Where do I even start!

Several months ago, @sjgcore asked if we wanted to do a father/son hunt with a bunch of the guys, and of course I said absolutely.

Dimitri has been wanting to hunt for some time now. Every time I’ve gone, he hasn’t been able to come. But once he turned 6, it felt like the right time.

Sid brought us out to his place and put on what turned out to be one of the most amazing 3-day hunts for fathers and their kids.

Looking back at my own childhood, this one hits different. I didn’t get these opportunities. To be there and provide that for him means everything in the world.

And then this little kid goes out and smacks the trophy deer of the weekend. At 6 years old.

In a funny way, it’s bittersweet. He just set the bar pretty high. The only way to go from here is up.

Sid, Spider, @the.kyle.mann, I’m eternally grateful to you. Thank you for creating the most magical weekend with my son. That memory will last the rest of our lives, 100%.

And if that wasn’t enough, I was gifted a 1992 Ford Flareside by Sid, basically my dream truck. Stand by to see what that thing turns into.

There are two kinds of guys who show up in these comments.

The one in his mom’s basement with the lights off, calling men frauds for trying to build something he’s never once attempted. And the dad on the couch, picking Cheeto dust out of his belly button, throwing shade at men out there bettering themselves while he hasn’t moved off that cushion in years.

Successful people don’t troll. They’re too busy working on themselves and building other men up around them.

So before you type that comment, ask yourself one question. Am I projecting? Because every single time I see one of these, I see the same guy. A low testosterone beta who feels the lack in his own life and takes it out on the men actually doing something about theirs.

Instead of that, get the fuck up. Do something about your life, and about the space between your ears.

Comment RECLAIM when you’re ready.

Most men are surrounded by people and still doing it alone.

You are the guy everybody leans on. Who do you lean on?

Agoge Live 2026. November 6-8, Holly Ridge, NC.

Jiu-jitsu. Team training. Cold plunge. Cookouts. Real conversation with men who will tell you the truth. Not a conference. Part of it happens at my house.

Swipe to hear from the speakers.

80 spots total. VIP is sold out. Bring your spouse.

Stop doing it alone. Comment LIVE and the details land in your DMs.

IBJJF no-gi Pans, took silver🥈. Losing to a guy who’s just better, I can take. Losing because I didn’t perform, I can’t. That’s on me. Today I performed, and I’m super stoked to take silver.

Nobody’s self-made. Thank you to everyone who gives a shit about me getting better:

@tomdeblass
Everybody at @crestbjj
@cashmoneyjitsu
@nwiggles
@redwolfjiujitsu
My two bruisers brothers, @brendan.yunger @the.kyle.mann

This is a direct reflection of every one of you.

@sobczaksteve my man! Proud of you and how far you have come. 🥈The Agoge

And babe @alisoncapra , thank you for coaching me, for choosing to spend our 12-year anniversary at Pans 😂, and for putting up with me being grumpy all day until I finished.

The call you keep putting off is the one that changes everything.

Around the time I called @tonycano_tx , a friend gave me a way to understand what was happening to me. Every experience you live through pours water into a bucket. Deployments. Loss. Divorce. The things you never talk about.

If you never empty it, the bucket overflows. And it doesn’t overflow where you’d expect. It spills into your relationships. Your drinking. Your money. Your job. Sometimes the law.

Most men think they’re the problem. They’re not. They’re just full.

You don’t empty that bucket alone. You empty it by talking to men who have carried the same weight. Tony knew that. The whole platoon knew it. I was the last one to find out.

Comment RECLAIM and I’ll send you the free six-session coaching series we ran inside @theagoge. It starts with making the call.

Everybody wants the collapse story. Nobody asks what the rebuild actually looked like.

Reclaim the Man Within is the playbook I used to rebuild my body, my finances, my marriage, and my fatherhood after 2016 nearly cost me all of them.

Eight chapters. Free.

Comment FREE and I’ll DM it to you.

Is the removing of color in our environment an intention decision by “the powers at be”? Some sort of psychological programing?

I’ve heard removing of color is the sign of moving towards a socialist/communist state.

I’ve heard it is life is so crazy that people find calm in bland.

Personally I like the modern clean look but I also like the vibrant array of color vs everything gray. Thoughts?

There are grown men walking around today who were not alive when it happened. For them it is a chapter in a book. For us it is the line that cut our lives into before and after.

I joined the Marine Corps in 2000. None of us signed up for what came next. We just happened to be standing there when the country needed men to go, so we went, and my generation kept going for two decades.

I have had a lot of years to think about what I actually carry out of it, and it is not the deployments. It is not the missions or the places. It is the men.

The ones I would still trust with my life without a second of thought. The ones I do not call nearly enough. The ones who are gone. The ones who made it home and still did not make it through.

That day cost this country more than most people will ever sit still long enough to feel, and it cost my generation some of the best men it had. I am not going to tidy that up into something clean.

But I know exactly who I am because of who I stood next to. That is not a small thing. That is the whole thing.

Today I am not thinking about buildings. I am thinking about the guys.

Thirty years old. Most men that age have already settled into the story about why they can’t. Why the weight stays. Why they stopped training. Why this is just who they are now.

Colin threw that story out.

He had every reason to keep it. He fought his way out of addiction, and a man who does that has earned the right to be tired. He wasn’t training. He wasn’t eating right. He wasn’t in the shape he wanted to be in. Any of it would have made a decent excuse and nobody would have blamed him for using it.

Instead he went and got the harder version of his life on purpose. Changed how he eats. Got in the gym and stayed there. Got lean, got healthy, and then walked into jiu-jitsu, where you get humbled by strangers on a weekly basis and there is no way to fake competence. That is not something you do for a photo. That is something you do because you’ve decided you’d rather be tested than comfortable.

That decision follows him into this building. Give him something difficult and he goes at it. No negotiation, no talking around it.

He is one of the men I’m proudest to have at Johnny Slicks. We make our product here, in America, with people who show up. He is exactly the kind of person that requires.

Happy 30th, @collin_zen

Listen… we’ve been on the scene for a long time…
Swipe ➡️ to see what @alisoncapra and I actually looked like in the 80s 😝😭

Seven months of training. Thousands in flights, hotel, food, babysitters. Time away from my family.

Five minutes of mediocrity.

Master Worlds, round one. Lost 0-0 on one advantage.

If you watch the video you’ll see me shaking my head and laughing after they raised his hand. That’s what I was laughing at. The math. All that input for that output.

@TomDeblass got in my ass about my performance afterward. Every word of it was accurate. That’s what a real coach does, and if you’ve got someone in your life who only tells you what you want to hear, you don’t have a coach, you have a fan.

Seven months of preparation for five minutes. I’ll take the five minutes and go back to work.

Back at it Monday.

Very impressed by my opponents @jeweljiujitsu @isaiah.j.riley excellent work, Brothers.

Every day somebody asks me what’s in the red syringe.

It’s the least interesting thing in the drawer. But it’s the question I get, so here’s the honest answer to the bigger one behind it.

There is no stack that works for everybody. What fits you depends on which system is actually underperforming, and you cannot know that from a post. You know it from symptoms and from labs.

What I can tell you is what not to do. Don’t buy anything labeled research use only. It’s cheap for a reason and you have no idea what’s in the vial.
Start by figuring out which category you’re even in.

Comment PROTOCOL and I’ll send you the link. Answer the questions about your symptoms and your goals, and it’ll tell you where to look and what to test for. Bloodwork and a physician come before anything gets prescribed. That’s the whole point.

Four things I took home from @originusa Immersion Camp 2026

1. There is no secret at black belt. It’s the same shit in more detail.

I always assumed there was magic being taught above my pay grade. Some conversation happening at brown and black belt that white belts don’t get access to yet. There isn’t. The problems I fought on day one are the exact problems I’m fighting now. Same guard passing issue. Same pressure problem. Same bad habit I’ve been carrying for years. The only thing that changed is resolution. What used to get discussed in feet is now discussed in millimeters.

Life is identical. Make more money and you don’t graduate into a new class of problems, you get the same problems with more zeros on the end. You still put your pants on one leg at a time. You still have a wife, kids, bills, a business that needs you today. You’re just further down the road and grayer. Anyone selling you a level where the problems stop is selling you something.

2. Every round you spend comparing is a round you wasted.

On the mat we take measure constantly. Every roll becomes a data point on where we sit against our peers. It feels like progress. It’s the opposite. Comparison is the thief of joy, and the man across from you started at a different age, in a different body, carrying a different set of problems to solve. Plenty of people have walked a path that looks like yours. Nobody has walked yours. Your pace is yours. Run it.

Name three men who would answer at 2am.

If you had to think about it, keep reading.
Here is what I meant in this clip.

Men have lived in tribes for a hundred thousand years. We hunted in tribes. We fought in tribes. We raised our kids in tribes. That is not a lifestyle choice. That is how we are built.

Now a group of men goes away for a weekend and it is weird. Women do the exact same thing and it is self care. Girls trip. Book club. Nobody blinks.

Ask yourself who benefits from that.
I learned this the hard way. When I got out of the Marine Corps I assumed my team would still be there. I had spent twelve years never being alone. Never facing a single problem by myself. Then I handed in my papers and the door shut behind me.

They did not abandon me. They were busy. They had the next deployment. My tribe just slowly stopped calling.

One night I was sitting in my office avoiding my own wife and daughters and I saw a photo of two of my best friends out to dinner with their wives. No call. No text. No invite. It gutted me.
Here is the part I did not admit for years.
I stopped calling too.

That is how it actually happens. Not one big betrayal. One skipped call at a time, until you look up and you have a house, a wife, kids, a career, and not one man who would pick up at 2am.

You are not antisocial. You are isolated. There is a difference, and the fix is not complicated. It is just uncomfortable.

Comment RECLAIM and I will send you six free coaching sessions. It starts with becoming the man who calls first.

Over a thousand contacts in my phone.

Josh asked me how many I could actually call at 2 in the morning when life is falling apart.

Not for support. Not for a pep talk. To actually help me out of a real problem.

Five. And I had to think hard to get there.

I asked a room full of men in their 40s and 50s the same question. Name one friend you could call at 2am. Most of them could not name one.

That is the part nobody says out loud. The most successful men I know are the loneliest men I know. More money, more responsibility, fewer people to call.

Guys like me and Josh, we got handed a brotherhood at 18. We never had to build one. The Marine Corps gave us the values, the code, the men. Then you get out and nobody hands you anything ever again.

So most men just white knuckle the steering wheel. Cows flying past the window. Somebody asks how you are doing and you say fine.
You are not fine. You are salty. Stressed, angry, lonely, tired, yearning for more.

Comment RECLAIM if that hit and I will send you the free six session coaching series we ran inside The Agoge.

Happy 6th Birthday - To our world-traveling, strong, badass stuntman, actor, producer, cowboy, jiujistu @radginganinja

Now a kid that owns a dirt bike 😝

Thank You, God for the best gift we’ve ever received… our children.

The most significant promotion you will ever get in jiu jitsu is white belt.

Nobody throws a party for it. Nobody films it. There is no stripe, no ceremony, no line of guys whipping you with belts. You just walk in the door and put the thing on.

And that is exactly why it counts more than the rest of them.

Every belt after white is earned with skill. White belt is earned with courage. It takes courage to walk into a room where you know nothing, in front of people who will beat you for years before you get good, and choose it anyway.

I am too old. I missed my window. I am not in shape enough yet. I will start after the holidays.

Those are not reasons. Those are a life you are choosing without admitting you chose it.

Courage is not the absence of all that. It is putting the belt on while you still feel it.

Congratulations to the men who did. You already did the hardest part.

You did not lose your identity. You lost the container it was living in.

The uniform. The badge. The title. The company. The marriage. Whatever you poured yourself into for fourteen years and then watched get taken from you.

When it went, it felt like you went with it.
September 16, 2012. I walked out of MARSOC headquarters, heard the door shut behind me, and twelve years of who I was stayed on the other side of it.

Four years later I was 240 pounds at thirty percent body fat. Bankrupt. Ninety percent of my network gone. And I was still trying to rebuild the container instead of looking at the man.
Here is what I had backwards.

Identity is who you are. Purpose is what you are doing about it this chapter.

Most men try to solve purpose first. They go hunting for the next mission to pour themselves into so they can stop feeling like nobody. That is exactly why purpose feels so heavy. You are asking it to carry your entire identity.

Get the first one right and the second one stops being so heavy.

The container burned. You did not.

So answer it honestly. What is worth building now, after everything you thought it was built on is gone?

I built Reclaim the Man Within for the man sitting in that question. It is free and it starts exactly where you are standing right now.

Comment RECLAIM and I will send you the link.

My wife has filed a formal complaint against this body wash. I want the record to show I did nothing wrong.

Statement of facts, as sworn before nobody in particular.

Eleven days on the trail. Came home looking like a wanted poster left out in the rain. Went to the wash house, used Deadwood, put on a clean shirt, and sat down at my own supper table like a civilized man in a lawless county.

She walked past me once. Stopped. Walked back. Leaned in about four inches off my collar and asked what that was.

I told her. Calabrian bergamot and mandarin orange up front, bright as a cold morning. Eucalyptus and Mediterranean cypress behind it, cold and green off the water. Siberian fir underneath, then sandalwood, blonde cedar, and a cashmere musk that sits on a man for the better part of a day whether he asks it to or not.

She said do not use this on Saturdays.

I asked why Saturdays. She said because I have things to do on Tuesdays and I cannot have you smelling like a national park while I am doing them.

Complaint noted. Complaint dismissed. I use it on Saturdays.

Deadwood. Shampoo, conditioner, body wash. 100 percent organic, made in America. Live @johnnyslicks 9am on our app, 10am site wide. Aug 1!

Consider yourself warned about Saturdays.

Nobody respects you because your word means nothing.

Not your wife. Not your kids. Not your team.
You told them things were changing. You’ve told them that before.

A man’s authority doesn’t come from his volume or his title. It comes from the distance between what he says and what he does. Close that distance and you don’t have to demand anything. Leave it open and you’ll fight for scraps of respect in your own home for the rest of your life.

That’s what tension actually is. It’s the receipt for a promise you didn’t keep.

Stop trying to win the argument. Start building the track record.

Comment RECLAIM and I’ll send you the first step.

I’ve been the guy with no track record.

Broke. Fat. Marriage gone. Standing in my own house explaining how things were going to be different now, while everyone in the room had already stopped believing me.

They weren’t wrong. I’d said it before.

Here’s what nobody tells you. When you have no track record, your vision doesn’t inspire people, it irritates them. You bring an idea to the table and tension shows up before you finish the sentence. Not because they don’t want you to win. Because they’ve been burned by the last version of you.

You don’t fix that with a better speech. You fix it by becoming a man whose word is worth something, then living that way long enough that it’s not a claim anymore, it’s just what people expect from you.

That takes longer than 30 days. It’s not a challenge. It’s a rebuild of who you are and what your rules are.

Do it, and the tension goes away without a single conversation. Then the only question left is whether you and your wife actually want the same life. That one’s worth talking about.

Comment RECLAIM and I’ll send you the first step.

Thirteen men filled out a form before they came to @theagoge Brotherhood Retreat. Nobody was going to read it back to them.

The two lowest scores on that form were tied. Belief in themselves, and brotherhood. Both at fifty percent.

Think about what that means. Half of these guys could not name the thing standing in their way, and half of them had nobody to call.

They were not in crisis. That’s the part people miss. They had careers and marriages and kids and service records. They were functioning. They were just doing all of it alone, and they had been for years.

Then we asked them what the worst day of their life was.

One of them said he’d been asked plenty of times what he was struggling with. Never that.

I’m not going to tell you what got said after that. What happens in that room stays in that room, and if that ever stops being true the whole thing is worthless.

Eight of them have sent their debriefs back so far. Belief went from fifty to ninety-seven. Brotherhood, fifty to ninety-seven. Leading at home, fifty-four to ninety-seven.

And marriage went from fifty-two to eighty-one, which is the number I actually trust the most. Because a weekend does not fix a marriage. It just tells you the truth about it and hands the work back to you.

If any of this sounds like your last few years, start with Reclaim The Man Within. It’s free. It’s the part you can do on your own, before you’re ready to do it in a room full of men.

Comment Reclaim and I’ll send you the free series

Most companies try to build culture with pizza parties, team building exercises, and motivational posters.

We choke each other.

Every week our team voluntarily steps onto the mats. We sweat together. We struggle together. We fail in front of each other. Then we get up and do it again.

Jiu jitsu has a way of stripping away ego. It builds trust because everyone is vulnerable. It teaches respect because everyone taps. It creates accountability because excuses don’t work when someone is trying to choke you.

That bond doesn’t stay on the mats.

It carries over into the warehouse, the office, and every conversation we have. People communicate better. They support each other more. They solve problems faster. They show up with a better attitude because they aren’t just coworkers. They are teammates.

Culture isn’t built in a conference room.

It’s built through shared hardship.

That is why morale at @johnnyslicks is different. Our team is happier. More positive. More engaged. People are genuinely excited to come to work because they know they get to train with people they respect.

You don’t build a great culture by making work easier.

You build it by doing hard things together.

The most dangerous place to get medical advice is a gym floor.

The guy who read one Reddit thread will tell you TRT blows out your heart, makes you infertile for good, and turns you into a meathead. He is wrong on all three, and his confidence is costing good men their health.

What the clinical data actually says: properly managed TRT does not raise your heart attack risk. It does not permanently shut you down, fertility is manageable with the right protocol. And it is not for stage bodybuilders, it is for fathers, veterans, cops, and business owners who are done running on empty.

Swipe through. Then stop guessing.

Comment PROTOCOL and I’ll send you our symptom quiz. It shows you which peptides and TRT products could fit based on your symptoms, then you confirm with bloodwork and our physicians.

Also, massive thank you to Pete Hegseth @secwar for what he is going for DOW members integrating to TRT and optimizing our service members readiness. It will create ripples that will save so many lives. 👊🏼🙏🏻