Survivor castaway Jonathan Young has revealed that Rob "Boston Rob" Mariano trained him for four years ahead of his Season 50 appearance.
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Jonathan, who was known for being a physical threat and food provider on Season 42, finished his first season in fourth place, knowing his strategic and social game could be improved.
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Jonathan, 31, therefore told People that he called Rob -- a five-time Survivor castaway who won Survivor: Redemption Island -- for help so he could play a better game and confidently compete against the Survivor 50 icons.
"I did a lot of psychological training with Boston Rob. For four years, I went to his house, trained, sat at his feet, and learned everything I could because my strategic game needed some work," Jonathan told the magazine.
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"Boston Rob helped me with that a lot. I completely changed my game. It was years of going to his house and talking to him about what I could do differently."
Jonathan said Rob made him feel "ready" and prepared for Survivor's milestone season, which currently airs Wednesday nights at 8PM ET/PT on CBS.
"[Rob] said, 'You have an opportunity to go into Season 50 because you were not played up. You were not put in a light where you were that smart.' So it completely changed my game," Jonathan revealed.
Jonathan shared that Rob -- who finished as the runner-up on Survivor: All-Stars behind his then-ally and now-wife Amber Brkich -- wrote him a letter, advising him to follow three rules for the game of Survivor.
In summary, Jonathan recalled of Rob's guidance, "One rule was to smile. Everybody wants to play with somebody who smiles. Number two, you want to win; nobody else wants you to win. Number three: control what you can control, and don't worry about anything else."
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Rob, 50, apparently told Jonathan that a tribal swap, for example, could completely change his course in the game.
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"[Rob said] you can have a tribe swap and completely mess you up. Don't worry about that. You can't control it. Just worry about what you can control," Jonathan said.
When looking back on his experience playing Survivor 42, Jonathan said the season "didn't show a lot of my strategy," and so fans can expect to see him "play a different game" on Season 50.
"They will see that I'm making different types of moves. I learned a lot from what I did right and wrong in Season 42," Jonathan explained.
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"I completely changed my game, and it's going to be obvious in these episodes coming up."
Comparing Survivor to the UFC, Jonathan acknowledged how "the best fighters are humble" and "know where they stand."
"In Survivor, if you're not humble and you don't know where you stand in the game, then you will not do well. One of the producers told me, 'Don't get comfortable,'" Jonathan recalled.
"If you get comfortable and get a sense of arrogance or pride about knowing what's going on, that's when you get knocked out in the UFC or taken out in Survivor. If you think you're better than you are, you'll either get knocked out or taken out."
On Survivor 42, Jonathan lost the fire-making challenge to Mike Turner at the Final 4 Tribal Council, and then Mike went on to secure Jonathan's vote in the final jury voting.
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Maryanne Oketch, however, came out victorious and won in a landslide after she received votes from the rest of the jury.
While Jonathan was viewed as a competition beast and great fisherman on his tribes throughout the season, he was also labeled a "misogynist" and had been accused of being arrogant and condescending to women.
"Man, I hate that they felt that way. Because whenever I got a chance to talk about them, I would give them praise," Jonathan told Entertainment Weekly after the finale aired in Spring 2022.
Jonathan, who was a 29-year-old beach service co-owner from Alabama at the time, also admitted he was crushed to have lost that final firemaking challenge.
"It was disappointing, but there's a place in Survivor that you reach and all you can do is all you can do. And I knew that everything that I was giving is all that I had to give," he shared at the time.
Had Jonathan made it to the Final 3 and jury questioning, he said, "I think I would've done well when it came to talking. I think that going to the jury and them asking me questions and answering questions would be great. How people would've voted, we'll never know."
Jonathan said no one had a clue how difficult it was for him to be a 6'4" and 250-pound starving person in the game.
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"They have no idea... what you have to do to change perceptions. Just like I have no idea what it's like being them. But yeah, they didn't see my strategy and that's completely okay because I didn't want them to," Jonathan noted.