Way of the Warrior Kid 3: Where there's a Will... (A Novel)

by Jocko Willink

“That’s exactly what I think,” Danny said.

  “Alright then, boys, enough talking,” Coach Adam said. “Get out there and train.”

  Danny and I walked out to that mat, shook hands, and started training.

  And even if I didn’t beat Danny, I knew that I was at least beating my ego.

  chapter 13

  When I woke up this morning, I was feeling pretty good. I had some good training with Danny yesterday, and I felt better now that I had told the truth to him and Coach Adam. And I have to admit that now that I knew it was my ego that had made me not like Danny, I could see he actually might be a pretty nice kid.

  But all that good feeling was tested when I did my workout with Uncle Jake this morning. First we did a bunch of pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups, burpees, and jumping jacks. Jumping jacks always seem easy when I start them—but try doing a hundred of them in a row!!!

  When we finished the workout in the garage, I thought I was going to take a little break, have some breakfast, and relax before Nathan and Kenny came over to go get our work done for the day. Because we had four houses worth of yard work to take care of, it was going to be a busy day.

  So, when I completed the final set of exercises, I said, “Thanks! That was a great workout!”

  “It’s not over yet,” he replied. “We are going to do some interval training.”

  “Interval training? I haven’t heard of that. What is it?”

  “It will be easier to show you than to tell you,” Uncle Jake said. “It will make you faster. But it may hurt a little bit while it is happening.”

  At this point, I got a little nervous. When Uncle Jake said something was going to hurt “a little bit”, that meant it was going to hurt A TON for a normal person— like me!

  “Okay, Uncle Jake,” I said.

  I must have not sounded very motivated, because Uncle Jake said, “Well, with an attitude like that, it might hurt a lot. Come on. Get in the game. This interval training will make you faster. Let’s go.”

  At this point, Uncle Jake started to jog, and I followed him. But he wasn’t running very fast; in fact, he was jogging at a pretty slow pace. As he jogged, he told me, “Interval training means that we are going to go easy for a bit, then hard—really hard—for a little bit, then easy for a while, then hard again, then easy again, and we are going to keep doing that for a while. Got it?”

  “Okay,” I told him.

  “Good, first hard sprint is going to be from the mailbox there up to that next corner right ahead, got it?” he said, pointing at the mailbox and the corner up ahead.

  “Okay,” I said. We jogged a little bit farther until we got to the mailbox and BOOM! Uncle Jake took off at a full sprint!

  I followed him as close as I could, sprinting as fast as I could go. The sprint didn’t take very long, and when I got to the corner, I slowed back down and caught up to Uncle Jake.

  “Next one is from that brick driveway to that big tree, okay?” Uncle Jake said.

  “Got it,” I told him.

  When we got to the brick driveway, we sprinted again, and I was going as fast as I possibly could all the way to the big tree. These sprints were tough, but they weren’t very long, so I realized I could run with everything I had—there wasn’t any reason to save any energy.

  And we kept doing that. Jogging. Sprinting. Jogging. Sprinting. Jogging. Sprinting…over and over again. I was getting tired, but it was a different kind of tired than I would get when running the mile. This workout made me feel good.

  Eventually, we turned and were headed back toward the house. During the middle of the run, some of the sprints were a little longer, but as we got closer to the house, Uncle Jake made the sprints shorter and shorter so I could still sprint FAST the whole time.

  Finally, we got back to the house. My legs were a little sore, but the run had made me feel really good—and fast.

  “How’d you like that, Marc?” Uncle Jake asked me.

  “Awesome. It was kind of fun to be able to sprint so fast.”

  “Good. It is a great workout—and it will make you faster on your mile time too. We’ll do this type of workout every few days to get your speed up, okay?”

  “Sounds good, Uncle Jake,” I said as he raised his hand and I gave him a high five.

  Finally, I went and got ready for the workday. Right at eight o’clock, Kenny and Nathan arrived. They were ready to work! We loaded up the wagon and got busy.

  And it was a good thing we did, because we had tons of work, especially at the Vandenberg’s house. They were a new customer, and we hadn’t worked on their yard at all. So it was a MESS! We had to pull out all kinds of weeds, and we actually had to mow the lawn, rake it, and then mow it again! It took a long time.

  By the time we were done with the Vandenberg’s house, it was already late. We didn’t even take any breaks or stop for lunch—we just kept working.

  “We are going to have to hurry if we are going to get done in time for jiu-jitsu,” Kenny said. He was right; we were running late.

  “Yes, we are—let’s have a weed race!” Nathan said. “Whoever pulls the most, wins!”

  At the next house, we all got buckets and started pulling weeds as fast as we could. Every time we would fill our buckets, we would run over and put them in a separate pile. After about fifteen minutes, there were no more weeds to pick up!

  “You won it, Nathan,” I said, looking at his pile of weeds, which was slightly bigger than mine and Kenny’s.

  “YES! I am the weed pulling king!” Nathan shouted as he picked up some weeds and put them on his head like a crown.

  We laughed and then Kenny said, “Come on! We have to finish up.”

  So we all got back to work, mowed the lawn, raked and swept up. We were done but without much time to spare. We loaded up the wagon and headed back to my house.

  “Looks like we are going to make it,” Kenny said. “But it will be close,” Nathan added.

  “Maybe we should get someone else to help?” Kenny suggested.

  “How about Danny?” Nathan asked quietly, and the way he asked, it sounded like maybe he thought I wouldn’t like that idea. Maybe he thought I was jealous of Danny. But he didn’t know I had my ego under control now.

  “Good idea!” I said cheerfully. “I can ask him tonight!”

  “Cool,” said Nathan.

  “Awesome,” said Kenny.

  I was excited. This was a good way to become better friends with Danny, a good way to get some extra help for Marc’s Meticulous Mowing, and a good way to make sure my ego was under control.

  chapter 14

  I am supposed to be making friends with Danny. And I am really trying. I realize that the biggest problem in making friends with him is me and my ego. So I am doing my best to be nice and really become friends with him.

  One way to do that was an idea from Uncle Jake. He told me to show Danny my best jiu-jitsu moves! At first I didn’t like that idea one bit! “If I show him my moves, I’ll never be able to tap him out!”

  “Wrong, Marc. If you show him your moves, he will learn to defend them. Once he knows how to defend them, they won’t work. If they won’t work, you will have to use another move to get him—and that will make you better. Also, if you show him your moves, he will most likely show you his moves. Then you can defend against his moves, and that will make him better too. And the more moves you both learn to use and defend—the better you will both get!"

  So, even though I didn’t really want to, when I got to jiu-jitsu, I went over to Danny and asked, “Hey, Danny, remember when I made you tap with a choke a couple weeks ago?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, “that was a good move. I wish you knew what you did so we could learn it. But you said you didn’t really know and just got lucky and squeezed. But it was a tight choke!”

  “Well, I actually do know what I did,” I told him. “Really?” he responded, with a surprised look on his face.

  “Yeah, really,” I said. “It was the only time I ha
d made you tap and I figured if I told you how, I wouldn’t be able to get you with it again—and you might use it to get me!”

  I thought Danny might be mad, but he just laughed and said, “You might be right about that! But if you teach your training partners the moves you know, it makes you better!”

  “I know, I know. But I wasn’t thinking about that! Anyway, the move I got you in was called the ‘loop choke’.”

  “The loop choke?” Danny asked.

  “Yes. The loop choke. It’s kind of a tricky move. Let me show you how to do it.” At that point, I explained the loop choke to Danny. I showed him where to put his hands and how to place his grip. I even showed him how to trick the person into thinking they are passing your guard when you are really just about to choke them! Danny loved it!

  Then Danny said, “Let me show you the omoplata!” This was the move that Danny had done to me before I faked getting hurt so I wouldn’t have to tap.

  This move was pretty crazy! It was a way of trapping the arm by just using your legs and it was very sneaky. It was a much harder move than the loop choke and it took me a bunch of tries before I finally made it work. But it was a really cool move!

  “That’s awesome,” I told Danny.

  Then I spent some time telling Danny how he could avoid getting caught in the loop choke by simply ducking his head under my hand before he passed my guard. And Danny showed me some ways to defend against and even escape from the omoplata. It was so cool!

  Once we taught each other the loop choke and the omaplata, we started showing each other some different moves and going over little details that made the moves work. It was really helpful. I was surprised at how much Danny taught me and how much I taught him.

  But things didn’t go the way I thought they would. After we finished showing each other moves, I figured it was a good time to ask Danny if he wanted to help out with Marc’s Meticulous Mowing.

  “Nathan, Kenny, and I work every day mowing lawns and pulling weeds, and we have a lot of work to do and we could use an extra hand. Do you think you might want to come over to my house tomorrow and help us? We start at eight o’clock in the morning. You have to wear some clothes that you don’t mind getting dirty and bring a water bottle with you and maybe a snack, too, in case you get hungry.”

  Danny had a weird look on his face.

  He looked like he really wanted to do it, but then he looked disappointed and said, “Sorry, Marc. Thanks for asking, but I am going to be doing some stuff with my older brother tomorrow.”

  I was thinking maybe it sounded like too much work— then I realized I forgot to tell him the best part! “One more thing I forgot to tell you, Danny. You get paid! All the different families pay me to take care of their lawns—and we split up that money!”

  I thought this would convince Danny.

  “Woah!” Danny said, “that’s awesome.” He looked excited for a second, then he looked disappointed again, and said, “But I am going to be hanging around with my older brother tomorrow.”

  Okay, I figured. Danny had some stuff to do tomorrow. I guess that was understandable. But not a big problem. “No problem. How about the next day?” I asked him.

  “Well, I’m going to be busy with my brother on that day as well,” he answered.

  “What about the day after that?” I asked.

  “I’ll probably being doing something with my brother on that day as well. Sorry, Marc.”

  At this point I kind of gave up. It didn’t make any sense to me. I was being super nice to Danny. We had taught each other our best jiu-jitsu moves. But he still didn’t want to come over and help us work. Maybe Danny was just lazy. Maybe he was only pretending to like me so that he could get my jiu-jitsu moves!

  I wasn’t sure what the problem was, but it seemed like Danny must have some reason he didn’t want to come and help us work. Maybe Danny wasn’t as ‘nice’ as he was acting. And I didn’t like that one bit.

  chapter 15

  “How is it going with Danny?” Uncle Jake asked as he did some push-ups during our morning workout.

  “I don’t know,” I replied.

  “You don’t know? Why not? I hope you’re not letting your ego get in the way,” he said as I did my set of squat-jumps.

  “I’m not letting my ego get in the way, Uncle Jake,” I said, breathing hard from my set, “but I’m not sure Danny is as nice as he seems.”

  “What makes you think that, Marc?” Uncle Jake asked.

  I stopped working out for a second so I could explain the situation to Uncle Jake. “Well, I asked him yesterday if he wanted to come over today and help Kenny and Nathan and me with the lawns. He said no. Then I asked him about the next day. He said no. Then I asked him about the day after that, and he still said no! I would say maybe he is lazy and doesn’t want to work, but, he is at jiu-jitsu every day working hard, so I don’t think that is it. I think maybe he just doesn’t like me or Kenny or Nathan.”

  “Do your push-ups,” Uncle Jake said. I guess I had been talking a little too long.

  “This is the same thing you went through with Nathan. There’s no telling what is going on in Danny’s life. Don’t be so quick to judge,” Uncle Jake said.

  I kept doing my push-ups, but I had to answer this. “I’ve already gathered some intelligence about Danny because I knew you might say this!” I said to Uncle Jake with a smile on my face.

  Uncle Jake smiled back. “Okay, what did you find out.”

  “Well his parents have a really nice car. In fact, at least two really nice cars—when his mom drops him off she drives one nice car, when his dad drops him off, he drives another one. Both of the cars look brand new! He also has really nice sneakers. And he has already had two new pairs, just this summer! On top of that, he has a bunch of nice jiu-jitsu gis and even a special jiu-jitsu backpack that he brings to the gym! A special backpack—just for jiu-jitsu!”

  “And in that backpack he has nice little snacks. Sandwiches, other snacks, and even one of those really nice water bottles that keeps drinks cold. He has EVERYTHING!” I told Uncle Jake as I finished my set of push-ups.

  Uncle Jake listened as he was doing his set of jump squats. He was breathing hard, but I could see a little smile on his face. He was impressed that I had gathered such good intelligence about Danny, just like Uncle Jake had me do last year when I gathered intelligence about Nathan. But with Nathan, what I learned was completely different. Nathan was living a very rough life. He didn’t have money for food or clothes, and he had to return cans and bottles to buy things to eat. His dad wasn’t around and his mom had to work all the time so she wasn’t home much.

  Danny’s life was completely different. Like I had told Uncle Jake, he seemed to have EVERYTHING he could want! Cars and food and clothes—everything! And there was one more thing I hadn’t told Uncle Jake yet. “One more thing, Uncle Jake,” I said.

  “What’s that?” he replied.

  “Guess what kind of bike Danny Rhinehart has?”

  Uncle Jake looked at me like he knew the answer. He didn’t say anything, but I could tell he knew.

  “That’s right! He has a Bentlee bike! The same exact one I wanted last year. The most expensive bike in the shop. So I don’t think Danny is exactly living a rough life!” I told Uncle Jake with a smile on my face.

  Uncle Jake just nodded.

  Finally! It started to seem like maybe I was right about Danny and maybe he wasn’t as nice as Uncle Jake seemed to think he was.

  Uncle Jake remained silent the rest of the workout as we finished our sets of push-ups and squats. Once we were done, Uncle Jake looked at me and said, “Alright, let’s go do your run.”

  We walked out of the garage and to the driveway.

  “Let’s give it a good push today,” Uncle Jake said, “and while you run, I want you to think about what you learned from Nathan last year. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Standby…BUST ‘EM!”

  I took off running a
t a good pace. Uncle Jake stayed just ahead of me, but I struggled and stayed pretty close. I could tell that I was running a bit faster than normal. The sprints from the interval training were really helping out, and I could feel it.

  At the turn around point, Uncle Jake ran past me back toward the house. "Keep it up!" he said with a stern look on his face.