Chad 1000X

Although this was not a true “Bulldog” workout, it was done at that location on Veteran’s Day to help stop veteran suicide with the Chad 1000X workout. I heard about this on a Jocko podcast with Sara Wilkinson and GoRuck founder Jason McCarthy. This workout was to both honor Sara’s husband Chad Wilkinson and help end veteran suicide. If you have time, listen to the Jocko Podcast #296. Listen to the VERY END-it is worth a few hours of your time. Chad did this workout while training to hike mountains. He would go in the garage with a projector picture of his next mountain displayed on the garage door while he did 1000 step ups with a 45# ruck on. The workout is scalable-in other words, you can do it as a team, do it with no weight, or do the full thing with 45# weight in a ruck sack. I knew this was going to be tough-no surprise for anyone reading this. However, I trained pretty hard for this-I could have done more, sure, but for the most part I did a bunch of step ups. Having a shoulder injury gave me an excuse to do more step ups whenever I posted  instead of whatever the Q had planned. Thankfully I had Roscoe and a few others pushing me on a regular basis telling me how much they were doing.

I got there a few minutes before 0500. Roscoe was there with a scale to make sure the weight was legit. I just knew my ruck was at least 50# despite not weighing it at all ever. WRONG!!! it was 47.5 #, thankfully Roscoe had a few small sandbags so I made the necessary adjustments then re-weighed and made it legal. Roscoe weighed in too while a few others showed. Flintstone got a team together to do this-great idea since not everyone has been training specifically for this. Defib showed up still with a sleep in his eyes and some kindergarten hair (hair that has not been brushed since the morning before) and all he said was…..This is stupid or something along those lines with that same funny smile we all have when we know how much it means to the guys next to us when we show up to do the stupid crap we do.

I gave a quick summary of how this workout came to be (again, listen to Jocko Podcast #296) and then I remembered I have a Jocko-sponsored Gear Box at home that (in my excitement about this am and difficulty sleeping the night before) I forgot to bring. At that point I think Roscoe also said he had a hard time sleeping the night before because he was excited about this too. And then it was time to get it on…..

We all did our 1000 step ups. Some as a team, some with weight, some without weight…..but we all did it and it was great. When I finished my 1000, I really didn’t get excited to finish. It was a great feeling, but I kept thinking about how this guy that served our country for 21 years as a SEAL, had an apparently great home life with a great wife and 2 kids, great friends/brothers in the SEAL community, and a family that supported him could end his life. Think about that for a few minutes. Think about how many F3 guys you know that could fit that description as far as how they look on the outside? Could be a lot of us so next time you think about fartsacking, think about how much your brother might be hurting on the inside. Maybe you could reach out to the Kotter you have not seen in awhile. Maybe you show up when your bone headed brother announces he’s gonna do some stupid event at 3 am and call it The Moron even if you don’t really run……… and this is a RUNNING event. My point is, find a way to support your brothers-search out ways to do that even when you don’t want to. Make that effort any chance you can. It just might not come again. Let that sink in.

We finished with the Pledge and COT. Great work guys-thanks so much for those that showed and those that supported us during the training for this. It is on my list of stupid events I plan to do each year. Hope to see more next year. Yeah, I’m talking to you Stroganoff (and a bunch of others too).