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Mark Wulfe:
From The Aasgaard Company Studios in beautiful Wichita Falls, Texas... From the finest mind in the modern fitness industry... The one true voice in the strength and conditioning profession... The most important podcast on the internet... Ladies and gentlemen, Starting Strength Radio!

Mark Rippetoe:
Welcome back to Starting Strength Radio. It's Friday. I mean, what other day would it be? Friday is the day we are here with Starting Strength Radio, and I think you all have gotten used to that by now.

Mark Rippetoe:
And, you know, if you're watching this on Saturday, hey, catch up, right? I mean, we've been here a whole day and you're just now watching it on Saturday. What the hell is wrong with you?

Mark Rippetoe:
We're here with our friend Jon Miller today. Jon's a Starting Strength coach, and he's currently going to school at Yale. So for an MBA, is that right?

Jon Miller:
Yeah. Correct.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, let me just start off by saying la di da.

Mark Rippetoe:
So why do we want to talk to Jon today? Well, Jon's got some interesting ideas about the fitness industry and how specifically how military veterans can find their way into what we are referring to as the new fitness industry here at Starting Strength Gyms.

Mark Rippetoe:
John, I appreciate your your time today. Give us a little background on your personal situation and how your you come to contact us about this and want to talk about this kind of program that we're working on with the military veterans and plugging them into jobs and in the new fitness industry.

Jon Miller:
Absolutely. And thanks so much for having me. So my story begins in the Army. I was an infantry officer for eight years. The last job that I had was a Stryker infantry company commander at Fort Hood. I actually attended the seminar - the first seminar I went to was at Wichita Falls the week after I took command and started implementing Starting Strength to the best of my abilities with my company.

Jon Miller:
My command was cut short by a training accident. I was injured pretty seriously. And so I spent the last year of my time in the military rehabbing from a spinal cord injury. Ended up getting medically retired. Although to be fair to the to be fair to the army, if I wanted to stay in, I could have they would have found something for me to do. It just didn't match with my interest.

Jon Miller:
So I got out and had about a year off and, you know, through the process of recovery, and then in that year gap, I used Starting Strength to get better and pursue the credential. Got certified in 2018 right before I started grad school, like you said at Yale.

Jon Miller:
And I was on my way to being a, you know, aspiring management consultant, following in the pretty traditional path out of business school. And I was in a recruiting meeting when I got a phone call from one of my former platoon members telling me that a guy named Dan Hardin, who I used to served with committed suicide.

Jon Miller:
And, you know, Dan was the kind of guy who, after loading up our buddies onto the medevac bird missing limbs, volunteers to carry the mine detector. He wanted to carry extra weight to ease the burden on his teammates.

Jon Miller:
And, you know, for a guy like that the turn out at the funeral was pretty strong and it ended up being a reunion of sorts. And I got looking around the table and knowing what these men were capable of in service, seeing them struggle really, really stuck with me. So I abandoned any aspirations of going down the traditional MBA route and started my own business.

Jon Miller:
The business is called Outlaws, Inc. It's named after the platoon I served with. And what we do is we help the soldiers that fall through the cracks find meaningful work and guide them through the transition process. Primarily interested in skilled trade jobs. Although for the past year I've been working on a project with Starting Strength Gym, as you know.

Jon Miller:
Because I know the value of the program and the many ways in which the gyms are different from the classical model, Starting Strength Gym hits all the criteria we look for in employers there. People focused, they provide structure, they have some basis and values in serving the community. So it's the ideal place for veterans.

Jon Miller:
So we have one gym currently at the final stages of approval for the GI Bill. And what this means is that separating service members can earn extra money to help ease the financial burden of switching careers while they're going through the apprenticeship program. And we hope to expand it.

Jon Miller:
And that's really where my story ends. But I just want to add on personal, Rip... I feel personally indebted to you for, you know, being able to walk today, frankly, and I'm sure we'll get into the details that we have later. But if it hadn't been for Starting Strength and the clarity that you bring to, you know, stress recovery, adaptation and and physiological adaptations, there is a good chance I would not, you know, have exceeded all the expectations of my provider.

Jon Miller:
So I guess I'll pause there and see where you want to go.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, I think that, you know, the the expectations of your providers are very low. I'm not prepared to take credit for anything that you have personally accomplished, although I'm proud to have been able to provide a theoretical framework for you to view the process within. And I think that I think we've done a service in terms of developing the stress recovery and adaptation model.

Mark Rippetoe:
And in reality, more therapy providers need to get up off their dead asses and adopt this approach because it works every single time. Your situation demonstrates that. Brian Jones's situation demonstrates that. Countless other people that we have worked with in terms of rehab have demonstrated that the prior therapy paradigm is wrong and that the one we have developed is much more useful.

Mark Rippetoe:
So we're proud of what you have accomplished. So let's... Since we're on that subject, let's talk about your injury and what actually happened.

Jon Miller:
Yeah. So you'll get a kick out of this. The mechanism of injury was a it was a fall from a Stryker, which is a big eight wheeled armored personnel carrier. And it was from about a height of five feet. What made it particularly dangerous is a piece of safety equipment, so something called the gunner's restraint harness. It's basically a seat belt that connects around your shoulders and attaches to the floor, you know, to prevent you from being thrown out in the event of an IED strike or a rollover.

Jon Miller:
Well, I had spent my entire career as a light infantryman and vehicles were new. And I think at the time of the injury, I had been an instructor maybe six or seven times, you know, and I'm commanding a company of striking infantry. And so like an idiot, I released from the quick release handle of the floor, which meant that there is this little snap hook dangling between my legs.

Jon Miller:
And I get out of the vehicle to dismount, climb up over the hood, sit down and push myself off. And that snap hook got caught on a bolt on the Stryker. And what that meant was as my torso went forward, my body was yanked backwards.

Mark Rippetoe:
Grabbed you by the leg, I guess, right?

Jon Miller:
Yeah. And so rapid, violent extension of the neck. I completely avulsed and shattered C4, C5. I pushed the disc into my spinal cord and had a central cord injury is how they characterized it. Luckily the OIC of the range is a was a former Special Forces medic. And so as I'm as I'm coming to, you know, I can't feel anything below the neck. I can't move. All I see is dirt and taste blood. I hear, you know, a lot of hubbub and, you know, thank God for Enrique Zelaya, for being there, for saving my life, you know, because he knew how to prevent them from moving me and doing for the damage.

Jon Miller:
So so that that was the injury, the next four years...

Mark Rippetoe:
Boy, that was a lot easier to... That had been really easy to screw that up, wouldn't it? You know. I mean, if somebody doesn't know the nature of that injury and tries to move you, tries to get you sorted out onto a stretcher and everything that could have just killed you, real, real, real, real, real easily. So yeah, the guy was, yeah, that's a providential situation there, wasn't it?

Jon Miller:
It's the first of many lucky events surrounding this whole occurrence. But, you know, the next 48 hours were touch and go in terms of, you know, what the exact diagnosis was. I think I sent over some some footage of the hole that was in the spinal cord.

Jon Miller:
And I end up at Baylor Scott White and the neurosurgeons there realized there's no transection and their plan was to leave me in the collar for six weeks in the hospital, take off the collar and then flex and extend my neck, and if I further damaged my neck or my spine, they they said then we'll operate. And if not, well, then you're on your way to healing.

Jon Miller:
And speaking of luck, I happened to be fortunate enough to be married to a physician who through her network got a second opinion. And they said, that's crazy, don't do that. And a couple of days later, I think five or six days later, I was in San Antonio getting excellent care. They did a ACDF which is anterior cervical discectomy and fusion. Once they took the disc out, completely relieved all the pressure on the spinal cord, and it was just...

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah, that seems like a more intelligent approach to that injury than just waiting six weeks to see what would happen. I mean, you leave a nerve compressed for any length of time, well the nerve is damaged. And this was a very important nerve to not be damaged.

Jon Miller:
I mean, this whole time...

Mark Rippetoe:
I wonder what possessed them to think that that would be a good way to do this. Did you ever have a conversation with them about it?

Jon Miller:
You know, we were we were looking forward. So we didn't look back. And I think I did hear an explanation at one point. But, you know, that period I was so... Had such tunnel vision, was on so many drugs. You know, and during this period also I still didn't have any motor function, bowel, bladder, below... Anything below the neck.

Jon Miller:
And so I do remember the one of the the neurosurgeons checked doing a checkup and he had forgotten his little reflex hammer. And so he just starts looking around the room and finds a flashlight. Takes the flashlight and starts banging on my feet with it. And he just nods and says, yeah, he's fine. And he walked out.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, you know, it's a good thing you're fine. It's like it could easily have gone the other way.

Jon Miller:
Exactly.

Mark Rippetoe:
So you got better and you're all healed up. And you've... This is what was the date of that injury? That was back about ten years ago?

Jon Miller:
Septemer 20... September 2017.

Mark Rippetoe:
Oh, so it's just about three or four years ago. Three and a half years ago now.

Jon Miller:
Yeah, right.

Mark Rippetoe:
So you had been training prior to the injury, right?

Jon Miller:
Yep, I had just finished my own LP. And I probably discovered Starting Strength through Brett McKay's videos, I'm pretty sure that was sort of like how I how I found and then, you know, attended the seminar almost immediately after.

Jon Miller:
Because what I was hearing was, you know, you know, things that have been in the back of my head going through the the military fitness paradigm and the functional fitness and like whatever the fad was, you name it, I, you know, tried it out at one point in my career. But in the back of my mind, I was always thinking, you know, I feel like this is overcomplicated. I feel like all I need is some sort of structured progression.

Jon Miller:
But that wasn't what everybody else was saying and all the fit people that I looked up to. So, yeah, I had just finished the LP, you know, as a sort of a testament to the success of the program. I didn't run once from when I took command to when I took my first PT test as a commander and maxed the run. And sort of did that as an experiment.

Mark Rippetoe:
Having not run. We try to tell people that that will happen, but nobody believes you. Nobody believes. Everybody thinks they have to run in order to be able to run. Guy in his twenties can run whether he runs or not. But nobody believes that. So.

Jon Miller:
I was a pretty scrawny guy to begin with.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well you had no trouble running, did you? Scrawny people run pretty well. We've noticed that.

[off-camera]:
It's important to point out that he's an infantrymen, too. He's not, you know. Yeah. I mean, he's not just spending his time sitting at a desk or whatever.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah. He's not just sitting around.

[off-camera]:
In other words, he's typically it's the guys who think they need to run all the time. And here's a guy who just didn't run

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah, maybe we'll get an article out of Jon about not running and then running. Could be real good. Maybe you need to write that an article for us. We're always looking for stuff to run on the website and that would be good. Would be would be real good.

Mark Rippetoe:
So, uh, uh, here we are. It's two thousand twenty one. All right. You're three and a half years after the injury and you've been OK for, what, three years now? How long did it take you to get where you were, you know, up and around and.

Jon Miller:
Yep. I was.... I was training four weeks out of the hospital. So, you know, leaving in a wheelchair, progressing to cane...

Mark Rippetoe:
So they did the surgery and that immediately relieve the pressure and it just, you know, fixed the lesion basically. And then you had to heal up from the surgery. And once that was... I'll bet you very clearly remember waking up after that surgery and being able to feel your tee tee. I bet you clearly remember that, don't you?

Jon Miller:
The first the first time I could use the bathroom on my own, I cried.

Mark Rippetoe:
Oh, I understand. You know, I understand. Boys, you know, being boys, our tee tees are very important to us.

Mark Rippetoe:
I remember when I had my neck surgery back in 1999. I had a real bad osteophyte mashing into my arm.And it was the pain was horrible. It was just all I could do, you know, get through the day. And it it got so damn bad that, you know, the surgery became not optional. And I remember waking up in a recovery room and looking down in my arm and saying, this is the first conscious thought I had: the pain is gone.

Mark Rippetoe:
And then I went back to sleep. But I clearly remember that. And I'm sure you remember the same damn thing, only on a order of magnitude more grateful than than I was.

Mark Rippetoe:
And so you were you were training for weeks post op. Boy, it is a good thing your wife got you some better advice than "yeah, we're just going to let you lay here in your own piss and shit for the next six weeks and see what happens after that."

Mark Rippetoe:
But that's that's another show I'm real interested in why they thought that was a good idea. But you don't know. And hell, they don't know either. So we're glad you're we're glad you're all right.

Mark Rippetoe:
So you had a good friend that committed suicide after after having served with you guys in the Army. And I don't want to go into that as much as I as I want to because that that kind of thing is not pleasant to talk about. But what I wanted... What do you think could have prevented that from happening?

Jon Miller:
Well, I had lost touch with Dan after I was reassigned and progressed on my career, so I can't comment on his, you know, family situation or what else is going on in his life. I will say that suicide has been a non insignificant part of my military career, unfortunately. As both investigating other suicides, having close friends commit suicide and, you know, some common threads that I think are relevant...

Mark Rippetoe:
I guess as a company commander, that's part of your responsibility, right? To investigate things like that within your command?

Jon Miller:
Right. And typically, it's it's it's other units that you if you're an investigator, they bring in somebody from outside to avoid any conflicts of interest. But, you know, this is sort of a half baked thoughtI've been I've been, you know, sort of in my head, but on the line of duty investigation form - the the standard form you fill out any time a service member dies - there's the block that says is this was this person mentally sound?

Jon Miller:
For a suicide you automatically check No - and it has to be a medical provider that signs off - because by definition, if they commit suicide, they you know, that's an irrational action.

Mark Rippetoe:
And I don't know that that's true. I mean, would you agree with that in all instances? Would you agree that anyone that kills themselves is irrational?

Jon Miller:
Well, you're exactly picking up on what direction I'm going in, which is what would you have to believe for that to be rational to you? And I think reframing suicide as the result of some combination of conditions that make it seem like a rational choice.

Jon Miller:
Could be your alter it in an altered state or whatever. But if we take a step back and just think about military service in general, you're taking young men and women. You're conditioning them to be blindly obedient, which is a necessary function for anybody who's joining the military. And I'm not making any normative claims here about what should or should not be the case. But that's just a fact.

Jon Miller:
And you put them in an extremely structured environment. And if they leave after three years without achieving a lot of rank and responsibility, the entire way in which their world is framed is reversed. Pure structure, zero autonomy to pure autonomy and zero structure.

Jon Miller:
And I think that's pretty traumatic. It was traumatic for me. And I was a captain with a college degree, with an amazing support network. And I didn't have to worry about food on the table or a roof over my head. You know, the entire time I was going through the rehab process, I was crossing paths with young soldiers who didn't have the support network, who didn't have the life experience that I had, who didn't have the family support. And, you know, I could see the difference in my outcomes compared to theirs.

Mark Rippetoe:
And you know, in a way, when you take a kid and stick him into a military situation like that, you're essentially taking away his adulthood in some sense. In terms of the fact that adults decide for themselves what's best and then do that, or at least they should and they try to that sort of thing.

Mark Rippetoe:
But if you if you enter a military situation, you're ceding your autonomy for a period of time. Now, if it's you know, it's four years and you're a typical little 18 year old puke who's not worthy of autonomy. Basically, this is a this this additional structure that is provided by the military could be very, very helpful.

Mark Rippetoe:
I know that when I was 18, I probably should have gone in the military instead of going straight into college because I had no business being in college. I was just a little undisciplined little turd, and I would have benefited from the structure that would have been provided by the military. But that was 1974 in the military was not popular back then because we'd just gotten our asses out of Vietnam and there was a lot of resistance to the idea.

Mark Rippetoe:
My parents were not supportive of the military. My dad had been in World War Two, and he had he thought it was kind of stupid for anybody to voluntarily go into the service. And and so I I didn't get the advice. I probably should have gotten to go into the military.

Mark Rippetoe:
But so in some in some ways, it postpones adulthood. And for some people, it actually improves the transition into adulthood. But I think you your comment is valuable in that you you go from when you go to the military, you're in you're in a situation of very little autonomy and you're taught blind obedience. And then they they get rid of you in four years. And here you are. You get off the bus. And for the first time you've had to had to make a decision about what the hell you're going to do today because it's been decided for you for quite some time.

Jon Miller:
Exactly. And you've been a part of a common purpose. You've had... There's been no question about when you put that uniform on and you walk through the airport and people look at you, what you represent. And you take that identity away from somebody, you know, it's it's a challenge that has to be dealt with.

Jon Miller:
And I you know, this is this means a lot to me. The there's a long list of young veterans that I served with who struggled in and out of service. A lot of times just because it was, you know, they just got a bad they got dealt a bad hand or, you know, unfortunately didn't have a great chain of command or, you know, a series of bad experiences or mistakes that they couldn't recover from. And that set them back irrevocably, irrevocably from what they're actually capable of, of achieving.

Jon Miller:
And, you know, just to bring things back to the Gyms and their opportunities for apprenticeship, you know, that's precisely filling the gap for those young men and women who could use that.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right, it provides a framework for the for the decisions they're going to make at work while at the same time requiring of them the resourcefulness to apply that framework in a variety of different situations. So it's kind of halfway between blind obedience and absolute autonomy. And I see your point.

Jon Miller:
Well, there should be some... You know, I think the process works best if it's gradual. So like, for example, you know, a young veteran who I recently placed in a concrete installation firm in South Carolina. Simple things, you know, what's my budget? How am I going to fill my emergency savings over the next few months paychecks? Where am I going to live? How am I commuting to work? Do I have the tools and the equipment I, you know, that are necessary to do this job successfully?

Jon Miller:
Walking somebody through that sounds trivial, but when, you know, a part of a comprehensive plan to get them from point A to point B, it's tremendously valuable. And, you know, the predictability provided by an apprenticeship program, any apprenticeship program, really but, you know, the gym one specifically, is another example of bringing bringing that structure gradually into their lives to the until they're ready to go out on their own in a more complete sense.

Mark Rippetoe:
I think it's it's going to work out well for us and for for you guys, because one of the challenges that any business has in selecting people who want to come on and work for them is the is the selection process, is it can be hit or miss.

Mark Rippetoe:
We don't know these people. We don't know their background. They fill out an application. You know, sometimes they're completely full of shit. You know, we've had some experience with that recently, people who are just absolutely unsuited for the position.

Mark Rippetoe:
And if we've got to, we got a choice between some kid we don't know and some kid with a military background, he's vetted for us. I mean, the fact that he was not dishonorably discharged is an important and important thing. You know, and I think this is going to work out quite well, is that is the system of gyms grows.

Mark Rippetoe:
If we could if we could take a majority of the people that are interested in working for us out of veteran status and into Starting Strength coach status, that's that's a wonderful thing for everybody, saves us time and gives them something constructive to look forward to do it.

Jon Miller:
And maybe there's a feedback loop where it gets back to, you know, you have a coalition of people that can help incorporate some of this successfully in the military where I failed, you know.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, that's a that's a very good point. The military, and you and I discussed this briefly the other day, the military's is famous for not being adaptable. All right, they they like to appear adaptable, but the military here in 2021, the military is still in the job of killing people and breaking things. That's what we have the military for, is to kill people and break things.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, you can, you know, say that the military's does good things all over the world and all this other shit. But the and that may be a part of it, but the but the primary function of any military used to kill people and break things for the purpose of fighting a war and winning it. And in 2021, running five miles doesn't really have a lot to do with any aspect of killing people and breaking things because of the the changes in in killing people and breaking things technology over the past 70 years.

Mark Rippetoe:
We don't do things now the way we did in World War One and none the less the military bases basic training on endurance, on running, on 900 pushups, 900 sit ups, the sort of thing. Things that are absolutely pointless with respect to the physical adaptation necessary for the role of the military in 2021.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, you and I can sit down and have a rational discussion about this. And you and I understand completely that that is, in fact the case, that force production instead of sub maximal repetition of movement is much more critical to the physical mission of being in military.

Mark Rippetoe:
But if you get you get myself and you and two or three other officers involved in the discussion and everyone agrees that that is absolutely true, nothing will still be done because that whole gigantic aggregate mass of the military bureaucracy is a bureaucracy. That's all it is. It's a bureaucracy. And bureaucracies do one thing and one thing only. They perpetuate themselves while assuming no personal responsibility for any aspect of that perpetuation. That's what they do.

Mark Rippetoe:
All bureaucracies function that way. And as a result, bureaucracies become about the process, not about the outcome, but about the process. And as long as the process is being followed, then everybody within the bureaucracy's ass is covered.

Mark Rippetoe:
So you and I come along and we say, well, we would like to make basic training into a six month novice linear progression instead of six months worth of running five miles. And in and amongst that novice linear progression, everybody's getting stronger. And there's more time now for actual actual teaching them things about killing people and breaking things and making them better soldiers, stronger soldiers, better soldiers, because now more time is freed up because the novel is a linear progression that take a couple hours, three days a week.

Mark Rippetoe:
That would be more efficient, but that's not going to happen because of the nature of the military bureaucracy, it's not going to happen. And if we me and you and all of us involved in Starting Strength can expose more military people to the idea that that's that forms the basis of the novel linear progression, five pounds of work workout on basic exercises that that have the capacity to be trained for a long period of time, then maybe some of it will get will bleed back up into the upper echelons of the bureaucracy.

Mark Rippetoe:
I don't think it will. But wouldn't be cool if it did?

Jon Miller:
I do have some lessons learned if there are leaders in the military out there interested in doing this. You basically need three ingredients realistically. One is supporting your chain of command, which I had, and I achieved that by using the Army's own doctrine against it. I used and 8-step training model. I built, you know, all the PowerPoint slides. I justified it with quantitative indicators of success.

Jon Miller:
Second thing you need is equipment. And this is the first obstacle I hit, which is crazy because out of the back door, my office was a warehouse full of exercise equipment owned by some civilian agency on post that we couldn't get access to because nobody knew who the approving authority was.

Mark Rippetoe:
Machines and stuff?

Jon Miller:
No, it was because it was from like the 80s. It was like, you know, old racks, barbells that were in really bad shape. But WD 40 take a little...would be fine.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah, you can fix those.

Jon Miller:
They even had the old cast iron plates that were 100 pounds each.

Jon Miller:
Yeah. So I mean, they had good they had, you know, usable stuff. And I mean for soldiers that's exactly what you want. You don't want a brand new power rack.

Mark Rippetoe:
It's not necessary. It's not. One of the one of the advantages of of the application of the novice linear progression to basic training. It doesn't cost anything. I mean, compared to the the money that the base had spent on all five of those gyms that are scattered all over the all over the property there.

Mark Rippetoe:
We're talking about five percent of that money. You know, we're talking about no money at all. And this is you know, I mean, I hate to be cynical, Jon, but the fact that there's not really any money in, you know, in a contract for this might mitigate against somebody advocating for that contract because, I mean, you know, the Army just recently implemented that silly ass trap bar lift into the PT.

Mark Rippetoe:
I wonder how many trap bar deadlifts Sorinex sold the U.S. military as a result of it? You think that money might have had something to do with that decision? Gosh, I don't know. That might not be a fair accusation, but it does cross the mind of a cynical civilian such as myself.

Jon Miller:
Well, there's yeah There's cynical annd then there's jaded. Because my reaction to all that was, oh, God, at least they're finally using something that looks like a deadlifts. I was just thankful about that.

Jon Miller:
Yeah, but if you don't mind, I can finish that point...

Mark Rippetoe:
The third ingredient is time. And the the daily PT formation that I had for a company of one hundred and fifty two soldiers on the books was maybe 30 soldiers because everyone else was tasked out for things that had nothing to do with our mission. And this, you know, leaders have been wringing their hands about this for as long as I've been in the military.

Jon Miller:
And the best we can hope for is some mitigation. The taskings are never going to go away, but commanders can do this if those three ingredients are in place. And expectation management means this is a multi month process for most units unless you have a complete reform from the top down.

Mark Rippetoe:
And when is the last time such a thing occurred, the complete reform from the top down? 1775, that's the last time that occurred, right? You know, this is this is something I used to worry about. I used to I get you know, we get we've been asked about this over and over and over again over the over the course of 15 years of doing our seminars.

Mark Rippetoe:
What do you think would be the best thing that could happen with Starting Strength if you'd like to get done? And I've said since the beginning, I would love to be able to completely reform basic training for all of the military, because it's the most important thing that we could do to make a radical, immediate, inexpensive improvement in combat readiness for everybody involved in getting a government paycheck, for being in the military.

Mark Rippetoe:
And it's just not going to happen. It's just not going to happen because... Always remember the following maxim: the facts, although interesting, are irrelevant. The fact that our way of physical preparation works better than their way of physical preparations is true, but it doesn't matter that it's true. It just all that matters is that this is what they're going to do.

Mark Rippetoe:
And why they're going to do it that way is involves the fact that they've always done it that way. And everybody in the decision making capacity is perfectly comfortable with continuing to do it that way. And the fact that it doesn't work as well as something else is just not interesting to.

Mark Rippetoe:
You know, so here we are in two thousand twenty one, we need to get these kids who are leaving a military commitment headed in a better direction than just turning them loose and letting them make their own mistakes, because sometimes the kids in that position make terrible mistakes. And it's just because, you know, some people make mistakes and that's just the way it is.

Mark Rippetoe:
I'm happy that you see the possibility, the possibilities that present themselves with the involvement of this particular demographic, with our method. Tell me about how you came to that conclusion.

Jon Miller:
I mean, it really started with the rehab. So I was primed as I came out of surgery to think yesterday I could move my arm to touch my nose, today, I'm going to try and pick up a spoon. Because to me, that was five pounds. And then, you know, you can foll...You can see the progression.

Mark Rippetoe:
Five pounds in scare quotes. I hope everybody understands that. Five pounds means increments. Right?

Jon Miller:
Right. And when you're when you've got a catheter in and you can't move anything below the neck, small victories matter.

Jon Miller:
And, you know, to me, the psychology of the SRA model and the manner in which you've presented it and actively gone for simplicity here is really fascinating to me, because I think that within that approach is the key to a lot of the success that I've experienced, personally, at least.

Jon Miller:
And, you know, just to clarify for our listeners, I wasn't waiting until I could get the barbell on my back to apply this model. You know, I was standing up from a chair. I was doing planks in my room, you know, just doing occupational therapy, things, whatever I could do. Yesterday, I was trying to go five pounds more.

Jon Miller:
And and, look, I'm not prepared to make, you know, categorical claims about spinal cord injury rehab, but that, you know, having a framework for success, for incremental improvement on top of a strong support network was an effective recipe. And it's easily replicable.

Jon Miller:
And, you know, I think one thing you talked about cynicism, like another thing that really struck me was as I was doing this rehab on my own, I was watching, you know, or experiencing also what was being provided as the solution or the the the protocol from the providers. And it was really depressing because it you know, for example, I used to drive down once they finally scheduled my my spinal focused PT rehab that had to be referred out. Once they finally did that, I used to drive my appointment in Austin and then immediately drive to Luke's Barbell Club and learn and train there, like in the same day, you know.

Jon Miller:
And so I'm in the PT office throwing a medicine ball and flex-etending my shoulders and all this other silly stuff...

Mark Rippetoe:
Dance practice.

Jon Miller:
Sure, sure. And it's all very nice while meeting people who are running this stuff. You know, and I would hate to imply that, you know, I would ever attack, you know, them personally.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, it's not their and it's not their intentions that are the problem.

Jon Miller:
Sure.

Mark Rippetoe:
You know, they haven't been prepared adequately by their educational structure. They don't understand that... The the way I've always thought about this is they don't understand that they are there to provide stress from which you can recover and adapt. Their paradigm is that the stress was the injury. And that everything that happens after the injury is it can be basically the same thing in terms of every time they go in, they give you the same medicine ball, they give you the same little squeezy thing they use with your hands, like you'd be the same little band to do your little silly ass external rotation stuff on, despite the fact that that's not the nature of the injury. They give you the same things over and over and over again without any awareness of the fact that they are there to create a stress which you are there to progressively recover from. Does that kind of describe what what you experienced?

Jon Miller:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I repeatedly got the impression that they had never had a patient who left the office to go continue the rehab process. I mean, I think I think the sword cuts both ways. In other words, they not only were they approaching it from a different, you know, philosophy or paradigm or whatever you want to call it, but they their day to day patient that they're used to seeing expected to show up, do the reps that of, you know, external rotation, and if it didn't work, then onto the next, you know, provider. So I was certainly, you know, like an alien to them in a lot of ways.

Mark Rippetoe:
I'm sure. I'm sure. They just they're just not prepared to think about it the same way we do. And I don't know that that's a damn shame in terms of the time and money wasted worldwide on rehab. It's just a damn shame.

Jon Miller:
I don't know if I don't know if this gives you any hope. You know, I used to be one of those people who thought it was important, you know, foam roll and, you know, to have variability. You know, I certainly used to think differently and I continually, you know, try to have an open mind. But so, you know, there's there's nothing that says that that people can't over time, you know, change their minds and learn new things.

Mark Rippetoe:
Oh, I'm completely aware of that. It's just that. The problem is that people in this situation refer to the authority of their educational background. I mean, you finally get into PT school, that's hard to do, right? You finally try try hard to get into schools, harder than getting into medical school because there are fewer slots because there fewer PT schools.

Mark Rippetoe:
So the the tendency is to now that I've gotten into school, most people not go in there and say, hold on just a minute, you guys are all full of shit. You know, it's not humans...that's not human behavior. This was hard to get into. They must be right. And so I'm just going to do what I'm told. I'm going to think the way they teach me to think, because I fought like hell to get in here and be taught this.

Mark Rippetoe:
And as a result, a lot of people just don't know a lot of stuff. They think they mean a lot of a lot of people know things that are not right and they are unwilling to question the paradigm. We see this an awful lot these days. Lots and lots of people that should know better are behaving in ways that make no sense now. And this is just one little example of that.

Mark Rippetoe:
But I don't know, I think maybe if if we made better inroads into physical therapy, that might be the way into the military, but I don't have any any particular designs on on being able to actually accomplish either one of those very important things just because there's too much lined up against us.

Mark Rippetoe:
So what it boils down to is we're responsible for ourselves. And I'm I'm happy that you have decided to use our framework to try to make a difference in these kids lives.

Mark Rippetoe:
So when when when we take people into Starting Strength... New clients are are are people that have decided for themselves that stronger is better, stronger is what they want to be. And we provide them a method by which to obtain that adaptation. We we take people that have never even thought about doing the basic barbell exercises that, you know, muscle heads have traditionally done. And we provide them with a structure that, you know, is the basic exercises, five pounds, a workout.

Mark Rippetoe:
And one of the most amazing things about this is that that process, having never occurred to most people before, immediately begins to yield results, immediately begins to yield results. And it is a process that applies to just damn near everything else they do in life. For your kids coming out of the service, this this can be a revelatory experience, can't it?

Jon Miller:
Yes, I think you definitely use the right word there. You know, I I could tell you lots of examples of veterans I've worked with personally who are just being told that they have agency and are you know, there's that great line from The Departed. You know, I'd rather in my environment be a product of me than me of my environment.

Jon Miller:
You know, just just that planting that little seed in somebody's head can go a long way. And then obviously, you back it up with the predictability of a process that, you know, like Nick mentioned. And so that's absolutely one of the consequences of being a young kid, no other civilian work experience, maybe don't have great coping skills because you had a rough upbringing turn to the military because it was a paycheck.

Jon Miller:
Now into the civilian world that you may not have an accurate perception of what the possibilities are simply because you never considered, you know, your own potential and ability to change your circumstances. And you know that I appreciate you bringing that up, because that's a that's a great point. This this sense of agency that you get when you are in control of your own training on the way in a very manageable sequence to certification. It's very powerful.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, I think that it's the thing about it is that as it turns out, one of the most beneficial aspects of our approach to to strength training is that it applies to everything else the person does. And I don't think that's I don't think that's adequately appreciated. You're handing anybody does this a tool that they can apply to everything else they do. Five more pounds, right?

Mark Rippetoe:
That's a very powerful basic stuff. Five more pounds. You know, it seems so obvious that it's kind of astonishing that no one else has articulated it before we did, because it's just lay in there and it and it works every single time. It's tried with everybody that it's tried with. And a lot of people have have benefited from getting their shit together, using the tools that they learned under the bar. You know, and this is this certainly applies to these kids coming out of the coming out of the military and and looking for a new way to behave, essentially, a new way to behave once they separate.

Jon Miller:
Completely agree.

Jon Miller:
I really liked your example, I think it was the first seminar I went to, of learning the trumpet. And that really resonated with me because one of the rehab activities I had was picking music back up. And I had to start from a really, really basic leve.

Mark Rippetoe:
I see your Coltrane poster behind you.

Jon Miller:
Is that coming through?

Mark Rippetoe:
You a sax player?

Jon Miller:
No, just he's one of my favorites. Before I joined the military, I was thought I might be a jazz guitarist.

Mark Rippetoe:
So you you picked it back up and you still play?

Jon Miller:
I do. It's coming back slowly, though honestly. I, I try and pretend that I didn't have an injury because it makes it easier to cope with the loss of chops over the years. But, you know, there may be some lingering effects.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, I've been trying like hell for twenty four years to gain chops and they just... they won't come. Chop's don't come for me.

Jon Miller:
You're an intermediate. You're an intermediate phase of your term.

Mark Rippetoe:
I am. I play the trumpet at the level of an average eighth grader. Yeah, I, I, I couldn't sit in third chair in a high school band. I really am not any better than that, but I have a lot of fun. I have a lot of fun.

Jon Miller:
Training frequency.

[off-camera]:
Increase the volume.

Mark Rippetoe:
Increase volume, volume, volume and intensity, stress recovery adaptation!

Jon Miller:
Well, OK, John, tell us what you have in mind as far as the process by which people leaving a service commitment, people separating. You get a can work with us on this kind of a on this introductory introduction into your business and into our business specifically.

Jon Miller:
Absolutely. Starting Strength Gyms dot com. Click on the tab. How to become a coach. There's already a box to check if you're a veteran that gets directed directly or that's it excuse me... That gets sent directly to me. And we set up an appointment.

Jon Miller:
Because of the red tape involved. It's usually better to do these things over a phone conversation, but I'm happy to communicate in... you know, the other day I was talking to somebody who is in Afghanistan, so we had to text. That was fine.

Jon Miller:
And, you know, if if you like what you hear, but you'd like to try something other than a career as a Starting Strength coach. My website is Vets Make It Dot com, which is V E T S M A K E I T and @vetsmakeit on all the social media.

Jon Miller:
And the bottom line is tailored mentorship. You know, we put your interests first. We like to find employers that have training pathways and our skilled trade catering mostly to noncollege educated younger veterans. But, you know, we we will talk to anybody. If we don't have the answers, we'll find somebody that does.

Mark Rippetoe:
And you guys are watching this pay attention to the fact that we're not interested in your college education. What what we do in gyms is very badly prepared for in college. Those of you that that are entertaining the idea of going back to school and and going into the fitness industry with an exercise physiology background, that that works fine if you want to be a pin setter at a global gym. But it does not prepare you for what we do.

Mark Rippetoe:
What we do is prepared for by you training and you learning and you thinking about the process that we advocate in terms of getting you from where you are right now to stronger nine months down the road. What you learn in your own novice training progression out of the bar is far, far more valuable than anything you will obtain in school. Understanding physiology and the biology and and the physics of all of this stuff is very, very important. But you can teach yourself that and we can help you to learn that. We have a coaching prep course that's available on the website and that helps you get the background, the academic background.

Mark Rippetoe:
You need to do the the things that you're going to have to do as a coach in a gym. But if you think that you can go to a school and get a four year degree in exercise physiology and come out able to correctly coach a deadlift, you know, that's not what happens. Sorry, that's not what happens.

Mark Rippetoe:
And it's a it's a... I think that what we're saying is that the old expectation that you have to have a college degree to get anything done now is that that's rapidly losing its its polish.

Jon Miller:
Can I put a point on that?

Mark Rippetoe:
Oh, yeah, please. We talk about this all the time. I you know, a college is expensive and if it's expensive as well as useless, don't do it.

Jon Miller:
I've spoken to a lot of very successful builders, contractors, high six figures, lots earning potential. And the one thing that they tell me -it's universal - is I can teach somebody skills, I can't teach them the right attitude. Show up at the right place at the right time. And in a sound bite, one builder in specific said: look, I'm only going to hire somebody if I'd also invite them to my house for Thanksgiving. And if you're getting out of the military, let that sink in. It's not about credentials and, you know, getting the degree alone, you've got to have the right character to go along with it, right?

Mark Rippetoe:
That's absolutely true. And a lot of that character to to reiterate, is built under the bar bill yourself. What you learn by taking your personal squat from 115 to 365 is what you have that is available to other people in this profession.

Mark Rippetoe:
And if you've never done that, you're you're not the right person for what we want to get done. If you haven't done it, you're either not prepared or you have consciously refused to prepare, neither one of which is acceptable. You learn under the bar, you learn all kinds of things. Under the bar, you learn the kind of things out of the bar that make the man want to invite you over for Thanksgiving dinner.

Mark Rippetoe:
I know that sounds grandiose and but. But it's absolutely true. It's absolutely true. Some of the most valuable lessons that can only be learned this way are learned under the bar. How to finish the fifth rep of a set. You don't know that you can do.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well the way you learn that as you try it. And every time somebody does something, they learn something about themselves, the matter, how long they've been training. They learn something about themselves. And we're eager to meet you. If you have if you find yourself in this situation, we're eager to meet you. We can put you to work. And we we want your experience, because if you've come out of the military, you've you've been in conflict and you've learned many good technical things and you've got a background that is structured and ordered. We can fit you into our program if you'll meet us halfway. And I think John's situation is something that you need to investigate.

Mark Rippetoe:
John, thanks for being with us today on Starting Strength Radio. How do people how do people get hold of you?

Jon Miller:
The website is Vets' Make It dot com V E T S M A K E I T dot com. The same for our Instagram handl.e schedule an appointment. No commitment, no commitment necessary.

Mark Rippetoe:
Ok. Email? You can just find you at that website?

Jon Miller:
Correct. Info@vetsmakeit.com

Mark Rippetoe:
Ok, well thank you John Miller. Appreciate your your being here. We're glad to have you associated with us. It's guys like you that demonstrate the value of what we do. And we're happy to have made whatever contribution to your situation we've made. And we're looking forward to you making a similar contribution to ours.

Jon Miller:
Thank you so much, Rip. I really appreciate it.

Mark Rippetoe:
Thanks. Thanks again, John.

Mark Rippetoe:
And thank you guys for watching us. We'll see you next week. Starting Strength Radio.

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