Ep. 43: The Kurtlocker Kurtis Stadsvold: Bombs, Garage Gyms, and RESILIENCE

Bio – Kurtis Stadsvold, aka The Kurt Locker. He is active duty military and his job is Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD). If you are not familiar with EOD, here is a quick background.

Background -  Mitigating the hazards of explosive materials and other weapons takes immense courage, precision, and skill. Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) members undertake some of the Air Force's most dangerous missions in diverse and unforgiving locales worldwide. These brave Airmen work solo or in teams and employ special tools and vehicles to safely locate, identify, recover, disarm, and dispose of dangerous weapons that threaten people, property, and natural environments.

Show Notes: 

Intro and his garage gym being a church
00:00 – 03:00 Kurtlocker It's good to be here. And yeah, I remember like that. First I think when I PCS'd here two years ago now that's when I think you first reached out is maybe a couple months into my assignment You're like hey, are you at Wright-Patt? Yeah, and I hit you back with a yes, and it was funny because I always kind of I marked it in Instagram as a it's got like a little corner tag thing so you follow up and remember who you were talking to and it was in there and it kind of went dormant for a few months and I remember who reached out to you. If I reached out to you, you reached out to me next. But basically just try to reinvigorate that conversation. So I'm really excited that we're finally doing this. It's an honor. It's a good church. I can't remember I've heard like the church before, like hey, what are you doing going to church, going to the gym? But absolutely in a way it has a lot of that same effect that going to church would be, for if you have a group of people that come work with you in your gym, you're getting that fellowship. You're also working to improve yourself, challenge where you're at, and really the intent is to not remain status quo but actually to improve and advance beyond even your own expectations. So in a lot of ways this is exactly like a church.

Importance of strength training and conditioning to one’s not only physical health, but also their mental and emotional health
03:19 – 05:20 Kurtlocker So I'd say it's super important, regardless of what your job is because although mine might be physically or mentally or even emotionally at times a very difficult job to do having the outlet where you can go and throw some weight around and having like that Zen thing for a lot of people it actually might not be that fitness is their Zen moment. It might be that making clay pots on a wheel is your Zen moment, and that's great. But for me, mine just happens to line up that with a physically demanding job. My passion after 2013 really turned into fitness and so for me it marries up nicely and for it's really important for me to have this, because my wife will tell you, if I'm not training, that I'm probably just the most impossible person to get along with.

 My body actually starts to hurt as a result of not training. We can talk about that now or later, but, like I'm facing another med board now I've faced previous med boards. I'm two inches shorter than when I joined the military. It's been a physically demanding job. So for me, training is what keeps me upright and keeps me moving, as well as it gives me that thing that I  can do it. I normally train by myself, not that it's by choice, it's just the way it works out. But it's that opportunity for me to have that kind of meditation time where it's me out here, whether I'm silent, listening to music or watching podcasts, but just that me and it allows me to disconnect from work, disassociate a little bit, while also doing something that also helps me at work from a physical sense.

Advice for someone on best ways to learn the skill of detachment
07:45 – 12:52 Kurtlocker So you absolutely do. So I have some opinions here. I just want to make sure I stayed up front that these are like Kurtis's opinions. These are things that I have done. So one I've had multiple AFSs in the Air Force. I used to be an avionics technician. I worked 16s, 22s, MQ ones and MQ nines awesome experience, but at the time it was a very different culture. So, switching over to the EOD culture, we almost teach that from the beginning, some things that we do to teach. That is one.

It's pretty rare that people wear their uniform to and from work and I'd like to just I'm not saying that that's what everybody should do, but for me I find that that's actually a super helpful thing, because for me it's almost like the period at the end of a sentence. So I finished work, I take my uniform off, I put it in my closet at work or in my locker, wherever I'm storing it, and I'm done at that point. You know I'm sort of going from who I am in the military to Kurtis, going back to Kurtis. I can stop somewhere on the way home and I'm just a normal Joe and we do that as a culture, like almost universally, EOD technicians don't wear their uniform to and from work, and that's not all of them. That's why it's almost universally. But that's the first thing right. There is learning how to have that disconnect, to try to have a group of friends that are separate, and I'm not saying that you got to lead two separate lives or anything like that. They're obviously going to know who you are, but having people that one are at least outside of your culture as far as an AFS to having someone that's just outside the military, have some people that have zero military background and just bounce ideas off them, because I don't know if other military members realize this or not, but a lot of the stuff we do is bonkers, absolutely ridiculous.

Try to explain to somebody like a change of command formation. Explain that to a civil, and that has zero context as to what's going on, because you're explaining like basically, hey, we got new management coming in and they want to see everybody. If you look at the historical context of a change of command, it's wildly important because it was developed during a time where social media wasn't a thing, like the internet wasn't a thing, so you got to see who's in charge of you, and sometimes these are outside, yes, and sometimes well, yeah, so you're explaining like yeah, so new management came in and we all stood in this block thing, like I stood next to someone, behind somebody and someone was behind me and it was this massive gaggle. It was like 100 degrees outside. We practiced this for like six hours just to make sure that we could stand there for 15 minutes and rigidly.

People are dropping out like flies, falling over, smoking their face, and people that are not in the military, like what are you doing? Someone who captures this really well from an influencer or content creator standpoint is the there's a soldier's tag is like mandatory fun day. He breaks this stuff down perfectly. I can't even begin to match his, his wit and his humor. But have those friends that are not in the military just so that you can get a beat on like hey, what is normal. And that doesn't mean that what we do in the military is bad. I like to make sure I say that too, because a lot of what we do customs and courtesies has a lot of heraldry, and it goes beyond just Air Force heraldry. This is like stuff that we have done since the Roman Empire which men think about at least once a day. So here's our moment to think about this. But this, this stuff, has been going on for ages and it's wildly important. But having those civilian friends to be able to disconnect, kind of disassociate a little bit, you will always be whether you're in, out, retired, separated, kicked out, I don't care what you are, you will always be that military member, that person who raised the right hand and said send me. But it's also really good to be able to break away from that and give your mind a little bit of a break, because we demand a lot out of our airmen. We demand a lot out of just anybody that's underneath you, because people that listen to this might not have airmen. They might have civilians that work for them, but we demand a lot out of those guys too.

 And so, being able to disconnect, have those civilian friends. So, to be clear, have those civilian friends. Don't wear uniform to and from work, just as a piece of advice. And then three have something that is yours. So for me, that thing is this space. Right here is the gym. I like to tell my young guys like, hey, you can pick like four things, pick four things. Your family should always be the number one. The Air Force is going to be one of those things. I'm sorry, but just get over it. College might be your third thing. And then, for me, the gym is my fourth thing, and the reason I say that is because I've been guilty in the past of taking out too much and it almost starts to detract away from that very important role as a Air Force leader.

Stories of when resilience established from strength training got him through a stressful time or situation
15:40 – 22:06 Kurtlocker I'm going to take the second part of the question first. So the second part of the question is talking about like a stressful time that got me through using strength training. So I'm going to rewind. So we brought up 2013. So 2013 was when I got back from Afghanistan. I was out there serving with the second combat engineer battalion, the Marine Corps out of Lejeune, and I was also serving with the seventh rifles British Brigade Operations Company and some of the SAS guys from England, United Kingdom, whatever that whole island is called.

When I got back, I was having debilitating back pain. I had basically been carrying a rock and I'm not exaggerating when I say I'm not talking 100 pounds of gear and we were doing dismount missions that would either last hours or days, and when I got back I was just in pain. I was trying to go to the clinic I affectionately call the medical group the Medical Hobby Shop that is 100% because of my time in 2013, just trying to get help and I finally so you actually mentioned Alan Thrall and it's really funny that you bring that up because watching YouTube, I saw Alan Thrall and I was like, oh, that's cool. He's a former pallbearer. He's out doing content now. I know fitness is important, but I never took it seriously.

Yeah, I started kind of following his page and then that ran into NeverSate, which is Brian Alsruhe's page, which he is just wildly inspirational. He's a former I think he's an agency guy or something. He's very hush-hush about his past but through those two gateways, as well as a really great physical therapist that I which I remembered his name big strapping dude for physical therapists like not your traditional like let me shove a needle in you. Not that I hate that, I actually like the dry needling, but he was like you know, he's a great guy Like, yeah, the reason you hurt is because you're weak, and I'm editing what he said here. So he's like basically, you're weak, You're a whiner, Shut up, let's lift some weights. And so those three were kind of my trifecta that got me started actually doing strength training in a way that was productive in nature, because before that I would do what I think a lot of military people do when they go to the gym.

So one, we teach running because it's the easiest thing to get a thousand people to do at the same time. So I would go and I would run. I'd come back, I'd be sweating, I'd be like all right, cool. So like that machine's open, I'll go do leg extensions and then, like that machine's open, I'll go do whatever Right? So you just basically wander around the gym doing the machine or we'll go do bench press bench press yeah, actually, that's all about to get to. Or like the bench press or like, well, I'm going to do decline bench press today, because you know I want to hit the lower pec versus the upper peck and like trying to get all like bro science scientific. And I took it seriously and I kind of simplified everything and I was like, all right, cool, so simple, hard and effective. Let's make training that simple, hard and effective. And that's that basically got me to where I was sitting on I was laying down in our training room multiple times a day during shift. I had like five ice packs I bring to work and the only way I could get through work was to go upstairs, lay down in the training room, lay on those ice packs for like 15 minutes and then I was like numb enough to continue the only other way outside of that. So, like when I would go to training events there's a lot of pride in this too, right, like I am, I'm a staff sergeant who is leading a section supervising like five airmen at the time, and I'm not going to go on no profile because mama didn't raise no punk That was my attitude. And so like I would go to training events and the only way I could get through some of those training events because I should have been on profile like just straight up, like I was not walking right as I was there was a stigma back then right Like hardcore.

I still am guilty of that stigma with myself. So like right now I'm actually at an amro process, potentially facing another med board, and I probably should be on profile. But I stepped up and took my, I was coming up due at the end of the month for my fitness test, earlier this week actually, and I came up to our PTL the week before and I was like, hey, I need a PT test. So we did my FSQ and he's like are you on profile? And in my head I'm like well, my elbow screwed, my shoulder's still a little bit screwed, my back is absolutely screwed. No, I'm fine.

Bad recommendations he often hears
28:10 – 32:53 Kurtlocker First off, don't argue with children. My interpreter taught me that in Afghanistan I shut people down very routinely. That's not fair. I will shut people down almost regardless of grade. I've learned how to do it appropriately for those that outrank me, but I don't argue with children. Period, you can't argue with a child.

Yeah, they'll take over, all right. So bad advice there's tons of bad advice out there, but there's also a lot of good advice. It's funny I go through stages. Let's see here. So when I first got into strength training, I was doing starting strength and because I read the book and because that's what I was doing and it was working for me at that time, I was like, well, if you don't do starting strength, you don't know what you're doing. All right, that is bad advice. Really, the good advice is going to be what helps you improve and what work, work man.

It's really hard to filter that when it comes to online, because it goes beyond just credentialing. Like someone could be like one certified personal trainer. I know how to give this advice, or I'm, and I'm working on my masters in exercise science. That means I know how to give good advice. I mean, but does it? So what I'd say is just one educate yourself. We live in an age where there is so much educational material available to you, and I would say that you should prioritize people that know what they're doing from an educational standpoint, whether it's certifications or degrees.

But don't just take it as gospel, because a really good example of this is there is a physio over in England. His name is Adam Meakins. Awesome physio gives great advice on Instagram, does like breakdowns. He also does some funny ones. And then we also have squat university, and that's one that a lot of people are a lot more familiar with. So squat university might put out content and he's a physio, like he maybe doesn't. I think he does patient care, but he is a physio, and so is Adam Meakins, but they actually offer opinions that are contrary to each other, and what people need to consider is that a lot of times, these pieces of advice are made within context. A really good example of this is knees over toes, so like they're supposed to have knees over toes when you lunge. So if you have long femurs, that might be the only way that you can get to depth in a way that promotes good balance, because if you're up on your toes, you're no longer have the midline of your body over the middle of your foot, blah, blah, blah. So when it comes to good advice, though, when you're trying to filter it, if it's just a bodybuilder like Sam Sulek and he's looking for the sick pump or whatever the heck he says, he's like the biggest thing right now. He's down in Cincinnati. He might have some good advice, but I don't know, maybe not. He's young. Just take it with a grain of salt.

And my biggest recommendation for people is to, if it's something that you want to do, seriously find a coach and not a remote coach. Find an in-person coach. That's you're going to be your best first line. If you can't get an in-person coach, start taking videos of yourself and maybe send it to me. I don't care if you send it to me over Instagram. I will break it down with angles and I'll give you some advice and you can take it or leave it. But if you need to hire a remote coach, just make sure that you have the video that goes along with the lifting to make sure it's good.

As far as like career field advice, what I would tell people that there are many, many roads that the military has to offer, whether it's in EOD or outside of EOD. I would tell people that they should not be taking 100% of their advice about their Air Force career from people that are inside of their career field and that they should have mentors that are not in their career field as well some that are, but have some that aren't. To give you that outside advice get perspective, get outside the box thinking, get out of your vacuum and stop trying to solve all your problems inside of your vacuum. That's my best advice I can give people. Use things like Project ARC, use those innovative fellowships that are out there. They're all over the Air Force portal. Nobody's reading them, but those are the guys that are solving guys and girls that are solving the problems that we're going to have when we potentially go to the next conflict. And if you're working in a vacuum, I promise you that you're going to fail.

How a failure, or apparent failure, set him up for future success and have a favorite failure story
35:14 – 37:24 Kurtlocker So I have failed a ton. My attitude towards failure is fail now, not when it counts the EOD mantra with failure is it's initial success or total failure. And that's true because it's either I'm working on a problem or, if I screw up, I'm just suddenly not there to deal with it anymore A favorite failure. So there's I don't know why, so like it's not even like that big of a failure. I was going through a divorce back I don't know whatever year it was I got back from Afghanistan. I was in for adjustment disorder, ptsd, at mental health I was angry. I was going through a med board. I was angry and I ran an IED operation as part of my training normal training and as I was sweeping up to an IED, there was an improvised rocket launcher and I went over there and basically the processes that I did got me killed within 30 seconds of identifying that there's a rocket launcher right there and I was just pissed, like I just remember being like overwhelmingly just pissed off. There was a lot of external factors, like my about to be ex-wife was right there watching. The guy that is the reason that we became exes was also standing right there watching.

But that failure, I think, is probably one of my favorite, because I have never thrown a piece of equipment that far. I got yelled at, I got smoked. It was significantly less than a 300 pound stone, but I threw a combat helmet. I don't even know how far it was. I probably remember it being farther. But it was just one of those moments where, like that moment really allowed me to get out a lot of anger and aggression that I had at my situation. It wasn't a good situation too. Just let me say that leadership if leadership needs to be engaged in what's going on with their guys, that should have been a command directed move. There should have been somebody needed to move.

When thinking of a movie image that depicts leadership, who or what comes to mind?42:37 – 45:17 Kurtlocker So a movie that has leadership, like projects, that leadership, oh man, that's a real. That's actually a really hard question. There's a couple that come to mind right away. One is 300 Leonidas, king Leonidas, absolutely. So think about that real quick. So, as the king, the warrior, king of the Spartans and again, a lot of this is speculation, but if I've read Steven Pressfield's work on the hot gates, I've read a lot of history on this and I mean we'll talk about the Roman Empire later, just to think about the Roman Empire again later. But yeah, with that this guy had 300 or more or less highly motivated, highly trained warriors that at a moment's notice dropped everything that they were doing and went to Thermopylae, at the hot gates and basically they defended their lifestyle, defended their families, defended their culture, and they were just I mean, the movie makes it like they're super, if you don't get goosebumps during that, you're not it, I don't know, I get goose bumps. Maybe I'm just easily influenced me to my movies, but like I listen to that. Hey, spartan, what is your profession? It's, yeah, it's like, oh my gosh, like that I got goosebumps right now. Right, there's a couple others that come to mind too.

The movie Otto, this so it may be not a leadership from like a large organization standpoint, but the super cranky old, like probably on the spectrum dude who completely changes the life of this this young family that moves into their neighborhood. I don't know if that's leadership. No, it is leadership because he basically takes them where they're at and like you got a guy that can't back up a car to save his life and he turns that whole like. He's like this father of the family is like falling off the roof, like he sucks as a, as like the stereotypical dude, and he takes that family and just turns them around and like makes all the difference in the world and, yeah, probably like that, like having that large impact on people that probably deserve it, but you don't realize they deserve it and that that's kind of the whole premise of the story there.

If a movie was made about his life, what would the name of the movie be and (IT CANNOT BE THE KURTLOCKER) and which members from the garage gym community he would cast
45:33 – 50:47 Kurtlocker I think that, honestly, what the movie would be about at this point is trying to make an impact on veteran lives after the military, like literally just focusing, maybe like the first 30 seconds it's like this action sequence of like these guys went through some crap, but really after that it's going to be me and probably my two closest friends in the garage gym community trying to meet people where they're at and try to make their lives better through strength. The two people that it's going to be is Chris Yarber. He's not necessarily a home gym owner, but he does sell the best lifting belts. They're all hand carved. He's a former Marine. He was in the 03 initial push into Fallujah Absolutely awesome human being has really been through a lot and is a huge influence in my life, like legitimately. And then the other person there's two more, but the other person that's like the really close part here is Jason Campbell from surplus strength and again, prior Army Iraq. Oh, I think he was Iraq 03 or 2003, something like that…

I'm very motivated to try to make a difference and so I've had drunk conversations with Chris sitting on the at home gym con in French Lick Indiana, just kind of talking about where we're at in life. And it wasn't forced, it wasn't deep, but like just talking about like hey, how are you doing? Like how actually are you doing and actually caring. And then we have a group, a text group, and it's called trace leches and we hit it up. It's almost every single day that there's something in that group where we're just trying to like reach out to each other. Like Fridays it's like it's not uncommon to open up that group and it's like, hey, it's Thursday, you guys are ugly as hell, but I love you all, hope you're okay where you're at. I keep on saying where you're at.

But the other person that we're going to, we're going to rope in here, is because every group needs a nerd who has a medical background, and that's going to be Jon Klipstein. Again, doesn't necessarily work in a home gym community but owns UXO supplements, and the reason we need him is because Jon is brilliant. He cares super deeply about the veteran community. A lot of the stuff that UXO does benefits Mission 22, trying to get out, try to give back to this community that we care about the veteran community specifically, and so I think that that's probably my three other dudes that are going to be there. Oh, he's, yeah, he's prior army and he knows more about PubMed and Medscape studies than anybody. When it comes to the actual efficacy of like, did you know that taking creatine is actually good for your mental health?

Five grams a day and it like has a positive impact. You want to know where that result comes from? Hit Jon up on a text and you'll get a study. Like I swear he's got him saved yeah, absolutely. And he has another podcast too, called Black Sheep Narrative. He's trying to get off the ground, but yeah, those are. So that's what it's going to be about is basically just making those saves, starting those tribes of veterans and it doesn't have to be all veterans but like we saw a chart today looking at veteran suicide, and veteran suicide for me is a huge deal because of some of the things I've been through with it. Like I've firsthand, like you, ever found a body before. Like I have so very, very much, so like an important thing to me and I care very deeply about that, and I think that that's what I want the rest of my life to be is either, as my main hustler, my side hustle, needs to be prioritizing that. Preaching the gospel of hey, like strength, strength and conditioning, let's make you a little bit better physically, mentally and emotionally in improving lives, saving lives, and the best part about that is you establish those relationships. And it's kind of like that gift that grows 100% and that is an exponential growth, like if I help two people in, both of them help two people, that's not asking all that much, but now you've helped what like 16 people or whatever. The path is on that.

If there was a GIANT BILLBOARD that he could place anywhere in the world with his message on it for the world to see, where would the billboard be and what would the message say?
50:49 – Time Kurtlocker Oh man, I'm not sure I can say that on this podcast. I'll skip that answer. Gosh, that's a really good question… yeah, that's a good one. So what I'm going to start with, like what, what does the Kurt Locker billboard say? One it's got a QR code on it. So that is, you're driving down the road texting, you can just aim it up at the billboard and, you know, go to my website. You probably can't do that, it's probably illegal to do, but I would do it anyways. It would probably I don't know some sort of message about.

I honestly might just go with the iron, like put the I don't know the actual Bible first, but the, as iron sharpens iron, so we sharpen each other. And the reason I would use that one is faith gets attention on billboards. It might be because someone that maybe doesn't have the maturity to just see it for what it is sees it and they're like oh, you're trying to force your religion on me, but it gets their attention and they see it. So it puts that bug in their ear. And then two for people that see it and they know what it is. They're like you know what that's true. I actually didn't think about that today. So maybe, as iron show up in iron, we should be sharpening each other. Now, where would I put it, man? That's a really tough question, because you want to put it somewhere where it's got, you know, like a lot of throughput, a lot of visibility. I don't know. That's a really good question.

More info about the guest:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheKurtlocker/featured
IG: https://www.instagram.com/the_kurtlocker/?hl=en

Books and People mentioned:
MandatoryFunDay
Brian Alsruhe
Alan Thrall
Sam Sulek       
Adam Meakins
Squat University
Chris Yarber
Jason Campbell
Surplus Strength
Jon Klipstein
UXO Supplements
Mission 22
Black Sheep Narrative

Key Takeaways:
The episode concludes with a reflection on leadership and its various forms. Curtis imagines a movie about his life and the people who have significantly impacted his journey. His dream is to make an impact on veteran lives post-military through strength and conditioning. His message is clear: prioritizing improving lives and saving lives through strength and conditioning should be our collective goal.

In essence, this episode presents a rich tapestry of military life, fitness, resilience, and personal growth. It underscores the transformative power of strength training and the importance of mentorship. Most importantly, it serves as a reminder that resilience, in any form, is a powerful tool for personal growth and well-being.

Quotes:
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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