Jesse Itzler - Living with a SEAL: 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet

People ask me why I hired SEAL. One answer is this: When it comes to physical fitness, I tend to be a creature of habit. I guess compared to most people my age, I was in excellent shape and in a great place in my personal life. At the time I was married (still am) to a fantastic woman, and we had our first beautiful eighteen-month-old son (two more since). I began running in 1992, just after I graduated from college. Ive missed maybe a handful of days since. Ive run eighteen New York City marathons in a row, and its been the same drill every year. Training schedulethe same. Running routethe same. The store I buy bananas from the day before the racethe same. The Patsys pizza I order the night before each racethe same.

I like routine.

And routine can be good, especially when it comes to working out.

But routine can also be a rut.

Many of us live our lives on autopilot. We do the same thing every day; wake up, go to work, come home, have dinner. Repeat. I found myself drifting in that direction. It was as if my cruise control settings had been set and I wasnt improving. I wanted to get off it; I wanted to shake things up in a big way. My Central Park West life and SEALs nomadic take-no-prisoners life merging (or I should say, colliding) for a period of time was what I needed. It was unexpected, it was unique. It was insane (okay, I admit it), but research shows that stepping out of our routine in life is great for the body and spirit the brain too. Mix it up! Do the outrageous; think out of the box. Life is short, why not? As SEAL says, This aint a dress rehearsal, bitch.

While this is a story about our month together, its just as much a story about two people that had to step outside of their comfort zones. SEAL and me. He was as uncomfortable with doormen, chefs, and drivers as I was with sleeping in a chair and intentionally waking up in the middle of the night to run in the worst possible conditions. His no rhyme or reason approach to our workout schedule actually brought a lot of clarity into my life.

SEAL had something I wanted, but I just wasnt sure what it was. And I wanted to find out. Do you remember Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid? He had a very unorthodox approach to training. Daniel LaRusso, played by Ralph Macchio, wants to learn martial arts, but Mr. Miyagi starts him off with menial chores to help him. And Daniel unknowingly develops the defensive blocks through muscle memory, but what he eventually learns is a lot more than martial arts. Thats kind of what I was looking for when I asked SEAL to move in and train me. I wanted to train my body, but also my mind and spirit. The difference was I wasnt training for protection or a trophy. And I had already gotten the girl. I just wanted to get better.

Ive also always had an unorthodox approach to business and life in general. Its served me well. I dont believe in rsums in the traditional sense, I believe in life rsums. Do more. Create memories. Only when looking back on my successes and failures am I able to connect the dots. I could have never predicted or planned to go from being a rapper on MTV in the 1990s to eventually owning and operating my own private jet company. My normal has always been abnormal.

I dont know if I was thinking about my mortality, or fretting over how many more peak years I had left, or anything like that. I just felt that now was as good a time as any to shake things up. You know, to break up that same routine.

I believe the best ideas are the ones you dont spend too much time thinking through. My time with SEAL was no different and I got a lot more than I bargained for. Most of my successes in life have come from learning how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Like I said, I just want to get better.