If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Hey, so what a fun episode, our boy Chase, right? We were on his show about a month or so ago. EverFord podcast. Great, dude. Yes, really like that guy. Really good. This podcast gets pretty deep, man. It gets pretty deep. We talk about PTSD. We talk about, I mean, there were a few moments there was uncomfortable having these conversations because it got so good. It got so deep. You guys will enjoy it. Chase Tuning has a long history in the military. He's got a great podcast called EverFord. Him and Adam have quite a bit in common. You wouldn't think so first glance, but we had a good conversation and it started getting pretty good. Yeah, it got pretty deep. But I really like the message that he has, right? The message that he has and what he's doing. He's got a cool story. And he's one of my, like as far as podcasters who's interviewed us, I think his flow of the podcast. He does a good job. Yeah, like he's a really good interviewer. So we've talked about, we've highlighted a few guys that have interviewed us and girls that have interviewed us before that, I think are really, really good at interviewing. I think he does a great job. He's one of those guys I have no doubt his podcast can continue to grow and do well. So I'm glad we can do it. For sure. Good message, good podcast. Yeah, glad we connected early on. His podcast, EverFord podcast. His website is Chase Chuning. That's C-H-E-W-N-I-N-G dot com. His website is EverFordApparel dot com. And you can find him on Instagram at ChuningElder. The Elder. The Elder, sorry, Chuning the Elder. So without any further ado, here we are talking to the host of EverFord podcast, Chase Chuning. So I was asking you earlier, your podcast has been on air since January? Yeah, so I launched January 22nd of this year. And here we are December. So, damn, I can't believe it's already been a year. Just about, pretty much, yeah. Wow, is that all you do now? Is that your thing or is it part of a bigger picture? Well, I continue to be vain and try to wear my headphones to not mess up my hair. Yeah, the podcast is definitely my baby. That's my biggest focus all of this year. Actually started like summer last year when I got the concept of it. And then just decided to start interviewing people and push forward. So this year has been the podcast and then I do dabble we're talking about in YouTube a little bit. And as of late, starting October, I launched a private coaching business. So it's what I do full-time as a job, but I just kinda segwayed out with that. And we've got EverFord Radio, EverFord Apparel, and now EverFord Coach.  I know you served before, right? Yes, yes, I did six years active duty in the Army. I enlisted right out of high school. And honestly, that whole time, that period right there was what got me started in the quote, fitness industry. Oh, really? Getting started in the military? Yeah. So you weren't fit or working out or anything like that until you got into a basic training? I was active my whole life. We had, I grew up down in the woods, like in the country and way Southwest Virginia.  We would just run wild, play down in the creek, build forts every day and just go from there.  It's probably the most active job in the world. And when I'm getting injured, when I'm getting medically discharged, and then in that process of wanting needing to really relearn the human body in a different way, versus just being active because this is what I can do, but really truly understanding anatomy, physiology, exercise, science, nutrition, because I was a different person in a different place. And so I just kind of fell in love with it from there. How'd you go about finding that information? Like where did you go? So besides the interwebs and finding all the misinformation out there and kind of just getting my feet wet with a lot of bro science, I went into an exercise science program. So self-discovery, self-learning, the internet, and then went to school. Yeah, got my undergraduate exercise science, took about a year off in between some jobs and stuff, and then went into my master's program, health promotion. Any time I meet somebody who's served in the military for any length of period of time, it's always fascinating to me because I've never done, I didn't serve, neither, none of us have. And it's such a- You serve in different ways. Yeah, okay, but it's different though, right?  How did it change you? How did it shape you? What were your challenges? What's it like? Man, in which way didn't it change me? Did you know that going into it, like were you, because I almost went, I remember thinking like, and I remember what my buddy and I, we were debating in, it was like, I need this, I need direction in my life, like this is gonna help me find that, that's why I almost- I think a lot of people go that route.   I had some idea of what I wanted to pursue and study in college. But I think the big thing that was kind of like the 51% leaning over the fence for me was this idea of legacy. And it was something that my dad did, my grandfather, my uncle, we go way, way back all the way to like Civil War and even, I think even to him, the American Revolution. Oh wow. Yeah, we've got like tunings way, way, way back in like Arlington National Cemetery. Yeah, so that really appealed to me. And I was like, well, if that seems pretty cool right now, versus not really knowing what I wanted to do in school, I was just like, I don't wanna waste my time, I don't wanna waste my money. So yeah, I enlisted actually Christmas break of my senior year in high school. And then about six months later, shipped off to basic training and yeah. Was it what you thought it would be? Yes, again, I kind of had like an insight.  It was just kind of like, hey, choose the best path for you, whatever you do, we'll support. So yeah, I kind of had an idea of what I was going into from the beginning, which I think gave me a leg up, especially in boot camp. My dad definitely was like, training me before I went in kind of thing, physically and mentally.  At what point did you change your mind that you weren't gonna just continue to serve and actually move up the rankings in the army? Like what made you go like, okay, I'm good? It was kind of decided for me. So about four and a half years in, we were talking earlier, I speak Russian. That was my job in the army. I signed up to go into the Intel field. That's a easy language. Oh, totally, it's the easiest thing. I could teach you here when we're done, no problem. Cool. Da. And so, you know, you go through a series of tests and applications before you choose any job in the military, and somehow I made it through this process. The hardest test I've ever taken in my life, this thing's called the D-Lab, the defense language aptitude battery test. And it's literally like a two hour exam of just made up noises and characters and just weird, weird, weird puzzles. And based upon how you score there, if you even pass, they categorize you into a language. So for whatever reason. Oh, what, that's cool. Yeah, so like if you're more of an auditory listener, they'll put you in whatever language. Or if you do really well with like puzzles and looking at pictures, they'll give you like a character language, like Japanese or Chinese or something like that. That's fascinating. That's brilliant, interesting. So your test said Russian. My test said da, send them to Russian. The whole Language Academy is in one place, the DLI right here in Monterey. So I used to live right down the road from you guys pretty much. Oh, wow. Yeah, and so I went in and did that and shit, what was it?  And you didn't want to just keep moving up the ranks. I did. And I went in and I was like, hell, I'm 17. You can do 20 years, retire at 37. Pretty cool.  So about four, four and a half years in, I was really enjoying the Russian thing, sort of kind of not really. And I wanted to kind of flex my soldier muscles a little bit. We all go through the same training, a soldier is a soldier is a soldier, but you all have different jobs. And so I kind of want to take a break from the Russian stuff. I want to go see what it's like to every day just live the soldier life and be the guy over there, as we call it. And so I volunteered, tried to volunteer for a couple of deployments. The first one didn't work out. It wasn't the right rank. So I did the work. Did my studying with the promotion boards, made my way up the ranks. Actually, I wound up separating as an E6, a staff sergeant. I made E6 in just under five years. And anyone listening who's in the military, doing that's really hard.  What does that entail? What is like? So basically an E6 is you would be like a general manager. So basically you would be overseeing either your whole squad or whole platoon, depending upon what your unit looks like. So at a minimum, you'd be looking at about seven to 12 guys that you would be directly be responsible for. Then if you're a platoon leader, you would directly be responsible for anywhere between like 35 to maybe even 16. So you quickly get put into leadership roles, managerial roles. And so did that, started making my way up through the ranks and doing all the necessary steps so that I could go be this idea, this form of a soldier that I thought I wanted to be. And in that process, you have to go through like war game training. So we're out in the field for a few days and I wound up, I was leading my group against what we call the opposing force, the OP4, the fake enemy, so to speak, and just snapped my shit up, man. What did you do? So it wasn't even like anything heavy impact. I was just leading a group, I just moved too fast in the wrong direction, just all things wrong. And I wound up, I tore my hamstring, really, really injured, kind of just like really heavily twisted. I didn't break my back, but just my L4 and L5 just went the wrong way. And from there, just trying to go through the rehab too fast, trying to get put back on the duty roster too soon, wound up re-injuring myself over and over, turned into bigger problems with my hips. And so long story short, I wound up having to have both my hips completely reconstructed. So they yanked me entirely from that mission, that roster. I got put in a med hold unit and I was a patient.  I could walk, go back, do the other side. So for like a year and a half, I was just a patient man.  Oh, it sucked, it sucked. Talk about this all night. Were you depressed through that process? Good question. No, I mean, not really. I mean, in a sense of kind of realizing that this idea of me serving for 20 years, me being soldier chase was totally gone, totally out the window. But I guess because I didn't go into it, so die hard that this is what I want to do and the only thing I want to do with my life, it kind of made it easier to start to separate. So yeah, I went through that first process and then just a lot of rehab, a lot of downtime and just began to kind of think about, okay, what's next, what's next. It's easy to, not easy, but it's easier to imagine and picture the physical challenges with doing that over the course of a year. Obviously, the surgeries, the pain, the rehab, all that stuff.  What was that like for you? So like I was saying earlier, I always knew what it was like to just get up and go and be active and that really, I think, kind of gave me a lot of mental wellness, clarity, whatever you want to call it because the mind feeds the body and the body feeds the mind, I think. And so in that sense, my mind wasn't able to do anything because my body couldn't do anything. And so it, I mean, it kind of sounds kind of cliche but I kind of just always had a really good attitude about it. I mean, I think I immediately knew what was different. It built your character, it sounds like. Yeah, very much so.  Yeah, what kept you strong? I had to be. He's a leadership, your leadership role, right? I mean, to me, I want to know that I love hearing somebody who was in a leadership role at that young of an age, what are some of the things that you learn going through that process? Because that's got to be challenging in your late teens, early 20s. Yeah, I was like 20, 21 at this time. Leading people, right? Yeah, it's weird.  You're literally a kid and you're in charge of other people's lives.  So I think already having that instilled in me that it wasn't about me. Knowing that this isn't just my mission to just abandon, you know, being a soldier or having this job or whatever because they do such an amazing job of getting rid of the I and incorporating the we, you know, they ditched the ego right out of the door, right? The first day of basic training. So I already kind of knew that, you know, I had this bigger mission to serve and it wasn't about me. And at that time, this kind of ties into with the whole ever forth thing, you know, I just lost my dad. And so I was just really driven from the familial aspect of not wanting to, not wanting to let my family down. You know, I wanted to continue to serve. I wanted to, because it was such a big thing to him. Was this while you were going to rehab and stuff that your father passed? Surely, yeah, he passed away in 05. My first surgery was like mid, late 07. So it's like, boom, boom, one thing after another.  And so I've always been kind of driven by the greater good, the bigger mission. And so I think that, you know, in a way really helped. And so it might have been easier for me just to say, screw it and walk away if I didn't really have his legacy, his honor that I wanted to kind of continue down the line if I didn't have, you know, if I wasn't the oldest brother, if I wasn't all these things that I thought it was supposed to be. I mean, who knows, it might have totally changed my outlook on it. And that's where the name ever forward came from? Was it through these experiences? Yeah, yeah, ever forward.  And it was something actually that started in the military. My dad, he was in the army, like I said, his first unit, like every unit you go to, we all have a creed, a saying, and his first unit was ever forward. And so he picked it up from his time in the army. That's where you carried it on. Yeah, exactly. So he brought it home with him, literally. And he instilled in us growing up. And we just kind of just heard our dad say this thing, growing up, didn't really pay much attention to it. But once he got sick, he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig disease, ALS, literally about two, if not three weeks after I left for boot camp. So I started my whole life transition and my life transitioned in a whole other way back home. And so I actually wanted to get out. I dropped paperwork, if you can prove you have a family hardship in the military, that your presence is needed more at home, they'll cut your contract, they'll let you go. And I actually started to do that. But then once my dad found out, he was like, hell no. He flew out to California, I was stationed right at the time while he could still move and still talk and spent literally four days with me on base in hotels, just literally telling me why I should not stop against him. Teaching me and showing me what it was like to live a life ever forward, what it really, really meant. And so I think those four days, that conversation, to really kind of go back to your question was just what I kept latching onto of why I wanted to keep pushing forward and why I didn't want to just stay on the couch and just say F my life and just let these injuries and let this set back get the better of me. He sounded like a pretty awesome guy. My dad? Yeah. He was the coolest man. He was my best friend, he was my mentor. Before I even knew what it was, he was my sergeant. He was the guy that I went to for answers and gave me questions and answers when both were needed. And I still speak the highest of him and he just literally instilled in me and my whole family what we should be and what honor and integrity and selfless service and all these things that I picked up in the military for sure that kind of really sharpened that skill set but it all started with him. Any mistakes that you remember being in leadership role at that young of an age?  I think one of the biggest mistakes being out now and especially in the military that leaders make even just being a manager, I don't think you're necessarily a leader but just thinking that you're a leader. So like I'm in this leadership position so therefore what I say is right. And so many times, man, I was wrong. So many times, I would see that so many times with other people that maybe were the same rank or above me and we would call it, they just hide behind the rank.  You are literally just because you maybe joined six months ahead of me or went to the promotion board a month ahead of me. Like you have this rank but you don't deserve it. You're just in this position. You're not telling me how to be a better person, how to be a better soldier. You're just telling me because you can tell me. How common is it? I know in real life that's very common. We talk about this, I used to talk about this all the time with other managers and peers that I worked with. Just like very small percentage I believed really should be in that leadership role. Is it like that with even when you serve too? Is it? Absolutely, I will say it. I think that I was blessed and fortunate enough to have some amazing leaders, some guys that for all intents and purposes probably crossed the boundary of what we call fraternization. Hey, you're really high up. I'm not quite there, so we shouldn't be having this conversation kind of thing. But I think the guys who recognize that there's a connection, there's a way to instill something of worth in another person, they'll, I'll never forget I had this one first sergeant, a first sergeant's like the top basically. I was at E-6 there and E-7 acting sometimes can mean E-8, so like years in ranks in between us.  Here's where I'm messing up, here's where you're messing up and just shoot it to your raw, man. Yeah, that seems so uncommon, right? Especially in that environment, like. It is. Yeah, cause you earn those ranks, right? Exactly. It's like I'm in this authoritative position, so I mean, was that, that was uncommon then, right? So uncommon. Yeah. So uncommon, because I think a lot of people will take a lot of pride in the fact that there are certain rank, which in some instances, you deserve it.  Like I said, I made E-6 in less than five years and that's really hard to do. So a lot of times people just get caught up in your accomplishments and not really what that means. Like it's not, you don't have an extra chevron or an extra shiny thing on your chest that just means you're better than everybody. Like this is a great power. This also has a great responsibility. Leadership is an earned once, always earned. Yes. You're not gonna get people to follow you if you stop leading. It's just the way it is. I think people forget that. I've worked for managers like that where they maybe at one point we're doing great things as leaders and then they just stopped and they lose the respect of the people underneath them and when you lose their respect, you're no longer effective as a leader. What is your, with your podcast, with what you're doing now, what is your larger purpose? Like what's driving you behind all this? I mean, obviously to live a life ever forward has, for lack of a better term, kind of become like a catchphrase. It went from just ever forward now that I have to put it into words in a podcast. It's not just a cool t-shirt or whatever but it has turned into an act, has turned into a service. And so I think being able to just talk about it is one thing but then also to be able to live it and push forward with my dreams and aspirations and share those and also share the setbacks and the failures and the rough spots and just having that brutal honesty. That's what ever forward's all about. And my brother does it with the apparel line so that people can literally walk around and share it and then with the podcast and the coaching, it's all encompassing. So we have different avenues of this business and this brand but it all comes under the same umbrella, the same two words. Let's talk about what that's like to start a podcast and build a business like you are right now. I mean, you're fresh in it right now and we have a lot of people that are listening that actually either one wanna start a podcast or wanna build a coaching business. What are some of the things that you've learned in this past year? The more you know, the more you don't know. I mean, you never stop learning and the second you think you've mastered something you're wrong, just stop, take a step back and figure out where your ego is getting in the way. It's just also, I mean delegation, huge for sure. I mean, I think any entrepreneur listening right now, you guys I'm sure can relate is you want to just make sure everything succeeds so quickly and so well that you just try to be involved with everything. Wouldn't you say that's one of the hardest things for a lot of leadership type personalities to deal with? Your delegation. You're giving things up, right? Exactly. There's a difference to I think in giving things up and entrusting things with other people. Absolutely. But you know, it's hard. We don't always recognize that. It always just initially seems like, I gotta give this up or like, I'm not gonna know this is done right. But you know, that's where trusting and having the right people surrounding you and part of that journey, I think can be even better because they're gonna have an insight and objective perspective that you probably don't have. So yeah, I mean, definitely, you're not always the smartest person in the room. Just always remember that for sure. Who are you talking to when you're doing your podcast? In other words, are you thinking yourself like, like sometimes when I'm talking on the podcast, I'm thinking of young kid who's just getting into fitness, kind of like I was, who's got the wrong information, who maybe have insecurities about their bodies and I'm trying to talk to that person or sometimes I feel like I'm talking to the soccer mom who's super stressed out and just wants to feel better or is there someone in particular or a group of people in particular you feel like you're talking to? Yes, sometimes I talk to soccer moms and then my wife yells at me, but that's usually just when I go to sleep. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, hey girl. Yeah, but, talking to you, yeah. I think, I think I'm probably talking to my former self because- Who is that? Yeah, I think that's a good question. Someone who, someone who's a little bit lost, but a little bit thinks they're on the right path, you know, they're pursuing something that either they, they think they should be doing, but also partially something they want to be doing, but you're not quite sure.  You know, taking a step is better than taking no step. And particularly with, you know, my story and my podcast, you know, we're in the fitness and nutrition and self-help and health categories. So I have to always kind of keep that in mind. And I always think it comes back to, to your health. And so to me, that means a lot of different things. And so me talking to myself, imagining me as my own avatar kind of thing, is that, and this is someone who recognizes that I need to be taking care of myself. And that means physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, all the above. And I can say that wholeheartedly now. Back then, I was just like, I need to go, I need to go to gym, need to lift weights, need to look cool, right kind of thing. And so my efforts are to bring about all of these nutrition and fitness and mindset, guests and topics so that my former self and anyone else listening right now can pick up on what's intriguing and appealing to them right now, but also kind of something kind of shiny or intriguing can lure them into another aspect that maybe they're neglecting. And I neglected a lot of areas in my life, the former self avatar, for sure. What's one of the most impactful things you've learned as far as what you were doing fitness wise versus then now what you're expressing, like something that you could have changed and told yourself going through that process? That it's okay to do what you want, not because everyone else is doing it. I think when I first started really get into what we all consider now, the fitness industry, it's just like you just go to gym, lift weights, get jacked, get shredded, whatever, because it's cool and hot and sexy. But I mean, everybody is different, literally everybody. And so I think, Sal, it's used as it, right? Your body's always gonna be your best coach. I think I picked up on that recently. People need to remember that. And so find a cool program that you like or find a good gym buddy or find a good gym or find an open space in your basement, whatever. And just listen to your body. Try stuff out. If your body likes lifting weights, cool.  It's so hard to listen. People don't know how to listen to their body. How long did it take you to learn to do that? 10, 12 years, yeah, at least a decade, yeah. I feel like the military almost teaches you probably not to, though, right? Don't they teach you like power through?   Mental discipline on point, yeah. Exactly, you know, drive on, the mission is priority. And that takes priority, you have to accomplish that. And in order to accomplish that mission, your body has to be in the most incredible shape possible. You have to have peak performance, high endurance.  So it's definitely mindset and physical performance. Yeah, for sure. There's definitely some merit and benefit to being able to sometimes, I hate to say it, not listen to your body or push yourself to limits that you did not think were possible. And I think, you know, military training, I mean, they're excellent at this. I mean, they have to be, obviously the goal is to turn people into effective soldiers and effective at their job. And it could be what determines whether or not you live or die in a particular situation.  That must be a conflicting message for you and your brain, right? Cause you've been trained that way for so long, but then you also know. Or do they work together? I think, you know, honestly, I would probably have to separate the two. I mean, if I'm in that environment, when I was soldier chase versus when I'm just chase, chase now it's, you have to, you have to kind of have that switch in the military. You have to prioritize mission, mission, mission and just, you know, tell your body no sometimes. But you know, now it definitely took a while to kind of learn that separation to learn when, yeah, I can push myself forward. I can push myself more because it's just my fear or the uncomfortableness of it that is kind of holding me back. Not the actual lack of ability or technical skill to do whatever it's having to do. That's a tough one to learn. Yeah, yeah. And so I think anyone listening, you know, in the military, yeah, that for sure, you know, takes precedent sometimes. And sometimes is it wrong?  You know, this is a great topic because I think a lot of times people can look at or we tend to look at situations and decide that was a good thing, that was a bad thing. And on the surface, your injury, your re-injury, the rehab process sounds terrible. However, you wouldn't be doing what you're doing or you wouldn't be this person now. Do you view it as a gift or does it seem like? Man, have you guys been stalking me? No. Maybe. Definitely online. Just soccer moms, right? Yeah. You know, it's really funny and again, this just goes to show that, I don't know if I would quite say I believe, you know, everything happens for a reason, everything happens and it's up to us to put reason to it, to really learn from it. Great way to put it. I would love to take credit for that. I think either my coach or someone I was just talking to recently mentioned that to me. I think I said it first. Actually, I'm just kidding. I'll take it back. If we get mad at that out. This is one of our podcasts. Chase Tuning, copyright 2078. That's one of the biggest things that I've been going through lately and I think there's been this next evolution that has definitely transferred into the next evolution of whatever Ford is as a brand, as a business, as a podcast, as whatever and that it is finding the most painful, difficult gifts in every situation. So I'm doing a Vlogmas series right now. Have you guys ever heard of Vlogmas? You basically, 25 days of Christmas leading up, you do a video every day for YouTube. Vlogmas? Vlogmas, yeah. And I thoroughly regret it. It's so painstaking. Dude, you are committed. Sounds awesome. No, it's totally right. Do you have a song for it? Vlogmas. No, you should. Can you wrap me one real quick? Yeah, I'll work on it, dude, I'll work on it. But one of the videos I put up the other day was I was just like looking for us. I mean, what am I gonna talk about? And so I was in my car.  And I keep my dad's dog tags hanging from the rear view mirror. And I was like, boom, there I go.  I've shared with maybe about two other people my entire life the dark origin of what ever forward means to me. And honestly really going back to when my dad was visiting for four days, you know, what also kind of saved my life. The gift that I learned was that my dad had to die. My dad had to teach us this lesson. My dad had to share with us this value, this honor, this legacy of what we can do now. And it wouldn't have happened any other way. And his passing, and I wish it, of course, didn't happen in a less painful way, but the gift that I got out of that was this lesson learned of giving my life meaning and what it's like to live it, walk it, talk it, breathe it and share it with others. And so what I talked about in this video was that, you know, the reason why I was in that place while I was in that training incident where I wound up getting injured that has set me down this path now is because I volunteered, I was trying to volunteer to be deployed because I did not want to come back alive. I wanted to die the honorable death. I wanted to be what I thought was this honor, soldier, glory in the battlefield kind of thing because I just lost my dad. I just lost my best friend. God, when did you recognize that? I knew what I was doing. I would say like in the back of my head, I was kind of like, like this dark passenger, you know, Dexter shout out.   This would be an easy way out. And then at the time, like the military just upped our life insurance plan from 200 to $400,000.  And so I saw this easy way out of all my problems. And that was why I really wholeheartedly, now looking back, decided to pursue that option. And it wasn't meant to be. I, you know, try twice. The first time apparently wasn't listening.  But I made this video about talking about that and what it was like to really battle the idea of your own mortality and looking at life or death.  That's just not who I am. But I recognized that I didn't really care. Well, in a sense, you kind of almost did. Yeah, I guess so, yeah.  If someone else did, it wouldn't have bothered me. Right, right. Yeah, so I thought I was doing the right thing. At the same time, taking the easy way out from all this pain and suffering that I was going through that I was just too afraid to just take on. And what I'm looking at now is looking at that gift, looking at all the pain and the suffering mentally, emotionally, physically that I had to go through in those couple of years of losing my dad, being apart from my family, being a patient for a year and a half, learning how to walk again twice and having my entire life planned pretty much scrubbed and having to start over. And it took 10 years before I could ever talk about my dad or be in a hospital or even watch an episode of Grey's Anatomy without completely breaking down. I always make this joke. I just never joke about mental health, but I'm the only guy, one of the only guys that I know that went through six years of active duty to walk out with PTSD and a mild TBI while never actually being downrange. I have diagnosed mild PTSD from the horrific scenes and things that I went through with my dad. And I went through years of, on and off, years of therapy and working with someone.  And all these things set me down the path that I'm on now. And it took me 10, damn, 10 years to really look at this as a gift to know that, hey Chase, if you didn't go through all this shit, you wouldn't understand what you're talking about now.  It was because of getting comfortable with the uncomfortable that I can speak it, live it.  You just named something that I dealt with before and in my opinion, it was one of the hardest things I ever dealt with which was I got addicted to painkillers when I went through my ACLM cell. So did you actually get addicted to the pills? At the time, I didn't recognize it was an addiction. Looking back, 100%, yeah. Right, right. So what was that? Tell me about that whole process and then coming off because that's a motherfucker. Dude, so unreal, I can 100% clearly understand where people are talking about, oh, I had no idea. I'm not an addict, but I just need another pill. It's so easy, especially when you can legitimize it in your own head, as far as like, I'm on the surgery, yeah, absolutely. And after my second surgery, I semi-reinjured my hip. I moved too quickly, like two weeks after the surgery and sent myself back to the hospital. So I was on like pill form, morphine. I was on every narcotic, every pain medicine. What was the highest you got up to?  Now, did you scale up that? Did you start with Vicodin or soma or Percocets? And then it wasn't enough. Talk about that, people don't, people don't, like I remember- It's so much more common than before really. It's very common. It's the elephant in the room that nobody likes to talk about because it's prescribed all over the world. It's widely accepted because we have- It's Dr. Candy. Right. So talk to me about what that was like, how you started to scale up. Cause I went from somebody having, this is kind of, I'll give you the short version of my story, is, you know, tour my ACL, MCL. Doctor prescribed me Norcos. I start taking them on the pill bottle. It says take every four hours. So I'm taking about four or five in a day. And I'm telling the doctor, like, I'm still in lots of pain. They're like, well, you need to stay ahead of the pain. So take it every three hours or so. So now I'm up to like seven of these things. And then I decided when I was through the injury and I rehabbed myself six months later, I just would stop. And I went through this with withdrawals. I didn't even know it was withdrawals until what happened was I started, I got all the side effects, right? Snivels, shakes, hot, cold, sweat. G&I tears? Yeah.  Real bad, right? And I just thought all of a sudden, when I, that day, I'll remember, forget that day, I thought that all of a sudden I got the flu really bad. And I remember, you know, toughing it out the first night and just feeling miserable the next day. And then I was like, fuck, I just need to sleep. And I still had some of the Norcos in my cabinet. I take one and whoa, I felt amazing. I felt like I could go out and go lift. And I was, it caught rid of all this.  Like my body has become dependent on this opiate. And that's when I started diving in, researching this and that. So what was that like for you? It was a slippery slope. And it was, again, I never really thought anything of it because I wasn't just taking them for fun, right? I had like, hey, I have the surgery, the doctor, the approving authority is telling me this is what I need to do part of my recovery process. And so I was like, okay, I'll do it. And yeah, there was a lot of pain for sure. And then these little happy pills make it all better, right? And then like you said, you know, every couple of hours turns into, well, I need it sooner. And again, my doctor says it's okay. So therefore it must be okay. And so just started recognizing that I'm having to take more and more to get the same effect.  And the body just wants to stay efficient, you know.  But it's just, it's so easy. And so you start taking more and you start feeling better for a while and then it slips up. And so then you don't want to feel the pain again. So it's just, one thing feeds another. And so literally for about three, four months, I just started with percocet and Vicodin and hydromorphone, fentanyl patches. Like they even gave out literal candy, like these happy pills. It was fentanyl pops. Like suckers that were these three months. God, yeah. That's creepy.  Yeah, because like so many people have like, oh, I can't take a pill or... Here's a lollipop. Exactly, yeah. And so it became easy. And so therefore, you know, who wants to do the hard work when it comes to pain management, right?  And I want to go take some more pills, but I'm totally useless, so I need to go lie down. I took the pills, I'll never forget this day. I took a couple of extra of the medication. I started getting loopy. I don't really remember going to bed, but I remember waking up with my girlfriend at the time, hovering over top of me. I was like prisoner in my own body. I wanted, looking back, I had a seizure. Grand mall, I think it is, where I was like semi-conscious, but I couldn't move my body. I was inhaling, but I wasn't exhaling. My chest was just concaving. I couldn't move. I was like rigid, tense, freezing up. Terrifying. Absolutely. Like cold, I was drenched. I swear to God, I thought someone dumped a bucket of water on me. What had happened was the medication kicked in. I didn't quite make it to bed, apparently. I wound up hitting, falling down, completely knocking myself unconscious. Pretty bad head wound off the corner of the table. Gave myself the mild TBI I was talking about, really back in cushion, mixed on top of probably three doses already that time of pain meds. Not a good place to be. So the seizure induced. I wound up, next thing I know, I woke up, I was in the ER and they're like, yeah, this is what happens when you're on three to four months of pain medication.  Now, how was it coming off of all that? I mean, were you in rehab or were you in the hospital? What did you have to do? So I was in the hospital, I think barely 24 hours. They kind of monitored me, gave me some more pain meds. Of course, they had to check my hips out because of fall, I was like two, three weeks after surgery, couldn't mess up the pins and stuff. So I got clear, they sent me home and they began to immediately down-regulated my medication. So I recognize, and again, I think this is where I think I have a strong suit and recognizing where like Chase, this is good versus Chase, you need to stop doing this kind of thing. Like I have pretty good awareness. I feel like I've always had a good sense of that.   So they down-regulated my pain meds and I just had to deal with it a little bit more because I was like, I don't want to wind up back in the hospital. Any time you have a seizure, they revoke your license. I went a few months without being able to drive and it sucked, but I just realized that the pain now is better than what could happen if I go back to previous habits. Do you remember how long it took you to completely wing off and be fine? I was on some form of pain pill, I would say for about six to eight months, whether it was just like tram at all or like super high level horse pill, Tylenol or Advil or whatever for a long time. And then I even started venturing out, this is where I really started learning more about the human body and stuff and put me on the path where I am now was I was looking at acupuncture and dry needling and prolotherapy, which is something I never heard of which honestly sucked even more than I think the- What is that? I've never heard of that before. So prolotherapy is, I imagine it kind of like dry needling where basically they numb up the area of pain around.   So we're gonna go on. We're just gonna agitate- Induce inflammation? Exactly.  That sounds fun. Yeah, they were literally just going with this needle and just like, just go to town. It's similar to dry needling. Yeah, but at the same time, they would inject this semi-saline solution stuff to- Now is this Western medicine approach or is this an Eastern medicine? This was an MD that administered it, but he only practiced Eastern medicine if that made sense, yeah. So they're stimulating an immune response or a response to heal the body? That was the goal and I will say- Did it work? I gave it like two or three tries. I could recognize the benefit from it, but the process wasn't worth it to me. Not at all, not at all. I would just like bend over- Not looking forward to it, huh?  So I was like, you know what? Again, I'll just embrace this stuff. I'll deal with it. Yeah, wow. I appreciate you being able to talk about all these difficult things because there's a lot of people out there who are going through similar issues and it's tough to talk about. It's very difficult to talk about, let alone talk about- Yeah. ...the podcast. Talk a little bit about the PTSD that you experienced because I think it's kind of like a buzz term now, right? People hear about all the time, but I feel like I almost went through a little bit after I had somebody who I lost very close to me who I watched them deteriorate from cancer and I identified some symptoms after that I think were probably PTSD of some sort. What was that like for you? The after effects are always amazing, isn't it? Hindsight being 20-20. Nobody will fool you better than you will. That's the thing. When you're in something, you're so in it, you don't see it. You're closing yourself, right? This is where, for me at least, this is where I find value and it's very difficult, very difficult, but this is where I find value in people around me that I trust.  You'll objectively look at it. Yeah, I'm wrong and they're right. I don't see it right now, but I trust this person. When you were in it, did anybody help you with that or how did you identify it? So when I was in it, it was a little bit more obvious because it was literally happening. I was around friends, around family, and it kind of made sense, you know, like it's the immediate grieving process. So of course, people are gonna be emotional or whatever, but I had to quickly suppress it. And this is one of the things I talked about why I think people, the immediate first inkling that you have about, am I questioning mortality? Am I just suppressing feelings? If you think you need mental help, go see a mental health therapist immediately. Don't wait 10 years like I did. I had to go back to the military. So I had to immediately suppress those feelings and emotions. Now, could I have helped sooner? Sure, yeah, I mean, they have therapists, they have doctors that could help us out. And I did see them for a short period, but I went back to having to be a soldier. I went back to not having to let my emotions and feelings sacrifice the integrity of this mission or my job or leading others, whatever. You masked it, right? Exactly, yeah, I had to mask it. Yeah, shout out Lewis House. But so for the next six years, you know, I used the excuse, I did use the excuse of, I don't have time to deal with this right now.  What would it look like when it would pop up? So the biggest trigger for me was just seeing anyone in a hospital, like particularly in a hospital bed, because how my father's illness progressed so quickly, every time I would come back home, which I would try to take three day, four day weekends every month or so, every time I came back, he was worse and worse and worse.  And so, you know, the body likes to kind of just suppress things. And so anytime I would think of my dad, I had a hard time kind of just going back to that spot. But when I saw it, it immediately took me back. I would see a movie, a TV show. I couldn't even walk into a hospital because I would break down, I would freeze up and seeing that, it immediately took me back to the day that he passed away. Luckily, I was able to get some emergency leave when I was home, my father's last 30 days. And I was with him his last, almost 48 hours, he was alive. But then walking into the room and seeing your hero, your best friend, seeing this person that you literally watched die, which is wither away day after day, month after month, it would immediately come flooding back. And I would just become terrified. I would become emotionally unstable. I would just laugh, cry, freeze, shake, have anxiety in tax. And I would just completely lose track of where I was. And so people would have to snap me out of it. Or even sometimes when I was driving, if I would hear somebody talk about a similar story, I would have to pull over because I just became unsafe behind the wheel. And it would just immediate flashbacks. And PTSD, I don't have an exact definition, but it's like when something triggers a previous experience, it's not just that current experience that you process. It's the old one. Exactly, you're back there.  And so that's what it was. And so it wasn't just recognizing this bad illness that someone else may be going through, but it was me every time walking back in and seeing my father, seeing my family around him crying, seeing just this person that I grew up with for 1920 years just be completely unrecognizable. ALS, you atrophy everywhere. The mind stays sharp. It doesn't affect the mind at all, which is think why, it's so cruel.  How many people do you think suffer from some sort of a PTSD and it just expresses itself differently in different people? Do you think there's a lot more than people realize? I think a lot more than people realize, yeah, because if you're not able to separate this bad experience that's going on right now from what you went through, then I think that's PTSD popping up a little bit in any mild way, shape or form.  What makes it more difficult is the fear of the experience, more so than the experience itself. I'm so afraid of feeling that again or I'm so afraid of... That's why I said I would avoid hospitals. Yeah, I wouldn't watch TV shows. I wouldn't like scrubs. Like yeah, that's a little bit funnier sometimes. So house, Grey's Anatomy. Like any movie, I would go to a movie and if there was like a hospital scene, I would have to get up and leave. Are you looking at some of the research that they're doing with PTSD and yeah, Psylocybin and MDMA and some of these other compounds? But I could kind of maybe understand whether trying to like induce that same experience to better walk you through it or like what's the sign? So it's pretty fascinating actually. So obviously these are schedule one or two drugs, highly illegal but the people who are actually putting the funding behind a lot of these studies, believe it or not, is the military because we've now had some long running occupations wars and so we're getting a lot of soldiers coming back with PTSD and so they're actually investing money in figuring out better ways of doing therapy with some of these individuals and they're finding that like MDMA, which is the popular drug in Ecstasy or Mali or whatever or Psylocybin, which is magic mushrooms, they're finding that one or two sessions with those substances is equivalent to years worth of therapy. Really? Yeah, absolutely. I actually, MAPS, which I know that's our fitness program but there's actually an organization called MAPS that studies this called the, or it's an organization around the study of these substances called the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies and it's all scientific, it's all science-based and they're finding remarkable results. I'm very much into that, into learning about that because I think it's absolutely fascinating. I think there's a future in therapy but my best interpretation of what they're studying or what they're finding is that under the influence of certain substances, it gives you the empathy, it puts you in a state where you're so empathetic to your own situation that you lose the fear of going into, not that it doesn't hurt, right? Because here's the thing like when you have something traumatic happen to you, whether it's something that happens over a long course of a long period of time or happens one instant, when something traumatic happens to you, your mind and your body remembers that feeling and you become so afraid of both that thing happening again but more so the feeling of how you felt when that thing happened, you become so afraid of it that you, it's another layer on top of whatever happened and it imprints, it almost imprints in your body in your mind and what prevents us from processing that is the fear of it and so I think what these substances do is they make, they give people enough empathy or at least they create this feeling of empathy where they're like, okay, I'm gonna go into this, I can talk about this, I'm not so afraid to process this at the moment because I feel different than I normally do so let me talk about this thing and then they process it and they truly process it versus, if you ever go to therapy for a traumatic experience, it can take years before you even talk about the experience. People say, well, why is therapy takes so long? Well, it took me three years just to talk about the time I was abused, like I couldn't even talk about it for three years. So fascinating. It expresses itself in different ways too. That's what's tough about it, I think there's not like this comment like, oh, you have PTSD so you notice these symptoms, it's like you could be suffering from something totally different. I dealt with it as a eight-year-old, seven to eight years old after my dad committed suicide and we had no idea and I didn't even know what it was. I all of a sudden at seven years old, I began shitting my pants. I don't know where.   You didn't want to do this.  No, you're old enough to know that.  And it's just adding to the layer. Yeah, I'm not processing it. Even my mom's not processing it.   Right, right, right. So, you know, you don't realize, it wasn't until years of therapy and stuff later on of that coming out that they actually attribute that to my dad's death and each one of the siblings and people handled it in different ways. So, that's the scary part is you don't, sometimes people don't even realize. The way I look at it with these situations, at least for me, is, you know, obviously, we're in the field, we communicate, right? That's what podcasters do. We're communicating to people and I feel like going through these things as difficult as they are and as challenged as they are and like we said, we look back and look at them as gifts. It gives us, at least for me, it makes me more empathetic. So, now I can, I'll sit down and listen and feel what someone may be feeling when they're trying to communicate something which makes me far more effective as a communicator myself, far more effective at my job. Do you find that? That right there, I was just gonna say, that's, you know, I definitely find that.  You know, it's becoming empathetic and recognizing that a lot of times what people are talking about is not really what they're talking about. And the fact that, like you just said, Sal, you know, we go to therapy sometimes and don't ever talk about, or not for a long time, talk about what you really need to be talking about. And it's because of the fear. I mean, who wants to just be afraid all the time? Who wants to just stay uncomfortable? But it's only in that fear, it's only in getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, are you ever gonna progress?   So I just, a couple years ago, went through a divorce, right? I was married for 15 years and I have two children, very difficult time. And something that helped me was a quote or a phrase that I've heard several times before, but I never really understood it. And it's, it goes like this. The only way out is through, right? And I've heard that before, didn't make any sense. The obstacle is the way. And I thought to myself, and so what I did is I actually pictured, I actually envisioned what my challenges were and it looked like hell.  There is no other path. I can't go above it, I can't go around it.  And so you just gotta find the courage to walk through that.    It sucks because you gotta go through it. Of course, if there was a way we couldn't, but then again, again, would you be who you are? And it's funny, because we work in fitness and I know you work in self-improvement and in fitness, that's what your podcast is about. And when you're dealing with obesity, people who are overweight or people who aren't taking care of themselves, when I first became a trainer, I remember thinking to myself, like, God, why doesn't this person just stop eating shitty?  Stop eating shitty. Math, right? Just do it. Just start walking, start working out, stop eating shitty and then it's done. It's not that hard, it's not that big of a deal.  But what I didn't truly understand, what I didn't truly empathize was. Psychological piece. That whatever they're going through, the obesity, the health issues, the lack of mobility, the issues with their appearance, all that stuff. Just an expression of something going on deep down. That pain, that pain is less than whatever pain they're running from. Exactly. It's literally, they say how alcohol and drugs aren't the solution. They actually are, for that particular individual, that is the solution. Now it's not a great solution, but to them it's better than- It's an escape. Yeah, exactly. It helps them disconnect. So I just, so I have a friend who I just talked to yesterday. This is, I totally forgot about this. I want to bring this up. You have a friend? Yeah, I have a friend. That's it. We're done.   And he's really obese, like severely, like a hundred pounds overweight.  Well, I guess he went and got gastric bypass to lose weight and everybody was like okay, well maybe he's gonna be a better guy and this is gonna totally solve issues. Well, he did the gastric bypass over the course of a few months or whatever afterwards lost a hundred pounds and comes to work with a bottle of what looks like water but is vodka and is now drinking at work and is no different than they were before except that they're lighter. And it's just highlighting what we're talking about. Like there's something there that they're not addressing and that was just eating food that was their solution for that. Food is safe, alcohol is safe or maybe not safe is the right word but it's comforting, safer, exactly. It's the easy way out. It's the way that I can just endure this thing without actually having to endure this thing. And this is one of the biggest things that I walk people through when I'm coaching them whether it's going through a life obstacle or they're significantly overweight is that they talk about all these things, right? Or like, oh, I couldn't work out because of this or I overate because of this reason. Well, you most likely know all these things. So when people present all of these obstacles and fears I'm like, you are literally giving yourself the answers to your own test.  There's no surprise. There's no sudden left turn. You know exactly what you need to do. You know exactly how to study. Life is giving you your answers ahead of time and we're too afraid to pay attention. We're too scared. We're too whatever because there's an easier way out. You can stare directly into your own hell and most of the time, most of the time you can see through it and you can see what that life looks like on the other side. You can see what a life 100 less pounds looks like. You can see what life on the other side of a breakup can look like. But you know what?  Yeah, I don't know. Dude, I think a lot of people have a hard time seeing through it. I think a lot of people... Oh, they fool themselves. Yeah. They do. The stories we tell ourselves, man. The stories we tell ourselves.  I mean, I think to a certain extent we all suffer from this or gravitate towards something that makes us less present and disconnect with. And that could be, we've talked about drugs, but it could be as simple as scrolling on Instagram and searching for dopamine rushes to get likes and friends and... Scroll hit, scroll hit, scroll hit, scroll hit. I mean, it doesn't necessarily have to. And I think so when you get caught up in it, you don't even realize it. And I think a lot of us, I mean, I catch myself still and I'm like, well, what am I detaching from right now that I got in a lot of times because I have something I need to be doing. I should be doing this and he'd be doing that. I don't really want to do that. So I do something that just totally numbs my mind and that could be smoking cannabis, that could be drinking something, that could be popping pills, that could be scrolling up and down on social media. And you know, man, that's exactly what I think a big part of what I was talking about before and sharing that this kind of dark origin of Everett Ford was that I was able to latch on to this brand, this meaning, this purpose of how I show up every day because that was my mask. That was my easy way through. It was so easy to just be like, oh yeah, cool. Like people like what I'm doing, people like I'm saying. I can just keep doing that. But I wasn't being honest with myself.  And I was using that as a way to not deal with what I really needed to deal with. And I was looking back at this situation, what happened to me physically, what happened to me mentally, emotionally and this loss. And I wasn't recognizing the gift in it all. And so I was doing this thing, but it wasn't with true purpose and intent and meaning. It was my mask, but it was just so easy because it was this positive mask, right? It was this cool thing that me and my family and my brother were all doing. And I was able to put that affront up. And like I said, the last one to two years, especially since I got married, my wife, she's amazing.  She will always know me better than myself. She has helped me through this, working with my coach and being honest with her in this process has dramatically increased my business and my professional development and my fitness and just how I show up every day. Even in something that's seemingly positive, maybe not becoming an alcoholic, maybe not putting on a hundred extra pounds, you can not deal with things in positive ways to seemingly positive. That's how people get addicted to exercise. That's the big one. Oh yeah, seriously. Yeah, exactly, yeah. That's the big one. Favorite guests that you've had so far on your show. I know you're only a year in, but you've had quite a few guests, right? Yeah, I've been fortunate enough to have some amazing people on. I gotta say, I always love connecting with Josh Trent. I know you guys have had him on the bonus course. He's such a great guy. He's a great interviewer too. Great interviewer, great interviewer. Him and I think we're cut from the same cloth and he and a few other people who podcast are one of the big reasons why I got into it because I was like, you know what?  I just tried to do it and I did it. So Josh was amazing. And honestly, I actually had on my wife, which I think was really cool. We did a couple.  We did a couple's Q and A. We still need to do that. Everyone keeps asking us to bring it. Oh my God. I get asked that. We need nervous to do that every day. Yeah, there's that something you're like, yeah, no problem. Yes and no, because even if it makes me look good or makes me kind of look not so good, she'll shoot it to you straight. And so some of the questions we got were kind of like. She sounds a lot like my wife. Yeah, so I mean, she was brutal honestly, exactly straight shooter for sure. Do your downloads reflect your favorites or did you have one that you have certain episodes that just did way better download wise compared to others? I definitely think those two particularly correlate for sure on one of my higher downloaded ones. One of the ones that's got the most downloads was, Justin, if you're listening to this man, I'm gonna give you a shout out. One of my sort of kind of coworkers, he is a chiropractor by trade but he works in their deep tissue myofascial release therapy company. And we talked about, which I thought was gonna be tricky about low back pain but we really talked about not just about it but treatment and stuff like that, which is hard to do I think in the podcast format. I think video is better for that to walk people through but yeah, that was one of the surprising ones. So I think that just goes to show that topic, like we were talking about before with topic doesn't always equate to great success in a YouTube video or a podcast download. It's that, how visually does it look or how does it sound? Is this professional great? Or with him and I, we just have a great rapport. So I think people connected with that looking back on it but at the same time is a great topic. Did you find a mine pump before Josh trend or after when did you first come across to us? I found you guys through wellness force, yeah. Very cool, thanks Josh. Yeah, good to have you. Looking ahead in the future, what do you guys got planned? What are your goals in the future? Man, so taking over the world. Cool. Absolutely, yeah. We're gonna have to fight over that. Yeah. We're gonna have to put our stake in too, yeah. Let me rephrase that. I wanna take over the world with all of you with me. There we go.  I mean, I love your format. I love how you have Justin, Sal, Adam, three totally different lives who came together at a unique point for a reason and you guys, here you are man, you're talking your truth, you're sharing what works, what doesn't and so many people connect with that and one of my greatest gifts that I've realized is that I'm really, really good at connecting with people who are way more successful than me and that comes in a lot of different forms. People who are physically stronger. I'm in the quote unquote fitness industry. Well, you know what? I stand right next to people who out dead lift me all the time. My brother and a lot of other people. You got a healthy ego man. Exactly, and I love that though.   I think drive is one of the most contagious things in the world and looking back a few years ago why I was kind of dicking around and I was like, I kind of want to do this, kind of want to do that, don't really know but the more and more I became involved with people who had their shit together and knew what they wanted to do, it helps me and to know whether it's, I'm working out with people who are 10 times stronger than me. Being this, having this incredible opportunity coming on Mind Pump, guys who are more successful on paper, quote unquote, maybe in the podcast world or when I do a YouTube collab with people who just have hundreds of thousands of subscribers and I'm sitting at like barely 19.  It's a great attitude. You're echoing what we talk about all the time. Echo, you guys want to be back? Echo. Thanks man, thanks for coming on the show, brother. Guys, it's been a privilege and honor. Justin, Sal, Adam, thank you guys so much. The second you guys, like, yeah, come on out.  I'll put my flight. So like, don't just be polite with me here but I want to say I really find value in your truth. I find value in what you share and your raw fitness truth, what you guys share was honestly a big kind of catalyst whether I recognize it or not at the time of sharing my truth and I want to just hope, I want to hope that this helps other people live their truth, speak their truth or even just take a step back and think, what am I not facing?  Exactly, yeah. So you guys keep killing it. It's going to help me keep killing it and ever forward, brothers. Appreciate it, brother. Check out YouTube, Mind Pump TV, post new videos all the time. In fact, I think after this podcast we may go film a YouTube video with you, Jason. Let's do it. I got my camera, let's roll. Excellent. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes Maths Anabolic, Maths Performance and Maths Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump.


Hello, Columbia, and welcome to This Week in the City. Highlights brought to you from the Public and Media Relations Department. I'm your host, Alicia Utsi. Starting out on Monday, April 2nd, the week kicks off National Community Development Week. And here in our city, our community development staff have planned a two-part, home-buyer workshop free for citizens. The workshop will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, and you can register by visiting our website at columbisc.net or by calling 545-3373. On Wednesday, April 4th, the Office of Business Opportunities will sponsor a Minority Business Opportunity Conference. This conference is free for those who would like to participate, and all business owners and entrepreneurs are welcome to attend. Call 545-4433 for more information, and you can visit our website for more details. As we roll into Friday, April 6th, come out for the Community Development Block Party in honor of National Community Development Week. Starting at 1130 and ending at 230, a free block party will be sponsored at 1225 Lady Street in the parking lot area. Come out for free food, hear some great music, network with city staff, and play some games for door prizes. And rolling into the weekend, look for our Destination Hometown Weekend Watch. Destination Hometown features local events here in Columbia that are family-friendly. Look for the Destination Hometown Marquee at the bottom of the homepage on our website at columbisc.net. You can also look for Destination Hometown information on our social media platforms on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And you can also call Public and Media Relations at 545-3020 to join our email network, or just email us at pio at columbisc.net. Well, that's a busy week, but we hope you have a great week here in the city.


Hi, I'm Captain Bieler with CJTF HOA, Behavioral Health, Behavioral Health Officer. Yeah, so what we've done today is basically for the last eight weeks, my team and myself have worked with the Armed Forces of Djibouti Rapid Intervention Battalion, also known as the BEER, on various training modules for insomnia and sleep. And today actually marks the testing portion where we're going to be testing the BEER medics on their competency and proficiency levels. So with the lines of effort, the collaboration between CJTF HOA and the Security Force Assistant Brigade is actually the first of its kind to enhance the ESFAB mission with the BEER at Camp Allian. This was otherwise an unknown training opportunity for the medical team here. Since the BEER's, no, this was actually an otherwise unknown training opportunity for the medical team at the BEER since the battalion's inception in 2018. As a result of this training, the behavioral health team advanced the capacity and capabilities of the BEER medical section and actually addressed critical needs within the battalion. The team further provided capability enhancement with the BEER through these training events we've been doing covering critical necessary screening tools to help them be able to identify service members in need of higher levels of care that they had not previously been able to offer or proficient to offer. So the collaborative efforts and training provided really demonstrated a direct strengthening and partnership capabilities between the Armed Forces of Djibouti and Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa and ultimately the relations with the host nation of Djibouti. Hi, my name is Captain Sam Anderson and I work with the ESFAB here on Camp Lemonade. So ESFAB stands for Security Force Assistance Brigade. So there are five active duty brigades and we're actually from the 54th National Guard ESFAB Brigade out of Florida. So this training is important for CJTFO's mission and lines of effort because they actually run in parallel with the Embassy and the Chief of Missions lines of effort as well. And what we found here in Djibouti is having those parallel lines of effort actually makes our job easier here in Djibouti and especially the case with the BEER. So it's being that strategic partner in the region and actually being that preferred partner. So the behavioral health training, we've tried to target it for at least a bi-weekly basis but now we've had so much training going on that we've been able to sustain that for a weekly presence. So the long term goal of the behavioral health training with the BEER especially is to take the BEER medical section to the next level. So we're constantly looking at how we can move the football farther, being that the BEER's medical section is very advanced in their training. So we've been looking for ways to expand that and push them farther. And they certainly have asked for this training as well. Yeah, so my team came in six months ago and we did an assessment on the BEER's medical section. What we found out when it comes to TCCC, they're very knowledgeable. Their expertise in this field has grown over the last couple rotations for the SBAP teams but also for their entire case. So now these BEER medics are experienced, they've had experience in Somalia and now they're bringing that back to the BEER. So now we're looking at ways, how can we make them better? Tactical combat casualty care. So BEER actually stands for Rapid Intervention Battalion in French. So in the English translation it's Battalion Intervention Rapide. Just on the note with the, you know, why is this training important for not only CJTFO but the embassy? So we actually align ourselves with the embassy's goals. And being here on Camp Lemonnier with the support of CJTFOA, it's only amplified our efforts and what we've been able to do in Djibouti. So as SBAP advisor teams, our rotations are six months long and really that first month we focus on building rapport. So it's not so much focusing on knocking out training tasks or training objectives. We're looking at building those relationships to set us up for success when we actually execute training. And that's the reason why my team's been so successful here and we've been able to invite our partners like from behavioral health to help us out with the training because we've built that relationship and now it makes those training objectives that much easier to accomplish.