David Goggins
Retired Navy SEAL · Can't Hurt Me
Retired Navy SEAL, ultra-endurance athlete and author of Can't Hurt Me and Never Finished. He went from 297 pounds and a pest-control job to SEAL training, then to Badwater, 205 miles at the 48-hour national championships and a pull-up world record, and he insists none of it came from talent. His days are running, the gym, hours of stretching and four or more hours of study for paramedic exams. No coffee, no pre-workout, no hacks: by his account the only method is doing the hard thing again, every day.
- Entries
- 18
- Does
- 10
- Recommends
- 5
- Discusses
- 3
Books
2 books in this stack
- BookRecommends$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Can't Hurt Me
His 2018 memoir. He told Outside he self-published it after turning down a $300,000 offer, saying he would not relive that story for the money.
Source: Outside: David Goggins Wrote the Game Plan for Peak PerformanceVisit davidgoggins.com (opens in a new tab)On record from 2 of 62 tracked people: 1 recommends it, 1 has discussed it - BookRecommends$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Never Finished
The 2022 follow-up. His site pitches it as a look inside what he calls his Mental Lab, and offers a curse-free edition alongside the original.
Source: davidgoggins.com: BooksVisit davidgoggins.com (opens in a new tab)On record from 1 of 62 tracked people: 1 recommends it
Supplements
1 supplement in this stack
- SupplementDiscusses$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Caffeine
He says he drinks no coffee and takes no caffeine or pre-workout at all, and that he has run for 70 hours without it. Picking up Huberman's medicine cabinet image, he says his cabinet holds the things he overcame, not anything off a shelf.
Source: Huberman Lab: David Goggins: How to Build Immense Inner StrengthView item: CaffeineOn record from 14 of 62 tracked people: 10 do it, 1 recommends it, 3 have discussed it
Protocols
10 entriesStructured routines and practices with a defined method.
The gym is the second block of the daily routine he described in 2019, after the run and before the stretching.
Source: Outside: David Goggins Wrote the Game Plan for Peak PerformanceTwo to three hours of stretching a day, as of 2019, and he told Outside he had missed two days in six years.
Source: Outside: David Goggins Wrote the Game Plan for Peak PerformanceStill runs daily and says it sucks. Several knee surgeries mean the first 20 minutes of every run are a limp, by his own account, and he keeps going because the body has not yet said he cannot.
Source: Huberman Lab: David Goggins: How to Build Immense Inner StrengthAccording to his own site, he held the Guinness record for pull-ups in 24 hours. 4,030 of them, in 17 hours, in 2013. It took a failed first attempt and five months of retraining.
Source: davidgoggins.com: Athletic achievementsIn 2008, still on active duty, he described a 25-mile ride each way to his Navy job. That was on top of the morning run. He also described riding home even on days when nothing else fit around work.
Source: Slowtwitch: An interview with US Navy Seal David GogginsFor 21 years in the military, he says, he lived every day as if it were day one, week one of SEAL training. Twice, he was rolled back to that phase.
Source: DVIDS: The Toughest Man Alive: An Interview with retired Navy SEAL David GogginsOne of the tools he says he and his partner Jennifer spent years writing down for readers, alongside the accountability mirror and callusing the mind. He adds that the tools are the part that fits in a book and the daily obsession is not.
Source: Huberman Lab: David Goggins: How to Build Immense Inner StrengthHis book page frames Can't Hurt Me around the claim that most people tap into about 40 percent of their capability; he calls it the 40% Rule.
Source: davidgoggins.com: BooksCalls ice baths, saunas, sleep and nutrition all important, then says he does not have time for some of them: something had to give.
Source: Huberman Lab: David Goggins: How to Build Immense Inner StrengthLumped in with ice baths as recovery tools he acknowledges matter, then says he does not have time for some of them. He is dismissive of any sauna protocol sold as a hack.
Source: Huberman Lab: David Goggins: How to Build Immense Inner Strength
Habits
5 entriesRecurring behaviors recorded in public statements.
Says he has trained 99% of his life alone, running at 2am and lifting at 1am in long sessions by himself. When Huberman suggests he needs no playlist to get going, he says it is all in his head now; the Rocky pump-up routine he leaned on at 300 pounds fell away as he got older.
Source: Huberman Lab: David Goggins: How to Build Immense Inner StrengthAs an active SEAL he was up at 3am, fitting in a run and a long ride before a 7am start. His line is that 24 hours in a day is enough if you want it, and that a missed session is on you.
Source: Slowtwitch: An interview with US Navy Seal David GogginsIt started at 16, while he was shaving his head, and he says it still happens every day. He names the lie or the failure out loud, then fixes it, down to phoning someone he lied to.
Source: The Tim Ferriss Show #630 transcript: Rich Roll interviews David GogginsFor his paramedic exams he writes every page out by hand, every day, until he can picture the page during the test. Four hours plus a day, including material he has already passed exams on.
Source: Huberman Lab: David Goggins: How to Build Immense Inner StrengthAsked how willpower grows, he says there is no hack: do the thing you do not want to do, then do it again, and expect it to suck. He agrees with Huberman that a hard thing you have learned to enjoy no longer counts.
Source: Huberman Lab: David Goggins: How to Build Immense Inner Strength
In their own words
Checked word for word against the linked source
“My daily routine is: I run, I go to the gym, and I stretch for about two, three hours. I’ve missed two days in the past six years.”
Outside: David Goggins Wrote the Game Plan for Peak Performance (opens in a new tab) · 25 Jan 2019 “Life is not friendly. Life is not you always being happy. You have to get the tactical advantage early in the morning, which means get up, go for a run, go to the gym, do something that prepares your mind. You want to start off your morning winning.”
Outside: David Goggins Wrote the Game Plan for Peak Performance (opens in a new tab) · 25 Jan 2019 On Early rising
“I have to go over the same page over, and over, and over, and over again … I go through and have to write everything down every single day.”
Huberman Lab: David Goggins: How to Build Immense Inner Strength (opens in a new tab) · 1 Jan 2024 “I can run for 70 hours, and I have before, no caffeine.”
Huberman Lab: David Goggins: How to Build Immense Inner Strength (opens in a new tab) · 1 Jan 2024 On Caffeine
“I had to change my thinking process, and basically the accountability mirror is what did it. I started shaving my head and my face when I was 16 years old, and I realized when I started shaving my face and my head, you have a lot of time to look at your reflection”
The Tim Ferriss Show #630 transcript: Rich Roll interviews David Goggins (opens in a new tab) · 29 Oct 2022
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