, SEAL was running it solo (he would run over a 100 miles in this race).
Before the race, my team stretched in a small circle on the grass. I was nervous and excited, but I couldn’t help notice the guy ten feet away. To say he stood out would be an understatement. For starters, he was the only African American in the race. He weighed over 260 pounds whereas most ultra-runners weighted between 140 and 165 pounds. Third, whereas everyone else was talkative and friendly , this guy was pissed. I mean, he looked angry.
He just sat there all by himself in a folding chair waiting for the race to start. No stretching, no prep, no fancy shoes, and no teammates. No smiling. he just sat quietly with a don’t-fuck-with-me-expression on his face. His supplies: a box of crackers and water. That’s it.
After the race Itzler tracks him down and makes a proposition to SEAL. He invites SEAL to come live with him for a month and be his personal trainer.
SEAL agrees, but with the condition that Itzler does everything he says, nothing is off limits and that by the end of the month Itzler will be able to do a thousand push-ups in one day.
The month they pick to do this experiment is a weird one, I don’t know why if you were going to do this you would pick December in New York City, but that is when SEAL shows up.
At exactly 7:00 am theres a knock on my door.
He has no luggage, No suitcases. No expression. In spite of the fact that it’s December and it’s freezing out, he’s wearing no coat. No hat. No gloves. And there’s no greeting.
He simply says, “You ready?”
Nine minutes later when Itzler is ready he finds SEAL waiting to go on their first run.
It’s fourteen degrees out and nippy. He’s wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and a knit hat. Nothing else.
“Man, I may need to borrow some gloves,” says SEAL.
“You may need gloves?”
“Yeah, or some kinda mittens or some shit like that.”
“That’s it. Only gloves?”
“That’s it.”
“It’s fourteen degrees outside,” I say.
“To you it’s fourteen degrees ‘cause you’re telling yourself it’s fourteen degrees!”
“No. It really is. It’s fourteen degrees. Like that’s the real actual temperature outside. It says so on my computer.”
SEAL pauses for a moment like I may have disappointed him. “On your computer, huh?”
He begins to laugh, just it’s a looming laugh, like the Count of Sesame Street after he just counted: “SEVEN—SEVEN flowers. AH, ah, ah, ahhhh….”
“The temperature is what you think it is bro, not what your computer thinks it is. If you think it’s fourteen degrees then it’s fourteen degrees. Personally, I’m looking at it like it’s in the mid-fifties.”
Rather than argue—after all, we’re still just getting to know each other—I just say: “Got it.”
“You ever spend any time in freezing water, Jesse?” SEAL asks.
I’m thinking to myself, Like on purpose? But I respond with a “no.”
“Well, is it freezing? Or is your mind just saying its freezing? Which is it?” He laughs again. “Control you mind, Jesse.”
“Got it.” (I’m going to have to put that on the to-do list: Control mind.)
“Exactly. Enjoy this shit. If you want it to be seventy and sunny…it’s seventy and sunny. Just run. The elements are in your mind. I don’t ever check the temperature when I run. Who gives a fuck what the temperature on the computer says? The computer isn’t out there running, is it?”
(In case your wondering this trick only works apparently for cold to hot, when it’s hot you just have to embrace how awful it is and maybe make yourself feel better knowing that everyone else is more miserable than you are.)
SEAL becomes a fixture in Itzler’s life, having him train at all hours of the day, going on business trips, family getaways, business meetings and eventually even spending the holidays with Itzler’s family.
For example, on what might have been Christmas (there are no dates just days given) they do 9.5 miles running through the woods in Connecticut, 775 push-ups, 125 sit-ups and spend 21-minutes in an excessively hot steam room. Oh, and SEAL makes him jump into a frozen lake of water and then dash back to the house while the threat of frostbite looms.
Along the way SEAL also buys the Itzler family a fifty pound inflatable raft that comes in it’s own backpack, in case they ever have to get out of Manhattan in a 9/11 style attack that has left the bridges and tunnels shut down. He gets them to reinforce the windows in their vacation home with glass that could stop a machine gum, and offers tactical suggestions how to walk to work with tips such as, avoid Trump Tower today because Trump has been in the news too much lately.
I don’t want to say that SEAL is bizarre, and I’m not entirely sure how accurate the portrayal is, or how much it just makes for an entertaining read to have him be so extreme, but he’s um, very focused. Kind of in a way that if he is half as focused and singleminded as he is portrayed it makes me wonder what the hell is wrong with me that I can’t muster up even a fraction of his determination. Towards the end of the book when Itzler and his friends are going around the dinner table sharing what their resolutions are for the upcoming year—and they are what you would normally think of New Year’s Resolutions—get a new job, move to someplace new, things like that, SEAL says, “I don’t want the same shit you guys want. I’m not looking for anything else. I’m going to do the same shit I’ve been doing,” he said, “only I’m going to do it better”
And a little while later in something like an apology he returns to the group and says, “I just think you don’t give your lives enough credit.”
The book is basically a pretty funny and upbeat book about personal transformation, even though the person who is doing the transformation is already someone who if you looked at you’d be like, um he’s probably got everything I could possibly think I want. He’s successful and rich. He has a beautiful wife. He’s already someone who can run ultra-marathons, so he’s healthy and fit. He comes across as a genuinely happy and grounded person. On the surface Jesse Itzler seems more like someone who should just join a Crossfit gym or something if he’s looking to break out of the exercise rut that he has found himself in.
Instead he went and found one of the toughest guys in the world (he ran an endurance race with both feet broken, there’s a point where it’s pretty unbelievable the things that SEAL has willed himself to push through and do) to train him for a month, with nothing off limits.
I’m kind of a sucker for stories like this, I’m fascinated by people who come up with crazy challenges for themselves or who do bizarre experiments to make themselves better in some way (and yet I’ve never had much desire to read an AJ Jacobs book, go figure).
A lot of this ‘genre’ turns out to be ways of hacking the body to get better results, like reading about ways that people can get more results out of exercise by doing less but in smarter ways; or ways around traditional ideas of diet and sleep. The kind of things that are called life hacks or bio-hacks. This book is at the other end of the spectrum of that. This isn’t the sort of thing that knowing if you can give your body a particular amount of stress you can get the results from an hour of planks in just a series of really short moves; or that in four minutes of the right exercise you can get way better cardio results than running for an hour (running is for suckers as I’ve told Karen).
This is the other side of the coin that those “miracle” actions promise. But it’s the same coin. Everything in this book is fairly simple, there are only a handful of exercises ever done, but it’s the amount of those few exercises that is unbelievable.
Everything in this book flies in the face of what experts say about exercise. There are no rest days. There is no targeting different parts of the body—the exercises are pretty much just running a lot and push-ups. With some other exercises thrown in from time to time, but still it’s just just mainly running and push-ups. And remembering that there are no rest days, it also involves things like doing 100 pull-ups when Itzler could barely do 10, and he was told to stay in the gym until he did a hundred. I can’t imagine what the lactic acid build up must have felt like when he had to go so far beyond what his body could comfortably do, even if it was just one pull-up at a time with lots of rest, and then the next day still have to go out and run (I was thinking that there were going to be push-ups the next day, but SEAL just went with running for the next two days).
Maybe you’ve noticed that I have a real fascination with this stuff lately. I was toying with the idea that I should give myself a ridiculous (for me) challenge of being able to run a half-marathon by the end of the summer a couple of weeks before this book came into my life.
Why a half-marathon? Because I hate to run. I always told myself that I was terrible at it, and when I start to run my brain is just waiting to come up with any excuse it can to give me an out and stop doing this activity for suckers (and it is for suckers). I tried a couple of times to run and I think I was lucky if i made it to a mile before my brain would win and say, awesome job, you ran a bit now rest!
A full marathon just seems ridiculous to me (your muscle is actually being converted into fuel by your body during a run that long, so you are actually in worse shape when you are done with one than when you started (maybe this is true of a half-marathon, too, but it wouldn’t be nearly as bad)—and in my head 13.1 miles running is just as much of an out there thing for me to do, in my head they are pretty much the same thing of, ‘way more than I could ever run.’
So I had toyed with the idea that I would get myself up to being able to run a half-marathon (or run 13.1 miles, the actual running in an organized event doesn’t really matter) and mentally if I could achieve this just about anything else I want to do should be fucking easy. Since remember, I hate fucking running and I’ll take any excuse to stop that my brain will give me.
So this book inspired me partially to actually go out and do it.
Will it make my life better? That remains to be seen, I want to say yes, that doing something this far outside of what I physically felt I could do will have a great impact on me, sort of like the feeling the first time I was able to land a head kick, but with more actual work and mental toughness to get to the end of the his challenge (I’m not saying physical toughness, that’s easy to come by if you can stick with something, it’s almost all mental), but it could just be a huge distraction, which is what my weird little challenges usually turn out to be and make me realize that I’m ignoring large parts of my life in my focus do this one thing.
And because running wasn’t enough, and because I’m too cheap right now to pay for a gym membership I decided that I’d throw in some push-ups everyday, like a hundred of them a day and increase that by fifty every week until I get to maybe 300 a day. After 300 the push-ups would take up way more time that I’d be interested in giving exercise a day, especially with running.
So that is my physical summer challenge, and that is my review for this book, which I ended up really enjoying and maybe you will, too.
Oh right, I said I’d mention the blurb, it wasn't anything too special, but it was by Coach K, the head-coach of Duke’s Baseketball team—and since i’m becoming more and more of a Duke fanboy every year, I kind of have to read a book that Coach K has blessed with his approval, fortunately I don’t spend much time looking through the sports section of bookstores so I don’t have to worry about having to read many more books that he has also blurbed (if he blurbs many, I don’t know if he does), but this is my first Coach K blurbed book.
August 3rd Addition to the review.
Hello. I wrote this review back in the beginning of June. I never posted it. But I’m checking in with some extra stuff.
So how has the “Summer of Fitness” worked out (that was a stupid name, I should have changed it to something better, no one would have ever known!)?
I’ll start with the failure!
I made it though about two weeks of push-ups, and then I got really fucking bored with doing push-ups. So I stopped. I didn’t intentionally stop, just one day I didn’t do them. And then the next I did some, and the day after that I was supposed to do 150 and I did 75 instead and then I just stopped.
Push-ups are boring.
Now a success!
On June 1st, I put on my shitty sneakers and went running. I was aiming to run a mile everyday for five days a week and then the next week I’d run 1.5 miles for five days and so on. I’m not sure how I figured that by the end of the summer I’d be at 13.1 miles, but that was my plan.
I’ll spare the details but on August 1st I ran what I’m calling the “Woodside/Sunnyside Half-Marathon” (it’s a very exclusive race). My time wasn’t very impressive, but I ran the entire 13.1 miles without having to walk at all, and only stopping a couple of times for a few seconds to save myself from being run over by cars.
I’m still not sure if I like running. I have found that if I can get over 4 or 5 miles than it becomes actually fairly enjoyable, but miles 2 through 4 seem to suck each and every time.
I don’t know if I have this book to thank for some of the inspiration in actually doing this very time consuming challenge. I also don’t know if I have unlocked any super-powers or will be able to tackle other tasks with greater ease now that I’ve proven I can push through my mind telling to me to stop and offering a lot of enticing excuses and rationalizations for why it would be better to go do just about anything else than run.
So I’m calling “The Summer of Fitness” a win. I’m not sure if there will be another challenge this summer.
I don’t really know why I picked this one up. I remember showing it to Karen and saying something like, look it’s a hipster who lives with a Navy SEAL for a month. I was thinking some kind of Perfect Strangers / Odd Couple type thing.
I almost left the book at BEA when I was culling from what my greedy hands had grabbed and I was trying to figure out how I could physically transport all the books Karen and I grabbed from the Javits Center back to Woodside. The book was actually in a pile of books I wasn’t going to take, and then I decided, what the fuck, I like reading about people doing crazy shit to themselves (I’d since read what the book was actually about, but still somehow missed the blurb on the cover, I’ll get to that at some point).
Then even more surprising the first evening I had the book in my apartment I started reading it (the first two books I started to pick through that first night were both non-literary books. I’m not sure if and when I’ll actually get into say the new Jonathan Franzen (answer no-time soon, I gave it to my sister in case she wanted to be read it during her summer vacation).
If you are like me you probably don’t know who Jesse Itzler is. He’s not some hipster, apparently. Imagine that my snap uninformed judgments aren’t always correct. In the early 90’s he had a dream to get on to Yo! MTV Raps, and he succeeded with the song (this came out in 1991, the year I’m fairly certain was the absolute low point for all popular music, it was an awful year), “Shake It Like a White Girl”
This is what he looked like as a rapper:
He then went on to start a company that allowed wealthy people to have the luxury of flying in a private jet but without having to own their own jet, sort of like a timesharing for Lear jets. He made a lot of money with that and some other ventures and according to the internet is worth somewhere around $100 million dollars today. Along the way he married Sara Blakely who (I’m pretty sure this is how the story goes) didn’t like the way her ass looked in a pair of pants one evening, so as a solution she took a pair of pantyhose cut the feet off of them and when she wore these footless pantyhose under her pants it made her ass look great. With this insight born of derriere dissatisfaction, a pair of pantyhose, some household scissors and $5000 dollars Blakely created Spanx (which Itzler says men have probably never heard of (he’s right I never did! until I had learned about her (which I didn’t do for the first time in this book)) but which to women is like the Michael Jordan of women’s underwear (I can only guess at this point he is correct)). Sara Blakely is now worth around a billion dollars. She’s probably one of the biggest modern day success stories that doesn’t involve creating a computer or a website.
I’m going into who these people are because they are definitely not hipsters, and they also aren’t people who necessarily would need to let a stranger into their house on this kind of insane month long adventure.
The Navy SEAL I don’t think wanted his name used, so he is just called SEAL. Itzler first comes across SEAL when he takes part in a team rely ultra-marathon. The objective of the race was for each team to run for 24 hours straight, trading off runners every 20 minutes (Itzler’s team had six people on it, so you can figure out how much running that is for a day). SEAL was at the race, but where as everyone else was part of a team taking part in the 24 hour race, SEAL was running it solo (he would run over a 100 miles in this race).
Before the race, my team stretched in a small circle on the grass. I was nervous and excited, but I couldn’t help notice the guy ten feet away. To say he stood out would be an understatement. For starters, he was the only African American in the race. He weighed over 260 pounds whereas most ultra-runners weighted between 140 and 165 pounds. Third, whereas everyone else was talkative and friendly , this guy was pissed. I mean, he looked angry.
He just sat there all by himself in a folding chair waiting for the race to start. No stretching, no prep, no fancy shoes, and no teammates. No smiling. he just sat quietly with a don’t-fuck-with-me-expression on his face. His supplies: a box of crackers and water. That’s it.
After the race Itzler tracks him down and makes a proposition to SEAL. He invites SEAL to come live with him for a month and be his personal trainer.
SEAL agrees, but with the condition that Itzler does everything he says, nothing is off limits and that by the end of the month Itzler will be able to do a thousand push-ups in one day.
The month they pick to do this experiment is a weird one, I don’t know why if you were going to do this you would pick December in New York City, but that is when SEAL shows up.
At exactly 7:00 am theres a knock on my door.
He has no luggage, No suitcases. No expression. In spite of the fact that it’s December and it’s freezing out, he’s wearing no coat. No hat. No gloves. And there’s no greeting.
He simply says, “You ready?”
Nine minutes later when Itzler is ready he finds SEAL waiting to go on their first run.
It’s fourteen degrees out and nippy. He’s wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and a knit hat. Nothing else.
“Man, I may need to borrow some gloves,” says SEAL.
“You may need gloves?”
“Yeah, or some kinda mittens or some shit like that.”
“That’s it. Only gloves?”
“That’s it.”
“It’s fourteen degrees outside,” I say.
“To you it’s fourteen degrees ‘cause you’re telling yourself it’s fourteen degrees!”
“No. It really is. It’s fourteen degrees. Like that’s the real actual temperature outside. It says so on my computer.”
SEAL pauses for a moment like I may have disappointed him. “On your computer, huh?”
He begins to laugh, just it’s a looming laugh, like the Count of Sesame Street after he just counted: “SEVEN—SEVEN flowers. AH, ah, ah, ahhhh….”
“The temperature is what you think it is bro, not what your computer thinks it is. If you think it’s fourteen degrees then it’s fourteen degrees. Personally, I’m looking at it like it’s in the mid-fifties.”
Rather than argue—after all, we’re still just getting to know each other—I just say: “Got it.”
“You ever spend any time in freezing water, Jesse?” SEAL asks.
I’m thinking to myself, Like on purpose? But I respond with a “no.”
“Well, is it freezing? Or is your mind just saying its freezing? Which is it?” He laughs again. “Control you mind, Jesse.”
“Got it.” (I’m going to have to put that on the to-do list: Control mind.)
“Exactly. Enjoy this shit. If you want it to be seventy and sunny…it’s seventy and sunny. Just run. The elements are in your mind. I don’t ever check the temperature when I run. Who gives a fuck what the temperature on the computer says? The computer isn’t out there running, is it?”
(In case your wondering this trick only works apparently for cold to hot, when it’s hot you just have to embrace how awful it is and maybe make yourself feel better knowing that everyone else is more miserable than you are.)
SEAL becomes a fixture in Itzler’s life, having him train at all hours of the day, going on business trips, family getaways, business meetings and eventually even spending the holidays with Itzler’s family.
For example, on what might have been Christmas (there are no dates just days given) they do 9.5 miles running through the woods in Connecticut, 775 push-ups, 125 sit-ups and spend 21-minutes in an excessively hot steam room. Oh, and SEAL makes him jump into a frozen lake of water and then dash back to the house while the threat of frostbite looms.
Along the way SEAL also buys the Itzler family a fifty pound inflatable raft that comes in it’s own backpack, in case they ever have to get out of Manhattan in a 9/11 style attack that has left the bridges and tunnels shut down. He gets them to reinforce the windows in their vacation home with glass that could stop a machine gum, and offers tactical suggestions how to walk to work with tips such as, avoid Trump Tower today because Trump has been in the news too much lately.
I don’t want to say that SEAL is bizarre, and I’m not entirely sure how accurate the portrayal is, or how much it just makes for an entertaining read to have him be so extreme, but he’s um, very focused. Kind of in a way that if he is half as focused and singleminded as he is portrayed it makes me wonder what the hell is wrong with me that I can’t muster up even a fraction of his determination. Towards the end of the book when Itzler and his friends are going around the dinner table sharing what their resolutions are for the upcoming year—and they are what you would normally think of New Year’s Resolutions—get a new job, move to someplace new, things like that, SEAL says, “I don’t want the same shit you guys want. I’m not looking for anything else. I’m going to do the same shit I’ve been doing,” he said, “only I’m going to do it better”
And a little while later in something like an apology he returns to the group and says, “I just think you don’t give your lives enough credit.”
The book is basically a pretty funny and upbeat book about personal transformation, even though the person who is doing the transformation is already someone who if you looked at you’d be like, um he’s probably got everything I could possibly think I want. He’s successful and rich. He has a beautiful wife. He’s already someone who can run ultra-marathons, so he’s healthy and fit. He comes across as a genuinely happy and grounded person. On the surface Jesse Itzler seems more like someone who should just join a Crossfit gym or something if he’s looking to break out of the exercise rut that he has found himself in.
Instead he went and found one of the toughest guys in the world (he ran an endurance race with both feet broken, there’s a point where it’s pretty unbelievable the things that SEAL has willed himself to push through and do) to train him for a month, with nothing off limits.
I’m kind of a sucker for stories like this, I’m fascinated by people who come up with crazy challenges for themselves or who do bizarre experiments to make themselves better in some way (and yet I’ve never had much desire to read an AJ Jacobs book, go figure).
A lot of this ‘genre’ turns out to be ways of hacking the body to get better results, like reading about ways that people can get more results out of exercise by doing less but in smarter ways; or ways around traditional ideas of diet and sleep. The kind of things that are called life hacks or bio-hacks. This book is at the other end of the spectrum of that. This isn’t the sort of thing that knowing if you can give your body a particular amount of stress you can get the results from an hour of planks in just a series of really short moves; or that in four minutes of the right exercise you can get way better cardio results than running for an hour (running is for suckers as I’ve told Karen).
This is the other side of the coin that those “miracle” actions promise. But it’s the same coin. Everything in this book is fairly simple, there are only a handful of exercises ever done, but it’s the amount of those few exercises that is unbelievable.
Everything in this book flies in the face of what experts say about exercise. There are no rest days. There is no targeting different parts of the body—the exercises are pretty much just running a lot and push-ups. With some other exercises thrown in from time to time, but still it’s just just mainly running and push-ups. And remembering that there are no rest days, it also involves things like doing 100 pull-ups when Itzler could barely do 10, and he was told to stay in the gym until he did a hundred. I can’t imagine what the lactic acid build up must have felt like when he had to go so far beyond what his body could comfortably do, even if it was just one pull-up at a time with lots of rest, and then the next day still have to go out and run (I was thinking that there were going to be push-ups the next day, but SEAL just went with running for the next two days).
Maybe you’ve noticed that I have a real fascination with this stuff lately. I was toying with the idea that I should give myself a ridiculous (for me) challenge of being able to run a half-marathon by the end of the summer a couple of weeks before this book came into my life.
Why a half-marathon? Because I hate to run. I always told myself that I was terrible at it, and when I start to run my brain is just waiting to come up with any excuse it can to give me an out and stop doing this activity for suckers (and it is for suckers). I tried a couple of times to run and I think I was lucky if i made it to a mile before my brain would win and say, awesome job, you ran a bit now rest!
A full marathon just seems ridiculous to me (your muscle is actually being converted into fuel by your body during a run that long, so you are actually in worse shape when you are done with one than when you started (maybe this is true of a half-marathon, too, but it wouldn’t be nearly as bad)—and in my head 13.1 miles running is just as much of an out there thing for me to do, in my head they are pretty much the same thing of, ‘way more than I could ever run.’
So I had toyed with the idea that I would get myself up to being able to run a half-marathon (or run 13.1 miles, the actual running in an organized event doesn’t really matter) and mentally if I could achieve this just about anything else I want to do should be fucking easy. Since remember, I hate fucking running and I’ll take any excuse to stop that my brain will give me.
So this book inspired me partially to actually go out and do it.
Will it make my life better? That remains to be seen, I want to say yes, that doing something this far outside of what I physically felt I could do will have a great impact on me, sort of like the feeling the first time I was able to land a head kick, but with more actual work and mental toughness to get to the end of the his challenge (I’m not saying physical toughness, that’s easy to come by if you can stick with something, it’s almost all mental), but it could just be a huge distraction, which is what my weird little challenges usually turn out to be and make me realize that I’m ignoring large parts of my life in my focus do this one thing.
And because running wasn’t enough, and because I’m too cheap right now to pay for a gym membership I decided that I’d throw in some push-ups everyday, like a hundred of them a day and increase that by fifty every week until I get to maybe 300 a day. After 300 the push-ups would take up way more time that I’d be interested in giving exercise a day, especially with running.
So that is my physical summer challenge, and that is my review for this book, which I ended up really enjoying and maybe you will, too.
Oh right, I said I’d mention the blurb, it wasn't anything too special, but it was by Coach K, the head-coach of Duke’s Baseketball team—and since i’m becoming more and more of a Duke fanboy every year, I kind of have to read a book that Coach K has blessed with his approval, fortunately I don’t spend much time looking through the sports section of bookstores so I don’t have to worry about having to read many more books that he has also blurbed (if he blurbs many, I don’t know if he does), but this is my first Coach K blurbed book.
August 3rd Addition to the review.
Hello. I wrote this review back in the beginning of June. I never posted it. But I’m checking in with some extra stuff.
So how has the “Summer of Fitness” worked out (that was a stupid name, I should have changed it to something better, no one would have ever known!)?
I’ll start with the failure!
I made it though about two weeks of push-ups, and then I got really fucking bored with doing push-ups. So I stopped. I didn’t intentionally stop, just one day I didn’t do them. And then the next I did some, and the day after that I was supposed to do 150 and I did 75 instead and then I just stopped.
Push-ups are boring.
Now a success!
On June 1st, I put on my shitty sneakers and went running. I was aiming to run a mile everyday for five days a week and then the next week I’d run 1.5 miles for five days and so on. I’m not sure how I figured that by the end of the summer I’d be at 13.1 miles, but that was my plan.
I’ll spare the details but on August 1st I ran what I’m calling the “Woodside/Sunnyside Half-Marathon” (it’s a very exclusive race). My time wasn’t very impressive, but I ran the entire 13.1 miles without having to walk at all, and only stopping a couple of times for a few seconds to save myself from being run over by cars.
I’m still not sure if I like running. I have found that if I can get over 4 or 5 miles than it becomes actually fairly enjoyable, but miles 2 through 4 seem to suck each and every time.
I don’t know if I have this book to thank for some of the inspiration in actually doing this very time consuming challenge. I also don’t know if I have unlocked any super-powers or will be able to tackle other tasks with greater ease now that I’ve proven I can push through my mind telling to me to stop and offering a lot of enticing excuses and rationalizations for why it would be better to go do just about anything else than run.
So I’m calling “The Summer of Fitness” a win. I’m not sure if there will be another challenge this summer.
February 14, 2017
You know the "College Girls are Easy" song? Well this book is by the guy that did that song. And apparently he's married to the lady who invented Spanx. And well, he hired a Navy SEAL to come live with him and train him. I had high hopes for this book, but it was super repetitive and lot of whiny rich, white guy stuff. The bright spot was that I learned how intense SEALs are and there were some funny quotes at the beginning of the chapters.
August 23, 2022
“If you don't challenge yourself, you don't know yourself. “I'd never heard of Jesse Itzler before coming across this book. He seems like a hard worker, who's created a lot of 'lucky' breaks for himself. But he’s also a bit goofy. It is completely believable that he think it fun to get a Navy Seal to live with him for 30 days to shake up his exercise routine.
…
“Every day do something that makes you uncomfortable.”
…
“If you can see yourself doing something, you can do it. If you can't see yourself doing something, usually you can't achieve it.”
Jesse and the Seal’s relationship is what gives Living with a SEAL its heart. They are polar opposites, and each of them is just bewildered by how the other lives. The Seal is very entertaining ... from this distance. The most interesting part were the life lessons Itzler describes learning from this experience. A quick, fun read, and oddly inspirational.
October 4, 2016
Jesse Itzler leads an interesting life. As a successful businessman and entrepreneur, his off-the-wall ideas for solving difficult situations and for stirring the pot have served him very well. In this book, Living with a SEAL, he documents a month of training with a real life SEAL (who is called just "SEAL" throughout the book). The workouts were insane, potentially life threatening, but Jesse achieved some astonishing results in a very short period of time. He also bonded with his trainer and learned, through daily interactions, that the sort of conditioning that it takes to make a killer like his SEAL, takes place mainly in the mind and such training can leave its marks on the psyche.
Jesse explains his motivation:"I don't know if I was thinking about my mortality, or fretting over how many more peak years I had left, or anything like that. I think I was just thinking that now was as good a time as any to shake things up. You know, to break up that same routine. And my SEAL-for-hire idea definitely shook things up. I believe the best ideas are the ones you don't spend too much time thinking through. Which I didn't, and I got a lot more than I bargained for." loc 91, ebook.
SEAL thinks very carefully, bordering on obsessively, about safety and potential disaster scenarios for Jesse and his family. In this passage, he's purchased an inflatable raft so that, if another 9/11 happens, that Jesse and crew could get out by taking the river. Here's what Jesse's wife, Sara, thought of this: "I'm supposed to grab my son, strap a fifty-pound pack on my shoulders, carry four oars, walk a mile to the river, inflate this survival raft, and then paddle to New Jersey... in the middle of a national emergency?" There is dead silence in the room. ... I think to myself, she has a point. Finally SEAL interjects. ... "Sara, don't EVER underestimate the power of adrenaline," he says. "People can accomplish great things on adrenaline. Adrenaline can make you do things you NEVER thought you could do," and storms out of the room." pg 961, ebook.
SEAL is a man who gets things done, sacrificing his own health to finish tasks that he's started: "I found out SEAL once entered a race where you could either run for twenty-four or forty-eight hours. Shocker: SEAL signed up for the forty-eight-hour one. At around the twenty-three-hour mark, he'd run approximately 130 miles, but he'd also torn his quad. He asked the race officials if they could just clock him out at twenty-four hours. When he was told they couldn't do that, he said, "ROGER THAT," asked for a roll of tape, and wrapped his quad. He walked (limped) on a torn quad for the last twenty-four hours to finish the race and complete the entire forty-eight hours." loc 1483, ebook. Amazing what people can accomplish when they set their minds to it. Personally, I would have stopped when I broke myself, but then, I suppose I wouldn't make a very good SEAL.
The extreme exercise that SEAL demanded of Jesse had some surprising mindfulness benefits: "...with SEAL around, I'm learning how to be more present. It's primarily because I have to. If I don't, there is no way I will be able to finish the tasks at hand. I just go one step at a time. One rep at a time. And when I'm done, I worry about the next step or rep." loc 1909
I was continually impressed by the physical displays of power and endurance from SEAL. But then, he'd have an interaction with Jesse or his family and I'd question the man's paranoia levels and ability to function in society. In this passage, he's encouraging Sara to mix up the times that she goes to get the mail: "Sara, you need to mix up your pattern." "Pattern?" "Yeah, your pattern. ... The time you get the mail. That's your pattern. It's the same every day. It's predictable." "I get the mail after lunch," she says, "That's the most convenient time."... "Exactly. You know that. And I know that. The mailman most definitely knows that. So I bet EVERYONE knows that. For sure your neighbors know that." "But I'm just getting the mail.. at my house... on our property," she says. "Just do me a favor. Change up the pick up time." loc 2161, ebook.
Living with a SEAL is a lot of fun, but as I said, there are hints of a darker reality that SEAL has learned to endure. It is never graphic or spills over, but you can feel it boiling under the surface. Recommended for runners, people who like to read memoirs, and those who are interested in the sheer power of the mind and body. Some read alikes: Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall, Explorers of the Infinite: The Secret Spiritual Lives of Extreme Athletes--and What They Reveal About Near-Death Experiences, Psychic Communication, and Touching the Beyond by Maria Coffey, or if the extreme nature of these books are just too much, pick up Confessions of an Unlikely Runner: A Guide to Racing and Obstacle Courses for the Averagely Fit and Halfway Dedicated by Dana L. Ayers.
Thank you to NetGalley and Center Street Publishing for a free digital copy of this book!
Jesse explains his motivation:"I don't know if I was thinking about my mortality, or fretting over how many more peak years I had left, or anything like that. I think I was just thinking that now was as good a time as any to shake things up. You know, to break up that same routine. And my SEAL-for-hire idea definitely shook things up. I believe the best ideas are the ones you don't spend too much time thinking through. Which I didn't, and I got a lot more than I bargained for." loc 91, ebook.
SEAL thinks very carefully, bordering on obsessively, about safety and potential disaster scenarios for Jesse and his family. In this passage, he's purchased an inflatable raft so that, if another 9/11 happens, that Jesse and crew could get out by taking the river. Here's what Jesse's wife, Sara, thought of this: "I'm supposed to grab my son, strap a fifty-pound pack on my shoulders, carry four oars, walk a mile to the river, inflate this survival raft, and then paddle to New Jersey... in the middle of a national emergency?" There is dead silence in the room. ... I think to myself, she has a point. Finally SEAL interjects. ... "Sara, don't EVER underestimate the power of adrenaline," he says. "People can accomplish great things on adrenaline. Adrenaline can make you do things you NEVER thought you could do," and storms out of the room." pg 961, ebook.
SEAL is a man who gets things done, sacrificing his own health to finish tasks that he's started: "I found out SEAL once entered a race where you could either run for twenty-four or forty-eight hours. Shocker: SEAL signed up for the forty-eight-hour one. At around the twenty-three-hour mark, he'd run approximately 130 miles, but he'd also torn his quad. He asked the race officials if they could just clock him out at twenty-four hours. When he was told they couldn't do that, he said, "ROGER THAT," asked for a roll of tape, and wrapped his quad. He walked (limped) on a torn quad for the last twenty-four hours to finish the race and complete the entire forty-eight hours." loc 1483, ebook. Amazing what people can accomplish when they set their minds to it. Personally, I would have stopped when I broke myself, but then, I suppose I wouldn't make a very good SEAL.
The extreme exercise that SEAL demanded of Jesse had some surprising mindfulness benefits: "...with SEAL around, I'm learning how to be more present. It's primarily because I have to. If I don't, there is no way I will be able to finish the tasks at hand. I just go one step at a time. One rep at a time. And when I'm done, I worry about the next step or rep." loc 1909
I was continually impressed by the physical displays of power and endurance from SEAL. But then, he'd have an interaction with Jesse or his family and I'd question the man's paranoia levels and ability to function in society. In this passage, he's encouraging Sara to mix up the times that she goes to get the mail: "Sara, you need to mix up your pattern." "Pattern?" "Yeah, your pattern. ... The time you get the mail. That's your pattern. It's the same every day. It's predictable." "I get the mail after lunch," she says, "That's the most convenient time."... "Exactly. You know that. And I know that. The mailman most definitely knows that. So I bet EVERYONE knows that. For sure your neighbors know that." "But I'm just getting the mail.. at my house... on our property," she says. "Just do me a favor. Change up the pick up time." loc 2161, ebook.
Living with a SEAL is a lot of fun, but as I said, there are hints of a darker reality that SEAL has learned to endure. It is never graphic or spills over, but you can feel it boiling under the surface. Recommended for runners, people who like to read memoirs, and those who are interested in the sheer power of the mind and body. Some read alikes: Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall, Explorers of the Infinite: The Secret Spiritual Lives of Extreme Athletes--and What They Reveal About Near-Death Experiences, Psychic Communication, and Touching the Beyond by Maria Coffey, or if the extreme nature of these books are just too much, pick up Confessions of an Unlikely Runner: A Guide to Racing and Obstacle Courses for the Averagely Fit and Halfway Dedicated by Dana L. Ayers.
Thank you to NetGalley and Center Street Publishing for a free digital copy of this book!
February 7, 2017
This book was a quick read and a lot of fun. Some key takeaways for me:
- it's important to do hard things
- push-ups are a great form of exercise
- routine and complacency can prevent progress
- you're never done when you think you are. There's always something left in the tank.
- you can always work harder, and always be better (granted basic good health)
The narrative was hilarious and I enjoyed Jesse Itzler's memoir bits. That guy's lived an interesting life. The whole premise of the month is kind of goofy, I mean his descriptions of SEAL seem at first to be almost caricature until you realize that this guy is actually quite possibly the toughest man on the planet, and the month is far more than just some gimmick. It also becomes apparent pretty early on that the Itzlers live an almost impossibly privileged life, but Jesse's not trying to brag about it and it doesn't come off in any way pretentious - those are just his circumstances, and the couple both and individually took some big steps to get to that point.
- it's important to do hard things
- push-ups are a great form of exercise
- routine and complacency can prevent progress
- you're never done when you think you are. There's always something left in the tank.
- you can always work harder, and always be better (granted basic good health)
The narrative was hilarious and I enjoyed Jesse Itzler's memoir bits. That guy's lived an interesting life. The whole premise of the month is kind of goofy, I mean his descriptions of SEAL seem at first to be almost caricature until you realize that this guy is actually quite possibly the toughest man on the planet, and the month is far more than just some gimmick. It also becomes apparent pretty early on that the Itzlers live an almost impossibly privileged life, but Jesse's not trying to brag about it and it doesn't come off in any way pretentious - those are just his circumstances, and the couple both and individually took some big steps to get to that point.
December 2, 2015
This was laugh-out-loud funny, and also surprisingly inspiring.
April 25, 2016
Opportunity lost. A training log with nothing deep to offer.
A promising premise with no introspection and no development. The book primarily consists of log entries for 31 days. "Today I ran. I thought I would die and 6 hours later SEAL made me run again....I did so many push-ups my shoulders hurt. They hurt a lot. Let me tell you, my shoulders hurt." Utterly lacking in insight or reflection upon the month spent living with a SEAL. For similar effect one can find a rigorous training log on the Internet and read it 31 times.
A promising premise with no introspection and no development. The book primarily consists of log entries for 31 days. "Today I ran. I thought I would die and 6 hours later SEAL made me run again....I did so many push-ups my shoulders hurt. They hurt a lot. Let me tell you, my shoulders hurt." Utterly lacking in insight or reflection upon the month spent living with a SEAL. For similar effect one can find a rigorous training log on the Internet and read it 31 times.
June 25, 2018
2.5 stars
Fun book - worth reading if you want a laugh, but all the exercise gets repetitive and dull after awhile. I guess this is what you do when you have too much money. Jesse is a funny fella though, which makes this strange experience entertaining.
Spending a month with David Goggin would annoy the crap out of me; is there actually anything going on upstairs or is he an android?
Also Jesse's life is somewhat nauseating: the NYC apartment, the private driver, the private jets, the houses in Atlanta, the holiday house Connecticut with sauna and steam room! Jesse and his family are so far removed from the lives of normal people, is is difficult to relate to his very privileged life. Alas if all just lied our way through business deals like Jesse, maybe we would all have 4 houses!
Fun book - worth reading if you want a laugh, but all the exercise gets repetitive and dull after awhile. I guess this is what you do when you have too much money. Jesse is a funny fella though, which makes this strange experience entertaining.
Spending a month with David Goggin would annoy the crap out of me; is there actually anything going on upstairs or is he an android?
Also Jesse's life is somewhat nauseating: the NYC apartment, the private driver, the private jets, the houses in Atlanta, the holiday house Connecticut with sauna and steam room! Jesse and his family are so far removed from the lives of normal people, is is difficult to relate to his very privileged life. Alas if all just lied our way through business deals like Jesse, maybe we would all have 4 houses!
November 19, 2015
Early in my reading of Bill Bryson's "A Walk in the Woods," I found myself thinking, "I should walk the Appalachian Trail!" A few chapters later, after learning of Bryson's hiking, sweating, and chafing experience, all I could think was, "Screw that. I'll stay indoors, thank you very much."
I had a similar experience reading Jesse Itzler's informative, inspiring and hilarious fitness memoir, "Living with a SEAL."
Itzler is a compulsively motivated human being who has achieved crazy success in entertainment, business, and fitness (to say nothing of marriage) by doing things others haven't thought of, view as contrarian or consider bat-shit insane. (is "bat-shit" hyphenated?)
In LWaS, Jesse recounts the intense, month-long training hell he brought on himself by inviting a real-life Navy SEAL to live with him and his family. Early in the book I was thinking, "...maybe I should turn up the heat on my workouts and push the limits of my mind and body." Then I read about Jesse's torn muscles, hypothermia and bloody nuts (yes, those kind of nuts), and thought, "naaahhh."
Indeed, Jesse holds back none of the grueling details involved in training with one of the world's most elite warriors and the marital complexities that arise when you host him in your family's apartment.
Like SEAL, Jesse has one speed: 110% x 24 x 7. He's also a little bat-shit insane and a really funny writer. If you're into fitness and/or crazy people, you'll love Living with a SEAL.
I had a similar experience reading Jesse Itzler's informative, inspiring and hilarious fitness memoir, "Living with a SEAL."
Itzler is a compulsively motivated human being who has achieved crazy success in entertainment, business, and fitness (to say nothing of marriage) by doing things others haven't thought of, view as contrarian or consider bat-shit insane. (is "bat-shit" hyphenated?)
In LWaS, Jesse recounts the intense, month-long training hell he brought on himself by inviting a real-life Navy SEAL to live with him and his family. Early in the book I was thinking, "...maybe I should turn up the heat on my workouts and push the limits of my mind and body." Then I read about Jesse's torn muscles, hypothermia and bloody nuts (yes, those kind of nuts), and thought, "naaahhh."
Indeed, Jesse holds back none of the grueling details involved in training with one of the world's most elite warriors and the marital complexities that arise when you host him in your family's apartment.
Like SEAL, Jesse has one speed: 110% x 24 x 7. He's also a little bat-shit insane and a really funny writer. If you're into fitness and/or crazy people, you'll love Living with a SEAL.
March 27, 2019
Как если бы Кристиан Грей заставлял Анастейшу бегать и отжиматься
August 11, 2022
Hilarious, especially knowing that "SEAL" is David Goggins
December 1, 2017
SEAL of approval...but I have so many questions.
It's weird that Jesse chose to not name Goggins. Maybe Goggins requested that or preferred that? He is truly an unconventional man, so that could be the case. Or maybe they had to anonymize it to distance themselves from the Navy for legal reasons? I found it distracting from the start, and honestly spent the whole time reading this wondering the reason. To me, not identifying Goggins outright was the antithesis of marketing, from someone like Jesse, who appears to be a marketing genius. If I had known when this was published that "Seal" was Goggins, I would have read the book the second I could get my hands on it. Instead, Goggins is referred to as "Seal", which is also truly odd. It's not "the Seal" but just "Seal" which makes me imagine the pop singer. You know, Hiedi Klum's ex husband.
This book was entertaining, and I wish I could give it 3.5 instead of 3. I couldn't go to 4 because I felt it only scratched the surface of so many questions I had while reading. I think possibly my expectations were in conflict with the premise of the book that the "Seal" be this anonymous nameless sado-masochistic "force" for motivation and self-improvement. I just wanted to know as much as I could gather about Goggins who, until recently has led a deeply private life. I'm fascinated by endurance sports and human limitations. I first heard about Goggins when he ran Badwater the first time, and being a quite talented web sleuth myself - there was zero information about him out there. He didn't give interviews then. He didn't care to be known, which of course made him even more intriguing. I guess I wanted from this book more "living with Goggins" but the book is about Jesse. My rating is likely unfair.
One thing, however, that I always wondered has been partially answered now. David Goggins is divorced and I always wondered "What woman divorces David F'n Goggins?!" Like, she must be out of her mind. It seems he's an extreme individual in every facet of his life, not just athletically, so I suppose I can understand how that might become difficult. But still, have you seen this man, or heard him talk about his life? Quality problems to have. It's like that quote, and I can't locate who said this, "Show me a beautiful woman, and I’ll show you a man who’s sick of her shit."
It's weird that Jesse chose to not name Goggins. Maybe Goggins requested that or preferred that? He is truly an unconventional man, so that could be the case. Or maybe they had to anonymize it to distance themselves from the Navy for legal reasons? I found it distracting from the start, and honestly spent the whole time reading this wondering the reason. To me, not identifying Goggins outright was the antithesis of marketing, from someone like Jesse, who appears to be a marketing genius. If I had known when this was published that "Seal" was Goggins, I would have read the book the second I could get my hands on it. Instead, Goggins is referred to as "Seal", which is also truly odd. It's not "the Seal" but just "Seal" which makes me imagine the pop singer. You know, Hiedi Klum's ex husband.
This book was entertaining, and I wish I could give it 3.5 instead of 3. I couldn't go to 4 because I felt it only scratched the surface of so many questions I had while reading. I think possibly my expectations were in conflict with the premise of the book that the "Seal" be this anonymous nameless sado-masochistic "force" for motivation and self-improvement. I just wanted to know as much as I could gather about Goggins who, until recently has led a deeply private life. I'm fascinated by endurance sports and human limitations. I first heard about Goggins when he ran Badwater the first time, and being a quite talented web sleuth myself - there was zero information about him out there. He didn't give interviews then. He didn't care to be known, which of course made him even more intriguing. I guess I wanted from this book more "living with Goggins" but the book is about Jesse. My rating is likely unfair.
One thing, however, that I always wondered has been partially answered now. David Goggins is divorced and I always wondered "What woman divorces David F'n Goggins?!" Like, she must be out of her mind. It seems he's an extreme individual in every facet of his life, not just athletically, so I suppose I can understand how that might become difficult. But still, have you seen this man, or heard him talk about his life? Quality problems to have. It's like that quote, and I can't locate who said this, "Show me a beautiful woman, and I’ll show you a man who’s sick of her shit."
January 9, 2020
Прочитал первую книгу в этом году — Джесси Ицлер «Месяц на пределе. Как я жил и тренировался со спецназовцем».
Популярный блогер, марафонец и, по совместительству, предприниматель и репер Джесси Ицлер застрял в колесе украл-выпил-в-тюрьму [зачеркнуто] подготовился-к-марафону-пробежал-отдохнул. Опять эти 42 километра, скукота! Что делать, надоело, да и над популярностью блога нужно работать.
Хитрый Джесси умеет сходиться с людьми. Сел, подумал, и позвонил известному ультрамарафонцу, спецназовцу армии США в отставке, «морскому котику» Дэвиду Гоггинсу. Задумка такая: Джесси «котику» платит, а «котик» живёт в квартире у Джесси месяц и всяче��ки его тиранит тренировками со страшной силой.
Тренировки внезапные, стрёмные и странные. Просидеть ночь на стуле, бегать по 10+ км утром и вечером каждый день в мороз. Отжиматься и подтягиваться до упада, а как упадешь, вставать и снова пытаться пока не сделаешь сколько «котик» приказал. Для разнообразия сидеть в раскаленной парной пока не станет плохо, а как станет — бегом по снегу до озера, раздолбили лёд и давай купаться пока снова не станет плохо.
Джесси от жадности (деньги-то уплачены) терпел «котиковые» издевательства месяц и вёл в блоге прямой репортаж. А что, народу нравится! Надо отдать должное Джесси, до эксперимента за его плечами было много марафонов, он даже начал готовиться в сложнейшему ультра «Бэд Уотер», кстати, «котик» этот ультрамарафон пробежал.
Итого: книга странная, с одной стороны «не пытайтесь это повторить», с другой стороны интересно на что способен человеческий организм. В качестве подзадпинатора сгодится, если вам оно надо. Написано с юмором, читается легко.
Выписал несколько советов от «котика» и наблюдений автора:
🔹 Каждый день делай что-нибудь неприятное и неудобное.
🔹 Что бы ты ни делал, всегда найдется человек, который пашет побольше твоего. Учись терпеть и бороться. В любом деле… Подумай о других и жри свою лопату говна.
🔹 Всё, что действительно нужно, это наладить постоянный режим отжиманий.
🔹 Хорошая физическая форма — это результат работы по нескольким фронтам. Конечно, сила играет важную роль, но также надо обладать энергией, гибкостью, способностью и срываться с места и выдерживать долгие нагрузки. Здоровье многогранно. Нужен полный комплект навыков.
🔹 Главное желание и мотивация — сделать завтра больше и лучше, чем сегодня.
🔹 Я нанял его («котика»), чтобы сломать рутину, встряхнуть систему, сознательно нарушить баланс, чтобы увидеть скрытые возможности и отвечать на вызовы по-новому. Всё это имело целью натренировать мою главную мышцу: мозг. В особенности навык концентрации на задаче.
Популярный блогер, марафонец и, по совместительству, предприниматель и репер Джесси Ицлер застрял в колесе украл-выпил-в-тюрьму [зачеркнуто] подготовился-к-марафону-пробежал-отдохнул. Опять эти 42 километра, скукота! Что делать, надоело, да и над популярностью блога нужно работать.
Хитрый Джесси умеет сходиться с людьми. Сел, подумал, и позвонил известному ультрамарафонцу, спецназовцу армии США в отставке, «морскому котику» Дэвиду Гоггинсу. Задумка такая: Джесси «котику» платит, а «котик» живёт в квартире у Джесси месяц и всяче��ки его тиранит тренировками со страшной силой.
Тренировки внезапные, стрёмные и странные. Просидеть ночь на стуле, бегать по 10+ км утром и вечером каждый день в мороз. Отжиматься и подтягиваться до упада, а как упадешь, вставать и снова пытаться пока не сделаешь сколько «котик» приказал. Для разнообразия сидеть в раскаленной парной пока не станет плохо, а как станет — бегом по снегу до озера, раздолбили лёд и давай купаться пока снова не станет плохо.
Джесси от жадности (деньги-то уплачены) терпел «котиковые» издевательства месяц и вёл в блоге прямой репортаж. А что, народу нравится! Надо отдать должное Джесси, до эксперимента за его плечами было много марафонов, он даже начал готовиться в сложнейшему ультра «Бэд Уотер», кстати, «котик» этот ультрамарафон пробежал.
Итого: книга странная, с одной стороны «не пытайтесь это повторить», с другой стороны интересно на что способен человеческий организм. В качестве подзадпинатора сгодится, если вам оно надо. Написано с юмором, читается легко.
Выписал несколько советов от «котика» и наблюдений автора:
🔹 Каждый день делай что-нибудь неприятное и неудобное.
🔹 Что бы ты ни делал, всегда найдется человек, который пашет побольше твоего. Учись терпеть и бороться. В любом деле… Подумай о других и жри свою лопату говна.
🔹 Всё, что действительно нужно, это наладить постоянный режим отжиманий.
🔹 Хорошая физическая форма — это результат работы по нескольким фронтам. Конечно, сила играет важную роль, но также надо обладать энергией, гибкостью, способностью и срываться с места и выдерживать долгие нагрузки. Здоровье многогранно. Нужен полный комплект навыков.
🔹 Главное желание и мотивация — сделать завтра больше и лучше, чем сегодня.
🔹 Я нанял его («котика»), чтобы сломать рутину, встряхнуть систему, сознательно нарушить баланс, чтобы увидеть скрытые возможности и отвечать на вызовы по-новому. Всё это имело целью натренировать мою главную мышцу: мозг. В особенности навык концентрации на задаче.
April 5, 2022
"""
While Goggin's book made me realize that there is no limit to what one can do, Itzler's book forced me to take immediate action, get off my ass, and understand that it's only me standing in my way of achieving what I want to want-to-do.
"""
---
There was no better follow-up to David Goggins' "Can't Hurt Me" than this book. If you listened to the audio version of Goggins' book (which I recommend more than the book given its format) and loved it, this is an absolute must listen right afterwards. Provided that the second audiobook is only 5 hours long, there is no excuse not to do so.
I stand by the order I specified above, even though this book was published three years priors to "Can't Hurt Me." At the time, Goggins kept a lower profile and is referred to as "Seal" throughout. However, knowing Goggin's backstory, I completed some of Itzler's stories and sentences before he provided details which was a fun game to play. For example, I knew they were going to meet up in San Diego, and I knew he would injure himself doing the 100-mile run. The craziest thing is that Goggins' didn't mention Jesse Itzler even once throughout his audiobook.
While Goggin's book made me realize that there is no limit to what one can do, Itzler's book forced me to take immediate action, get off my ass, and understand that it's only me standing in my way of achieving what I want to want-to-do.
A few examples of this from the past week include:
I ran into the cold lake by my house and took a quick plunge even though I didn't want to. This is nothing compared to diving into a frozen lake in NYC.
I finished my 10-minute row on a day when my back, legs and shoulders were sore. This is nothing compared to the 10-mile run, and hundreds of pushups Itzler had to do.
I did 100 burpees at the gym at the same time as Jesse simply because I didn't want to. 10 minutes and 20 seconds bitch.
I finished my self-imposed deadline at work last week when I suggested to my CTO that we finish it early next week, but he responded, "why not now?"
I am forcing myself to write this very book review when instead, I just want to brush my teeth, watch TV and go to bed.
I took that cold shower in the middle of the day, which was worth it, even though I didn't want to.
This book also made me realize that I don't need a fancy gym and can continue training (in an intelligent way), even when travelling. Burpees, pushups, pullups, jump squats, running, and biking can get you into the shape of your life without any equipment necessary.
There are too many memorable anecdotes from the book to list out without reiterating everything, but the few that stood out to me were:
Jumping into the cold lake and also freezing to death. Seal yelling "abort mission" was entertaining.
Seal called the house renovation company and forced them to give Jesse a 40% discount after initially over-charging him because they knew he was a high-net-worth individual.
Seal making a sweat puddle on top of Sarah Blakely's family carpet while working out in his room.
I plan to write a much longer article discussing the idea of callusing the mind, dopamine addiction, cold showers, ADHD, and these two books, which I believe are all interconnected, so I'll leave it here for now.
----
One takeaway from the book that I believe is likely overlooked by many readers is how supportive Sarah Blakely was of Jesse Itzler at every step along the way. This is what you call true love, a true family and true support without being neither too dependent nor too controlling. Here's to the Iztler Blakely Family 🥂
While Goggin's book made me realize that there is no limit to what one can do, Itzler's book forced me to take immediate action, get off my ass, and understand that it's only me standing in my way of achieving what I want to want-to-do.
"""
---
There was no better follow-up to David Goggins' "Can't Hurt Me" than this book. If you listened to the audio version of Goggins' book (which I recommend more than the book given its format) and loved it, this is an absolute must listen right afterwards. Provided that the second audiobook is only 5 hours long, there is no excuse not to do so.
I stand by the order I specified above, even though this book was published three years priors to "Can't Hurt Me." At the time, Goggins kept a lower profile and is referred to as "Seal" throughout. However, knowing Goggin's backstory, I completed some of Itzler's stories and sentences before he provided details which was a fun game to play. For example, I knew they were going to meet up in San Diego, and I knew he would injure himself doing the 100-mile run. The craziest thing is that Goggins' didn't mention Jesse Itzler even once throughout his audiobook.
While Goggin's book made me realize that there is no limit to what one can do, Itzler's book forced me to take immediate action, get off my ass, and understand that it's only me standing in my way of achieving what I want to want-to-do.
A few examples of this from the past week include:
I ran into the cold lake by my house and took a quick plunge even though I didn't want to. This is nothing compared to diving into a frozen lake in NYC.
I finished my 10-minute row on a day when my back, legs and shoulders were sore. This is nothing compared to the 10-mile run, and hundreds of pushups Itzler had to do.
I did 100 burpees at the gym at the same time as Jesse simply because I didn't want to. 10 minutes and 20 seconds bitch.
I finished my self-imposed deadline at work last week when I suggested to my CTO that we finish it early next week, but he responded, "why not now?"
I am forcing myself to write this very book review when instead, I just want to brush my teeth, watch TV and go to bed.
I took that cold shower in the middle of the day, which was worth it, even though I didn't want to.
This book also made me realize that I don't need a fancy gym and can continue training (in an intelligent way), even when travelling. Burpees, pushups, pullups, jump squats, running, and biking can get you into the shape of your life without any equipment necessary.
There are too many memorable anecdotes from the book to list out without reiterating everything, but the few that stood out to me were:
Jumping into the cold lake and also freezing to death. Seal yelling "abort mission" was entertaining.
Seal called the house renovation company and forced them to give Jesse a 40% discount after initially over-charging him because they knew he was a high-net-worth individual.
Seal making a sweat puddle on top of Sarah Blakely's family carpet while working out in his room.
I plan to write a much longer article discussing the idea of callusing the mind, dopamine addiction, cold showers, ADHD, and these two books, which I believe are all interconnected, so I'll leave it here for now.
----
One takeaway from the book that I believe is likely overlooked by many readers is how supportive Sarah Blakely was of Jesse Itzler at every step along the way. This is what you call true love, a true family and true support without being neither too dependent nor too controlling. Here's to the Iztler Blakely Family 🥂
May 17, 2022
This is another of those books that everyone seems to love. Everyone but me.
Here’s the (true) story: the author, a rich guy, pays a veteran SEAL to live with and train him for a month. The SEAL works the rich guy like he’s never been worked before. At the end of the month, the rich guy is in better shape and has learned some life lessons.
My problem with this book is that not only was I not buying what the SEAL was selling, I found him to be a disturbed man in need of counseling. This guy could not get out of his own head, obsessively and destructively exercising like a guy trying to sweat out his demons. “That’s what being a SEAL is all about, man,” I could practically hear the author arguing. But no: I’ve flown SEALs into (and out of) some dangerous places. I’ve hung out with SEALs in our off time. The SEALs I know, by and large, have more in common with the guy selling you camping equipment at REI or kicking your ass at and then buying a round after the local bike race: very fit, sure. But also relaxed and humble in the manner of people who don’t need to prove to anyone that they’re tough guys.
I spent the first half of the book suspecting that the SEAL hired by the author was a fraud, but nope: he was the real deal. Regardless, I didn’t read “Living with a SEAL” as the lighthearted yet motivating book the author intended. I read it as a cry for help. I hope the SEAL got, or is getting, some.
Here’s the (true) story: the author, a rich guy, pays a veteran SEAL to live with and train him for a month. The SEAL works the rich guy like he’s never been worked before. At the end of the month, the rich guy is in better shape and has learned some life lessons.
My problem with this book is that not only was I not buying what the SEAL was selling, I found him to be a disturbed man in need of counseling. This guy could not get out of his own head, obsessively and destructively exercising like a guy trying to sweat out his demons. “That’s what being a SEAL is all about, man,” I could practically hear the author arguing. But no: I’ve flown SEALs into (and out of) some dangerous places. I’ve hung out with SEALs in our off time. The SEALs I know, by and large, have more in common with the guy selling you camping equipment at REI or kicking your ass at and then buying a round after the local bike race: very fit, sure. But also relaxed and humble in the manner of people who don’t need to prove to anyone that they’re tough guys.
I spent the first half of the book suspecting that the SEAL hired by the author was a fraud, but nope: he was the real deal. Regardless, I didn’t read “Living with a SEAL” as the lighthearted yet motivating book the author intended. I read it as a cry for help. I hope the SEAL got, or is getting, some.
September 16, 2016
My husband wanted to read this, so I ordered it online and breezed through it in half a day. It's easy to read and entertaining, but Jesse's big ego and constant bragging took away from a lot of the better aspects of the book. The Navy SEAL, as portrayed in this book, is both inspiring and concerning. It sounds as though he is not at all adjusted to civilian life, which at times was funny but more often uncomfortable. It's hard to relate to either man individually, but overall the overarching theme of the story was mostly inspirational and entertaining. Not bad for a quick read, but if Jesse wasn't so self involved in his story telling it could have been better.
January 26, 2017
Half funny anecdotes about his interactions with SEAL, half autobiographical. The former is hilarious and entertaining. The latter is tolerable.
You aren't going to learn anything life changing here, but you will likely find yourself amused during the couple of hours it takes to read through this short book.
You aren't going to learn anything life changing here, but you will likely find yourself amused during the couple of hours it takes to read through this short book.
January 7, 2017
Some solid personal growth nuggets.
Literally made me laugh out loud, which is something I don't often do.
Easy read, but super glad I did.
Literally made me laugh out loud, which is something I don't often do.
Easy read, but super glad I did.
February 15, 2017
I laughed out Loud a lot reading this book and I found it to be a quick and Fun read. I liked the learnings from Seal and how he lived such a Simple life. He just gets things done.
November 28, 2022
Excellent little book to read. 4.5 stars for no nonsense simplicity.
What happens when David Goggins stays with you for a month and pushes you to the very limit? For Jesse Itzler, a lot of pain, growth and respect. For us, a lot of fun reading and shaking our heads.
What happens when David Goggins stays with you for a month and pushes you to the very limit? For Jesse Itzler, a lot of pain, growth and respect. For us, a lot of fun reading and shaking our heads.
June 14, 2017
One of the most memorable books I've ever read. Ultra-marathoner Jesse Itzler might be crazy, hiring a SEAL to train him for a month. SEAL is even crazier. His identity remains a secret for most of the book (so I won't spoil it) but he really is the toughest man on the planet.
I bought this based on a single story: I heard that SEAL had initially caught Itzler's eye by running a 100-mile race in 24 hours (solo) during which he broke several metatarsals in both feet and was urinating blood due to key failure. SOLD.
That same nutcase then agrees to get Jesse as tough as he can in 31 days. This book is that story. It's quick, conversational, hilarious, inspiring, insane, and filled with military-grade trashtalking. (SEAL doesn't say much, but he could cut his words in half by avoiding the F word.)
Takeaway: My life is easy. WAY too easy. Time to get up and find my limit! Who wants to die without knowing their point of collapse? Where's the fun in never discovering the moment at which your body fails? "When you think you're done, you're only at forty percent of what your body is capable of doing."
Anyone who loves to laugh or workout or both, GET THIS BOOK. It's worth the t-shirt quotes alone. Especially if you're prepping for a Spartan race or marathon or GORUCK.
"I don't think about yesterday. I think about today and getting better."
"If it doesn't suck, we don't do it."
"If you want to be pushed to your limits, you have to train to your limits."
"If you get hurt, you will recover."
"I earned the pain. Now I'm going to enjoy it."
"You can get through any workout because everything ends."
"The tougher the conditions, the more I like my odds."
"If you don't challenge yourself, you don't know yourself."
"I don't stop when I'm tired. I stop when I'm done."
BAM. How would you like SEAL as your spirit animal?
I bought this based on a single story: I heard that SEAL had initially caught Itzler's eye by running a 100-mile race in 24 hours (solo) during which he broke several metatarsals in both feet and was urinating blood due to key failure. SOLD.
That same nutcase then agrees to get Jesse as tough as he can in 31 days. This book is that story. It's quick, conversational, hilarious, inspiring, insane, and filled with military-grade trashtalking. (SEAL doesn't say much, but he could cut his words in half by avoiding the F word.)
Takeaway: My life is easy. WAY too easy. Time to get up and find my limit! Who wants to die without knowing their point of collapse? Where's the fun in never discovering the moment at which your body fails? "When you think you're done, you're only at forty percent of what your body is capable of doing."
Anyone who loves to laugh or workout or both, GET THIS BOOK. It's worth the t-shirt quotes alone. Especially if you're prepping for a Spartan race or marathon or GORUCK.
"I don't think about yesterday. I think about today and getting better."
"If it doesn't suck, we don't do it."
"If you want to be pushed to your limits, you have to train to your limits."
"If you get hurt, you will recover."
"I earned the pain. Now I'm going to enjoy it."
"You can get through any workout because everything ends."
"The tougher the conditions, the more I like my odds."
"If you don't challenge yourself, you don't know yourself."
"I don't stop when I'm tired. I stop when I'm done."
BAM. How would you like SEAL as your spirit animal?
May 31, 2021
After reading David Goggins' memoir, Can't Hurt Me, I had to get my hands on this book. I've become obsessed with David's outlandish lifestyle and mental toughness. This book offered a look at who he is and how he lives from someone else's perspective. Honestly, I want a whole series of books like this! It was insanely interesting and hilarious. I was constantly stopping to read lines and quotes from David to my husband, along with his concocted workout routines (which sounded like pure torture).
While this book was meant to be humorous, I think there was plenty of value in it as well. I enjoyed the meaning Jesse Itzler was able to extract from his time living with David Goggins.
Most specifically:
"I have houses, a driver, fly privately. I have all of these things. SEAL has a military ID and cash. That’s what he walks around with, just a backpack of belongings. He didn’t want my life and I wanted his life. For starters, I’m going to simplify things. I’m going to try to get down to thirty items of clothing. I’m going through my closets and the extra shit in the garage and getting rid of stuff. I started deleting all of my emails, and it felt great. I started not answering people right away, and it felt fantastic."
While this book was meant to be humorous, I think there was plenty of value in it as well. I enjoyed the meaning Jesse Itzler was able to extract from his time living with David Goggins.
Most specifically:
"I have houses, a driver, fly privately. I have all of these things. SEAL has a military ID and cash. That’s what he walks around with, just a backpack of belongings. He didn’t want my life and I wanted his life. For starters, I’m going to simplify things. I’m going to try to get down to thirty items of clothing. I’m going through my closets and the extra shit in the garage and getting rid of stuff. I started deleting all of my emails, and it felt great. I started not answering people right away, and it felt fantastic."
July 14, 2018
Just "ok". Not quite what I expected from this book. Expectation was more on the inspired/motivated side, which is not the case at all.
My biggest gripe with the book is probably that I didn't like Jessie.
Kudos for all his accomplishments in life, business etc. But damn.
The narration of this audiobook done by the author didn't sound professional at all. And using his own voice didn't really add a sense of going through the story with him either.
He comes across as a rich kid (although older than me) that can just gets everything he wants.
The training with Seal came across more as bragging rights, than accomplishments.
Coming out of this book, I'm far more interested in David Goggins's back story. Hoping his book Built Not Born will get released soon.
Really liked the character of Seal.
My biggest gripe with the book is probably that I didn't like Jessie.
Kudos for all his accomplishments in life, business etc. But damn.
The narration of this audiobook done by the author didn't sound professional at all. And using his own voice didn't really add a sense of going through the story with him either.
He comes across as a rich kid (although older than me) that can just gets everything he wants.
The training with Seal came across more as bragging rights, than accomplishments.
Coming out of this book, I'm far more interested in David Goggins's back story. Hoping his book Built Not Born will get released soon.
Really liked the character of Seal.
August 6, 2021
Hea ja kerge teos, mis motiveerib ennast push'ima ning kinnitab mind over body eluviisi. Kuigi tegu on nimetu SEAL-iga, on tegelikult väga kerge aimata, kellega tegu. Olles lugenud ka nimetu härra biograafiat, tekkis antud teost läbides mitu korda äratundmisrõõm: nii Itzler kui ka hr SEAL kirjeldasid mõlemad mitu korda sündmusi, kus kokku puutusid, aimatama omavahelist taaskokkupuudet paar aaatat hiljem. Märksõna siinkohal on Badwater'i Ultra.
Üldiselt möödus teos vaat et lausa ludinal ning on kindlasti on väärt lugemist. Ning SEAL-i tsitaadid iga peatüki alguses olid kirsiks tordil!
____________________
SPOLIER!
Kuigi on SEAL-i ametlik identiteet saladus, on see väga AVALIK saladus. Ning kui tahta tema uskumatu elukäigu kohta veelgi rohkem lugeda-uurida, tasuks teha üks otsingumootoripäring märksõnadega "David Goggins".
Üldiselt möödus teos vaat et lausa ludinal ning on kindlasti on väärt lugemist. Ning SEAL-i tsitaadid iga peatüki alguses olid kirsiks tordil!
____________________
SPOLIER!
Kuigi on SEAL-i ametlik identiteet saladus, on see väga AVALIK saladus. Ning kui tahta tema uskumatu elukäigu kohta veelgi rohkem lugeda-uurida, tasuks teha üks otsingumootoripäring märksõnadega "David Goggins".
May 2, 2018
This book was entertaining but not motivational, I was hoping it would be both. Oddly the most interesting part of the book was reading about Jesse's own personal life. I'm sure living with a SEAL would be the experience of a lifetime but reading about long runs and burpees isn't all that interesting.
April 4, 2022
I love this!!!!
Do you think you're pushing your limits by waking 10 minutes early? Try this.
This is insane, next-level shit.
I probably need a SEAL in my life too.
It shows how physical training can impact the way that you live your life and make decisions about the little and the big things.
I need to keep re-reading this once in a while to give myself a strict reality check.
Do you think you're pushing your limits by waking 10 minutes early? Try this.
This is insane, next-level shit.
I probably need a SEAL in my life too.
It shows how physical training can impact the way that you live your life and make decisions about the little and the big things.
I need to keep re-reading this once in a while to give myself a strict reality check.
August 2, 2022
This book was so good. CEO Jesse Itzler invites a Navy SEAL to live with him for 30 days, he talks about the insane workouts SEAL put him though, the lessons he learned, and the crazy stories that took place during the 30 days.
The book was hilarious, motivating, enlightening, easy to read, and thoroughly entertaining.
The book was hilarious, motivating, enlightening, easy to read, and thoroughly entertaining.
April 5, 2021
The half of the book where Jesse is training with SEAL are pretty fun and informative, the other half where he tries to convince us that him and his wife are the coolest, richest, most beautiful people on the planet....those are strange.
May 5, 2023
David goggins is a different animal. Honestly really enjoyed listening to this while working out, great advice not only with pushing yourself past conceivable limits, but also in the world of business with Jessie and his wife Sarah Blakey. Would definitely recommend.
November 25, 2019
Sick Book!
Legendary Stories and most of all inspiring!
Legendary Stories and most of all inspiring!
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