MOPs & MOEs: Recent Episodes
MOPs & MOEs
Changing the fitness culture of the force. Your one stop shop for all things fitness for tactical professionals.
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This week's episode is a crossover with Ray and Travis over at Coaches' AAR. If you're in the tactical human performance space, they're much more focused on the practical aspects of coaching. Where we get into strategic, policy, and cultural issues, they keep it focused on the practitioner's perspective.
Go follow Coaches' AAR on the following platforms!
Coaches' AAR on Instagram
Coaches' AAR on Spotify
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On September 30th, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth spoke to an audience of the US military's most senior leaders, announcing a sweeping set of policy reforms. These included a heavy emphasis on fitness, both force-wide and for particular education and training courses.
In this episode we review many of those changes. We start with a rapid overview of the "non-fitness" changes, like grooming standards and adjustments to investigation processes. After than we move into a more focused discussion of the fitness-specific changes and the ramifications these will have.
Drew mentioned our "Fitness Aptitude Test" (FAT), if you want to check that out and try it for yourself, here's a blog post about it.
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On this week's episode we're breaking down two recently released memos that establish guidelines for medical oversight of the Army's H2F teams.
Across the military embedded human performance is becoming a bigger and bigger part of how we train and care for service members, but having so many medical providers operating outside the clinic creates some policy challenges. Whether it's "integrated operational support," H2F, or something else, policies like these are popping up across multiple services.
The first memo is "Credentialing Policy for Certified Athletic Trainers" and it clears up some grey area about how ATs fit into the Army's medical system.
The second is "U.S. Army Medical Command Responsibility for Clinical Quality Management of Holistic Health and Fitness Program" and it applies to all medical providers on H2F teams (not just ATs). It also has important consequences for facility standards in the spaces that H2F teams provide medical care.
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If you enjoy the discussion on stoicism, pre-order our guest's book now!
On this week's episode we're diving deep (get it?) on an extremely unique corner of the military human performance world. Submariners operate in an environment unlike any other, and trying to maintain health and fitness under those conditions involves a variety of challenges. Our guest is uniquely qualified to provide insights about life in this world.
Commander William Spears is a submarine warfare officer in the U.S. Navy. A native of Pineville, Louisiana, William enlisted in the U.S. Navy’s nuclear propulsion program after high school. Upon completing technical training, he was admitted to the United States Naval Academy, graduating in 2008 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and commissioning as an officer. Today, he also holds defense-related master’s degrees from the Naval Postgraduate School, the Air Command and Staff College, and the Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy.
William has served in nuclear-powered submarines across a variety of classes and mission profiles, including duty as the Weapons Officer of a fast-attack submarine and the Executive Officer of a Trident missile submarine. Ashore, he has served as a tactical evaluator on an inspection team responsible to assess the combat readiness of U.S. submarines, and he currently works in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD CAPE) in the Pentagon. He will return to sea duty in the summer of 2026.
He has his own passion for exercise, which is not always a clean fit with the culture of the submarine community, as you'll hear in this episode.
He also writes on leadership, ethics, and military topics. His book Stoicism as a Warrior Philosophy releases in the US in November.
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Our guest for this episode was brought low by persistent back pain despite being one of the strongest people on the planet. But through his journey to find a solution for that pain, he found a new mission to help others avoid the mistakes he made in the past. His book, "The Gift of Injury: The Strength Athlete’s Guide To Recovering From Back Injury To Winning Again" co-written with Dr. Stuart McGill is highly praised by athletes and rehab professionals alike.
Since entering his first powerlifting meet in 1999, Brian Carroll has since risen to the absolute pinnacle of the sport. Brian totaled 2730 at 275 and 2651 at 242 with more than ten times his body weight in three different classes (220, 242, 275), and both bench pressed and deadlifted over 800 pounds in two other weight classes. He’s totaled 2600 over 20 times in 2 different weight classes in his career. He has squatted over 1000lbs more than 60 times and was the first man to squat of 1300lbs.
After ten years of high-level powerlifting competition and an all-time World Record squat at 220 with 1030, in 2009, Brian was competing for a Police academy scholarship. On a hot and humid July morning, Brian, hurdling over a barricade at 275lbs, landed on, fell, and hurt his back. The resulting back pain has been a huge part of his professional journey, leading him to seek out Stu McGill in 2013 who he latered co-authored The Gift of Injury with in 2017.
It's worth nothing that his 1306lb squat came AFTER all of the back back and working with Dr. McGill.
He owns his own coaching and consulting business Power Rack Strength where he works with a wide range of athletes and frequently delivers professional education for rehab professionals.
Abnormal magnetic-resonance scans of the lumbar spine in asymptomatic subjects. A prospective investigation."
"Magnetic resonance imaging of the lumbar spine in people without back pain"
"Association of Lumbar MRI Findings with Current and Future Back Pain in a Population-based Cohort Study"
"Systematic Literature Review of Imaging Features of Spinal Degeneration in Asymptomatic Populations"
"Does magnetic resonance imaging predict future low back pain? A systematic review"
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Drew is on a side quest to dive into niche areas of military human performance, and this episode is extremely niche. A few episodes ago we mentioned the fitness test for the Marine Corps Body Bearers (which includes bench press, squat, barbell curls, and behind the neck overhead presses). We got some of the details wrong, and thanks to the our audience we were put in touch with a former bearer to set the record straight.
Billy Lashley served as a United States Marine and World Famous Body Bearer from 2019 to 2023. In that time, he performed 625 funerals — including high-profile state and joint services — and took part in Friday night parades and wreath-laying ceremonies at Marine Barracks Washington. His roles within the section included recruiter and instructor, giving him a front-row seat to both the weight of the mission and the responsibility of preparing others for it.
This is small and extremely unique community that upholds some elite performance standards, and our conversation spans recruiting/testing standards, training protocols, and how leaders in the organization maintain the culture.
Billy has much longer hair now, and is even more jacked. Follow him on Instagram at @blashley96.
Here's some official Marine Corps media diving into the organization if you want more after listening to the episode:
Marine Corps Body Bearers Part I
Marine Corps Body Bearers Part II
On this week's episode we're tackling a topic we've been meaning to discuss for a long time: Despite being pervasive in both performance and medical spaces, SMART goals are no actually an evidence based way to change health and fitness behaviors. They may even, in some cases, be harmful.
Our guest, Dr. Christian Swann, is a Professor of Psychology at Southern Cross University in Australia where he leads the Physical Activity, Sport and Exercise Research (PASER) group.
Christian's background is in sport and exercise psychology, and his expertise is in goal setting. His research focuses on how to set goals to increase and maintain physical activity, and he is particularly interested in how different goal setting approaches make us feel while we pursue them — as well as how they influence our mental health.
As part of an international team of researchers he published "The (over)use of SMART goals for physical activity promotion: A narrative review and critique." This article aimed to answer a few key questions:
Is the SMART framework based on theory? Is it consistent with existing evidence? Does it consider what type of goal is set? Is it applied consistently? Is it being used as originally intended? Does it carry any risks?
Once you learn the history of SMART goals, some of the answers become a lot less surprising...
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In this week's episode we're breaking down some recently published research. Specifically, "Personalized, Evidence-Informed Training Plans and Exercise Prescriptions for Performance, Fitness and Health" by Henning Wackerhage and Brad Schoenfeld.
Up front, the article itself is an opinion piece, but it's based on an extensive review of the literature, and provides thorough citations. It's a useful article specifically because it synthesizes so much evidence into some practical guidelines for coaches.
The authors advocate for an athlete, client and patient-centered approach whereby an individual’s needs and abilities are the main consideration behind all decision-making. They also lay out a subjective, pragmatic six-step approach that details how to write a training plan or exercise prescription that is partially based on scientific evidence.
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You can find Mauri's podcast on Spotify or on Apple Podcasts
We recently had Mauri on to discuss his research on lactate threshold based training, but after he joined the conversation on our Discord we found out we missed an even more important topic. Fitness plays a huge role in ROTC cadets' ranking, and those rankings determine their choices of component and branch. As an instructor, Mauri's human performance focused approach dramatically enhanced his school's outcomes, so in the conversation we explore what worked.
We discussed news of a cadet's death at Advanced Camp, you can find that story here.
You can find coverage of the ROTC "rebalancing and optimization" (downgrading programs) here.
On July 31st President Trump signed an executive order re-establishing the President's Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition and directing the new council to develop a proposal on bringing back the Presidential Fitness Test. This test figures prominently in the childhood memories of many Americans, with pride for some and trauma for others.
In this episode we break down the latest news within the decades of historical context that got us here.
You can read "The Soft American" here (we consider it mandatory reading for MOPs & MOEs followers)
For background on our mention of physical education in Europe (especially the Turnverein movement) check out our episode History of Army Fitness with Dr. East
For some context on the President's Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, check out our episode with former council member Rob Wilkins
We mentioned Maintenance Phase's episode on the PFT and you can find that here
We also mentioned a similar perspective on the test presented in this article on Vox
Drew referenced the official history of the council provided on the HHS website
Alex referenced the FitnessGram teacher training which provides an overview of the program
This article highlights the lack of academic scrutiny focused on physical education, including FitnessGram
The source of the claim that the average school budget for physical education is $764 annually is this article from Time
You can read the La Sierra High School Physical Education handbook here, including the basic philosophies as well as the specific events and standards
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This episode includes a reference to this Defense Health Agency report that found that the more H2F resources provided for Reserve soldiers, the better results they saw.
If you follow the MOPs & MOEs blog, you already know this week's guests from things like his 5 part series "The Other 28 Days" on how to implement human performance for part time service members or his "Maximizing Fitness Efficiency" piece on minimal effective dose training. Members of our discord server know he's always bringing research citations to the conversations happening there.
Mark Christiani is an Army Veteran who served in Ranger Regiment before transitioning into the human performance space. He currently works with O2X as an On-Site Human Performance Specialist at the 81st Readiness Division of the Army Reserve. Mark served as the Brigade Lead Strength and Conditioning Coach for GAP Solutions for not just any brigade, but 44th Medical Brigade where Drew works.
He holds a Master of Science in Sports Medicine from Georgia Southern University and is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and Registered Strength and Conditioning Coach (RSCC).
This week's episode we're answer a few audience questions, going through some military fitness news, and discussing some recently published research. It's a bit of rapid fire content, if you want a deeper dive on any of the individual topics, please let us know!
Here's everything we discuss:
Joint Fitness Test Rumors
Air Force Fitness Test Changes
Occupationally Specific Fitness Test for EOD
Marine Corps Body Bearers PT Standards
Updates on Athletic Trainer Contracts
NDAA and Human Performance Funding
Congressional Amendments and Military Spending
Running Injuries and Research Insights
Modernizing Army Dining: A Critical Perspective
MAHA Wins: Analyzing Food Industry Changes
Neck Training: Myths and Practical Insights
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Find Tactical Alpinism on Instagram here
You can find Mauri's podcast on Spotify or on Apple Podcasts
You can download a copy of Mauri’s thesis, “Relationship Between the Lactate Thresholds and Endurance Performance in Trained Runners” here
In this episode we're returning to the topic of how mountain athletes and tactical athletes have similar fitness demands. Mauri is particularly qualified to discuss this topic since he is a bit of both. His perspectives include being an infantry officer, alpinist, coach to endurance athletes, certified mountain guide, and more.
Mauri served in a multitude of leadership roles as an infantry officer in the US Army. During that service he applied many advanced planning and navigation techniques to make mountain missions successful. He adapted the military's operational planning process for use in the mountains by combining military planning and navigation techniques with mountain objectives.
He now leads Tactical Alpinism, where he provides training and education for both tactical professionals and civilians pursuing high levels of performance in the mountains. This includes both physical training and technical mountain navigation.
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A few weeks ago we mentioned that the Navy provides pilots with human performance resources, but it turns out we were wrong! A common complaint in that community is "I've been told my entire career that I'm an athlete, but I haven't been treated like one." Our guest this week is a Sports Medicine MD who is working on several initiatives to bring human performance resources to the fleet.
We'll forgive him for his past affiliation with Navy football.
Commander Kevin Bernstein, MD, MMS, CAQSM, FAAFP is currently Director of Sports and Performance Medicine for Naval Special Warfare Group TWO in Virginia Beach, VA. He is also Chairman of the Human Performance Sub-Community for Navy Medicine’s Neuro-Musculoskeletal Readiness Community and Specialty Leader for Navy Primary Care Sports Medicine. He is an Associate Professor of Family Medicine at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.
He received his Bachelor of Science in pre-medicine with minors in biology and Jewish studies from the Pennsylvania State University, and his Master of Medical Science and Medical Degree from Drexel University College of Medicine. He completed residency training at Naval Hospital Pensacola where he served as Chief Resident, and fellowship training in Sports Medicine at Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton.
After residency, he reported to Fleet Surgical Team SEVEN forward-deployed 24 months as staff Family Physician on 5 patrols augmenting medical support aboard 3 large deck amphibious platforms (LHA 5, LHD 6, LCC-19) in support of amphibious and expeditionary exercises in 7th Fleet.
He then reported to Naval Health Clinic Annapolis, serving as Team Physician for 10 NCAA D1 teams including Navy football, Director for Public Health, Chair of the Medical Executive Committee, and Sports Medicine faculty for 5 GME residency programs and USUHS medical students.
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This week's episode is just the two of us, and we're discussing a topic that we've referenced a few times on social media: Nazareth Syndrome. One of the simplest ways to explain this phenomenon is "nobody trusts the hometown kid." The origins of this idea are biblical (Jesus was rejected by his own community because to them he was just the carpenter they knew), but the applications are very practical.
Have you ever seen a leader latch onto an idea from a guest speaker or outside consultant that their subordinates have been trying to explain for ages? That's because human nature makes us more receptive to these messages from outsides than from people we're too familiar.
In this conversation we break down how this affects the military, and specifically how it plays out in human performance settings (both within teams, and between the teams and the units they support).
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In the final part of this series we cover several topics we didn't get enough clarity on in the first two segments: an update on MAHA, Lifestyle Medicine, and how research could be better communicated.
Rachele Pojednic, PhD, EdM, FACSM, is the Director of Scientific Research & Education at Restore Hyper Wellness, an Adjunct Lecturer at Stanford University and the Director of Education at Stanford Lifestyle Medicine. In addition, she serves as a Research Associate at the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine at Harvard Medical School and is an award-winning Instructor at the Harvard Extension School. Previously, she was a tenure-track faculty member at Norwich University and Simmons University.
For the past decade, Dr Pojednic’s work has examined nutrition, supplementation and physical activity interventions on muscle physiology, performance and recovery, as well as muscle related chronic disease. She has received research funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and the Vermont Biomedical Research Network (VBRN) an NIH IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) program. She has published extensively on vitamin D and cannabidiol (CBD) supplementation and their effects on skeletal muscle in health and disease, muscle physiology and aging with a focus on sarcopenia, physiologic metrics of muscle recovery in warfighters, the effects of nutrition and exercise interventions on diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes, and educational models for healthcare professionals focused on nutrition and exercise.
Dr. Pojednic received her PhD in Biochemical and Molecular Nutrition & Exercise Physiology from Tufts University. She also holds a Masters in Education in Physical Education and Coaching from Boston University and a BS in Cardiopulmonary and Exercise Science from Northeastern University.
She holds a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) certification from National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) and is board certified Health Coach from the National Board of Health and Wellness Coaches (NBHWC).
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In part 2 of this 3 part series we finally get to the primary topic we invited Rachele onto the podcast to talk about: the gap between human performance research and the practitioners who work to implement it every day.
Some specific topics include the the state of human performance research, consumer trends, recovery modalities, supplements, and how all these things get funded.
Rachele Pojednic, PhD, EdM, FACSM, is the Director of Scientific Research & Education at Restore Hyper Wellness, an Adjunct Lecturer at Stanford University and the Director of Education at Stanford Lifestyle Medicine. In addition, she serves as a Research Associate at the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine at Harvard Medical School and is an award-winning Instructor at the Harvard Extension School. Previously, she was a tenure-track faculty member at Norwich University and Simmons University.
For the past decade, Dr Pojednic’s work has examined nutrition, supplementation and physical activity interventions on muscle physiology, performance and recovery, as well as muscle related chronic disease. She has received research funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and the Vermont Biomedical Research Network (VBRN) an NIH IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) program. She has published extensively on vitamin D and cannabidiol (CBD) supplementation and their effects on skeletal muscle in health and disease, muscle physiology and aging with a focus on sarcopenia, physiologic metrics of muscle recovery in warfighters, the effects of nutrition and exercise interventions on diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes, and educational models for healthcare professionals focused on nutrition and exercise.
Dr. Pojednic received her PhD in Biochemical and Molecular Nutrition & Exercise Physiology from Tufts University. She also holds a Masters in Education in Physical Education and Coaching from Boston University and a BS in Cardiopulmonary and Exercise Science from Northeastern University.
She holds a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) certification from National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) and is board certified Health Coach from the National Board of Health and Wellness Coaches (NBHWC).
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When we hit record on this conversation, we thought it would be a single episode focused on bridging the gap between academia and practice, but we quickly realized that Rachele had a wealth of information to share. This will be part 1 of a 3 part series, and it all revolves around science communication.
Some specific topics include the roles of different professions within human performance, lifestyle medicine, supplements, and the challenges of making sure research is relevant and useful.
Rachele Pojednic, PhD, EdM, FACSM, is the Director of Scientific Research & Education at Restore Hyper Wellness, an Adjunct Lecturer at Stanford University and the Director of Education at Stanford Lifestyle Medicine. In addition, she serves as a Research Associate at the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine at Harvard Medical School and is an award-winning Instructor at the Harvard Extension School. Previously, she was a tenure-track faculty member at Norwich University and Simmons University.
For the past decade, Dr Pojednic’s work has examined nutrition, supplementation and physical activity interventions on muscle physiology, performance and recovery, as well as muscle related chronic disease. She has received research funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and the Vermont Biomedical Research Network (VBRN) an NIH IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) program. She has published extensively on vitamin D and cannabidiol (CBD) supplementation and their effects on skeletal muscle in health and disease, muscle physiology and aging with a focus on sarcopenia, physiologic metrics of muscle recovery in warfighters, the effects of nutrition and exercise interventions on diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes, and educational models for healthcare professionals focused on nutrition and exercise.
Dr. Pojednic received her PhD in Biochemical and Molecular Nutrition & Exercise Physiology from Tufts University. She also holds a Masters in Education in Physical Education and Coaching from Boston University and a BS in Cardiopulmonary and Exercise Science from Northeastern University.
She holds a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) certification from National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) and is board certified Health Coach from the National Board of Health and Wellness Coaches (NBHWC).
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This is a quick hits episode! Instead of spending an hour on a specific topic, we hustle through a series of hot topics that either address current events, add to previous episodes we've done, or just don't quite make the cut for a full episode of their own.
These topics include:
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Athletic Trainers in the military
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The nomination of Casey Means for Surgeon General
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The validity of the Standing Power Throw
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Some concerns with the new combat standards
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Are frequent changes to fitness standards a problem?
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How the side shuffle got added to the sprint drag carry
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Do alternate cardio events need full scoring scales?
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One of the classic problems with tactical strength and conditioning is that, unlike many athletic settings, you can't assume a common baseline level of fitness. Even in combat arms units, it's normal to have extremely wide ranges of fitness levels in the same unit. The same platoon might have powerlifters, distance runners, and gamers who would rather not exercise at all.
In this episode Nate Palin joins us to share some lessons learned about navigating this challenge. He has coached diverse populations ranging from civilians to special operators, all of whom have influenced his current perspective. We touch on a number of important topics:
- Novelty in training can significantly impact engagement
- Barbells are not always the primary tool in tactical training
- Engagement and enjoyment are crucial for participation in training
- Coaching relationships are essential for effective training outcomes
- Lifestyle conversations often take precedence over strict programming
- Real-time monitoring can enhance training effectiveness and safety
- Performance programs focus on pushing limits, while wellness programs aim to elevate the baseline
- Wellness and high performance are interconnected
- Tactical professionals have diverse roles beyond physicality
- Knowledge sharing is vital for effective coaching
- Motivation is a leader's responsibility, not just a coach's
- Hard work remains the foundation of success in training
On the week's episode we're getting "clickbaity with integrity" in the words of our guest, Dr. Alyssa "Lyss" Olenick. Between her social media presence as @doclyssfitness and her powerhouse training business The Lyss Method she's a big deal as both a coach and a science communicator.
We've been working on getting her on the podcast for over a year, and she definitely delivered. You'll hear about everything from her husband's hair journey to training for Hyrox to running ultramarathons.
As far as credentials, Lyss has a bachelors in health science from Lockhaven University, a masters in exercise physiology from Western Kentucky University and a Ph.D. in Exercise Physiology from the University of Georgia where she looked specifically at sex differences and female metabolism. She also holds a CrossFit level 2 certification and she's a Certified Sports Nutritionist through ISSN.
If you like what you hear, she offers a ton of great content including both free and paid resources. Training programs, a newsletter, blog articles, ebooks, and more.
We first became aware of the story at the heart of this episode over three years ago. Details were scarce at the time, but we knew that heat casualties had been a major issue for units at Defener Pacific... except for one company that was completely unaffected. And as it turned out, that company had been doing afternoon physical training to deliberately prepare for the heat (plus leveraging H2F experts to optimize the training).
Our guest for this episode was the commander of that company at the time, and he provides a ton of insight into how good training management left his company with zero heat casualties while the battalion experienced 45.
MAJ Christian Wardynski is an Instructor of Economics in the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy at West Point, which he also graduated from in 2014. After graduating Engineer BOLC, Chris served in the 54th BEB, 173rd IBCT in Vicenza, Italy as a Light Equipment PL, Sapper PL, and BN Air Officer. Most recently, he served as the Company Commander for Bravo Company, 37th Engineer Battalion, 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, NC. Chris holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from West Point, a Master of Science in Engineering Management from the Missouri University of Science and Technology, and a Master of Public Policy from the University of Chicago where he also served as a fellow at the Pearson Institute. Chris and his wife, Jackie, have four daughters.
He also provided a bunch of clarifying notes that we'll share here:
He said the DoD vs. VA alignment is a Principal-Agent Problem, but as he described it, it would probably fit the definition of a negative externality better - the DoD's decisions to "overuse"/ or under-rehabilitate soldiers impose uncompensated long-term healthcare costs on the VA (and thus the taxpayer); same for the current commander not considering the cost savings of proper rehabilitation/physical resiliency of soldiers for the next commander. Regardless, both principal-agent issue and externality issue apply. You can tell by this correction that he's a true econ instructor...
For additional context on the heat acclimation they started in May 2021, they had Company STX the second week of June and he initially started reverse cycle PT to see if it'd help soldiers with performance during the STX event. They executed 9x ESB-style lanes focused on individual soldier and engineer tasks, and covered over 30 miles under load in 24 hours. As a bit of risk management for the event, he mandated that all soldiers had to eat at least the main meal of the MRE and a side, or three sides total if not eating the main meal, as well as the entire salt/electrolyte packet every four hours during the event. If they found any soldier who ate less than the required amount, it would result in a summarized article 15 (if there were no extenuating circumstances). It was on the TLs to decide if they needed to eat more frequently and if they wanted to eat on the move or not. Team leaders led their own teams movement through all the lanes and to each station. This provided a great opportunity for them to exercise some initiative and leadership. Surprisingly, zero heat casualties during this crucible event for the ~80 soldiers that completed it, despite a peak ~95 degree heat index in that timeframe.
Regarding Defender Pacific, when he arrived to his company assembly area after the jump, his soldiers looked utterly unphased and appeared completely fresh. The BN TF, however, had about 45 heat casualties by that time. After the BN TF mission was complete, they had a 7 mi ruck to the training area where they'd rest overnight, and his soldiers handled the movement without any issue whatsoever. He did note that they did not have a very hard follow on mission, whereas most other companies in the BN TF had some pretty physically arduous movements/follow-on missions.
This one is a bit of a current events episode. We're diving into two hot topics in Army human performance:
First we dig into the ongoing drama around cutting Athletic Trainers from H2F teams, including the efforts to reverse the decision. This touches on everything from contracting policy to the difference between measuring performance and measuring effectiveness. Embedded Athletic Trainers in military settings have some of the best evidence for effectiveness (including saving more money than they cost), but that's not always how decisions get made.
Then we break down some of the changes from the Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) to the new Army Fitness Test (AFT). Specifically, we take a look at the pros and cons of the Standing Power Throw and the the impact of switching select close combat jobs to sex-neutral fitness standards.
We mentioned a few resources/links in the conversation, so here they are:
Petition to members of Congress and senior military leaders to retain Athletic Trainers in the H2F program
Article from an infantry OSUT battalion commander highlighting the value of Athletic Trainers within H2F
Kristen Griest's speech at West Point Founders Day 2021, focused on sex-neutral fitness standards for combat roles
Michael Moss is the author of the #1 NYT bestseller Salt Sugar Fat that rocked the processed food industry (which has been so impactful that it's still in print a decade later, now in 22 languages). He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist formerly with the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and a trusted keynote speaker to global audiences. His latest bestselling book Hooked explores addiction and free will in battle with corporate interests.
He has been a guest on shows like CBS This Morning, CNN The Lead, All Things Considered, and the Daily Show to discuss his work, which has ranged widely from exposing the corporate interests in nursing homes to the Pentagon’s failures in providing soldiers with armor, to the food industry in the context of health, safety, nutrition, politics, marketing, and the power of individuals to gain control of what and how they eat.
He lives with his wife Eve in Brooklyn, where they’ve raised two boys.
If a whole book is a little too much of a commitment for you, you can also read this article version in the New York Times.
Salt Sugar Fat on Amazon.
Hooked on Amazon.
On Monday the Army announced some major fitness testing changes that include removing the Standing Power Throw (SPT) and introducing sex-neutral standards for 21 "close combat" military occupational specialties (MOSs). These changes are marked with a shift from Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) to the new name: Army Fitness Test (AFT).
In this episode we break down the changes and some of the most frequently asked questions with CSM Raymond Harris, the Command Sergeant Major of Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), the command responsible for ACFT/AFT and H2F.
Command Sgt. Maj. Raymond S. Harris assumed the responsibilities as Command Sergeant Major, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, Fort Eustis, Virginia on Sept 29, 2023.
He enlisted into the Army on March 20, 1996, as an Infantryman. He attended One-Station Unit Training at Fort Benning, Georgia. He has served as a rifleman, machine gunner, automatic rifleman, Bradley gunner, team leader, squad leader, platoon sergeant, first sergeant, and command sergeant
major.
Some highlights from his extensive bio:
He has served in infantry battalions across Fort Riley, Vilseck Germany, Fort Cavazos, Fort Benning, Hawaii, and Fort Campbell. He was a member of The Old Guard. His Brigade and higher level assignments have been with 165th Infantry Brigade at Fort Jackson so basic training, 3rd SFAB, 1st Infantry Division, and V Corps.
He has deployed in support of the Kosovo Campaign, Operations Enduring Freedom Cuba and Afghanistan, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation EADR (European Assure, Deter, and Reinforce) ISO Ukraine. CSM Harris is a graduate of all levels of the NCO Education System, U. S. Army Sergeants Major Academy Class 64.
His awards and decorations include the Legion of Merit with three oak leaf clusters, Bronze Star Medal with one OLC, Meritorious Service Medal, and all of the campaign medals and chest candy badges you would expect based on his assignments and deployments.
CSM Harris is married and has two children.
In 2016 the American Heart Association called for Cardiorespiratory Fitness (CRF), generally measured using VO2max, to be included as a vital sign. They said:
“The underlying premise of this statement is that the addition of CRF for risk classification presents health professionals with unique opportunities to improve patient management and to encourage lifestyle-based strategies designed to reduce cardiovascular risk.”
In this episode we discuss the arguments made and evidence cited in that statement, as well the update published in 2024.
If you're the type to want follow up citations/further readings, here are a few that we found interesting (but you can find many more cited in the two statements linked above):
People over 60 can still improve their VO2 by just as much as young people, relative to their baseline.
Here's where you'll find the normative values from the Fitness Registry and the Importance of Exercise National Database (FRIEND) that we discussed.
And before you ask, we also briefly address the classic "strength vs cardio" debate. Here are some studies we used to support it:
Association of Resistance Exercise with Cardiovascular Disease Morbidity and Mortality (yes, we understand that CVD is probably not the right place to look for strength training benefits)
Optimum dosing of resistance training for health and longevity
This episode is all about identifying the right approach to endurance training for different types of athletes. Some people are genetically predisposed to strength and power, while others are built for stamina. While most of us fall somewhere on a spectrum between the two, knowing your athlete archetype can help you determine your optimal approach to training.
This episode is built on Drew's blog post from a month ago, so if you need some written examples of what we discuss you can refer to that.
Some key topics we address:
Strength and power adaptations are largely neurological, while endurance adaptations are largely physiological. As a result, intensity is the key training variable for strength and power, while volume if the key to endurance.
We return to a frequent topic on this podcast, which is the energy systems model routinely found in strength and conditioning education classes.
Zone 2, who it's appropriate for, and when.
Alternate cardio modalities (like biking, rowing, and swimming) and how they fit into training when the primary focus is often running.
The classic "training residuals" chart that appears in so many textbooks, and just a few of the reasons it's probably not accurate for most people.
The human performance community often focuses on physical fitness at the expense of other domains. Recent holistic approaches have improved the ways we address other domains, especially nutrition, mental health, and spiritual fitness. A weak area in many of these programs is financial fitness, and Life Skills for Soldiers is working to fix that.
Financial fitness is a dedicated domain in the DoD's Total Force Fitness model, but it's often treated as separate from the "performance" focused domains.
Our guest on this week's episode is Brendan Duebner, a former artillery officer who served at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and deployed to the Middle East. He served as a headquarters and HIMARS platoon leader and as a liaison officer to the Kuwaiti Artillery forces.
During his last year in the Army he started Life Skills for Soldiers, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose mission is to improve service members lives through life skills education. Through this organization he has led a team of over 25 and raised over $150,000 including donations from companies like Nike and Google.
After leaving active duty he completed his MBA at Wharton where he focused on Entrepreneurship and Finance, and he still serves as a member of the Army Reserve's 75th Innovation Command.
In the spirit of measuring effectiveness, Brendan's team also publishes impact assessments from their pilot programs.
This episode covers a lot of ground. On the heels of last week's episode where we had to edit out our discussion of women in special operations, that's exactly where our conversation this week starts.
We originally connected with our guest because of his LinkedIn post about a woman in her senior year at the Naval Academy who has been selected to attend BUD/S, but we quickly move on to focus on how mindfulness fits into human performance.
Jon Macaskill is a retired Navy SEAL Commander turned consultant and mindfulness and meditation teacher. He was born in South Africa but grew up in Ruston, Louisiana.
After graduating high school, he served briefly as an enlisted sailor in the US Navy before receiving an appointment to the US Naval Academy and graduating from there with a BS in mathematics 4 years later. He also has a Master’s degree in Operations Research from the Naval Postgraduate School.
During his 24-year Navy career Jon served in Iraq, Afghanistan, off the coast of Somalia, and in Panama.
After retiring, he served briefly as the Deputy Executive Director for the veteran nonprofit, Veteran’s PATH. He now runs a podcast called Men Talking Mindfulness; does keynote speaking engagements on developing leadership, grit, and resilience; and owns his own consulting company, Frogman Mindfulness. In all three roles, his desire is to improve cultures and individuals through mindfulness, meditation, vulnerability, and compassion.
Jon’s wife, Beka, also served in the Navy and is now a civilian Orthopedic Physician Assistant. Together, they are the proud parents of three children, and after an adventurous 6 months as a family in an RV, they have settled on a small farm in Colorado Springs.
CSM JoAnn Naumann planned on serving one enlistment in the Army to get a clearance and learn a language so she would be competitive for the Foreign Service. 28 years and 14 deployments later she's now the USASOC Command Sergeant Major.
We originally got in touch because she appreciated our episode with Alyssa Clark where we talked about ultra marathon running. CSM Naumann recently completed her first fifty miler at fifty years old (at a pace faster than she's required to run on the ACFT two mile, according to the Army).
In addition to hearing about her approach to training, we also discussed her experience with embedded human performance teams in special operations, including the challenges around integrating human performance professionals while preserving NCOs' role in physical training leadership. She joined the special operations community before POTFF was established and has watched it evolve over the course of her career.
In this episode we look at a few pieces of recent research that focus on how knowledgeable both health and fitness professionals and average gym goers are on a variety of topics. We break down the results, but we also challenge the quality of questions the researchers asked in their assessments.
We spend the bulk of the time on this survey by researchers from the University of Klagenfurt's (Austria) Institute of Sports Science.
We compare it to research done by another Austrian team where they instead focus on health professionals (physical therapists, sports scientists, and coaches).
Finally, we discussed a similar study among American health and fitness professionals looking at exercise prescription across a wide range of experience and education levels.
We get pretty deep in the weeds in this episode, so tune in if some research discussion is up your alley!
After they complete initial entry training all soldiers are entitled to Basic Allowance for Subsistence (BAS) to help pay for food, but many of them have most of it deducted to pay for meals provided in dining facilities (DFACs).
Recent investigative reporting by our guest, Steve Beynon, has revealed striking inconsistencies between how much money is taken from soldiers in the form of BAS deductions and how much money is spent on providing those soldiers with the meals they're entitled to. At many of the Army's largest installations more than half of those funds seem to be getting reallocated, and the Army can't even explain where.
From "smoke pit conspiracy" to congressional inquiry, this is a problem that many soldiers have talked about for years, but is just now breaking into mainstream media coverage thanks to Steve's work. He joined us on the podcast to discuss what he's found, and we may have even identified more problems live on air...
Steve Beynon is a reporter for Military.com based out of the Washington, D.C., area whose detailed investigations have covered urgent issues impacting soldiers.
A veteran of the Afghanistan war with over a decade of experience as a cavalry scout, Steve leverages his firsthand military experience to deliver authoritative journalism. In 2023, Military Veterans in Journalism honored him as one of the top veterans in media for exposing a cult scheme that defrauded veterans of their benefits, one of the largest scams ever to target the military community. This accolade includes recipients from the New York Times and Associated Press. The cult's churches were eventually raided by the FBI.
His byline has appeared in Politico, Stars and Stripes, Military Times, American Legion Magazine, National Guard Magazine, Fox 19, Cincinnati City Beat, and the Cincinnati Enquirer. He studied journalism and environmental policy at the University of Cincinnati on a GI Bill scholarship.
Steve's original story breaking this news published last month in Military.com
21 Senators and Members of Congress signed this letter to the Secretary of Defense demanding answers about this situation
Steve published a follow up piece discussing the reaction from Congress and some of the feedback from inside the pentagon
Here's the DoD's page about BAS
We discussed the Army's budget estimates towards the end of the episode, the military personnel (MILPERS) portion of which can be found here
We also referenced the DoD's Financial Management Regulation, and the subsistence portion is found in Volume 7A, Chapter 25
We also referenced two GAO reports:
The first was "DOD Should Formalize Its Process for Revising Food Ingredients and Better Track Dining Facility Use and Costs"
The second was "Additional Actions Needed to Implement, Oversee, and Evaluate Nutrition Efforts for Service Members"
The law that guides most of this is 37 USC 402
And finally, the DoD's overarching guidance is found in DoD Directive 1418.05
1.35 million applicants received a military entrance physical from 2016 to 2020, and about 15% of them received an initial disqualification. More than half of these disqualified applicants sought a waiver, and they were more likely than not to get approved. This whole system can be frustrating and opaque, so in this episode we dive into the medical standards and waiver process with a guest who was deeply involved.
Dr. Christopher D. Meyering is a board-certified Primary Care Sports Medicine physician. He attended medical school at the Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine, Midwestern University and subsequently completed his Family Medicine internship and residency training at DeWitt Army Community Hospital at Fort Belvoir, VA. Following a 2-year assignment in Germany, he completed a Sports Medicine Fellowship at the Tri-Service Primary Care Fellowship at Fort Belvoir, VA. He is certified by the American Board of Family Physicians with a Certificate of Added Qualification in Sports Medicine, and he is a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians.
Dr. Meyering retired from the U.S. Army after 21 years of Service which included 3 combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan as a Battalion Surgeon for Infantry, Armor, and Field Artillery units. Several key positions during his career were assignments as the Command Surgeon for the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command which oversees all recruiting and training for the entire U.S. Army; the Command Surgeon for the U.S. Army Recruiting Command which made him the medical waiver authority for the Army; and the Division Surgeon for the 1st Cavalry Division.
Dr. Meyering was the Chief Medical Officer for the 2022 and 2024 DoD Warrior Games held in Orlando, FL. Additionally he was the co-medical lead for the 2021 Invictus Games held in The Hague, The Netherlands and for the 2023 Invictus Games in Dusseldorf, Germany. He is currently the Chief Medical Officer for all upcoming DoD Warrior Games and is the Medical Lead for Team U.S. at the 2025 Invictus Games in Vancouver and Whistler, Canada. He is the author of multiple peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and published abstracts, and he has presented at international and national conferences and events. He was previously the assistant team physician for George Mason University and covered all collegiate sports. He volunteered medical services at multiple levels and events to include the Marine Corps marathon, the Army 10 miler, the Augusta Half Iron Man Triathlon, All Army Wheelchair basketball, USA National and Golden Gloves Boxing events, Army combatives tournaments, professional fast pitch softball, and Special Olympics.
We reference a lot of data from this AMSARA report "Accession Medical Standards Analysis and Research Activity"
Some other relevant reporting on the issue includes this piece from The War Horse and this discussion of recent changes from AUSA
COL (R) Meyering told a story about national media attention on some of his work, and you can find that coverage here
How much do we really know about injury risk and prevention? Our guest this week argues it's less than most people think, so we dive into the state of the research to figure out why.
There aren't many people as qualified as Dr. Dan Rhon to discuss the problem of musculoskeletal injuries in the military. He has a bachelors in applied health, a masters in physical therapy, and THREE doctorates: one in physical therapy, one in orthopedic physical therapy, and one in physiotherapy.
All of those degrees are a bit ironic because he originally enlisted as an infantry marine because he didn't really think school was for him. That led him to going through marine corps infantry school, the scout swimmers course, the scout sniper course, SERE, and the special purpose recon and surveillance course. So he has military chops beyond his extensive medical qualifications.
He's been a hospital staff physical therapist, brigade combat team physical therapist while deployed to Iraq, research center director, USARIEM research fellow, and various faculty and professor positions across a few university and clinical settings.
He also lists 174 peer reviewed publications, well over 100 national and international presentations, and $35 million in total funding for projects where he was the primary investigator.
Why are there more MRI machines in Massachusetts than in all of Canada? Why is healthy food getting more expensive faster than processed food? Why does our medical system prioritize providing treatments over improving health outcomes?
Our guest this week answers all of these and more, and he's among the most qualified people in the world to take on these questions.
Dr. David Cutler is an American economist who is the Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics at Harvard University. He holds a joint appointment in the economics department and at Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard School of Public Health, is a faculty member for the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, and serves as commissioner on the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission.
Cutler graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College with a degree in economics, and then joined the Harvard faculty after receiving his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991. He has served in the administration of two presidents.
His book Your Money or Your Life gives an introduction on the US health care system or you can find a discussion of it in the New York Times Magazine article, "The Quality Cure" Cutler's 2003 study "Why have Americans become more obese?" discusses rising obesity as an outcome of the revolution in mass food packaging.
You can find links to his peer reviewed publications here
You can find links to much of his editorial work here
This week we're bringing you an episode from Part-Time Hitters, where Eric Evans interviewed us about all things military human performance. We discussed H2F, MOPs & MOEs, Leg Tuck Nation, and how to improve performance in the part-time military.
Go check out more from Part-Time Hitters and their supporters!
Part-Time Hitters Website (a podcast about the reservist life)
The Fratty Guard on Instagram (a lifestyle brand for part-time hitters)
Friendly Forces Website (a 501c3 non-profit committed to helping reserve component members seamlessly integrate their military service with rewarding civilian careers)
Welcome back to part 2 of our injury conversation. From prevention to treatment, in this episode we're answering all of your questions about anything to do with injuries. We collected these questions from you the listeners (and Instagram followers) and our Physical Therapist John is back to answer everything we didn't get to in part 1.
Topics discussed in this episode include:
Lower back pain and what kinds of exercise help with it.
Tendonitis, especially looking at the achilles and the patellar tendon. John even provides a very specific achilles tendonitis protocol you can use.
IT band syndrome, including what aggravates it and what treatments do and don't help.
How to build strong and durable hamstrings, as well as what types of activity tend to injure people's hamstrings.
Warm ups, specifically looking at how effective research suggests they are, and some specific strategies you can try.
And finally we talk about non-physical components of injury rehab, including nutrition, sleep, and the mental aspect.
From prevention to treatment, in this episode we're answering all of your questions about anything to do with injuries. And of course to do that we needed an expert, so our Physical Therapist John is back on pod. He has a background working with human performance teams and currently serves in Special Operations.
The primary topics we discuss in this episode are:
Bracing, sleeves, and wraps - Do they work? When are they appropriate? Are there any drawbacks?
How to decide whether or not to get a surgery.
When it's appropriate to push through pain.
Inflammation - When is it a good thing? When is it a bad thing? How should it be managed? Most notably, we talk about how RICE is out and PEACE & LOVE is in.
Does running cadence affect injury risk?
Shin splints - What causes them? How can they be prevented? What should you do if you have them?
Plantar fasciitis - Or maybe plantar fasciosis would be more correct? There have been some recent developments here, so we dive into them.
Shoulder impingement - Is it real? Do certain exercises cause it? What can we do about it?
At that point, we ran out of time. So come back for the next episode if you want to hear about achilles tendonitis, hamstring injury prevention, the biggest risks during injury rehab, and more!
We specifically mentioned this article in regards to running cadence: https://www.outsideonline.com/health/stop-overthinking-your-running-cadence/
We also mentioned a bit of research on ACL spontaneous healing, but we'll discuss that further next episode so you'll get the citations then.
Welcome back to part two of our Make America Healthy again breakdown. In this part of the conversation, after wrapping up the last of the key elements of the MAHA platform, we dive into the key personalities.
Specifically, we went through many of the participants from "American Health and Nutrition: A Second Opinion," a roundtable discussion hosted by Senator Ron Johnson. It essentially served as a mainstream declaration of MAHA's priorities, and clips featured prominently on social media.
Our discussion features the following key players in the MAHA community:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Vani Hari (Food Babe)
Dr. Casey Means and Calley Means
Max Lugavere
Dr. Jordan Peterson
Jillian Michaels
Join us as we dive into both the good and the bad of MAHA, with a particular focus on the ways some of these initiatives could positively impact American public health.
We're starting the new year by diving straight into a politically sensitive topic.
According to their platform, Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) seeks to drive a transformative agenda by aligning health-conscious, independent-minded voters with candidates who have the ability to disrupt the status quo. This includes prioritizing regenerative agriculture, preserving natural habitats, and eliminating toxins from our food, water, and air.
The face of MAHA is RFK Jr., who is the presumptive nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services under the incoming administration. Other key personalities associated with MAHA include Vani Hari (aka Food Babe), Senator Ron Johnson, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Dr. Casey Means, and celebrity trainer Jillian Michaels.
Join us as we dive into both the good and the bad of MAHA, with a particular focus on the ways some of these initiatives could positively impact American public health.
This is a rerun of an episode we did a year ago. As our last holiday rerun before we get into fresh content, this one helps to set the stage for our first couple episodes for 2025 which will discuss the "Make America Healthy Again" movement, aka MAHA. You might be surprised that many of our biggest problems today are the results of solutions to the problems we faced a few decades ago.
This episode is all about nutrition in America: How did we get here? (Hint: there are actually some very good reasons for all the processed food) What problems is our diet creating? (Hint: it's more than just obesity) And what can we do to start fixing it?
That's a huge topic, but our guest is one of the most qualified person to tackle it. Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian is a cardiologist, Jean Mayer Professor of Nutrition at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, Professor of Medicine at Tufts School of Medicine, and an attending physician at Tufts Medical Center. Recently he also became the founding Director of the Tufts Food is Medicine Institute. His work aims to create the science and translation for a food system that is nutritious, equitable, and sustainable.
Dr. Mozaffarian has authored more than 500 scientific publications on dietary priorities for obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases, and on evidence-based policy approaches and innovations to reduce diet-related diseases and improve health equity in the US and globally. Areas of focus include defining healthy diets, nutritional biomarkers, Food is Medicine interventions in healthcare, business innovation and entrepreneurship, and food policy.
He is one of the top cited researchers in medicine globally, he has served in numerous advisory roles including for the US and Canadian governments, American Heart Association, World Health Organization, and United Nations. His work has been featured in an array of media outlets. Thomson Reuters has named him as one of the World's Most Influential Scientific Minds In 2023, Dr. Mozaffarian was nominated by President Biden to serve on the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition (PCSFN).
Dr. Mozaffarian received his B.S. in biological sciences from Stanford University, M.D. from Columbia University. He took his residency at Stanford, and was a fellow in cardiovascular medicine at the University of Washington, where he also received his MPH. He earned a Doctorate in Public Health from Harvard. Before being appointed as Dean at Tufts in 2014, Dr. Mozaffarian was at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health for a decade and clinically active in cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is married, has three children, and actively trains as a Fourth Degree Black Belt in Taekwondo.
For an overview of the initiatives that the Tufts Food is Medicine Institute is tackling see their fact sheet.
If you want to learn more about the Food Compass drama that we briefly discuss in the episode, check out this blog post summarizing the situation.
You can find the text of the SWEET Act here, which is a proposal to tax sugar sweetened beverages and use the revenue from that tax to fund research on diet-related health conditions.
This is a rerun of an episode from 2022, if you joined us recently it's a great introduction to building smarter physical training plans to improve performance and reduce injuries. We'll be back in a couple weeks with fresh content. Until then, happy holidays!
No guest this time, just Alex and Drew trying to answer one of the most commonly asked questions we get here at MOPs & MOEs. Many of you are tactical professionals out there leading your teams without access to professional coaches. Or there are a lot of you training on your own with no guidance at all. So how do you build a plan that will produce results? This conversation will provide you with a few foundational principles you can apply to make sure you're on the right track. We discuss foundational movement patterns, conditioning modalities, frequencies for different types of training, balancing intensity and volume, and more. But we start with the most important thing, which too many people seem to forget: how to set a good goal.
Happy holidays! This is a rerun of an episode we published back in March 2023, but this topic has been getting a lot of discussion again recently so we wanted to revisit it!
MOPs & MOEs merch is now for sale on our website! Check out the shop for tees, hoodies, stickers, and more.
Job Fransen is a skill acquisition specialist working at the University Medical Centre Groningen in the Netherlands and an adjunct fellow at the University of Technology Sydney’s School of Sport, Exercise, and Rehabilitation. His research focuses on optimizing skill acquisition in athletes. He has worked with high-performance athletes and individuals from around the world, across elite sport, esports and gaming, and the military. Job is also a skill acquisition consultant, assisting some of the world’s best coaches to design practice that optimizes learning across a range of sports, most notably rugby, Australian football, soccer, and basketball.
We discovered Job's work because of a preprint article he released that provides extensively resourced evidence to argue two main points:
- A far transfer of skills is something we all think we do yet it is very difficult to achieve. Instead, we mostly achieve near transfers of skills between very similar or related tasks.
- Cognitive training is evidenced not to have a far transfer in robust scientific research in psychology, yet numerous tech companies claim to have the ‘next best cognitive or perceptual training tool’ for improving sports performance while these transfers are exceptionally difficult to achieve and there is no evidence these tools can even achieve them.
In this episode, we start off by defining the concepts of "near transfer" and "far transfer" and then set off on a wide-ranging conversation about how to better deliver actual evidence-based cognitive training. We address the heated debate among researchers in this space, critique some of the popular technologies, and arrive at some pretty valuable insights on how to integrate skill acquisition principles into the ways we train, such as the optimal challenge point model.
If this is a topic that excites you, you're in luck. Both ahead of and during our conversation Job pointed us toward a wealth of resources. We'll include links to numerous references below, but if you want to contact Job directly he is very open to that. You can email him at Job.Fransen@gmail.com or reach him on his LinkedIn.
References:
A critical systematic review of the Neurotracker perceptual-cognitive training tool
Near and Far Transfer in Cognitive Training: A Second-Order Meta-Analysis
Far Transfer: Does it Exist?
Do “Brain-Training” Programs Work?
Business leaders praised Lumosity's success then just two years later Lumosity settles for millions and admits lack of evidence for their claims
We stumbled onto Michaela's story because of this hilarious video explaining her pretty traumatic experience. We love a good comeback story after injury, especially when it includes a life being saved by strength training.
We won't ruin the whole story, you'll just have to listen to the episode to find out, but there are several valuable lessons in here for both service members facing their own challenges, and for the medical professionals who care for them.
The parallels between Michaela's experience and our previous episode with F/A-18E pilot Kegan Gill are astonishing. They both faced the unique combination of physical injury, brain injury, and mental health issues, and they both describe the mental health recovery as being far more challenging than the physical recovery.
Find her on Instagram @maneuvering_mic where she discusses everything from aviation to outdoor adventures to resilience.
The year is coming to an end and there are a few topics that we didn't make full episodes out of that we thought were worth discussing.
In this episode we hash out:
A grab bag of nutrition topics including eating local, raw milk, processed food, and other hot topics in the nutrition space.
Fitness during the holidays (or during travel in general).
Some moderately spicy political stuff, mostly tied to "MAHA" and what we might see under the incoming presidential administration.
Military medical accessions standards (the consequences of MHS Genesis on recruiting, conditions that require waivers, and some recent pilot programs).
Tune in for a wide ranging conversation and little light debate. If you're interested in a deeper dive on any of the topics, let us know! Or better yet, recommend an expert guest we can bring on.
This episode continues a theme of bringing on guest's who crossed paths with Alex in the Army and helped shape his perspective on human performance. SGM Jaime Espinoza's career started with troubles involving weight gain, mental health, alcohol abuse, and more. But thanks to help from several people along the way (some human performance professionals, but also just fellow soldiers) he managed to overcome those hurdles and excel professionally. He joined us to talk about how, and how lessons he learned in the process can help improve outcomes for people experiencing the same challenges.
Sergeant Major Jaime Espinoza is a native of Azusa, CA. Upon enlisting in the Army in August 2006, he attended basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, followed by advanced individual training at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. After completing advanced individual training, he was awarded the MOS 35F Intelligence Analyst.
His assignments, in ascending order, were with HHC 2-6 IN, 2 BDE, 1st AD, Baumholder, GE; Bravo Company, 304th MI, Fort Huachuca, AZ; HHD, 525th MP BN, Guantanamo Bay, CU; HHC, 4 BDE, 1st CAV DIV, Fort Hood; HHT, 1-9 CAV, 1st CAV DIV, Fort Cavazos; HHC, 4th BDE, 1st CAV DIV, Fort Hood; HHC, 3rd BDE, 4th ID Attached to Foundry Fort Carson, CO; Delta MI Company, 299th BEB, 4th ID, Fort Carson, CO; HHD, 1ST IO CMD Land, Fort Belvoir; United States Special Operations Command (USASOC). He has deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom
(OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).
He served in a variety of leadership and technical positions, including Junior Analyst, Targeting Analyst, S2 NCO, ASAS-L Master Analyst, Special Security Representative, Detainee Mail Analyst, S2 NCOIC, Senior Intelligence Sergeant, Platoon Sergeant, First Sergeant, Operations NCO, Observer Controller and Trainer, Foundry Instructor, Operations Sergeant Major.
SGM Espinoza’s military education includes the Joint Special Operations Forces Senior Enlisted Academy (Class 74). Other schools include the Small UAV Course, Army Basic Instructor Course, Foreign Disclosure Officer Course, Military Police Pre-Service Course, Army Space Cadre Basic Course, Master Fitness Trainer Course, Critical Thinking Course, Integrated Data Sources and Enhanced Analytics Course, Information Operations Capabilities, Application and Planning Course, Army Operations Security Program Manager / Officer Certification Level II Course, Anti-Terrorism Officer Basic Course Airborne Course and SERE course.
He holds an Associate of Arts degree in Applied Sciences in Intelligence Operations from Cochise College, a Bachelor of Arts in History with a concentration in Military History from Southern New Hampshire University, and a Master of Arts in International Relations from New England College.
SGM Espinoza’s awards and decorations are the Meritorious Service Medal (2nd Award), Army Commendation Medal (7th Award), Army Achievement Medal (6th Award), Army Good Conduct Medal (6th Award), National Defense Service Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal (1 Campaign Star), Iraqi Campaign Medal (2 Campaign Stars), Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal,
Humanitarian Service Medal, Military Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal (2nd Award), Noncommissioned Officer Professional Development Ribbon (5th Award), Army Service Ribbon, Overseas Service Ribbon (3rd Award), NATO Medal, Luxembourg’s International March of Diekirch Medal, Presidential Unit Citation (2 nd Award), Meritorious Unit Citation (3rd Award), Army Superior Unit Award.
He has earned the Parachutist Badge, Army Basic Space Badge, Canadian Jump wings, Italian Parachutist Badge, German Bronze Parachutist, Polish Parachutist Jump wings and Netherlands Parachutist Jump wings, Norwegian Foot March Badge, Driver’s badge with wheel and track clasps. SGM Espinoza is a recipient of the Military Intelligence Corps Association Knowlton Award.
One of the toughest challenges in military human performance is how to implement programs that work for reserve service members. With only a couple days a month of direct interaction, how do you improve their health and fitness behaviors the rest of the month?
Who better to workshop solutions to this issue with than the Chief of the Army Reserve? Lieutenant General Robert Harter was an H2F skeptic at first (we discuss why), but now he's a believer and trying to mobilize the right leaders and resources to improve human performance for his part time soldiers.
LTG Harter was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on August 1, 2024, and assumed the dual role of Chief of Army Reserve and Commanding General, U.S. Army Reserve Command.
As the Chief of Army Reserve, LTG Harter is the principal advisor on Army Reserve matters to the Secretary of the Army and the Chief of Staff of the Army. As Commanding General of U.S. Army Reserve Command, he leads a community-based force of more than 174,000 Citizen Soldiers and 11,000 Civilians – with a footprint that encompasses all 50 states, five U.S. territories, and more than 23 countries across the globe.
His previous General Officer assignments include Commanding General of the 81st Readiness Division, Deputy Chief of Army Reserve, Chief of Staff for Army Material Command, and Commanding General, 316th Expeditionary Sustainment Command (deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom).
After graduating from Virginia Tech in 1988 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in communication, LTG Harter received his Active Duty commission as a Field Artillery Officer. He also holds a Master of Science degree in National Security Strategy from the National War College.
As his initial Active Duty assignment, LTG Harter served as a platoon leader in the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, Bad Hersfeld, Germany (deployed to Desert Storm). After branch transferring to the Ordnance Corps, he completed Active Duty assignments with the 101st Corps Support Group, Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and the U.S. Army Munition Center and School, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama.
LTG Harter then transferred from Active Duty to the Active Guard and Reserve (AGR) program in 1999. His AGR assignments include Support Operations Officer, 55th Sustainment Brigade, Distribution Management Center Chief, 316th Expeditionary Sustainment Command (deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom), and Assistant Chief of Staff, Office of Chief of Army Reserve.
LTG Harter and his wife Erin have been married for over 35 years and have three children. They currently live in Stafford, Virginia.
In this episode we're discussing endurance training with an extremely qualified guest with a world class competitive ultra marathon resume.
Alyssa Clark is a professional mountain runner, coach, podcast host and training plans director for Uphill Athlete. As a military spouse, running and coaching have been the constants she can bring with her no matter the duty station. She is also a multisport athlete with pursuits in winter adventures including large mountain link-ups through ski mountaineering, Alpinism, and ice climbing with her husband, Codi who is active duty Navy. Alyssa and Codi currently reside in San Diego, CA with their two Italian cats named Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute.
To get an idea of the level of competitor she is in ultra running, here are a few of her race performances:
1st female finisher at Canyons Endurance Runs by UTMB 2023
1st female finisher at HURT 100 2023
1st female finisher at Moab 240 Race 2022
Ran 95 marathons in 95 days in 2020
FKT on the 350-mile Pinhoti Trail
Ouray 100-mile women's winner in 2021
And since recording, she also won the UTMB Puerto Vallarta 100k through Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains, qualifying her for the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB).
You can find her on Instagram @theory_in_motion
We mentioned Uphill Athlete's recent podcast about fasted training, you can find it here.
In our episode with LTG Gilland we mentioned Shawn "Big Tires Rollin" Robertson as a future guest, and now he's here! Shawn is a paragon of fitness (consistent ACFT 600s, 2nd place in the European bodybuilding championship) who is also passionate about organizational psychology. He joined us for this conversation about the role of fitness in leader development and how leaders can enhance the performance culture of their organizations.
MAJ Shawn Robertson is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He is married to his lovely wife, Maj Jordan Robertson (USAF) and they have three sons – Ezekiel (6), Ishvi (4), and Zachariah (2). Shawn was enlisted as an 88M before commissioning via the Green to Gold program through the University of Hawaii where he earned his Bachelor of Science in Psychology. MAJ Robertson also holds a Master of Arts in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University and a Master of Arts in Defense and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College.
Upon completion of the Military Intelligence Basic Officer Leaders Course, he was assigned to the 173RD Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne) at Vicenza, Italy. While there, he served as the Assistant Battalion Intelligence Officer for the 1st Battalion, 503RD Infantry Regiment (Airborne), HUMINT and SIGINT Platoon Leader in the Military Intelligence Company, and deployed with 1ST Battalion, 75TH Ranger Regiment as an individual augmentee in support of Operation Freedom Sentinel in Afghanistan, serving as one of the Deputy J2s.
Following attendance at the Infantry Captain’s Career Course at Fort Benning, Georgia, and the Signals Intelligence/Electronic Warfare course at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, MAJ Robertson was assigned to the National Security Agency, where he served as the Technical Production Operations Officer in the Army Technical Control and Analysis Element, and as the Bravo Company Commander, leading the National Security Agency’s Special Operations Detachment in support of combat operations.
In our episode with LTG Gilland a few weeks ago we mentioned Shawn "Big Tires Rollin'" Robertson as a future guest, and now he's here! Shawn is passionate about organizational psychology and developing leaders, but he's also incredibly fit (consistent ACFT 600s, 2nd place in the European bodybuilding championship). He joined us in this conversation to discuss how fitness fits into leadership development, and how leaders can improve the performance culture in their organizations.
After completion of graduate school and the United States Military Academy’s (USMA) Eisenhower Leader Development Program, MAJ Robertson served as the Tactical Officer for a Cadet Company, where he focused on leadership and character development. MAJ Robertson also served as the Aide-de-Camp for the Commanding General and Superintendent of USMA. MAJ Robertson is now serving as a Commander in the United States Army Special Operations Command.
In this episode we're diving into the fundamentals of how to get strong, and our guest is one of the best in the game at taking novices to pretty serious levels of strength.
Andy Baker began his career in the strength & conditioning industry in 2001, as an intern while attending Texas A&M University. Like many people in the early 2000s he witnessed 9/11 and thought exercise science lectures might not be exactly where he needed to be, so in 2003, he stepped away from college and enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. He served multiple combat tours in Iraq between 2003-2007. While serving on active duty he continued to coach clients and finished his undergraduate degree in Health & Sport Science from American Military University.
In 2007, he opened the doors to Kingwood Strength & Conditioning (now Baker Personal Training) and he has served as the owner and lead trainer for the past 16 years! His clients range from Division I college athletes to people in their 80s!
As you'll hear in the episode he's been extensively involved in Starting Strength working with Mark Rippetoe, including co-authoring the current edition of Practical Programming for Strength Training and the Barbell Prescription. He has also competed as a Raw and Drug-Free Powerlifter with the Natural Athlete Strength Association. In 2010, I won the N.A.S.A. Grand Nationals in the 198 lb raw division. My winning total included a 529 lb Squat, 380 lb Bench Press, and 562 lb Deadlift.
We didn't work it into today's discussion, but his rebrand from strength and conditioning to personal training has also involved a refocus on older adults and strength training for longevity. As that space grows, he has made some really important contributions to that expanding part of the fitness industry.
To prepare for this episode we challenged each other to bring our top three fitness tests from any military around the world. Globally there are a wide variety of approaches, from extremely simple to extremely complex.
A few of the ones we chose have been previously mentioned on the podcast (or on our social media) but others we've never discussed before.
We also have a few honorable mentions, including one that isn't from the military at all, but that everyone who is passionate about the history of physical culture should be familiar with.
Down the road we might use pieces of these for some audience challenges, so hopefully you've been training!
After two years of waiting, the Pose Method episode is finally here! You've asked what we think of it, here are our answers.
Pose Method® is a proprietary method for coaching running technique developed by Dr. Nichloas Romanov in 1977 in the former Soviet Union. Pose clinics have been taught around the Army since 2009 and the newest version of FM 7-22 put Pose into official Army doctrine.
In this episode we break down a few key questions:
What is the Pose Method?
Does the Pose Method work?
How did the Pose Method end up in Army doctrine?
We are joined in this conversation by Dr. Nick Barringer, who co-authored Gravitational Running and the Tactical Athlete, which analyzed the evidence for Pose Method, among other similar techniques.
You can find Pose Method's content on their website and their military-specific website. They also have a YouTube channel called Pose TV that includes a military section featuring numerous endorsements from Army leaders.
Some of the research mentioned in the episode:
Effect of a global alteration of running technique on kinematics and economy (co-authored by Dr. Romanov, who led the training intervention)
A Review of Mechanics and Injury Trends Among Various Running Styles (authored by Army researchers)
Thinking about your running movement makes you less efficient: attentional focus effects on running economy and kinematics
Smoothness: an Unexplored Window into Coordinated Running Proficiency (we didn't actually talk about this one, but even though he can't describe the findings, Drew is annoying about it so it's in the show notes)
We've been talking about having Ray on the podcast for over a year now. He brings a unique perspective as a former infantry Marine NCO turned strength and conditioning coach. And more importantly, he always focuses his insight on the real issues. The military human performance space is more about building the right culture than dialing in the Xs and Os of workouts, and he clearly knows that.
Ramon “Ray” Cossio is a 12-year veteran of the Marine Corps, where he served as an infantry squad leader, platoon sergeant, and martial arts-instructor trainer. During his time in service, he deployed to Afghanistan in 2005 and participated in operation Red Wings, Iraq in 2006 during the “Surge”, and once again Afghanistan in 2011 to Sangin, Helmand Province. For his service Mr. Cossio was awarded two Combat Action Ribbons, three Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals, and a Bronze Star with "V."
Following his time in the Marine Corps he received his bachelor’s degree in Exercise Science from the University of Houston where he participated in internships with the UH sports performance and the Texas Obesity Research Clinic. He then went on to earn his master’s degree in Kinesiology from the University of Texas where he conducted research on e-cigarettes’ effect on blood vessel and was member of the Cardiovascular and Aging Laboratory.
His professional experience has included roles as a coach, programmer, and operations manager for private “multimodal” gyms Austin and Houston, TX. In 2018 he began working as a contracted strength and conditioning coach for the Army’s H2F-Lite program where he had the privilege of working with 40 th BEB, 2-37 AR, and 1AD DSB.
Following his time as a coach Mr. Cossio was hired in 2021 as the 11th ADA H2F Program Director, and he continues in that role today.
It has been a long time, but we're back with another "101" episode. This time we're breaking down the considerations involved in assembling a week of hybrid training.
If you're in the military, you're already doing hybrid training whether you call it that or not. Frankly, just meeting global health guidelines for physical activity amounts to hybrid training. Every health authority agrees: both cardiovascular and resistance exercise are vital to overall health.
But trying to push both to high levels introduces some complexity. That's what we're here to help with.
Some key topics we cover include the interference effect, consolidation of stressors, and building assessments into training.
We did a contracting episode a few weeks ago where we aired out a few grievances mostly focused on how strength and conditioning coaches in contracted roles with the military are treated. In that conversation we acknowledged that we have limited experience with contracting, and we were open to having an expert come on and set the record straight.
As it happens, this week’s guest is exactly the kind of expert we were looking for.
Chris Larkin is LMR Technical Group CEO and Cofounder and his background covers enlisted and officer service in Air Force Special Warfare and extensive involvement in military human performance in multiple different roles.
Chris spent 28 years total in the Air Force as an enlisted Combat Controller and Special Tactics Officer, starting to advocate for military human performance initiatives even before commissioning.
He served as the first Squadron Commander at the Special Tactics Training Squadron and helped establish the Combat Athlete Program (which pre-dated SOCOM POTFF) working with AF Research Lab and USAFA Human Performance Lab.
He had HPO specific facilities built at the STTS and 23 Special Tactics Squadron – some of the first built in the DoD and even ran one of the first ever Human Performance Symposiums (bringing in industry, academia, and other military units to help solve HPO problems). He wrote his thesis at the Joint Advanced Warfighting School (JAWS) on “Combat Fitness a Concept Vital to National Defense” and was an Operational Squadron commander when POTFF came to AFSOC and even deployed HPO staff into Afghanistan to expedite the recovery process.
His credentials include a bachelors in Exercise Science, Master Fitness Trainer, ACSM Exercise Leader, and USA Triathlon Coach.
He's also an accomplished athlete in his own right. He ran Division 1 Cross Country and Southwest Texas State University. He has represented the Air Force in downhill skiing, triathlon, pentathlon, and Ironman - including 3 Ironman finishes. And he has 3,000 parachute jumps – including numerous demonstrations at events including NFL, MLB, NASCAR.
Dr. Chris Frueh is back for his second appearance on the pod! If you missed our previous conversation with him we dove into the dysfunction at the VA, with particular emphasis on the disability system.
Dr. Chris Frueh, PhD is a Clinical Psychologist and Professor of Psychology at the University of Hawaii-Hilo. He has over thirty years of professional experience working with military veterans and active-duty personnel, and has conducted clinical trials, epidemiology, historical, and neuroscience research. He has co-authored over 300 scientific publications, including a graduate textbook on adult psychopathology.
Recently his work has been intensely focused on a phenomenon called "operator syndrome," a set of complex, interrelated medical-psychological injuries faced by military special operators. This is interwoven with the concept of high allostatic load, but with a particular focus on the types of stresses and exposures unique to the military and combat.
Chris' book released just a few months ago, you can pick up a copy here!
If you're not ready for the full book but still want to learn more about the topic, Chris published this article in the International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine laying out the Operator Syndrome phenomenon.
A few weeks ago we got the news that Congress was considering directing the military to investigate the potential for adding creatine to MREs. This spurred a lot of discussion on creatine's effectiveness and dosing strategies, and to really get to the bottom of that we needed an expert. Our guest this week is so much of an expert that he is often referred to as "Dr. Creatine."
Scott Forbes is an associate professor in the Department of Physical Education Studies at Brandon University in Manitoba, Canada, and an adjunct professor in the faculty of Kinesiology and Health Studies at the University of Regina in Canada. Dr. Forbes is a certified sports nutritionist through the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN) and a clinical exercise physiologist and high-performance specialist through the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology (CSEP). Dr. Forbes has published over 110 peer-reviewed manuscripts and five book chapters. His research examines various nutritional (e.g., creatine and protein) and exercise interventions to enhance muscle, bone, and brain function in multiple populations, including athletes and aging adults.
Bachelors (Kinesiology): University of Saskatchewan
Masters (Kinesiology): University of Saskatchewan
Ph.D. (Physical Education and Recreation): University of Alberta
Post-Doctoral Fellowship (Faculty of Medicine): University of Calgary
International Olympic Committee diploma in Sport Nutrition
A large portion of the content for this episode was based on his publication "Common questions and misconceptions about creatine supplementation: what does the scientific evidence really show?"
Our guest for this episode has been on Active Duty for over 34 years, with much of that spent in Special Operations, and he's still scoring 600s on his ACFTs. Our wide ranging conversation covers everything from how he's maintained a high level of physical performance across his long career to the role that physicality plays in developing young leaders. We even dig into ideas for improving the health and fitness culture across our country.
Lieutenant General Steve Gilland commissioned into the United States Army upon graduation from the United States Military Academy in 1990. As an Infantry Officer, he served in a variety of tactical assignments in Air Assault, Armor, Mechanized Infantry, Ranger, and Special Operations units. He has served in the 24th Infantry Division, the 2nd Infantry Division, the 75th Ranger Regiment, the United States Army Special Operations Command, the 1st Cavalry Division, the 101st Airborne Division, the 2nd Infantry Division, the III Armored Corps, and the United States Military Academy.
Lieutenant General Gilland has commanded at every level up to Division and participated in numerous operational deployments to the Middle East, Africa, and Afghanistan.
Prior to assuming duties as USMA’s 61st Superintendent, he served as the Deputy Commanding General (Maneuver) of III Armored Corps, Fort Hood (known as Fort Cavazos since 2023), Texas.
Lieutenant General Gilland holds a Master's Degree in Military Operational Art and Science from the Air Force Command and Staff College.
He has the long list of awards you would expect, plus he has earned the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, Expert Infantryman’s Badge, Ranger Tab, Master Parachutist Badge, Air Assault Badge, and - notably less common than the rest - the Military Free Fall Jumpmaster Badge.
Lieutenant General Gilland has been happily married to his West Point classmate Betsy, for more than 33 years. Team Gilland are the proud parents of three children.
Our guest this week is a key player in two important research and policy initiatives. First, she led the Army Comprehensive Body Composition (ACBC) study that led to the recent updates to body composition policy. Second, she leads the Female Elite Warfighter (FEW) research initiative which focuses on identifying the characteristics that make women successful in elite combat training courses. We discuss both of these ongoing efforts in this conversation.
Holly McClung is a Nutritional Physiologist for the Military Performance Division at the United States Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine (USARIEM) in Natick, MA.
She earned her Master of Science Degree in Nutritional Biochemistry from the University of New Hampshire and obtained her certification as a Registered Dietitian through course work at Cornell University and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.
Holly is dual-trained in nutrition and exercise physiology, holding certifications as a Certified Specialist in Sports Dietetics and Certified Exercise Physiologist.
On the Military Performance Team Holly functions as a principal investigator leading work in the female Warfighter and special populations workspace. Her work group is focused on designing and implementing research to quantify and model individualized energy and nutritional needs of modern Warfighters.
She led the Army’s modern body composition study, and her research supports the 2023 updates to the Army Body Composition Policy (AR 600-9).
Holly has published more than 45 peer-reviewed publications and holds two patents on a mobile metabolic sensor system intended for personal use. Most recently her attention has been on characterizing the physiological, metabolic, and cognitive profile of elite Warfighters going through the modern Ranger Training Course to determine
whether differences exist between sexes.
She also has some really interesting forthcoming research based on the Army body composition study pending publication that we'll keep you guys posted on. And most importantly, she's a member of Leg Tuck Nation.
A selection of her publications:
"Development and cross-validation of a circumference-based predictive equation to estimate body fat in an active population"
"The Rise of the Female Warfighter: Physiology, Performance, and Future Directions"
"Physiology of Health and Performance: Enabling Success of Women in Combat Arms Roles"
"Physical and Physiological Characterization of Female Elite Warfighters"
"Psychological and Sociological Profile of Women Who Have Completed Elite Military Combat Training"
Contracting is a dominant theme in military human performance because so much of the staffing for military human performance teams is handled through large contracts. In this week's episode we break down some of the key issues with defense contracting that make things harder in human performance.
If we can't define the value of coaches, "least price technically acceptable" quickly becomes "lowest bidder." And that creates a race to the bottom for coaching salaries.
Stricter requirements for coach certification might be counterproductive if pay doesn't increase. We've seen other related professions require higher degrees without the salaries to justify the additional schooling.
Personal services contracting only happens within specific exemptions, mostly reserved for medical and special operations. Non-personal services comes with limitations that make it harder to get the right people.
It's hard to come up with who is "at fault" for some of the current problems, because these systems are complicated. But we have to have these conversations if we're going to make any progress.
In this wide ranging and long overdue episode we talk about everything from kettlebell training to data literacy. Our guest is something of a godfather in the tactical strength and conditioning space, and if you don't know who he is you're missing out. He's been around the space in both academic and industry roles and is one of the smartest guys in the game.
Chris Frankel, PhD, has over 40 years of experience, including significant contributions to fitness, sports performance, and tactical training through his roles in academia, coaching, and instructor development.
Dr. Frankel earned his doctorate in health, exercise, and sports science from the University of New Mexico and has developed and delivered evidence-based fitness education worldwide. He is a self-described gym rat and science geek, and he says he's currently fighting the good fight against age-related decline, but based on the handful of sessions where I've trained with him I'd say he's winning.
Chris is the Head of Performance Innovation at BeaverFit USA, and if you're wondering how to better utilize Beaverfit equipment at your unit, he'll blow your mind.
In this episode we answer questions submitted by you guys!
Topics covered include PED use in the military, NCAA athletes now being allowed to smoke weed, hybrid programming considerations, eccentric training, herniated disc recovery, and more.
We discuss several references:
This blog post about physical training in the reserve component
The first ever study on DOMS from 1902
This blog post on the Heavy-Light-Medium programming method
Our fillable, DA form lookalike PT planning guide
Anyone who's familiar with the Army's Pregnancy and Postpartum Physical Training (P3T) program has probably heard pretty negative things about it. Historically, women have avoided participating if they can get out of it, and if they can't they've been disappointed by what they got out of it.
Our guest on this week's episode is changing that. She's bringing modern human performance to P3T and traveling around the around training leader's on up to date principles and methods.
Kelsey Mathias is a pelvic health Occupational Therapist. Her career has been spent in private practice and working with U.S Military Service Members and Veterans. She currently works as a contractor supporting the U.S Army as an instructor training leaders from interdisciplinary teams on a holistic approach to pregnancy and postpartum physical training.
In the episode Kelsey references the updated policies which can be found in Army Directive 2022-06.
As a reminder, like all of our guests, the views expressed by Kelsey Mathias do not reflect the views of the government.
We reached out to our guest for this week's episode after he testified before Congress and used the opportunity to repeatedly highlight military human performance programs. He was also our first guest to tune in from the Pentagon Briefing Room.
Troy Black is the Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, making him the most senior NCO in the entire United States military. We were particularly interested in having him on when we saw that the #2 priority on his strategy document is Holistic Human Performance.
SEAC Black assumed his current post as the 5th SEAC on Nov. 3rd, 2023 following his selection and service as the 19th Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps. A native of Louisville, Kentucky, he attended recruit training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., in April of 1988 and attended the School of Infantry and Marine Corps Security Force School.
Throughout his career, SEAC Black has been assigned numerous duties to include: Machine Gunner, Machine Gun Squad and Section Leader; Weapons Platoon Sergeant and Weapons Platoon Commander; Drill Instructor, Senior Drill Instructor, Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Team (FAST) Platoon Sergeant and Operations Chief, Series Gunnery Sergeant, DI School Instructor, and RTR Drill Master; First Sergeant, Sergeant Major, 3d Bn, 7th Marines, Combat Logistics Battalion 5, 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, 1st Marine Logistics Group, and Manpower and Reserve Affairs.
He has deployed in support of Operation Just Cause, Operation Sea Soldier, Desert Storm/Desert Shield, and Sea Angel; Operation Iraqi Freedom II (OIF), Operation Bright Star, Operation Iraqi Freedom IV (OIF) ; Operation Enduring Freedom in 2010; WESTPAC 14.2 and Operation Inherent Resolve.
SEAC Black has a Bachelor of Science in Terrorism and Counterterrorism Studies from National American University and graduated from the Joint Special Operations Forces Senior Enlisted Academy December of 2011.
Two years into this and we've fielded a lot of questions that relate to injuries. Since we're not experts in that space, we brought a professional on board! John Romanello is a Physical Therapist with experience in both the conventional Army and special operations. In this episode he breaks down the science behind injury risk, what we can do to prevent injuries, and some of the important considerations to ensure successful rehabilitation after injury.
If this episode has you interested on how you can better rehab your own nagging injuries and lower your risk for reinjury, check out the our blueprints and master plans!
John also wrote a blog post on all of this, including references to relevant research.
At the beginning of the episode we mentioned Shrier, Impellizzeri, and Stovitz's piece about the misguided semantic fights over "injury prevention."
If you need some rehab hype, it's hard to beat Adrian Peterson's comeback from a torn ACL/MCL to MVP of the NFL in the following season.
The ACFT has been a hot topic since the day it was announced. Even now, after a few years, myths and misconceptions persist. We've seen a lot of these in our comments and messages, and we thought it was time to address a few.
In this episode we break down a little bit of the history behind how the test was developed, the reasoning behind a few of the events, and the validity (or lack thereof) of some of the common criticisms of the test.
Here are some of the references mentioned, if you want to dive deeper:
"Prediction of simulated battlefield physical performance from field-expedient tests" (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18251329/ )
Pilot testing of two proposed alternative fitness tests, the APRT and the ACRT (https://www.army.mil/article/55446/new-army-pt-tests-army-physical-readiness-test-army-combat-readiness-test/)
"Correlations between Physical Fitness Tests and Performance of Military Tasks: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA607688.pdf )
"Development of a New Army Standardized Physical Readiness Test" (https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD1011066.pdf )
Final report of the BSPRRS study published (https://www.iadlest.org/Portals/0/AD1097586%20Baseline%20Soldier%20Physical%20Readiness%20Requirements%20Study.pdf )
Our episode with Dr. East, who was involved in much of the work linked above: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0vjeGEOqUwnkokRrSrgJKL
Jessie Graff is probably best known for her athletic achievements on the obstacle course show American Ninja Warrior. In 2016, she became the first woman ever to complete Stage 1 of the Las Vegas Finals course. In 2017, she became the first woman to compete in, and to successfully finish, Stage 2.
Her athletic evolution started with circus classes, which led her to gymnastics, then pole vault. All of that, combined with a base of martial arts training and a theater major in college led her to stunt work. She has made stunt double appearances in X-Men: First Class, Bridesmaids, John Carter, Sons of Anarchy and The Mandalorian. She both acted in a doubled Gal Gadot in Wonder Woman 1984.
As you might expect from her career, she has had her fair share of injuries, we won't spoil the full list, but a theme you'll hear in this conversation is the mindset, resilience, and adaptability to navigate those challenges.
It's also fitting that this episode comes shortly after our home gym conversation, because Jessie takes that to an entirely different level. While most of us live in homes that happen to have some gym equipment in them, Jessie lives in a gym that happen to has a home in it.
You might notice that when she talks about being a top finisher competitively she doesn't talk about her place among the women, she only talks about her ranking among everyone, including the men.
Cooking a meal while hanging from the ceiling
Pushing the limits of the kinds of activity her house makes possible (including a zip line)
Jessie navigating her stairs and hallway without touching the floor
Jessie building her gym home
If you know the name Matt Chan, then he needs no introduction. Skip this and start listening.
His athletic journey started as a high school swimmer and continued as a collegiate water polo player at Western Illinois University.
He originally took up CrossFit in his late 20s to help improve his endurance as a firefighter in Denver, Colorado. Despite making his games debut at 30 years old he went on to four top 10 finishes at the CrossFit Games (including runner-up in 2012). During this competitive peak Chan became a full-time athlete and one of the most popular and knowledgeable veterans in the sport.
Now that he's done with the pro athlete phase of his life he's back to firefighting, and in addition he coaches at Train For the Win (aka TrainFTW). He has spent a lot of time on CrossFit Seminar Staff and has a leadership role in the Peer Fitness Trainer program in his fire department.
Matt was also the Titan Games season 2 champion at 42 years old, enjoys climbing, mountain biking, and hunting.
If you're curious about the Peer Fitness Trainer program it is a collaboration between ACE (the American Council on Exercise) and the IAFC (International Association of Fire Chiefs): https://www.iafc.org/topics-and-tools/resources/resource/iafc-iaff-ace-peer-fitness-training-certification-program-candidate-information-guide
Sidney Jaques has logged quite a few firsts for women in the Army. In 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne she became the first woman assigned to one of their infantry battalions. While serving in that capacity, she attended Ranger Assessment and Selection (RASP2) and was selected to serve as the Ranger Regimental S1. Once she graduated Ranger School she became the first woman in the Army to have earned both the Ranger tab and Ranger Regiment scroll.
This journey has not been without its challenges, and in the episode she discusses some of the hardship she faced along the way. But more importantly she shares how she uses her experience to help mentor and support the women who are following in her footsteps.
Sidney is outspoken and active on social media, and you can find her platform Balance Your Grit on Instragram.
How to outfit a home gym is always a popular topic, and we get plenty of questions about what equipment we recommend. For this episode we break down our thoughts on a variety of options at different price points.
To frame the discussion we broke our options down into less than $100, $100-$500, $500-$1000, and over $1000.
We don't agree on every priority, but we definitely agree on the essentials. With a few basic things you can be ready for some pretty robust training sessions.
Towards the end of the episode we do talk about DIY home gym equipment, and you can make more than you might expect on a very basic budget. End of Three Fitness has a fantastic guide for over 20 different home gym projects.
Let us know what you agree and disagree with! And tag us if you have an awesome home gym you want to show off!
This episode is long overdue. Spencer Posey is an all star that anyone involved in military health and fitness should be following. As a sergeant and infantryman in the Old Guard he is having an absolutely massive impact far beyond his unit.
His passion for health and fitness first led him to becoming the Old Guard's Regimental H2F Lead. Pulling that off as a specialist would be a huge achievement for most people, but Spencer was just getting started.
His work - and more importantly his results - got the attention of the commanding general, and he is now also the Human Performance Lead for the Military District of Washington. On top of this he's also working with the Air Force, Walter Reed, and the Command and General Staff College. As a bonus, you might have also seen him starring in an Army recruiting ad on national television.
We start this episode with the personal and professional history that brought Spencer to where he is now. If you're out there across the force trying to improve your unit's culture of performance, his store will absolutely help point you in the right direction.
And if that's not enough, he's so willing to help that he said to put his email in these show notes so here it is:
spencer.w.posey.mil@army.mil
Check out Spencer's national commercial featured on NBC here
Check out Spencer's feature in Muscle & Fitness here
We're back on our mission to get to the bottom of why providing soldiers with healthy food is such a challenge for the Army, and this time we have an insider with decades of experience in running Army food service operations.
Jeremy M. Deck is a Vice President at the national insurance
brokerage firm HUB International specializing in commercial risk management, employee benefit, and human resources consulting. Although the bio he sent us focused heavily on his work in the insurance industry, that's obviously not what we're here to talk to him about.
Jeremy’s professional career, spanning over two decades in the Army, exemplifies dedication to leadership, operational planning, and management. His military service, culminating as the Food Service Director for the US Military Academy at West Point, makes him a perfect person for us to bring on to discuss one of our favorite issues: how the Army feed's its soldiers.
Jeremy possesses a passion for service to the community through involvement and outreach as a member of several organizations locally. Jeremy volunteers as a mentor with the national non-profit American Corporate Partners, an organization that places industry mentors with service members exploring post-military employment. Additionally, his community involvement includes board service with the non-profit Eating for Your Health a 501c3 non- profit based in Princeton, New Jersey, that aims to promote health through cooking and eating whole, nutrient-dense foods. These are only two among many volunteer efforts he's a part of.
Jeremy holds an MBA from the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business where he specialized in International Business and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
We also owe a shout out to George Dailey, for making this episode happen. He was the one who first referred us to Jeremy and said he had a night and day impact of the food service operation at West Point.
Newton Cheng is Google's Director of Health and Performance, but he's also a lot more than that. He started his social media platform focused on his powerlifting. He's a world class masters competitor, so it makes sense to focus on his lifting, and it's certainly impressive. But he quickly found that his messages about mental health and career advice resonated just as much or more with his audience. He has recently found a lot of success in connecting with younger audiences on these sensitive issues.
This marks Newton's third time on the pod, the most of any guest. Join us in this conversation as we discuss everything from the latest slang to navigating burnout in high performance environments. Many of the topics we touch on are things that military leaders are currently struggling with, so this is guaranteed to be relevant.
Today's episode pulls together a few different important topics, from performing cognitively in crisis situations to how we develop character and leadership in the military. We also discuss the impact of human performance programs among pilots. But mostly this episode is a story of how a pilot handled being hit by an anti-aircraft missile and the lessons learned she walked away with after surviving.
Kim “KC” Campbell is a retired Colonel who served in the Air Force for over 24 years as a fighter pilot and senior military leader. She has flown 1,800 hours in the A-10 Warthog, including more than 100 combat missions protecting troops on the ground in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2003, Kim was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for Heroism after successfully recovering her battle-damaged airplane after an intense close air support mission. You'll hear plenty about that story in the episode, but let's just say she has a proven ability to perform in a crisis.
Kim knew she wanted to fly from a young age, making her first solo flight in a civilian aircraft over San Jose at age 17. She went to the United States Air Force Academy where she was the cadet wing commander (the highest position a USAFA cadet can achieve), as was her father during his time as a cadet; the first time that a father and daughter both served as cadet wing commander. She holds a degree in International Security Studies from the University of Reading, and a Master of Business Administration from Imperial College London, which she undertook while on a Marshall Scholarship.
Her final assignment on active duty was back at the United States Air Force Academy as the Director of the Center for Character and Leadership Development.
Learn more about Kim or schedule her as a speaker on her website.
She also wrote a book diving deeper on much of what we discussed here.
If you've never heard the SR-71 Blackbird "ground speed check" story, then check it out here.
This episode definitely involves physical fitness, but on a deeper level it's much more about resilience. The resilience to pursue an education while growing up in rural poverty. The resilience to survive the selection process for the Royal Gurkha Rifles. The resilience to persevere after severe combat injuries including the loss of both legs above the knee.
Hari Budha Magar was born in 1979 in a village in the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal. He was born in a cow-shed at an altitude of 2,500m in a remote part of Western Nepal. He grew up in Mirul, in the Rolpa District of the Himalayas in Nepal. As a child, he had to walk 45 minutes each day to go to school and back, barefoot; at school, there were no pens or paper so he learnt to write with chalk stone on a wooden plank. He was forced to get married at the age of 11. During his teenage years, he was surrounded by the Nepalese Civil War where more than 17,000 people were killed over a period of 10 years.
Hari joined the British Army via the Royal Gurkha Rifles when he was 19. He served across five continents, doing training and operations for the British Army, his roles included Combat Medic, Sniper, and Covert Surveillance, amongst other things
Since his injuries, Hari has tried a variety of sports and adventures, they include: golf, skiing, skydiving, kayaking, and rock climbing. He has also played wheelchair rugby and wheelchair basketball.
In 2017, he became the first double above-knee amputee (DAK) to summit a mountain taller than 6,000m (Mera Peak, 6,476m). Then, on May 19, 2023, he accomplished the record of being the first ever double above-knee amputee to summit the world's tallest mountain, Mount Everest (8,848m).
You can learn more about Hari and his current work on his website, including links to all of his social media.
With our second 101 episode we’re diving into a topic that is foundational to the way we design training: autoregulation. That’s a slightly sciencey word, but it’s a very simple concept. You’ve likely heard of either rate of perceived exertion (RPE) or reps in reserve (RIR) - both of which we discuss in this episode - and these are both popular autoregulation strategies.
The focus of this strategy is to account for the many ways stress from our lives outside the gym influences our performance in the gym. It turns out the research suggests that subjective evaluations of readiness and fatigue are actually more accurate than trying to be objective with things like percentages of one rep max and traditional methods of tracking training volume.
If you train with us on our Long & Strong program, you’ll have seen plenty of this already. If you’re interested in trying it out for yourself we are offering one week free trials!
Borg RPE Scale
Reliability of 1RMs
Subjective vs Objective Athlete Monitoring
Barbell Medicine RPE Explainer
We're going back overseas with this episode, this time to Norway. The Norwegian military has a reputation for high fitness standards, and therefore their special operations forces take fitness to another level. This week we'll be digging into the training and testing of the Marinejegerkommandoen, more commonly known in English as MJK or NORNAVSOC (Norwegian Navy Special Operations Command). Directly translated they are the Marine Jaegers, and they live up to that legendary name.
Our guest Paul Solberg has a Masters in sport psychology and PhD in health psychology and physiology from the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences. He is an accomplished athlete in his own right, having represented Norway as a javelin thrower and also competing nationally in handball, powerlifting and weightlifting. After his athletic career he Coached for several of the best track and field throwers in Norway.
These days he is the Head of the Strength Department at the Norwegian Olympic Training Center and Committee, but we're going to spend most of this conversation focused on his previous role.
For many years he was the human performance program director for NORNAVSOC, where he built the training program they use today. He has also published close to 40 peer reviewed articles focusing particularly on muscle adaptations, recovery, power-training, motivation and well-being, and reliability of testing.
We mentioned Magnus Midtbo's videos where he took the Coastal Rangers and Long Range Reconnaissance fitness tests, so here there are:
Coastal Rangers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81Dz26FboU4
LRRP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-zAeifC2sQ
Based on feedback from you guys we are kicking of a "101" series. Don't worry, we'll continue to have the episodes with guests where we deep dive interest topics, but many listeners have asked for some episodes where we focus on the fundamentals.
We're starting with recovery because there have been so many questions about different recovery modalities. This episode will cover active recovery, sauna, cold plunge, foam rolling, stretching, compression, massage guns, and painkillers (plus a few others that we touch on more briefly). We'll go over when and how some of these might be appropriate, but we'll also address some of the misinformation that has made some of them more popular than they probably deserve to be.
We do mention a lot of research in this conversation, so in roughly the order they were mentioned here are links to those studies:
https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/ijspp/15/7/article-p934.xml?content=abstract&utm_source=TrendMD&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=International_Journal_of_Sports_Physiology_and_Performance_TrendMD_0 (swimmers significantly worse the day after sauna)
https://www.termedia.pl/A-post-exercise-infrared-sauna-session-improves-recovery-of-neuromuscular-performance-and-muscle-soreness-after-resistance-exercise-training,78,47765,0,1.html (for power/muscular performance, recovery was actually improved by sauna, or at least not worsened)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0965229919301943 (sauna can have an acute positive effect on HRV)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41371-017-0008-z (sauna may have beneficial effects on blood pressure, arterial stiffness, and other cardiovascular risk factors)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ejsc.12074 (2024 meta analysis showing CWI post-exercise reduces hypertrophy, but the authors caution that the overall quality of the evidence isn’t particularly strong.)
If you're still reading at this point, I'm impressed. Anyway, I ran out of characters to keep doing the summaries. If you want a list that includes the topics, email me at alex@mopsnmoes.com - otherwise they generally follow the order of the discussion.
https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/fulltext/2017/05000/effects_of_cold_water_immersion_and_contrast_water.32.aspx/1000
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-020-01362-0?fbclid=IwAR1hXbM9l5PfFAgrDCOdEompuANV86qPosdgunFfisQfvNUVn58oS6AglC8
https://pharmacia.pensoft.net/article/54581/download/pdf/
https://journals.lww.com/acsm-csmr/fulltext/2021/07000/Passive_Recovery_Strategies_after_Exercise__A.5.aspx
https://www.mdpi.com/2411-5142/8/3/138
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2021.677581/full?fbclid=IwAR2k3FE6ZUwkrPc6clrbBBgbUkMjQuia1_Re81qUNh4u-XMA2AaAyHzJcN4%2F%3Famp%3D1
https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/fulltext/2020/11000/foam_rolling_prescription__a_clinical_commentary.35.aspx?context=featuredarticles
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S136085921930395X
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.00376/full?fbclid=IwAR3B80g6xRxA9kHwhrge0xKy4HsJJs7SAt8UFLj5vQqrJbBMPMyvfptCvo0
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-022-01699-8
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00421-003-0834-2
https://www.mdpi.com/2673-7248/2/3/22
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02640414.2020.1737387
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-022-01681-4
https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/fulltext/2008/05000/Central_and_Peripheral_Fatigue_after.00049.aspx
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02640410400021302
https://ijrep.org/wp-content/uploads/lana-downloads/2020/11/oconnor.et_.al_.fall_.2020.pdf
https://journals.lww.com/nsca-scj/abstract/2021/04000/practical_postexercise_recovery_strategies_in_male.2.aspx
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1360859221000607
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2021.665204/full
Our guest this week is the creator of Ninety-Pound Rucksack, a podcast that examines the stories that made the 10th Mountain Division famous as well as those history has forgotten. Equal parts real-time research, intimate conversation and revelatory journalism, Ninety-Pound Rucksack explores not only the conventional wisdom about the 10th, but the transformative power of the mountains to forge a collective identity among the mountain troops—and to ignite a passion for the outdoors that reshaped American society in the process.
The story of the 10th is famous for good reason. Not only did its insertion into the war help end Germany’s occupation of Italy; post-war, its veterans founded and developed ski areas across America, started companies like NOLS and Nike and launched the fields of avalanche science and wilderness rescue.
The founder and board chair of The Teton Climbers’ Coalition, Christian Beckwith has spent more than thirty years immersed in the world of alpinism. In 1996, he became the youngest person to edit the world’s premier mountaineering journal, The American Alpine Journal. From there he went on to lead numerous projects: Alpinist Magazine, Alpinist Film Festival, Teton Boulder Project Outerlocal, the Town Pump bouldering series, SHIFT (a 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of nature as a social determinant of health), and AlpinFilm. He has made expeditions to Kyrgyzstan, Alaska, Peru and Tibet, skied the Grand Teton half a dozen times, and established numerous first ascents and descents around the world. In 2023, he was inducted into the 10th Mountain Division’s Warrior Hall of Fame for services rendered to the Division which is what we'll be discussing in this conversation. He lives in Jackson, Wyoming, with his wife and daughter.
If the discussions in this episode interest you, go listen to Ninety Pound Rucksack wherever you get your podcasts!
This week we're diving into the topic of combatives, and it would be hard to find a more qualified guest to discuss the topic than the one we have today. From bare-knuckle boxing the ROK Marines' Taekwondo champion to establish the US Army Combatives School, he has done it all.
Matt Larsen is a former United States Army Ranger and combatives instructor. He is known as "The Father of Modern Combatives," credited with the creation of the United States Army's modern combatives doctrine and the establishment of the U.S. Army Combatives School.
Larsen enlisted in the United States Marine Corps as an infantryman in 1984. He was stationed overseas in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan with the Marine detachment at Naval Air Facility Atsugi. During this time Larsen began training in judo, Shotokan karate, and traditional boxing.
During his time in Japan Larsen fought in the Japan Karate Association's All Japan Karate Championships, Muay Thai bouts in Thailand, and a bare-knuckle fight against the ROK Marines Taekwondo champion. He was also a member of the 3rd Marine Division's boxing team.
Matt then transitioned from the Marine Corps to the Army and made his way to Ranger Regiment. Initially assigned to 1st Ranger Battalion at Hunter Army Airfield, Larsen parachuted into Panama with the Rangers during Operation Just Cause and was also involved in Ranger operations during the Gulf War.
After moving to 2nd Ranger Battalion he found himself as the Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge of combatives and Close Quarters Battle (CQB) and started developing a more formal curriculum. This led him to taking over the combatives program for the entire regiment.
During an assignment to 11th Infantry Regiment he establish a combatives schoolhouse in a warehouse. Within a short time, the school became so successful that units from throughout the Army began sending their soldiers. Several new courses had to be developed in order to continue teaching beyond the initial course, with the idea of building programs within these units. Eventually the school was recognized by the Army as the "United States Army Combatives School". In 2002, the training manual which he had been working on since his time with the Ranger Training Brigade was published by the Army as Field Manual 3-25.150 (Combatives).
After more than a decade leading combatives for the Army he now works at West Point's Department of Physical Education as the director of their combatives program.
You can find Matt on Instagram at the extremely appropriate handle @combatives
This week's podcast is special because we have a chance to provide a platform for someone who is really making a difference in improving quality of life got service members. Rob Evans is the creator of Hots & Cots, an app built to be the "yelp for enlisted life" that is simultaneously increasing transparency and accountability for dining facilities and barracks.
If you're unfamiliar with the phrase "three hots and a cot" it refers to that, whether you're joining the military or going to prison, at least you can (theoretically) count on three square meals a day and a cot to sleep on. If you've been following the news, you've almost certainly seen that there are issues with both the "hots" (meals) and the "cots" (barracks) lately, and Rob is on a mission to fix both.
Rob is a former Army sergeant with 12 years of service, concluded his military career as a 92F. Leveraging over a decade of IT experience, he transitioned into the role of a software developer. Combining both his Army experience and his software skills he recently created an app called Hots & Cots that is essentially Yelp for military installations, which we'll be diving into here. Rob lives outside of Charlotte, NC, with his wife and two boys and outside of work he loves running, weightlifting, and the outdoors. Oh and coffee, he also loves coffee.
As you listen to the work Rob is doing, if you're in the military please encourage anyone you work with to download the app and help give Rob the tools to hold leaders accountable on these issues.
We discussed the notorious clip of the IMCOM commander saying he doesn't have a mold problem, he has a discipline problem. If you missed that incident, here's some of the coverage including the video clip.
Hots & Cots Website
People have asked us many times what we think of CrossFit, so it's about time we just laid it all out. In this episode we work our way through CrossFit's various philosophies, protocols, and teachings and highlight where we agree and where we don't. In general, the first half of the conversation is more critical while the second half is more positive.
If you want to dive in on your own, we framed this conversation around the CrossFit Level 1 Training Guide, which you can download for free. They describe it as "the most comprehensive CrossFit training resource available" and "foundational to the CrossFit methodology" so it's arguably the best primary source for understanding the CrossFit system.
We talk about all the classics in here:
- Defining "fitness" and CrossFit's "fitness in 100 words"
- What "functional fitness" means
- Kipping
- Nutrition (including Paleo and Zone)
- Olympic Lifting
- Uncle Rhabdo and Pukey the Clown
And so much more...
In one section we mentioned a series of articles on hydration. The Hyponatremia of Exercise is a 12 part series by Tim Noakes. Here's a link to part one which links to all the subsequent parts. Skip to part 4 if you want to see where the Army (and specifically USARIEM) got involved, but it comes back up throughout the series.
This week we're diving into what it takes to build strong communities, and how many organizations (including the military) go about it completely wrong. Our guest cuts right to the heart of the issue and provides both intense criticism and practical guidelines for improving. From the crucial role of breaking bread together (yes, this ties into a DFAC conversation) to the "campfire principle" this conversation is chock full of powerful ideas for bringing groups together.
Charles Vogl’s work is used to advise and develop leadership and programs worldwide within organizations including Google, Airbnb, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitch, and Amazon. He has instructed and presented at organizations including Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and the US Army.
He works with Google in several capacities, including as a trusted thought leader for the Google School for Leaders which develops 20,000 Google managers. He is also a
founding member of the Google Vitality Lab which works toward innovating healing strategies.
He is the author of three books: His first book, the international bestseller The Art of Community shares how both community and belonging can be built through time-tested principles and rituals. It won a Nautilus Book Award for Business and Leadership writing. His second book, Storytelling for Leadership, draws on his own experience as a PBS documentary filmmaker to distill principles that help those in leadership confidently share authentic stories and inspire emotional resonance. His latest book, Building Brand Communities, speaks to organization leaders connecting the people important for success. It won an Axiom Business Book Gold Medal.
In his 20s, Charles served in the U.S. Peace Corps in northern Zambia. There, he witnessed inspirational community inside his rural village. After the Peace Corps, Charles founded a social impact documentary film company in New York City. His PBS film projects won many awards including the Amnesty International prestigious “Movies That Matter” award.
He holds an M.Div. from Yale, where he studied spiritual traditions, ethics, and business.
You can find more information on Charles including his books, resources for leaders, and much more on his website.
This week we're diving into a conversation about mountain warfare, and our guest is about as qualified as they come. Captain Paul Rogers is the commander of the Special Operations Mountain Warfare Training Center (SOMWTC). He is the first Officer to graduate all USSOCOM Mountain Operator Courses and has tackled some extreme mountain objectives. The SOMWTC develops some of the most qualified mountain warfare instructors within the US Military, and is responsible for the certification of USSOCOM Mountain Leaders, operational employment of mountain warfare experts, and doctrine writing for all USSOCOM Military Mountain Operations.In this episode we also spend some time discussing a devastating mountaineering accident that Paul recently experienced. Our human performance folks will appreciate the way that 10th Special Forces Group's interdisciplinary team brought Paul back from nearly dying to a high level performance in a matter of just a few months. We also discuss the mental health ramifications of an experience like that and how he tackled that challenge too.Captain Paul Rogers is a native of Littleton, Colorado and commissioned as an Engineer Officer in 2013 from the United States Military Academy with a Bachelors of Science in Civil Engineering. Following the Engineer Officer Basic Course, he was assigned to 4th Brigade 25th Infantry Division at Fort Richardson, AK. While at 4-25 IBCT(A) he served as an Airborne Light Equipment Platoon Leader, Sapper Company Executive Officer, and BN Assistant Operations Officer. CPT Rogers attended the Special Forces Assessment and Selection in 2017 and graduated from the Q Course in 2019, after which he was assigned to 10th Special Forces Group. There he served as the Detachment Commander of SFOD-A 0223 (Mountain). As Detachment Commander he deployed twice in support in support of Operation ATLANTIC RESOLVE and the Russo-Ukrainian War before transitioning into his current role.CPT Rogers is an active member of the American Mountain Guide Association and has completed a number of certifications as an aspiring Ski and Alpine Guide. He lives in Castle Rock, CO with his wife Andrea and their three dogs.
In this week's episode we're focusing on breathing in some pretty extreme circumstances. Our guest is Lt Col Justin "Astro" Elliott (depending on when you're listening to this, possibly Colonel already). It's hard to find someone more qualified to talk about breathing for extreme physiological demands - Astro has flown 30+ different airframes, commanded the Thunderbirds demonstration squadron, and led the Air Force's efforts to address breathing problems among fighter pilots.
Astro went to Yale where he was a D1 collegiate swimmer and a Mechanical Engineering engineering major, so he embraced the high performer life early. He graduated and commissioned in the Air Force in 2005, and went on to fly the F-15E in Afghanistan, including participating in the Battle of Kamdesh, which is featured in both Red Platoon and The Outpost. He went on to get Masters Degrees in Aerospace Engineering and Flight Test Engineering, and is a graduate of both the USAF Weapons School and the USAF Test Pilot School. He commanded the 59th Test and Eval Squadron (which includes All 6 fighter/attack jets in one squadron), and then most recently served as Thunderbird 1, the commander of the USAF Thunderbirds. He just wrapped up that command and is now at the NATO Defense College in Rome.
Bonus facts about Astro:
He is the first person in history to complete all 3 Air Force elite flying programs (Weapons School, Test Pilot School, and Thunderbirds).
He combined fighter breathing knowledge from 9 communities into 1 unifying brief to explain fighter physiological performance across disparate communities.
He is a founding member of COPE Fighter, (characterizing/optimizing the physiological environment in fighters).
He founded "Crowd Sourced Flight Test" - pulling fighter test data from fielded forces to avoid test environment stovepipes and accelerate iterative learning.
He was a finalist in the NASA Astronaut 2017 board. He also participated in the 2021 board, but withdrew to accept the Thunderbird 1 assignment.
On this week's episode we're handing over the reins to our guest Brendon Huttmann. Brendon was our guest on episode 3 almost two years ago, where we learned about his transition from Major League Baseball to the Army's H2F program. This time, though, the tables are turned and Brendon is asking the questions.
He came much more prepared for hosting duties than we normally do, and he asked some really insightful questions about our origin story, what we're trying to accomplish with this platform, and what we've learned in the process.
Whether you're a new listener who isn't sure what we're all about or a long time fan who wants the full history of where MOPs & MOEs came from, this one should answer a few of your questions.
On this week's episode we're diving into some unique human performance considerations for close air support pilots. Everything from cognitive performance to neck strength to how pilots go to the bathroom in single seat aircraft...
Major Ridge "KELSO" Flick is a military pilot with over 2000 cumulative flight hours in the T-6, T-38, and A-10C. He flew A-10 combat missions in support of Operation Inherent Resolve and Operation Freedom Sentinel in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. He is currently the A-10C Program Element Monitor (PEM) at Air Combat Command. In that role, Maj Flick monitors all A-10C modernization and sustainment programs by working with the A-10 squadrons, the System Program Office, the A-10 test team, Headquarters Air Force and other Major Command staffs to ensure the A-10 remains the greatest Close Air Support aircraft in the world.
He received a Bachelors of Science in Aeronautical Engineering from the United States Air Force Academy where he was near the top of his class academically and the captain of the lacrosse team.
We have another research focused episode for you guys this week, and we're diving into the recently published article "Demographic, psychosocial, and physical fitness predictors of successful graduation from U.S. Army Ranger School."
We're joined by the lead author, LTC Timothy Benedict, who has a unique background as both an infantry officer and a physical therapist. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Baylor University – Keller Army Community Hospital Division 1 Sports Physical Therapy Fellowship at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York where he is also the chief of the Physical Therapy Department.
After graduating from the United States Military Academy in 2002, LTC Benedict commissioned as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army. Immediately following graduation from Ranger School, he joined the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vicenza, Italy, and then deployed to Iraq as a rifle platoon leader (2003-2004) and Afghanistan as a company executive officer (2005-2006). He graduated from the Army-Baylor Physical Therapy Program in 2009 and was assigned to the 3rd Brigade, 25th ID in Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, and deployed to Afghanistan in 2011-2012.
LTC Benedict graduated from the University of Kentucky with a PhD in rehabilitation sciences after completing a randomized controlled trial implementing pain neuroscience education for Service Members with low back pain and post-traumatic stress in 2018. Since obtaining his PhD, Tim has taught and researched about the neuroscience of pain and resilience.
On this episode we each brought five books that have shaped the way we think about human performance and discussed why they had such an impact. And in classic form, we each also brought a few honorable mentions as well.
Drew's books are a little more focused on strength and conditioning, while Alex's books (somewhat unexpectedly) are largely focused on mental health and how exercise affects our brains.
If you're looking for reading suggestions in the human performance space, you have come to the right place. This list spans a lot of different topics, so there's something for everyone.
If you want to get any of them, here is the full list:
Drew's Top 5
Practical Programming for Strength Training (Andy Baker/Mark Rippetoe)
The Science of Running (Steve Magness)
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Thomas Kuhn)
Training Talk (Martin Bingisser)
Endure (Alex Hutchinson)
Alex's Top 5
Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (John Ratey)
Man's Search for Meaning (Viktor Frankl)
How Minds Change (David Mcraney)
Saving Normal (Allen Frances)
Tribe (Sebastian Junger)
Honorable Mentions
Training for the New Alpinism (Scott Johnston/Steve House)
Starting Strength (Mark Rippetoe)
Strongest Shall Survive (Bill Starr)
80/20 Running (Matt Fitzgerald)
Winning (Clive Woodward)
Reactive Training Systems Manual (Mike Tuscherer)
John Kiely Papers: A New Understanding of Stress, Periodization Paradigms in the 21st Century, and Periodization Theory: Confronting an Inconvenient Truth
Michael Pollan books: This is Your Mind on Plants, In Defense of Food, and Omnivore’s Dilemma
Go Wild (John Ratey)
The Nature Fix (Florence Williams)
Why Zebra’s Don’t Get Ulcers (Robert Sapolsky)
On this week's episode we're headed across the pond. WO2 Steve Turner is a Quartermaster Sergeant Instructor in the British Royal Army Physical Training Corps, and he's here to help us understand how the British Army approaches physical fitness.
If you're in the US military, it's worth noting up front that Warrant Officers in the British Army are not quite the same as ours. He's much more like what we would call a Sergeant Major.
The topics we covered include everything from how NCOs can take on full time roles as physical training instructors to how they've recently updated their testing to (as listeners have come to expect from us) a discussion of how their soldiers are fed.
Their new Role Fitness Test Soldier is quite similar to our ACFT, they have just started implementing something called EDGE, which parallels our H2F, and although we discuss plenty of differences between our approaches there are clearly some similar challenges and valuable lessons we can learn from their model.
This document provides descriptions of the various fitness tests British soldiers take at different points in their career, depending on their occupation.
You can find an excellent hype reel that will have you ready to go try out for the RAPTC here.
If you're ready to try out, here's an overview of the selection process for RAPTCIs.
On this week's episode we're diving into how strength and conditioning coaches are trained and educated, and we have a perfect guest to tackle this topic. Coach Scott Caulfield is one of the most well-known collegiate strength and conditioning coaches in the industry. He spent 11 years at the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) as a coaching education manager and head strength and conditioning coach.
Scott Caulfield earned his bachelors degree in Physical Education from Castleton University in 2000 and his masters in Sports Coaching from the University of Denver's renowned Graduate School of Professional Psychology in 2017.
Prior to joining the NSCA, he served as an assistant strength & conditioning coach at Dartmouth College from 2008-11. During that time, he also served as the director of sports performance at the River Valley Club, one of the most successful training facilities in New England, and served as the NSCA's Vermont State Director.
After his time at the NSCA he served as the head strength and conditioning coach at Colorado College, and at the same time teaching in the strength and conditioning graduate degree program at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. He has given hundreds of public presentations both in the US and internationally.
He became Norwich University's first ever Director of Strength and Conditioning in August 2021. In this role he directs the development and management of individual and group strength and conditioning programs to over 600 student-athletes participating in Norwich University's athletic programs, and as you'll hear in this episode they have a growing relationship with the ROTC programs.
He holds the Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist with Distinction (CSCSD) certification and Registered Strength and Conditioning Coach with Distinction (RSCCD) designation from the NSCA as well as USA Weightlifting's Level 2 Advanced Sports Performance Coach certification.
This is our heavily anticipated episode on the weight loss drugs that have been receiving a ton of media attention recently, including Ozempic and Wegovy (semaglutide), Mounjaro and Zepbound (tirzepatide), and others.
Since these drugs are intimately involved with our bodies' hormone regulation, we had to bring in an hormone expert to break it down for us. Dr. Karl Nadolsky is one of the best in this space, and is both a nationally recognize expert in obesity medicine, and a Navy veteran who worked extensively on these issues with active duty service members at Walter Reed.
Karl is a clinical endocrinologist and chief of the endocrinology, obesity & diabetes department for Holland Hospital in Holland, MI. He is an assistant clinical professor of medicine for Michigan State University College of Human Medicine. He holds board certification in Internal Medicine, Diabetes Endocrinology & Metabolism, and Obesity Medicine.
You may know him from the Docs Who Lift podcast which he co-hosts with his brother Spencer, who is also a doctor specializing in obesity medicine. Both of the brothers are accomplished athletes in addition to their medical credentials, giving them a unique perspective on the appropriate combinations of medical and lifestyle interventions.
You can listen to the Docs Who Lift podcast on Spotify here (or on your preferred listening app).
You can find Karl's article on obesity pharmacotherapy in active duty military populations here.
You can follow Karl on his Instagram for some excellent health and fitness content, and if you want to follow both of the Docs Who Lift, you can follow Spencer on his page as well.
This episode is all about nutrition in America: How did we get here? (Hint: there are actually some very good reasons for all the processed food) What problems is our diet creating? (Hint: it's more than just obesity) And what can we do to start fixing it?
That's a huge topic, but our guest is one of the most qualified person to tackle it. Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian is a cardiologist, Jean Mayer Professor of Nutrition at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, Professor of Medicine at Tufts School of Medicine, and an attending physician at Tufts Medical Center. Recently he also became the founding Director of the Tufts Food is Medicine Institute. His work aims to create the science and translation for a food system that is nutritious, equitable, and sustainable.
Dr. Mozaffarian has authored more than 500 scientific publications on dietary priorities for obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases, and on evidence-based policy approaches and innovations to reduce diet-related diseases and improve health equity in the US and globally. Areas of focus include defining healthy diets, nutritional biomarkers, Food is Medicine interventions in healthcare, business innovation and entrepreneurship, and food policy.
He is one of the top cited researchers in medicine globally, he has served in numerous advisory roles including for the US and Canadian governments, American Heart Association, World Health Organization, and United Nations. His work has been featured in an array of media outlets. Thomson Reuters has named him as one of the World's Most Influential Scientific Minds In 2023, Dr. Mozaffarian was nominated by President Biden to serve on the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition (PCSFN).
Dr. Mozaffarian received his B.S. in biological sciences from Stanford University, M.D. from Columbia University. He took his residency at Stanford, and was a fellow in cardiovascular medicine at the University of Washington, where he also received his MPH. He earned a Doctorate in Public Health from Harvard. Before being appointed as Dean at Tufts in 2014, Dr. Mozaffarian was at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health for a decade and clinically active in cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is married, has three children, and actively trains as a Fourth Degree Black Belt in Taekwondo.
For an overview of the initiatives that the Tufts Food is Medicine Institute is tackling see their fact sheet.
If you want to learn more about the Food Compass drama that we briefly discuss in the episode, check out this blog post summarizing the situation.
You can find the text of the SWEET Act here, which is a proposal to tax sugar sweetened beverages and use the revenue from that tax to fund research on diet-related health conditions.
We have Kechi Anyadike-Danes back for round two to discuss the second installment of his planned three part research series looking into the divide between human performance research and education and the reality of actual coaching practice.
This episode is specifically focused on periodization. We chart the history of how periodization theory developed, and then we look at how coaches responded to a variety of questions about core concepts within periodization.
Kechi is a doctoral student at the German Sport University Cologne where he has been looking at various aspects of athlete preparation and how coaches perceive various theories, concepts and strongly held beliefs that exist in the training literature. His doctoral research is being supervised and helped by friend of the pod John Kiely from the University of Limerick and Lars Donath from the German Sport University Cologne. Kechi doesn't just focus on the theoretical, he is also passionate about training and coaching (especially weightlifting).
You can find the full text of Kechi's paper here.
We also discussed Yuri Verkhoshansky's paper "The End of 'Periodization' in the Training of High Performance Sport" an abbreviated translation of which can be found here.
The paper by Matt Clark that we mentioned is available on Modern War Institute here.
Some recommended further reading:
Foundations of Training Periodization Part I: Historical Outline by Jimmy Pedemonte
Foundation of Training Periodization Part II: The Objective of Periodization by Jimmy Pedemonte
From Russia with Love? Sixty years of proliferation of L.P. Matveyev’s concept of Periodisation? by Arnd Kruger
Kechi asked us to include on correction to the section when was discussing a system used in ancient Rome/Greece. The system was called the Tetrad. It is not known whether this was the only approach but it is one that has been popularly discussed due to it appearing in a book called 'On Gymnastics' by Philostratus. Below is the description:
By the tetrad system we mean a cycle of four days, each one of which is devoted to a different activity. The first day prepares the athlete; the second is an all-out trial; the third is relaxation; and the fourth a medium-hard workout. The exercise of the first day, the one that prepares him, is made up of short, intense movements which stir up the athlete and prepare him for the hard workout to follow on the next day. The strenuous day (the second) is an all-out test of his potential. The third, the day of relaxation, so to speak, employs his energy in a moderate way, while on the day of the medium workout (the last day), the athlete practices breaking holds himself and preventing his opponent from breaking away.
On this episode we have John Mackersie joining us for a little end of year reflection.
John is a strength and conditioning coach with over 15 years of professional experience in collegiate athletics and military special operations. He began coaching in Division I athletics and has been working with special operations since 2013. He has spoken and lectured on numerous occasions at national and regional levels, including preparing aspiring coaches for certification exams. He is a strong believer in all things old school (he and Drew share an affinity for stone lifting) but also in integrating newer technologies. He has both his bachelors and masters in psychology, bringing a unique perspective to the strength and conditioning profession.
We each prepared for this conversation by thinking of three big things we’ve changed our minds on when it comes to human performance. A common theme was the difference between the “textbook” version of strength and conditioning and the reality of working with actual people who have complicated lives, specific preferences, and plenty of other priorities beyond fitness.
As you listen, think about what you’ve changed your mind onwhen it comes to your own health and fitness. If you’re listening on Spotify we’ll have a Q&A button on this episode, or you can join us over on the Instagram page to share the lessons you’ve learned.
We're back with another foray into some topics that are often considered outside the scope of military human performance, but play important roles in whether these programs achieve their goals: mental health, veteran healthcare, and the veteran disability system. Our guest brings 15 years of experience working as a clinical psychologist in the VA, plus extensive work on multiple initiatives with the special operations community.
Christopher Frueh, PhD is a clinical psychologist by training and Professor of Psychology at the University of Hawaii. He has over thirty years of professional experience working with military veterans and active-duty personnel, and has conducted clinical trials, epidemiology, historical, and neuroscience research. He has co-authored over 300 scientific publications, including a graduate textbook on adult psychopathology.
His work on “Operator Syndrome” is helping change the way we understand and treat the complex set of interrelated health, psychological, and interpersonal difficulties that are common downstream outcomes of a career in military special operations. He has advisory roles with SEAL Future Foundation, Boulder Crest Foundation, Military Special Operations Family Collaborative, The Mission Within, VETS, Inc., Quick Reaction Foundation, and to the military special operations community in general.
We're actually going to have him back in a couple months to focus on Operator Syndrome because he has a book on the topic coming out, but on this episode we're focusing on his time at the VA, where he worked from 1991-2006. Specifically we're digging into how the VA approaches mental health.
He has testified before US Congress, and served as a paid contractor for Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, US State Department, and the National Board of Medical Examiners. He has also been published, quoted, and cited in a huge range of publications including commentaries in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Reuters, and many others.
We strongly recommend listening to our episode with Dan Gade or reading his book if this is a topic that interests you. You'll hear both referenced a few times throughout this conversation.
Here are a few of the references he mentioned during the episode:
Kessler et al, 2005 - a large scale investigation of lifetime prevalence of mental health disorders.
Frueh et al, 2005 - Chris' own research that the VA attempted to prevent from being published
You asked, and now we've delivered.
We know the Army runs on checklists. Medevac? There's a checklist for that. Call for fire? There's a checklist for that. Breaching an enemy obstacle? There's a checklist for that. And all of these are simple enough that they can be laminated and stuck in a cargo pocket, or even boiled down to an easily memorized acronym.
But the physical training we do every day? Oddly, this is where you're expected to read hundreds of pages of science, guiding principles, and exercises complete with drill and ceremony. How do you simplify that into something actionable? Apparently that's up to you to figure out.
When we floated the idea of a simple form (checklist included) for planning physical training, people seemed very interested. So now you can download it for free on our website! We even included an example filled out version.
Listen to this episode for a discussion of how to use it. You can certainly go deeper on all of these topics, but we've tried to create something simple and straightforward that will get you off to a good start.
Give it a shot and let us know what you think. This will likely evolve based on feedback, and maybe one day the Army will even put it to use officially. And if you're in another service or organization that wants something like this, we'd be happy to collaborate on that too!
If you've spent any time learning about strength and conditioning you're almost certainly familiar with the "energy systems" framework. In this episode we're breaking down why the way these concepts are widely understood isn't supported by the evidence. And don't worry, we're not just here to criticize, we also explore an alternative model that's more up to date.
Evan Peikon is back for his second episode (if you missed his first, check it out here). He is a physiologist and bioscientist who focuses on human performance, including consulting for elite athletes and military special operations. He has a particular focus on understanding and monitoring how the body utilizes oxygen during exercise.
He the co-founder and lead physiologist at NNOXX, where he and his team developed the first and only wearable device to non-invasively measure muscle oxygenation (SmO2) and nitric oxide (NO) release from red blood cells in real-time.
If you're not familiar with the traditional energy systems model, I made this Instagram post about it in the early days of MOPs & MOEs.
You can even find this energy systems model on the Army's official page.
Evan cited three studies that collectively shatter the fundamental assumptions behind the traditional energy systems model, here are each of those studies:
The "glycogen shunt" in exercising muscle
Metabolic fluctuation during a muscle contraction cycle
Simultaneous in vivo measurements of HbO2 saturation and PCr kinetics after exercise in normal humans
This week's episode has a little bit of everything. The role of team sports in the military, lessons in leadership, how to stay injury free through a career in the infantry, and the challenges of balancing two careers and family responsibilities in a dual military marriage. Our guest has, on top of his successful Army career, played a key role in leading the All Army Rugby team to a decade of dominance in the Armed Forces Rugby Championship.
COL Nate Conkey is a current United States Army War College Fellow studying at Columbia University and most recently served as the Regimental Tactical Officer for the First Regiment of the United States Corps of Cadets at West Point, NY. He commissioned into the Infantry in 2000 after graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point with a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering. He also holds a Master of Arts in Physical Education from Columbia University's Teacher's College.
COL Conkey’s infantry career has taken him from the 2nd infantry division at JBLM to the 101st at Ft Campbell to teaching at West Point’s Department of Physical Education to the 1st Cavalry Division at Ft Hood, back to JBLM for multiple field grade assignments and a stint as the 1st Corps Commander’s Liaison Officer to United States Army Pacific from Fort Shafter, Hawaii. He returned to JBLM as the Battalion Commander for 2-357 IN of 189th INF BDE, and then most recently served as the Professor of Military Science for Auburn University Army ROTC program in Auburn, AL. He has been selected as the next Commandant of the United States Military Academy Preparatory School beginning in Summer 2024.
COL Conkey's deployments include as a Rifle Company Commander to Kirkuk, Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and as a Future Plans Officer with the 1st CAV DIV to Bagram, Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
His list of awards is long, but highlights include the Bronze Star Medal, Purple Heart Medal, Ranger Tab, Airborne, Air Assault, Pathfinder, and both the Combat and Expert Infantryman's Badges. He was the Army’s Athlete of the Year in 2014.
He is married to COL Kate Conkey, an Academy Professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership and they have three kids together.
If you want to read the article on navigating a career as a dual military couple by Nate and Kate Conkey, you can find it here.
You probably know him as "Sergeant Major of the Army Grinston" or simply "SMA," but these days he prefers Tony. After a tenure as the Army's senior Noncommissioned Officer marked by numerous big changes to how the Army approaches health and fitness, Tony is now setting off on a new career as the Director of Army Emergency Relief (AER), which provides grants, interest-free loans, and scholarships to help relieve financial distress for soldiers and their families.
Our conversation focused on a few of the hottest topics that he got involved in: the Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT), Holistic Health and Fitness (H2F), and the state of Dining Facilities (DFACs - or "Warrior Restaurants" if you prefer) across the Army.
He was remarkably candid in this conversation, even revealing some of his biggest regrets from his time as SMA. Perhaps most importantly, he "officially" declared his stance on the leg tuck.
Tune in for an awesome conversation about what it takes to make change in an organization as large and diverse in the United States Army!
Want to train with us? One week free trial of our Long & Strong program is available now!
Mindfulness is a hot topic, but how many people even know what the term really means? To dive into it we have one of the world's foremost researchers on this topic. Ellen Langer has been researching mind-body unity for nearly half a century, and her work has influenced everything from behavioral economics to healthcare to positive psychology.
We've cited her work on numerous occasions before, most notably the chambermaid study, as well as several studies led by students from her lab. This work generally centers on how our beliefs influence how our bodies respond to things we might normally assume are strictly biologically mediated.
You'll hear quickly in this episode that we did not come to this conversation immediately agreeing on the applicability of mindfulness in all situations, but Dr. Langer presents compelling arguments for its advantages.
Ellen Langer was the first woman to be tenured in psychology at Harvard, where she is still professor of psychology. The recipient of three Distinguished Scientists awards, the Arthur W. Staats Award for Unifying Psychology, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Liberty Science Genius Award, Dr. Langer is the author of twelve books, including international bestseller Mindfulness, as well as The Power of Mindful Learning, Counterclockwise, and On Becoming an Artist.
Her trailblazing experiments in social psychology have earned inclusion in The New York Times Magazine's "Year in Ideas" issue. She is known worldwide as the "mother of mindfulness."
We discussed a large number of research studies in this episode, here are just a few of the most foundational and most frequently cited:
Mind-set matters: exercise and the placebo effect, better known as "The Chambermaid Study," is a classic that demonstrates how our mindset towards physical activity directly influences its health benefits.
Blood sugar level follows perceived time rather than actual time in people with type 2 diabetes is one of several Langer studies relying on rigged clocks to show how perceived time can be more influential than actual time, even on something as seemingly biological as blood sugar.
Mind over milkshakes: mindsets, not just nutrients, determine ghrelin response shows that how we think about our food directly influences how it is digested and the nutritional value it provides.
On this episode we dive into an awesome study that was published recently. It digs into something we often talk about here: the huge gap between sports science research and the actual reality of coaching in the human performance space. Right after it came out we saw people from across the human performance space talking about it, so we knew it would make for a great discussion.
The author of the piece is Kechi Anyadike-Danes and our discussion was definitely enhanced because, in addition to his research work, Kechi is also passionate about training and coaching (especially weightlifting). This background puts him in an excellent position to address the ways human performance research (plus accreditation systems, education, etc.) is failing to address the realities of actual human performance coaching.
Kechi is a doctoral student at the German Sport University Cologne where I he has been looking at various aspects of athlete preparation and how coaches perceive various theories, concepts and strongly held beliefs that exist in the training literature. He has a particular interest in the reasons for divisions that seem to routinely exist between sports scientists and coaches regarding certain topics. His doctoral research is being supervised and helped by friend of the pod John Kiely from the University of Limerick and Lars Donath from the German Sport University Cologne.
Read Kechi's study: Coaches’ Perceptions of Factors Driving Training Adaptation: An International Survey
We mentioned the TED Talk "Are athletes really getting faster, better, stronger?"
Listen to our previous episode with Kechi's research mentor John Kiely
For the final episode of our NASA series we're welcoming Judy Hayes, Chief Science Officer for NASA's Human Health and Performance Directorate. She joined Johnson Space Center (JSC) in 1984 as a research scientist in the Neurosciences Laboratory and established the JSC Exercise Physiology Laboratory in 1987. She was principle investigator on two Space Shuttle experiments studying the effects of microgravity on skeletal muscle performance in astronauts. During her career she managed the physiology laboratories, Reduced Gravity Programs, Space Medicine Project, and integration of biomedical research for the Space Shuttle, Russian Mir-Shuttle, and International Space Station programs. In addition to JSC, she managed NASA laboratories at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia.
Judy earned a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Exercise Physiology from West Virginia University followed by a Master of Public Health degree in Occupational Health/Aerospace Medicine from the University of Texas Health Sciences Center. She completed a joint fellowship at The Royal College of Surgeons of England and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine supporting epidemiologic research in the development of clinical practice guidelines for the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. She has been awarded the NASA Silver Snoopy and WVU Outstanding Alumnus. She was inducted into the WVU Hall of Fame and the WVU Academy of Distinguished Alumni.
The wealth of experience that Judy brings made this a great conversation about many of biggest physiological challenges that NASA faces trying to keep humans healthy during long duration space missions. Some of the topics we discussed were how NASA simulates space for research here on earth (everything from parabolic flight to underwater labs to long term isolation experiments), how they're adjusting their protocols for planned missions to the moon and Mars, and how they select and develop equipment solutions for use in space.
Commercial Destinations in Low Earth Orbit
E4D (European Enhanced Exploration Exercise Devices)
Complement of Integrated Protocols for Human Exploration Research (CIPHER)
Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA)
NASA Spinoff
Bone and Mineral Evaluation and Analysis (this involves scans every three years, including on retired astronauts)
Spaceflight Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome (SANS)
This episode is a continuation of last week's conversation, so if you missed it we highly encourage you to go back and start there. We have NASA's Astronaut Strength Conditioning and Rehabilitation (ASCR) team joining us, including Corey Twine (Strength and Conditioning Coach), Danielle Anderson (Physical Therapist), Bruce Nieschwitz (Athletic Trainer), and Christ Keeler (Athletic Trainer).
In the previous conversation we focused on pre-flight preparation for astronauts and we transitioned into the in-flight training they do to mitigate the effects of microgravity. This time we wrap up the in-flight conversation and transition into post-flight rehabilitation.
We discuss everything from how to do a dynamic warm up in space to the potential for things like wearables and blood flow restriction training in space. Like lasting time, we learn a lot about the fascinating challenges involved in keeping humans healthy and fit in space.
NASA makes a huge amount of their information publicly available, here are a few for those of you that want to dive deeper into some of the topics we discussed:
NASA has a dedicated page to highlight technology spinoffs that were developed for spaceflight but now benefit those of us here on earth. You can even find Bowflex on there!
The Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program (CLDP) is NASA's program to assist companies with developing commercial access to low earth orbit.
Astronaut flight assignment process
EVA (extravehicular activity/spacewalk) spacesuit
Human adaptation to spaceflight (if you search “exercise,” you’ll find quite a few references to how exercise is used as a countermeasure in spaceflight)
Welcome to episode 2 of our NASA series! This is the first of two conversations we had with the Astronaut Strength Conditioning and Rehabilitation (ASCR - pronounced "acer") team. Much like the interdisciplinary human performance teams supporting military organizations, we'll hear from a Strength and Conditioning Coach (Corey), two Athletic Trainers (Bruce and Christi), and a Physical Therapist (Danielle). And it doesn't stop there, you'll hear how they collaborate with a broad range of professionals to integrate human performance into spaceflight.
The challenges these folks are faced with on a daily basis are incredible. For example, no one can be using the exercise equipment when the space station needs to change altitude, or when a spacecraft is docking with the station. They're also responsible for teaching the astronauts to use the exercise equipment in zero gravity, including a resistance training machine that can be loaded up to 600lbs.
Bios for each of the team members are below, but first, here are some links to resources we mentioned during the conversation:
Astronaut flight assignment process
EVA (extravehicular activity/spacewalk) spacesuit
Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL)
Human adaptation to spaceflight (if you search “exercise,” you’ll find quite a few references to how exercise is used as a countermeasure in spaceflight)
Corey Twine is an ASCR Specialist at NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) for KBR. Prior to this role, Corey served as a strength and conditioning coach for the Army Special Forces as a part of the POTFF contract at KBR. He also supported astronauts during the shuttle era, acting as the primary ASCR for several shuttle missions, including STS 114 "Return to Flight" in 2005. Since returning to KBR in 2018, Mr. Twine has worked extensively on projects spanning the design and implementation of mission-specific strength and conditioning programs for individuals in obscure environments.
Major Danielle Anderson is a Physical Therapist currently assigned to Johnson Space Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration. She delivers a spectrum of neuromusculoskeletal care preparing and supporting both U.S and International Astronauts for long duration space flight aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Additionally, she provides consultation and management recommendations to Crew and Deputy Crew Flight Surgeons. She serves as the Air Force's liaison to the Military Musculoskeletal residency, a tri-service one-year Physical Therapy residency, where she oversees admittance, regional instruction, and successful program completion of Air Force, Army and Navy Physical Therapists.
Christi Keeler is an ASCR at NASA Johnson Space Center for KBR's Government Solutions U.S. Science and Space Business Unit. Prior to this role, she worked in several orthopedic settings and in organ and tissue procurement. Since joining KBR in 2022, Mrs. Keeler has worked extensively supporting the neuromuscular care program by evaluating, treating and rehabilitating injuries for both U.S. and international astronauts for long duration spaceflight aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Her role also includes servicing crew by instructing mobility classes, completing functional fitness evaluations, and training on spaceflight Advanced Resistance Exercise Device (ARED).
Bruce Nieschwitz is an ASCR for KBR at NASA-JSC. Bruce's primary role is to provide comprehensive strength and conditioning, physical medicine, and rehabilitation services for pre-flight, in-flight, and post-flight to active astronauts. Since Bruce began at KBR in 2006, he has served as the primary ASCR assigned to numerous shuttle and ISS missions. He also provides perspective, serving as a subject matter expert for designing and using exercise hardware for spaceflight. He is a board-certified and Licensed Athletic Trainer earning his B.S. from Kent State University and was a Graduate Assistant Athletic Trainer at Mankato State University.
Welcome to the first episode of our four part series with NASA, focusing on how they approach human performance for the unique demands of spaceflight. We're starting with an astronaut and in the rest of the series we'll be talking with the human performance and research teams who support them. Stay tuned!
Colonel (retired) Shane Kimbrough is a 1989 West Point graduate where he was captain of the baseball team. He was commissioned as an aviation officer and flew Apaches, including in Desert Storm. He got his Masters of Science degree at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1998, and headed back to West Point to teach in the math department. While he was teaching he got selected by NASA to be an astronaut and he entered that program in 2004.
He completed his first spaceflight in 2008 on STS-126, one of the last shuttle missions where they were building the international space station. He spent almost 16 days on the mission to expand the crew living quarters to accommodate a six-member crew on the International Space Station (ISS). He performed two spacewalks during this mission. On his second spaceflight, Kimbrough launched to the ISS on the Russian Soyuz MS-02 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. This mission lasted 173 days as part of Expeditions 49 and 50, where he performed four spacewalks and numerous science and maintenance activities. He most recently served as commander of the NASA/SpaceX Crew-2 Dragon spacecraft, which launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Once on the ISS, Kimbrough served as Flight Engineer of Expedition 65/66. He performed three spacewalks during the 199-day mission. Kimbrough now has a total of 388 days in space.
For additional insights into Shane's approach to fitness, your can read his profiles in Men’s Health and Men’s Journal.
This week's episode is all about work capacity. What is it? How do you train for it? What programming principles apply?
This is another one of our recurring "how to" episodes, and it essentially fills in the gap left after our strength and endurance episodes. Somewhere between those two is the fuzzy concept of work capacity, which brings up related concepts like "mixed modal training" and even the dreaded CrossFit.
We start with a few definitions (some better than others) and even a quick science lesson. After that the bulk of this episode focuses on Drew's "Theoretical Guide to Work Capacity" which lays out his multi-pace theory. We highly recommend you pull up the blog post if you can, some of the framework is easier to digest when you can look at a chart. To some extent, this also builds on the previous blog post "Three Strategies for Functional Conditioning."
Subscribers to our Long and Strong program may enjoy this look into the method behind the madness of the work capacity sessions they've been doing a lot of. If this episode gets you curious, we'd love to have you join us!
One of our definitions of work capacity came from the very smart Greg Nuckols of Stronger by Science.
Another came from T-Nation, which can be a good resource as long as you're on guard for their shameless and aggressive supplement sales.
Unsurprisingly we also touch on CrossFit's definition as well
And Drew also specifically cites OPEX's framework, specifically maximal aerobic power.
Finally, and perhaps oddly, one of our definitions came from the Indian Journal of Environmental & Occupational Medicine. It turns out there is a large body of research focused on work capacity in the context of manual labor. Based on their less than impressive grasp on physiology, this might be an opportunity for some exercise physiology folks to help them out.
On this episode we're diving into the mental health conversation, and we hope it's only the beginning.
Our guest is Jonathan Wilson, a former Navy SEAL with multiple deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan. His transition journey included an MBA from University of Oxford's Said Business School and working as an equity trader at Goldman Sachs. While it all looked great on paper, he still found himself struggling with his own mental health. This led him to founding the SEAL Future Foundation in 2012.
Our focus in this episode though is his role as CEO and Founder of INVI Mindhealth. They are leveraging some interesting technology to monitor physiological indicators of distress, but more importantly they're combining the tech with human to human interaction.
In what is starting to becoming a theme with our favorite episodes, we threw the plan for this conversation out the window almost immediately. So join as we go down many of the rabbit holes involved in military and veteran mental health.
Data Driven Strength is on a mission to translate research, integrate experience, and develop strength. On this week's episode we have Zac and Josh who, along with their partner Jake, are researchers and coaches who directly apply evidence based approaches to developing powerlifters. In particular, they leverage their knowledge to individualize training programs based on monitoring performance data.
Some themes of this discussion involve rethinking traditional notions around RPE and maximal strength and acknowledging the complexity of truly individualizing both research and programming. We even dive in to the potential impact of AI on strength and conditioning, but as you might expect that's a little more complicated than it might seem on the surface.
The work they're doing with Data Driven Strength has definitely impacted how we talk about these issues, and you can see its influence on our programming, so we hope you enjoy some deeper insight into their methods.
You can find a wealth of resources, including their own podcast and blog on their website. Almost everything we referenced in this conversation can be found on their blog.
The one exception is we did reference Range by David Epstein. It's a great discussion of how humans learn if you want to dive into that.
On this episode we welcome Newton Cheng back to the podcast, but this time he's taking over hosting duty! In his previous episode we focused on what military human performance could learn from corporate wellness, but he wanted to turn the tables and find out what corporate wellness could learn from military human performance.
Newton is a father, world-class powerlifter, engineer, and Google's Director of Health and Performance. In his work, he leads a team with the mission to support the physical, mental, social, and spiritual health and well-being of Google's global workforce. At the time this episode is publishing, he's also just a few days out from competing in primetime at USAPL raw nationals. If you're curious to learn more about his (impressive) powerlifting, check out his Instagram page.
This wide ranging conversation is all about helping someone with an outside perspective understand how the military approaches human performance, including both the good parts and the bad parts. We hope this will become a continuing conversation, since we have a lot to learn from each other in this space.
In our discussion about spirituality we recommended Soul Boom by Rainn Wilson, which you can find here.
In our attempt to define both corporate wellness and military human performance we cited several sources, those are:
Human Performance Optimization: A Framework for the Military Health System
Booz Allen's Human Performance Training for Military Missions
RTI International's Military Health and Human Performance
Human Performance Resources by the Consortium for Health and Military Performance (CHAMP)
Bureau of Labor Statistics' What attributes characterize a successful corporate wellness program?
This week's guest is Tyler Fillion, the current Company 1SG and Senior Enlisted Advisor to the 75th Ranger Regiment Selection and Training Company. The Company conducts assessment and selection programs, known as RASP1 and RASP2, as well as a pre-Ranger School course known as SURT (small unit Ranger tactics). Additionally, the Company runs an extensive Pre-RASP program that prepares service members for RASP1.
Tyler has been serving in the Army since 2005 and attended Ranger School shortly after a 15 month deployment to Iraq during the surge. That was his first exposure to Ranger Regiment soldiers, and after another deployment he attended one of the first editions of the RASP1 course in 2010.
His career has taken him from 3rd Ranger Battalion, to Regimental Headquarters, to 1st Ranger Battalion, and now back to Fort Moore with Selection and Training. Tyler holds a Masters degree in Psychology with a focus on Industrial and Organization Psychology.
It's very clear from our conversation that Tyler cares deeply about human performance and is a huge believer in the Army's H2F system. As you might expect from a leader in Ranger Regiment, he's all about challenging people to achieve things they might not have thought were possible.
This episode has a lot of good information for any soldier who aspires to serve in Ranger Regiment, but it's also full of insight for anyone who is interested in how to incorporate human performance staffs into a military unit. The Rangers have been doing it for over a decade now, and Tyler speaks to how they get the most value out of their Ranger Athlete Warrior program.
For insight into assessment and selection processes, Tyler recommended this documentary about the British Pegasus Company.
To understand the culture in Ranger Regiment, Tyer recommended the 6-part Ranger Creed series. You can find those videos, along with plenty of others about life in Ranger Regiment on their YouTube channel.
To find the monthly challenges we talked about, check out @75th_humanperformance_wellness on Instagram.
RASP also has their own Instagram page that offers glimpses into the assessment and selection process.
And finally, if you're ready to take the next steps towards becoming a Ranger, you can find their recruiting team here.
This week's episode is an exciting one. If you've been following MOPs & MOEs on Instagram you'll know that, in additional to the normally scheduled military human performance content, we occasionally transform into a fan page for the one and only Chandler Smith. This week, we finally have him on for a chat!
When we recorded this conversation Chandler was in the final weeks of preparation for his fourth CrossFit Games appearance, where he ultimately placed 7th. This year was a comeback season for him after a massive asthma attack during last year's semifinals derailed his season.
Chandler grew up around athletics, his father was an NFL fullback and now works as a strength and conditioning coach for the Dallas Cowboys. Chandler wrestled throughout high school and at West Point, discovering CrossFit as a conditioning tool along the way.
Graduating in 2015, Chandler commissioned as an Armor Officer and started focusing more and more on training for competitive CrossFit with a goal of making it to the Games by 2022. Despite a couple setbacks including losing part of his left ring finger in an Army training accident in 2017 and having to train in extremely austere conditions while deployed in 2018, he ended up beating his goal and qualifying for the Games in 2019. He has since separated from the Army and is now a full time professional CrossFit athlete.
Chandler is also very involved in the programming of his training, reflecting his interest in understanding the why behind various training approaches. This gives us a unique opportunity to talk to someone who is not only well versed on the Xs and Os of training, but is also applying those principles at an elite level.
If you want to learn more about what happened to Chandler last year, we highly recommend the In the Arena documentary following his 2022 season.
You can find Chandler on Instagram here.
We're launching a training program!
In this episode we are explaining the Long & Strong program that we are getting ready to launch. This is a subscription based program that will be delivered via TrainHeroic. Programming will start in September, but if you subscribe during the August presale, you'll get a discount!
This will be a concurrent training program, meaning it incorporates both strength and endurance training, including some work capacity type of conditioning sessions. If you've been following along with the podcast you'll find that many of the concepts we discuss here are reflected in the program.
If you have questions about what to expect and how it will work, this is the episode for you. We collected questions on Instagram, and we answer all of the frequently asked ones here.
Click here to sign up!
This program is based on numerous concepts we've discussed before on the podcast, shared on the Instagram page, and gone a little deeper on on the blog. Two blog posts that Drew specifically recommended during our conversation are:
4 Fundamental Truths of Tactical Training
A Theoretical Guide to Work Capacity
This wide ranging episode will touch on everything from the Army's fitness education for leaders, to the way soldiers prepare physically for demanding courses like Ranger and Sapper, to what it's like being a woman and a leader in combat organizations. Emma brings an authentic perspective and is very direct on these issues in a way that will hopefully start some important conversations.
1LT Emma Powless currently serves as a Combat Engineer in the Army’s only Rough Terrain unit, the 57th Sapper Company (Airborne), at Fort Liberty, NC. This is the Army's only unit designed to intentionally jump into trees and then clear landing zones and drop zones for follow on forces.
Emma graduated from West Point in 2020 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Kinesiology where she also competed on the Women's Lacrosse Team, the Triathlon Team, and the Functional Fitness Team. Her military schools include Airborne School, Military Freefall School, Ranger School, Sapper School, Jumpmaster School, and the Master Fitness Trainer Course. With all those schools, she was the 6th woman ever to earn both her Ranger and Sapper tabs.
Outside of the Army Emma enjoys fitness, mentoring others, sourdough baking, and skydiving.
Emma is a huge advocate for mentorship, and if you want to reach out to her directly you can email her at epowless21@gmail.com
On today's episode we're diving into Yoga Nidra, which translated literally means yoga sleep. While it's not literally sleep, evidence suggests it can be a powerful tool for improving sleep quality and falling asleep faster, among many other things. That is the subject of a piece by our guest, titled "The Thin Line Between Waking and Sleeping in Athletes: A Call for Yoga Nidra in the Sporting Context."
Selenia di Fronso is a PhD researcher affiliated with the Department of Medicine and Aging Sciences, within the Behavioral Imaging and Neural Dynamics Center, University “G. d'Annunzio” of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy. She focuses on sports psychology, including things like mental imagery, stress management, and mindfulness.
While this is an opinion piece, it heavily references the existing literature on Yoga Nidra, especially in medical contexts. She's primarily calling for greater investigation of how Yoga Nidra could be applied in athletic contexts.
Once you hear about it, we're sure some of you are going to be interested in trying this out. For those people we're also releasing a recorded guided session that she has prepared for us, which will appear as a separate episode.
Below are some additional resources if you want to learn more or find more sessions:
For our veteran listeners, there is an 8-week prerecorded iRest series through the VA’s War Related Illness and Injury Study Center, or you can contact them for live sessions. Technically these recordings are right there on their website, so you don't really need to be a veteran...
A 2010 Pain Management Task Force report from the Office of the Army Surgeon General listed Yoga Nidra as a “Tier 1” modality for pain management.
Evidence from Occupational Therapy settings suggests that Yoga Nidra can significantly improve time spent asleep (above and beyond traditional sleep hygiene interventions) for patients suffering from sleep disorders.
Clinical studies have shown that yoga nidra meditation is associated with positive physiological changes, including improvements in several hematological variables, red blood cell counts, blood glucose levels, and hormonal status. Two neuroimaging studies have shown that yoga nidra produces changes in endogenous dopamine release and cerebral blood flow, a further confirmation that its effects on the CNS are objectively measurable. The practice has also been shown to reduce psychometrically measured indices of mild depression and anxiety, although these benefits were not shown in an experimental study to extend to severe depression or severe anxiety.
We recommend listening to the full podcast episode we did with Selenia di Fronso before listening to this guided Yoga Nidra session. In our conversation we discussed the research showing a wide range of benefits from Yoga Nidra, which include improved sleep quality, sleep duration, and sleep latency, but also go far beyond sleep. It has been shown to improve things as varied as red blood cell counts and blood glucose levels, and is even a validated treatment for both PTSD and chronic pain.
If that episode gets you interested, you can listen to this for a guided Yoga Nidra session of your own.
Have you ever wondered when the best time of day is for a workout? Have you noticed differences in your performance between the morning and the afternoon? Are you looking for reasons to justify modifying physical training time for your unit? This episode will dive in to all of these questions and more.
Raphael Knaier and Ralf Roth are part of a research team from the Department of Sport, Exercise and Health at the University of Basel in Switzerland. For this study they teamed up with the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Medical Chronobiology Program at the Brigham and Women's Hospital to investigate if the time of day of exercise influences the degree of improvements in physical performance or health-related outcomes.
You'll often see headlines in the news touting revolutionary findings that one time of day is superior. When you talk to experts on the research though, you'll often find that the answer is a bit muddier. Even if, on average, one time of day is better, that does not mean it's better for everyone, or even for every type of training or outcome goal. Raphael and Ralf lay out how many factors like chronotype, meal timing, and habituation to certain training times all play a part.
Tune in to learn more, and if you want to go straight to the source you can read the full text of their article here.
We have ongoing conversations here about fitness in the military, disability policies, changes to testing, and so much more. Because many of these are hot topics, they often attract media coverage, which can have both positive and negative consequences. To help shed some light on the complex relationship between the media and the military, especially with regard to health and fitness issues, we brought in an expert for this episode.
Todd South is Editor-at-large for Military Times, which publishes Air Force Times, Army Times, Marine Corps Times, and Navy Times. Todd has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd served as a Marine in the Iraq War, and some of his favorite topics include marksmanship and fitness.
As a special bonus, stay tuned until the end of the episode to get some pro tips on how to put together Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from someone who has extensive experience doing them.
Todd makes several references throughout the episode to places you can go to learn more about journalism, here are the links if you want to go check them out:
The Braindead Megaphone: the titular essay from this collection by George Saunders presages some of the modern social media problems with which we’re all now grappling.
All I know is What I Read in the Papers (explains what the public gets wrong about reporters and how they do their work in a very funny way). This essay is available either as a Kindle single or in the essay collection titled “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs.”
The News: A User's Manual which Todd describes as being how news should be viewed, read and frankly, produced. Many of the sentiments expressed had rattle around his head starting with his first bylines in 2004. He wishes all creators and consumers of news media would read it.
Intimate Journalism: The Art and Craft of Reporting Everyday Life, which he describes as simply a classic that should be studied more by journalists at every level.
This episode offers an awesome lens into a really unique corner of the human performance world: NASCAR pit crews. These teams perform physically and cognitively demanding tasks under highly stressful conditions where speed and teamwork are both vital. Our guests are not only accomplished pit crew athletes in their own right, but also coaches who have led teams to achieve at the highest levels.
Shaun Peet and Mike Metcalf are the co-founders DECK Leadership and co-authors of 12 Second Culture. They are working to transforming the modern workplace by uncovering opportunities for Diversity, Efficiency, Culture, and Kindness rooted in the principles of a pit crew experience. Together they have over 25 years of experience in NASCAR and have worked with many Fortune 500 companies. They are Co-Head Pit Crew Coaches and Directors of Culture and Community at Trackhouse Racing.
Shaun played hockey in the Ivy League at Dartmouth College, where he picked up a double major in Psychology and Sociology. He then played eight years in the minor leagues. A chance meeting with a fan then afforded him an opportunity to work in NASCAR as a Jackman on a pit crew for the next 12 years where he was a part of the Red Bull Racing Crew that won the 2008 World Pit Crew Championships.
Mike was a fullback for Appalachian State University football and then entered the world of motorsports in 2006 as a member of a NASCAR Pit Crew. In addition to competing he started coaching in 2012. He's also very engaged with several volunteering efforts in his community.
Tune in to find out what principles they use to build elite pit crew teams, and how this episode only came to be thanks to chance meeting following a car wreck in a tiny French village.
You can order their book 12 Second Culture here.
We're back with another practical episode, and this time it is how to implement autoregulation into your coaching and/or training. We start out by laying out the foundational concepts that underpin autoregulation, specifically the difference between external and internal load, then we discuss rating of perceived exertion scales. But most importantly, we talk through the reasons why we think it's important and some strategies for incorporating it into your training.
Autoregulation is particularly important in tactical populations because of its utility in adjusting group workouts when the group contains a wide diversity of fitness levels. Equipping them with an understanding of RPE is an easy way to start individualizing training even when you can't necessarily individualize the programming itself.
There aren't a whole lot of research references for this episode since we focused on practical application, but here are the ones we mentioned and a few we didn't:
Barbell Medicine's great article on autoregulation and RPE.
As part of their discussion on measuring the intensity of physical activity, the CDC actually has a page on RPE.
Small scale research indicates that athletes can learn to accurately apply RPE in as little as a few weeks.
Self-selected exercise improves athlete's enjoyment of training due to the higher levels of autonomy they experience (but on average they're less likely to self-select higher intensities).
Self-selected cardiovascular training intensity correlates more strongly with ventilatory threshold than percent of peak heart rate (this ties to some of our conversations about how to determine "zone 2").
LTG (R) Mark Hertling may be best known these days as a national security correspondent for CNN, where you'll often here him discussing the latest developments in Ukraine. But throughout his accomplished military career his interest in the health and fitness of soldiers was a major theme.
His 2012 TED Talk "Obesity is a National Security Issue" has over three million views on YouTube, and is frequently cited in conversations about how obesity and lack of physical activity impact the readiness of our military. But we can trace his interest in fitness much earlier than that. He got his Masters in Kinesiology in 1984 before heading off to instruct in West Point's Department of Physical Education. Shortly after that assignment he wrote his 1987 CGSC thesis titled "Physical Training for the Modern Battlefield: Are we Tough Enough?" Ultimately, he applied much of this knowledge as TRADOC's Deputy Commander for Initial Military Training where he oversaw a major overhaul of the Army's Basic Combat Training.
His involvement in these issues certainly didn't end when he took off the uniform, he went on to serve on the President's Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition, as well as serving on the board of Mission: Readiness. More recently he authored "Growing Physician Leaders" and he has held several leadership roles in the healthcare space.
LTG Hertling's unique perspective on some of the topics we discuss here most often makes this episode particularly valuable. You'll hear about the challenges our leaders face, even at the highest levels, trying to make real change in how the military approaches fitness, nutrition, and health.
We have a quick bonus (emergency?) episode here to address the rampant confusion around some Congressional language that has taken the internet by storm the last couple days. On page 17 of the executive summary of the NDAA markup by the Senate Armed Services Committee, one particular sentence alarmed many of you:
"Restores the Army's Physical Fitness Test (APFT) as the test of record and requires a 24month pilot program, briefing to Congress, and a one year waiting period before a new standard can be implemented."
As this excerpt has made its rounds on the internet, many people clearly thought it was already official. That is far from reality. Nothing has changed, and it is important that we clear up the confusion here. This short episode will explain a bit of the context, plus a little big of bonus insight into Army fitness policy that you might not know about.
You can find the EXSUM that start all of this here.
You can find the House Subcommittee on Military Personnel markup, with its conflicting language, here.
You can find the contents of DA PAM 611-21 (in smartbook format) here.
This episode is a slight detour from our normally military-focused content into the world of wildland firefighting. Katrina Mohr was recently featured on Outside Online where she talked about her path into firefighting as well as the challenges of being a small woman in an extremely physically demanding job. There were some great insights there, so we invited her to join us for a conversation as well.
When we first reached out to Katrina she was hesitant to come on the podcast because she didn't feel qualified, but we think as you listen you'll find a lot of practical insights here that apply to anyone pursuing physical challenges, or big goals of any kind.
Her blog, The 5ft Firefighter, contains a wealth of resources for anyone looking to learn more about wildland firefighting, especially if they want to find out how to get into this kind of work. If the conversation we have here piques your interest, definitely go check it out to learn more!
Since recording this episode she's been advocating for the Tim Hart Wildland Firefighter Classification and Pay Parity Act. This bill would go a long way to helping these critical firefighters make a living wage. They currently make as little as $13.45 an hour, and that does NOT include times when they're on standby or even times when they're on assignment but not actively at the fire site.
You can find the fact sheet here and more information and testimonials here.
You can also find Katrina on Instagram here.
Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) DeLellis leads research focused on traumatic brain injury, including managing the longest continually running TBI surveillance project in the Special Operations community and co-authoring more than 30 articles on TBI in SOF. But in this episode we aren't here to discuss the research he's had success in, we're here to discuss the research he hasn't been able to get off the ground. On numerous occasions he has tried and failed to initiate research projects on nutrition for soldiers, and we brought him on to talk about why that might be.
LTC (R) Delellis had a truly incredible career in the Army, with combat service in essentially every conflict the United States has participated in in the last four decades. He was on the ground in Operation Just Cause (Panama,) Operation Gothic Serpent (Mogadishu, Somalia), Operation Uphold Democracy (Haiti), Operation Deliberate Force (The Balkans), and eleven rotations in Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom.
He entered active duty as a Private in 1983 and went on to serve as an Infantryman, Team Leader, Squad Leader, and Battalion Assistant Operations Sergeant for the 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment at Hunter Army Airfield. From 1988 to 1998 LTC DeLellis served as a Team Member and Team Leader in the Army’s Special Missions Unit at Fort Bragg, NC.
Upon graduating from Physician Assistant School, LTC DeLellis served as the Battalion PA for 3rd Battalion, 325th Infantry, 82nd Airborne division, and the Battalion PA for 3rd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group. From 2004 to 2014 he served as a Squadron PA, Family Medicine Clinic Supervisor, and Deputy Surgeon for the Army’s Special Missions Unit. LTC DeLellis served briefly as the Deputy Surgeon for the XVIII Airborne Corps before moving back to USASOC as the Chief of Medical Training and the Deputy Command Surgeon.
Today, DeLellis is the Executive Director of the Fort Bragg Research Institute, a program of The Geneva Foundation, where he continues his important work supporting the operational needs of the warfighter.
Learn more about the Fort Bragg Research Institute here
Learn more about the North Carolina Center for Optimizing Military Performance (NC-COMP) here
We discussed some DoD obesity data which can be found here
We also discussed comparisons in obesity rates between branches which can be found here
COL Michael Kloepper has spent effectively his entirely career as a paratrooper, and now as Commander of the 173rd Airborne Brigade he has implemented some really interesting policies around health, fitness, and wellness.
There's a good chance you've heard about his "Policy Letter #2 - Cohesion and the Pursuit of Excellence," commonly referred to as the incentives memo. This policy allows soldiers to earn time off for everything from graduating Ranger School to traveling around Europe to taking a picture at the Trail #173 sign in the Dolomites.
In this episode we talk about that memo (which was originally inspired by a Specialist in the brigade), as well as the 173rd's Tough in Spirit initiative, his efforts to improve the DFAC, and even - prepare yourselves - limiting alcohol sales on post.
And of course we talk about his approach to physical fitness.
COL Kloepper is a 1997 graduate of West Point, a 2015 graduate of UNC's Keenan-Flagler Business School, and a 2021 Distinguished Graduate of the Army War College. He is an Infantryman, Ranger, and Paratrooper whose assignments include Ranger Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade, and USASOC.
You can read the incentives memo here.
He also discussed many of these topics at the H2F Symposium, and you can view that presentation here.
This episode is a crossover between the Instagram version of MOPs & MOEs (punchy, oversimplified, sometimes deliberately instigating, etc.) and the podcast version of MOPs & MOEs (more thought out, addressing nuance, etc.).
I (Alex) recently connected with Taylor Starch over a discussion about spinal flexion in strength training. Seeing some of Taylor's subsequent content got me thinking about the outsized influence of powerlifting on strength and conditioning in general, and especially the tactical space. While powerlifting is not alone in this, it does seem to face the least scrutiny - squat, bench, and deadlift are broadly accepted as the core of strength and conditioning.
If you missed my post articulating this, this episode is essentially a discussion about how that conversation rapidly devolved. Since Taylor sent me down this rabbit hole in the first place, we thought we'd include him in the discussion, and he added some really interesting perspective.
Taylor Starch has his bachelors in health and exercise science and health promotion from Colorado State, where he was on the cycling team and competed at the national level. Since then he has accumulated roughly fifteen years of experience from personal training to running his own company and now to tactical. His last six years spent in tactical have included time with Air Force Special Warfare and currently with the 56th Fighter Wing. Along the way he has acquired an astonishingly extensive list of professional certifications, and if you follow him you'll quickly learn that he's a big trail runner.
You can find Taylor on Instagram
Drew mentioned an Elon Musk video discussing first principles
Alex mentioned a study showing mixed results from the Tactical Athlete Performance Center
This is a special episode, in more ways than just being twice as long as the rest. Dr Whitfield "Chip" East literally wrote the book on the history of Army physical fitness, and the incredible depth of knowledge he has on historical physical culture is absolutely astonishing. His insight reveals that many of the problems we're reckoning with today are echoes of extremely similar problems from decades ago.
Dr. East played an integral role in the development and implementation of the ACFT, and you'll see over the course of this episode how it fits into the broader context of Army fitness history. As we chronologically work our way through a couple hundred years of history we pause at key junctures to discuss the implication of these events for our current fitness culture.
I (Alex) have been lucky enough to be both taught by and work alongside Dr. East, and every visit to his office led to a fascinating conversation. This episode is no exception, and you'll definitely learn something interesting. From the origins of Turnverein gymnastics training to the role of political and social trends in military fitness to tracing the history of fitness testing, we cover centuries of relevant history in this conversation.
Most of the episode centers around summarizing key pieces of Dr. East's book A Historical Review and Analysis of Army Physical Readiness Training and Assessment (available as a free pdf here)
Dr. East also makes several references to West Point's Indoor Obstacle Course Test (IOCT). For those who are unfamiliar, these videos provide some context:
IOCT Men's Record: Matthew Bassette
IOCT Women's Record: Elizabeth Bradley
We've touched on conversations about veteran disability before, but on this episode we're going all in. To get this conversation right we needed a guest who really understands the VA disability system, and it's hard to imagine someone more qualified to discuss this issue than Dan Gade. Dan is an Army veteran who became an amputee in 2005 while serving as a company commander in Ramadi, Iraq. Since this is an audio only format and we don't discuss it directly in the episode, it's important to note that Dan is missing almost the entirety of his right leg. He continued serving despite his injury and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2017. He went on to work as a disability and veteran services activist, professor, and researcher. He currently serves as the Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Veterans Services.
Most importantly for this conversation, Dan is the author of Wounding Warriors: How Bad Policy is Making Veterans Sicker and Poorer. This well researched book unflinchingly goes after the "third rail" political topic of veterans disability reform. Described as a "must read" by GEN (R) Jim Mattis (former Secretary of Defense) and Jim Nicholson (former Secretary of Veterans Affairs) the book takes on controversial issues that others tend to avoid.
Dan has his bachelors in environmental science from West Point and his Masters in public administration and his PhD in public policy from the University of Georgia. He served in the administration of President George W. Bush, taught at both West Point and American University, and was appointed to the National Council on Disability. He also knows a thing or two about fitness, he became the paralympic world champion at the 2010 Ironman 70.3.
Additional Resources:
Of course we recommend reading Dan's book Wounding Warriors: How Bad Policy is Making Veterans Sicker and Poorer. You can even order a signed copy from Dan from woundingwarriors.com.
You can find Dan's article "A Better Way to Help Veterans" in National Affairs here.
Read his article "Why the VA is Buried in Disability Claims" in the Wall Street Journal here.
He has also published formal research:
"Combat exposure and mental health: the long-term effects among US Vietnam and Gulf war veterans" in Health Economics can be found here.
"Where Did You Serve? Veteran Identity, Representative Bureaucracy, and Vocational Rehabilitation" in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory can be found here.
In our discussion he also recommended listening to his appearance on the Cleared Hot podcast with Andy Stumpf.
This week we have Alec Blenis back for round two. If you didn't catch his first episode back in August, it's one of our most popular and definitely worth going back for. Alec has a really unique background ranging from Georgia Tech physics grad to former professional Spartan Racer and competitive ultramarathoner to Murph world record holder. Lately he's becoming a bigger and bigger voice in the fitness social media world with his emphasis on hybrid training, antifragile approach to movement, and willingness to take on big problems in the space.
In this conversation we cover a lot of ground. We start with how to ask better questions (Alec is a master of the Instagram Q&A) and then we dive into interference effect, how people misinterpret the concept of progressive overload, and more.
You can find Alec on Instragram @alecblenis where he has tons of great content, and he also offers paid programming and coaching.
He's also currently running a side bend challenge if you have what it takes to compete!
This is a "give the people what they want" kind of episode. If you've been following us for any amount of time, you'll know we're not fans of training for the test. But so many people have foundational misunderstandings about what types of training will serve them well on the test that we thought this conversation might be helpful.
We start with a little history of how we got to the ACFT we know today, then we lay out a few policy and doctrinal references for how training is "supposed" to be done. These might come in handy if, as we encourage, you're teaching classes to soldiers on how to train more effectively. They will hopefully also clear up a bit of confusion, since people get them wrong so often.
But of course the bulk of this episode is a breakdown of the specific test events, what components of fitness they are designed to assess, and what types of training will improve those components of fitness. We routinely get questions about these topics, so now all the answers are in one place.
If you find this episode useful, please share it with other soldiers!
There are several topics in this episode that we brushed past very briefly. If you want to dive deeper on any of these, here are the episodes and resources we referred to:
How to Build Your PT Plan episode
Programming for Strength episode
ACFT development episode with Dr. DeGroot
Zone 2 training episode with Scott Johnston
Stronger by Science article about the Hinge-Squat Continuum
A throwback early MOPs & MOEs post about the "hardstyle plank"
As a current Brigade Commander Colonel Jon Harvey oversees an embedded team of human performance professionals as part of the Army's Holistic Health and Fitness (H2F) program. Because human performance in a military setting is so dependent on leader buy in, we wanted Colonel Harvey's perspective on how he utilizes this team, and why he is personally so passionate about the program. It is obvious in this conversation that he is all in, and they're already seeing some impressive results.
Colonel Jon Harvey is a US Army Field Artillery Officer and commander of the 18th Field Artillery Brigade at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He has commanded soldiers at every level from small units up to brigade, and he has extensive staff experience to include the Joint Staff, the Army Staff, and U.S. Forces Afghanistan. His postings have taken him all over the world from Korea, to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to Fort Drum, New York, to Washington, D.C and now to the center of the universe at Fort Bragg. Operationally, he has served in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Haiti, and Iraq. He has a bachelors in political science from Eastern New Mexico University, a Masters from the Army Command and General Staff College, and a Counterterrorism and Public Policy fellowship from Duke University where he focused on military senior leader decision making and the Army’s professional military education of staff officers.
You can find Colonel Harvey on his (very active) Instagram page.The 18th FAB H2F team (STORM) also has their own Instagram page.
You may have seen headlines the last few weeks saying things like "Exercise is More Effective than Medication for Mental Health" and "It’s Not Just Exercise that Improves your Mental Health – Intensity and Type Matters Too." The research that is driving all these headlines comes from Dr. Ben Singh's team at the University of South Australia, and he's our guest on this week's episode.
The study that has caught everyone's attention has been described as “the most comprehensive synthesis to date of evidence regarding the effects of all modes of physical activity on symptoms of depression, anxiety and psychological distress in adult populations.” Their team pulled together systematic reviews spanning numerous exercise modalities, mental health disorders, and patient populations to synthesize a comprehensive overview of the current literature.
The article has done the research equivalent of "breaking the internet." As of this episode posting, it has an Altmeric Attention Score of 2957 (and rising), it has been picked up by 195 news outlets, and it has already been cited in three academic articles despite only being published a couple months ago. For context, any score over 20 is considered quite good, and Dr. Singh's previous high was 60. This article is already in the top 1% of all research ever tracked by Altmetric.
In the episode we discuss how different types of physical activity may be more or less beneficial for different conditions, the importance of including exercise professionals in the treatment of mental health disorders, and the many obstacles to normalize exercise as a treatment modality. For an example of the insights Dr. Singh's team found, resistance training appears to be most effective for depression, whereas pilates and yoga were more effective for anxiety. Both outperformed aerobic exercise despite previous guidelines that prioritized it. But tune in to the conversation before you draw your conclusions, because Dr. Singh discusses limitations of the existing research, and how much work there is left to do.
You can find the original article HERE.
You can find Dr. Singh on Twitter.
Kegan Gill's story is so incredible that the moment we first read it we knew we needed to try and get him on the podcast. We're just lucky we found out about him early on, because he will definitely be a household name soon enough.
Without spoiling too much of the story, which he tells eloquently, he was an F/A-18E Super Hornet pilot who experienced an extremely traumatic ejection, fought his way through the physical rehab, but was then laid low again by delayed onset mental health and TBI issues.
Our medical system successfully brought Kegan back from the brink of death, but when it came time to get him back to actual health it failed completely. What you'll hear in this conversation are all the ways he took ownership of his recovery journey.
We certainly brought Kegan on to tell his story, but he's told his story several times before. What we tried to draw out in this conversation were some key insights about the power of simple lifestyle behaviors to have profound health, fitness, and wellness benefits even in extreme situations.
You can find a full written version of Kegan's story here and Kegan specifically mention's the support he received from Jesse Gould and Heroic Hearts Project so check out their page while you're there.Kegan mentions a documentary video about another high speed crash, you can find Brian Udell's (call sign Noodle) story on YouTube here.Kegan recommends a few books to read:
In Defense of Food
How to Change Your Mind
Why We Sleep
Kegan also calls out several organizations that provided him crucial support during his journey:
Marcus Capone's Vet SolutionsAndrew & Adam Marr's Warrior Angels Foundation
Defenders of Freedom
Resiliency Brain Health
You can get in touch with Kegan himself on his Instagram and LinkedIn
Formally speaking, our guest on this episode is The Honorable Robert Wilkins as he is a presidential appointee. Rob retired as a Master Sergeant after 26 years in the Air Force, but that was just the beginning of his career. While deployed in West Germany during the cold war, Rob got involved in bodybuilding and ended up getting in touch with early leaders in the bodybuilding community, Joe and Ben Weider, the cofounders of the IFBB. This led to Rob later being appointed as the IFBB Liaison to the military and started his life long efforts to encourage fitness nationwide.
He is the Senior Military Editor for Muscle & Fitness, the Head of Veterans Outreach for Sightline Media (Military Times' parent company), and most notably he was nominated to be a member of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition. When we recorded this episode, Rob was finishing his second term on the council. He served terms under both President Trump and President Biden, one of very few to span two administrations, especially of different parties. He continues to stay closely involved in the work of the Council and the Department of Health and Human Services.
You can learn more about the President's Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition HERE.
The White House announced the newest council appointees, including Steph Curry and Chloe Kim, HERE.
This topic has been frequently requested, but since we are not remotely experts in this space, we needed to find someone who was. We've heard great things from a number of women who have benefited from Mamastefit's content and services, and Gina definitely presented some great insights for anyone looking to learn more about fitness for pregnant and postpartum women. Importantly, this information isn't just for those actual women, it's for anyone who supports them, especially their partners and any leadership who may be responsible for them.
Gina Conley holds a M.S. in Exercise Science and is the Founder & CEO of MamasteFit, an industry leading perinatal fitness provider with a training facility located in Aberdeen, NC (nearby Fort Bragg). Gina is a seasoned birth doula who has supported nearly 200 births in North Carolina. Her unique experience of exclusively training perinatal fitness clients (in-person and online), coupled with supporting births as a doula, has resulted in MamasteFit creating in-depth prenatal fitness programs, which support clients in returning to their desired sport or professional demands. Also, Gina is 7-year Army Veteran who served a combat tour to Afghanistan in support of Operations Enduring Freedom and Freedom Sentinel. Mamstefit's website
@mamastefit on Instragram
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Committee Opinion on Physical Activity and Exercise During Pregnancy and the Postpartum Period
Mike Erwin is a long overdue guest for this podcast, and he brings a wealth of insight that spans everything from his experiences in combat to leading multiple nonprofit organizations to his efforts to reshape education in America.
A 2002 graduate of The U.S. Military Academy at West Point with a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics, Mike was commissioned as an Intelligence Officer, serving in three combat tours with the First Cavalry Division and 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne). His service includes deployment to Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2004-2005 that involved the Battles of Fallujah and Najaf. Mike also deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2006-2007 and 2009.
Following his third deployment, Mike attended the University of Michigan from 2009-2011, where he studied positive psychology and leadership under the tutelage of the co-founder of positive psychology, Dr. Chris Peterson. He went on to serve as an Assistant Professor in Psychology & Leadership at the U.S. Military Academy from 2011-2014. He continues to serve as an instructor there as a LTC in the Army Reserve.
While in graduate school in 2010, Mike founded a non-profit organization named Team Red, White & Blue (Team RWB) with the mission to to enrich the lives of America's veterans by connecting them to their community through physical and social activity and a vision towards forging America's leading health and wellness community for veterans. Today Team RWB has nearly 200k members across over 200 chapters globally.
He is also co-founder & CEO of the Positivity Project—a non-profit organization with the mission to empower America’s youth to build positive relationships. With 542 partner schools, the organization reaches 332,000 children daily.
He is the CEO of The Character & Leadership Center and has done leadership development with over 100 major organizations.
He also serves as the founding Chairman of the Board for Father Vincent Capodanno High School, outside Fort Bragg, NC.
Finally he has authored two books: Lead Yourself First (co-authored with Ray Kethledge) and Leadership is a Relationship (co-authored with Willys Devoll).
Mike lives on a 32-acre farm in North Carolina with his wife Genevieve and their four children; Eli, Adelaide, Therese and Matthias.
If you want to read the Wall Street Journal article Mike mentions, it is "Socrates Never Wrote a Term Paper" by Jeremy Tate and it discusses how AI (specifically ChatGPT) is impacting education, and suggests that the Socratic method might offer a way forward.
Our guest for this episode is Newton Cheng, a father, world class powerlifter, engineer, and Google's Director of Health and Performance. In his work he leads a team with the mission to support the physical, mental, social and spiritual health and wellbeing of Google's global workforce. We went into this conversation looking to compare corporate wellness with tactical human performance, but we came away from it with so much more. This wide ranging conversation covers everything from the importance of mastery practices to making meaningful social connection their primary measure of effectiveness.
While Newton works in a space that is very different from the military, it is astonishing how many of the points he made are directly relevant to challenges we face. At times it felt like he had been in some of the same meetings we have. He argues that retention means ensuring talented people flourish in your system, that quantitative data may not be the most important thing when considering health and wellness outcomes, and that vulnerability is a superpower because of the way it enables meaningful social connection. He also spends some time addressing his personal experience with taking mental health leave from work, and if that's something you want to hear more about, he speaks about it frequently in numerous other forums.
If you're the kind of listener who wants to follow up on all the interesting references Newton provides, here they are:
He recommended the work of Dr. Lauren Whitt, Google's Head of Resilience.
He suggested Ken Wilbur's Integral Theory and Paul Gibbons' work on The Science of Successful Organizational Change.
He discussed how he was influenced by Miyamoto Musashi's Book of Five Rings, a classic book on strategy that is rooted in martial arts but has gained new popularity in the strength training community.
He highlighted the value of Charles Vogl's The Art of Community for leaders seeking to build a culture of belonging in any organization.
He cited Gallup survey findings that people who have a best friend at work get more done in less time, support a safe workplace with fewer accidents, are more likely to innovate and share ideas, and have more fun while at work.
He highlighted Microsoft's Work Trend Index, and especially its emphasis on increasing rates of employee burnout.
Job Fransen is a skill acquisition specialist working at the University Medical Centre Groningen in the Netherlands and a adjunct fellow at the University of Technology Sydney’s School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation. His research focuses on optimizing skill acquisition in athletes. He has worked with high performance athletes and individuals from around the world, across elite sport, esports and gaming and the military. Job is also a skill acquisition consultant, assisting some of the world’s best coaches to design practice that optimizes learning across a range of sports, most notably rugby, Australian football, soccer and basketball.We discovered Job's work because of a preprint article he released that provides extensively resourced evidence to argue two main points:(1) A far transfer of skills is something we all think we do yet it is very difficult to achieve. Instead we mostly achieve near transfers of skills between very similar or related tasks.(2) Cognitive training is evidenced not to have a far transfer in robust scientific research in psychology, yet numerous tech companies claim to have the ‘next best cognitive or perceptual training tool’ for improving sports performance while these transfers are exceptionally difficult to achieve and there is no evidence these tools can even achieve them.In this episode we start of by defining the concepts of "near transfer" and "far transfer" and then set off on a wide ranging conversation about how to better deliver actual evidence based cognitive training. We address the heated debate among researchers in this space, critique some of the popular technologies, and arrive at some pretty valuable insights on how to integrate skill acquisition principles into the ways we train, such as the optimal challenge point model.If this is a topic that excites you, you're in luck. Both ahead of and during our conversation Job pointed us towards a wealth of resources. We'll include links to numerous references below, but if you want to contact Job directly he is very open to that. You can email him at Job.Fransen@gmail.com or reach him on his LinkedIn.References:A critical systematic review of the Neurotracker perceptual-cognitive training toolNear and Far Transfer in Cognitive Training: A Second-Order Meta-AnalysisFar Transfer: Does it Exist?Do “Brain-Training” Programs Work?Business leaders praising Lumosity's success then just two years later Lumosity settles for millions and admits lack of evidence for their claims
We’re back with another “Xs and Os” episode about how to plan your training, this time focusing on strength specifically. In this episode Drew lays out his version of the Heavy-Light-Medium framework. His primary influence here was the work of Andy Baker who was in turn influenced by Bill Starr, and you’ll find many commonalities between this framework and some of the most popular templates like Starting Strength and Westside.
This version of Heavy-Light-Medium is different from the original. Instead of relying on different %1RM of the same movements, it uses exercise selections that force the athlete into differently loaded variations of the same foundational movement pattern. This adjustment makes it more applicable outside of powerlifting. Drew also introduces a variety of ways to incorporate variations on the core framework, ultimately arriving at a tactical template that looks an awful lot like “Heavy – Pump – Metcon” (you’ll have to listen to figure out that part).
Some of this can get a little hard to picture visually when you’re only listening to the audio, so this episode will be accompanied by both a blog post and an Instagram post with the visuals for the 3x3 charts that are discussed.
Yes, I (Alex) know I mispronounced Schoenfeld’s name at the beginning, and yes I should know better. But Drew is the one with the Master’s degree in this field, so I blame him for not correcting me.
Article on Minimum Effective Dose
Article on Optimal Dose
Article on Reexamining Rep Ranges
How can we navigate a health and fitness space riddled with pseudoscience and misinformation? What does it mean to live in the post-truth era? How can we all train ourselves to become better critical thinkers?
We dive into all this and more with Dr. Nicholas Tiller, who we discovered because of his call to action paper about the need for exercise scientists to contest the growing amount of misinformation in the space.
Nick is a senior researcher in the Institute of Exercise Physiology and Respiratory Medicine (Lundquist Institute) at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Tiller has a broad research profile, contributing numerous peer-reviewed studies in cardiopulmonary function (specifically in chronic respiratory disease), respiratory mechanics, and exercise limitation. Tiller is a leading authority in the physiology and pathophysiology of extreme exercise, a subject of personal interest in his capacity as an ultramarathon runner. He is an associate editor of the International Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism.
While Nick's work focuses on exercise science, he is fundamentally a skeptic and an advocate for critical thinking. This lens is apparent throughout all of his work, and drives much of what we discuss in this episode.
Check out hiswebsite here
He's also very active on Twitter
His book Skeptics Guide to Sports Science has been reviewed as one of the "Best Sports Science Books of All Time" and easy a great reference from common exercise science myths.
His column on Skeptical Inquirer is also excellent.
For more on the story we briefly discussed about the British con artist who scammed militaries with fake bomb detectors, you can start here.
If you want to dive deeper into our brief conversation about the Tuft's Food Compass research and the subsequent Joe Rogan drama, start with this blog post.
Some of the reading that Nick suggests includes:
Isaac Asimov's Robot series (and Alex also recommends Foundation)
Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World
James Randi's Flim Flam
He also recommends the following podcasts for aspiring skeptics:
Skeptics Guide to the Universe
Geologic
This episode is a roundtable discussion about the experiences of women in strength and conditioning, and especially in the tactical environment. Erica Mansaray, Jaimie Lafler, and Paula Arreola are all coaches working in different parts of the tactical space. Their academic and professional backgrounds are varied, including more and less traditional paths, everything from high school to professional sports, and both conventional and special operations military environments across multiple branches.
The conversation covers a lot of ground, but some highlights include working in male dominated environments (both military and athletics), getting mansplained to (which we explained to them), and their thoughts on gender based fitness standards in the military. On some issues they were unanimous, while on others they disagreed, and their feedback provides a ton of valuable insight.
You can find out guests on Instagram at:
@coachjaimie (https://www.instagram.com/coachjaimie/)
@paulaarr15 (https://www.instagram.com/paulaarr15/)
@ericanicolerica_ (https://www.instagram.com/ericanicolerica_/)
Since we also mentioned MoveU's educational content, you can find them at:
@moveU (https://www.instagram.com/moveu/)
We’ve been trying to get Nick Barringer onto the podcast for a few months now, but he’s too professional to get in the trenches with us. At least he was until a recent report came out about the Occupational Physical Aptitude Test (OPAT). Years ago Nick warned the Army that the standards were too low for the OPAT to accomplish its goals, and he took a lot of heat for being publicly critical. Fast forward to today, and the Army Auditing Agency has confirmed he was right, the OPAT accomplished none of its stated goals.
In addition to vindicating Nick, we also take time during this episode to discuss the state of military fitness more broadly, including a chat about World War II standards, things like La Sierra High School PE, and plenty of other good fitness history.
LTC Barringer's original critique of the OPAT: https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2016/10/08/commentary-officer-takes-on-the-army-s-new-opat-and-pulls-no-punches/
Jim Gourley's commentary piece for Tom Ricks' Best Defense Column on Foreign Policy: https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/10/20/major-nick-barringer-says-the-armys-new-opat-is-garbage-but-the-armys-leadership-cant-see-why-that-matters/
DoD Inspector General Semiannual Report to Congress (April - September 2021): on page 54 of this document (page 64 of the pdf) you can finding the excerpt that tipped us off to this OPAT audit: https://media.defense.gov/2021/Nov/30/2002900902/-1/-1/1/SEMIANNUAL%20REPORT%20TO%20THE%20CONGRESS%20%E2%80%93%20APRIL%201,%202021%20THROUGH%20SEPTEMBER%2030,%202021.PDF
Army Audit Agency report on the OPAT (this is the only place this document has been released publicly): https://static1.squarespace.com/static/63ac58edac97035ec3c43c24/t/63e816f419a20621c21f7fe4/1676154615480/Audit+Report+A-2021-0052-FIZ+FOIA+%28002%29_Redacted+%281%29.pdf
July 2018 article claiming that "OPAT reducing trainee attrition, avoiding millions in wasted training dollars, officials say" despite the Army Audit Agency finding that trainee attrition continued to get worse: https://www.army.mil/article/207956/opat_reducing_trainee_attrition_avoiding_millions_in_wasted_training_dollars_officials_say
La Sierra High School PE/The Motivation Factor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fISgKl8dB3M&ab_channel=DougOrchard
This disclaimer applies to every episode, but it's extra important on this one. Everything expressed in this episode reflects only the opinions of the individuals, and does not represent any of the organizations with which they are affiliated.
What?! A bonus episode of MOPs & MOEs?! In the middle of the week?!
While we'll be back to our normal weekly routine on Sunday (with our first ever investigative episode), we wanted to take this chance to officially announce that we have a website!
mopsnmoes.com
When you land on our homepage make sure to sign up at the bottom to get future newsletters and announcements. Then check out the rest of the site for all sorts of good stuff! It provides a home for all of our podcast episodes where you can find detailed show notes, links to sources, and contact information for our guests.
It is also where you'll find our blog with a few good articles already posted:
"What is MOPs & MOEs Anyway?" provides an overview of the whole measures of performance vs measures of effectiveness framework: https://www.mopsnmoes.com/blog/what-is-mops-and-moes-anyway
"Misleading Reporting on Childhood Obesity Guidelines" clears up a bit of the "fake news" that was spreading about what doctors are recommending for overweight children and adolescents: https://www.mopsnmoes.com/blog/misleading-reporting-on-childhood-obesity-guidelines
"Nutrient Profiling Systems: Why None of the Methods Work" addresses the recently viral nonsense about comparing steak to Lucky Charms: https://www.mopsnmoes.com/blog/kpdik1chlil8gdiz6ccrpe87r28zqf
"4 Fundamental Truths about Tactical Training" lays out some foundational concepts for those who are trying to develop their own tactical strength and conditioning framework: https://www.mopsnmoes.com/blog/4-fundamental-truths-of-tactical-training
And as we create more useful resources for you guys, the website is where you'll be able to find them!
Guy Shamam is an Israeli Defense Force special operations soldier who transitioned into the reserve and is now working to address problems with the health and fitness of reserve service members in Israel. He reached out to us looking for advice on developing a program, and we decided to record the conversation because this is the kind of stuff that many of our listeners are working to address. While Israel has mandatory service requirements and the structure of their reserve is very different from ours, many of the problems they struggle with in the health and fitness space are nearly identical. In this live working session we talk our way through various considerations around assessments and training that we hope will provide some insight for all of you.
Guy's unit is an extremely cool special operations demolitions team called Yahalom, and you can check out what they do here: https://youtu.be/rDYoNdVgiQI
During the episode we talked about some of the debates in Israel about the state of their reserve forces. Here's an article I referenced during that conversation for some background: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-729060
Guy has agreed to share his contact info if you want to reach out to him directly:
LinkedIn: Guy Shamam
Instagram: @guy.sham
Email: gbilas76@gmail.com
On this episode we welcome our first general officer guest, BG Mike Drowley, call sign Jonny Bravo. Brrrrrrt enthusiasts will appreciate that he is an A-10 Warthog pilot which, for the unfamiliar, means he flies an aircraft that is effectively a giant machine gun with wings. Pilots face unique performance demands that revolve around around applying technical skills under pressure while resisting g-forces on their bodies. BG Drowley discusses these, but we also had a wide ranging conversation about leadership at the strategic level, taking care of people, and the importance of human performance professionals being completely integrated with the units they support. He's an engaging and thoughtful leader, and his authenticity is immediately apparent when you talk to him.
Catch his TED Talk with 2+ million views here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WtQqKrbmKc
He also appeared on Simon Sinek's podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXLunCM7ISw
Erin Williams (aka @runstrongmama) is a mom, an athlete, a running coach, and an accomplished Army engineer officer. In this episode we discuss how all of those experiences have shaped her approach to fitness.
Erin Williams was a Division 1 basketball player at West Point, and was commissioned as an Army Engineer officer in 2011. Since then, Erin has completed a variety of military schools including Sapper and Jumpmaster, served in the 82nd and the 101st Airborne Divisions, earned a data science degree from Harvard, and had three children. In 2018, she also became a run coach. She holds certifications from Road Runners Club of America and VDotO2, and coaches with the service Lift Run Perform. She is a strong advocate for women in military service, and has focused her efforts in the past 2 years on highlighting shortfalls in the military child care space and how this impacts service members and families.
This wide ranging conversation covers everything from how to incorporate strength training into a running program to the state of pregnancy and postpartum physical training (P3T) in the Army. Erin has some valuable insights into a wide range of topics, so we covered a lot of ground with her. And if you want to learn more about her advocacy for women in the military, follow her platforms!
Erin mentioned a few useful resources that she recommends people check out, so here they are:
Laura Norris' running blog: https://lauranorrisrunning.com/
Dr. Alyssa Olenick: https://doclyssfitness.com/ and https://www.instagram.com/doclyssfitness/
Jack Daniels' VDOT: https://vdoto2.com/
She coaches with Lift Run Perform, find out more about them here: https://liftrunperform.com/
After a lot of questions we decided to do a podcast on how to get hired in tactical. Whether it's in uniform, as a federal civilian, or as a contractor, we lay out the basic requirements, pros and cons, and how to set yourself up for success. This is a rapidly growing space, and in addition to coaches getting curious about the tactical space, a lot of people in the military seem interested in pursuing these roles after their time in uniform comes to an end.
We definitely focus specifically on strength and conditioning, both because that's what we know and because it's the biggest population in the tactical human performance space. That said, we do touch on other roles throughout, so at least you'll hear about some of the other options.
If you're currently serving in uniform and want to make this your next career, we also include several considerations that are specific to transitioning service members (sources of funding, options to get experience, etc). If you have more questions, please reach out and we'll try and make resources available that assist with the process.
When leaders across the Department of Defense have questions about biosensing, wearable devices, or human performance data, Josh Hagen is frequently at the top of the list of experts they reach out to. He has his Bachelors in Chemical Engineering, Masters in Materials Engineering, and PhD in Materials Engineering all from the University of Cincinnati. Josh executed his graduate research in bioelectronics at the Materials and Manufacturing Directorate at Air Force Research Labs, and shortly after joined the 711th Human Performance Wing where he began his current research thrust in Human Performance Monitoring and Augmentation. His work there focused on measuring physiology utilizing wearable sensors and blood biomarkers, developing novel analytics for correlating and modeling data, and beginning to understand how to take that data to optimize performance in elite military and athletics populations. In 2018, Josh became the Director of the Human Performance Innovation Center at the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute at West Virginia University, as well as Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience. His latest role is Director of the Human Performance Collaborative where he leads a multi disciplinary team focused on human performance optimization.
Scott's first appearance was our most popular episode of 2022, so we're kicking off 2023 by bringing him back to answer your most frequently asked questions about Zone 2 training! This conversation covers everything from how to implement it in group training settings to incorporating rucking and low impact modalities. It's one more step in our mission to #MakeEnduranceGreatAgain.
Scott is an accomplished endurance athlete in his own right, and his coaching resume includes everything from elite special operators to Olympians. Of particular note, there's a big update since our last episode: he has launched Evoke Endurance! You can find out more at https://evokeendurance.com/
Towards the end of the episode we briefly discuss how recovery tracking devices can have a placebo effect on performance, whether or not they're accurate. The paper mentioned is available here, and it finds that not only is there an effect, but the placebo is stronger than self reported experience: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/xlm-a0035546.pdf
If you asked Santa for more MOPs & MOEs for Christmas, your wish has come true! 2022 is coming to an end, and we wanted to look back at all the ground we've covered in our first year of podcasting. Well, technically it's 3/4 of a year in review since we started this adventure in April. In this episode we shout out our most popular episodes from the first year of the MOPs & MOEs podcast and highlight some of the key themes we've discovered after all of these conversations with health and fitness professionals around the world. Thank you all for joining us on this journey, and please let us know what you want to hear from us in 2023!
We're trying something new with this episode and diving into the research a little bit. We're reviewing the International Olympic Committee's consensus statement on training load and injury risk. They assembled a panel of international experts and pulled together a huge amount of research to come up with some actionable recommendations for anyone who supervises physical training. This discussion is particularly timely as we head into the holidays, which for many people means a few weeks of lower training volume. Leaders might feel the urge to "make up for lost time" by hitting it hard when everyone gets back, but the evidence suggests that this is a perfect storm for injury risk.
Spoiler alert: the answer is there's probably no such thing as too much. But there is definitely too much too soon.
Here are the links if you want to read it yourself:
Part 1: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/50/17/1030
Part 2: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/50/17/1043
You guys have been asking for a cognitive performance episode for a while, so we brought Mike on to dive into it. We knew he would bring a valuable perspective when he said he had a particular interest in measuring the effectiveness of cognitive interventions. Mike has worked in a variety of research and human performance roles, starting with the United States Naval Academy until he decided he wanted to be on a winning team instead so he switched over to the Army's 7th Special Forces Group. His credentials include a masters degree in Applied Psychological Research from Penn State University, a Leadership and Management certificate from Wharton School of Business, and Chartered Psychologist status from the British Psychological Society. He makes some strong arguments against oversimplifying cognitive performance and emphasizes that it is both individual and task dependent.
Reilly is a legend up in the frozen north where he runs JBER Strength and Conditioning. It took us a while to get him on here, but he's definitely the most requested guest we've had on the podcast and the wait was worth it. Especially because all of those requests came from soldiers he has trained who can vouch for the impact he has on everyone who comes through his facility. After well over a decade of training soldiers, Reilly was recently recognized as the Tactical Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year, which is particularly noteworthy since unlike much of the industry he not only doesn't seek attention, he actively avoids it. There's nowhere to buy programs from him, and if you request to follow him on Instragram he won't accept it. This guy is all about doing the work, and getting soldiers Arctic Strong. The proof is how much leaders have invested in him: both his facility and Wolf's Lair up at Ft Wainwright are the tangible results of his work, and he was one of the first two civilians ever to graduate from the Army's Cold Weather Orientation Course, earning him the coveted Arctic tab.
In our continuing effort to not get fired and/or go to jail over this podcast, we thought it might be prudent to talk to a legal professional. Matt's background as an infantry officer turned lawyer gives him a unique perspective on military issues, and as you'll hear in this episode he has a special focus on social media policy. In fact, his work has been a driving force behind recent updates to DoD social media rules. Among other outlets, you can find Matt's work on LawFare, War on the Rocks, the Modern War Institute, and the Harvard National Security Journal. After leaving active duty earlier this year he also provided over 1,000 hours of free legal support to displaced Afghans seeking asylum in the United States.
Disclaimer: Our discussion in no way reflects the official position of the Department of Defense or federal government, and nothing in this podcast episode should be understood as legal advice, nor does this discussion in any way form an attorney-client relationship. Don’t take legal advice from a podcast, but especially not from this podcast.
References we mention during the episode:
MWI article: https://mwi.usma.edu/monetizing-military-service-the-need-for-an-institutional-reckoning-on-ethics-and-social-media/'
"New" social media guidance: https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DD/issuances/dodi/540017p.PDF
Harvard National Security Journal / full form argument: https://harvardnsj.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2021/03/Fitzgerald_Thank-Me-for-My-Service.pdf
Expanded recruiting pool argument: https://www.dayoneproject.org/ideas/a-digital-military-talent-initiative-for-noncitizen-technologists/
LTG (R) Hertling's TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWN13pKVp9s
No guest this time, just Alex and Drew trying to answer one of the most commonly asked questions we get here at MOPs & MOEs. Many of you are tactical professionals out there leading your teams without access to professional coaches. Or there are a lot of you training on your own with no guidance at all. So how do you build a plan that will produce results? This conversation will provide you with a few foundational principles you can apply to make sure you're on the right track. We discuss foundational movement patterns, conditioning modalities, frequencies for different types of training, balancing intensity and volume, and more. But we start with the most important thing, which too many people seem to forget: how to set a good goal.
Continuing our side quest of talking to the professionals calling BS on their professions, we're chatting with Chiropractor Aaron Kubal. He works specifically with chronic pain patients whose previous treatments have failed. Utilizing education & exercise, Aaron delivers a unique model of care that involves no manipulations whatsoever but rather focuses on graded exposure and patient empowerment. His approach is all about working WITH the person not on them.
Aaron is a huge advocate for evidence-based practice and has become extremely outspoken on social media in a way that is refreshing, but also makes many of his chiropractic peers very angry. His practice is delivered entirely through telehealth, which may be surprising to people who assume that chiros are all about cracking backs. As a result of his unique approach he is routinely invited to speak to audiences ranging from chiro students to orthopedic surgeons.
Follow him on Instagram @aaron_kubal or we hear he's a big deal on TikTok but we're too old for that.
Angus Bradley is the quintessential Australian. He's a surfer who dropped out of college to tour with his band before getting into Olympic weightlifting which led him to his current career as a personal trainer (although he might really be a comedian). He now operates out of Sydney, Australia training people across the spectrum from gen pop to professional athletes and hosting the Hyperformance podcast. This episode definitely includes more laughter than any other we've done, but it also includes some solid gold nuggets of wisdom, references to economic theory, and discussions of the philosophy of science.
Some disclaimers: We get pretty unfiltered in this episode, so it's important to remind everyone that these are only our opinions, and do not reflect the positions of any organizations with which we are associated. It's also our first episode where I have to check the "explicit" block, thanks to some flowery language.
On this episode we welcome the owner of what may be the coolest job title on the planet: COL Nick Gist, the Master of the Sword. He leads West Point's Department of Physical Education, which is both an academic department (teaching the Kinesiology major along with a couple fundamentals of fitness courses) and responsible for delivering the physical courses that all cadets must take. We ended up having a really cool conversation that centered around what people need to know to be effective in the fitness space, and what his department is trying to do to give them those tools.
This time the tables were turned and we were guests on the Not Your Typical Doctors podcast. We're airing it on our feed to give you guys a taste of their content, and if you like what you hear we'd encourage you to go check them out. Sarah and Alyse discuss very similar topics, but from a different perspective that offers valuable insights. In this particular conversation we covered wide ranging topics, but with a theme of what human performance teams' role is in mental health.
Disclaimer from Alex: at one point I say "brigade of 400 to 800 people" because apparently I'm an idiot and can't remember the difference between a battalion and a brigade.
Based on popular demand from many of you who listened to his previous episode, we brought LTC David DeGroot, PhD back to dive into the research process that led to the development of the ACFT. If you're familiar with the Baseline Soldier Physical Readiness Requirements Study (BSPRRS) he is one of the authors, and therefore played a key role in the creation of the test as we know it. In this conversation you'll hear a lot about the history (and a little bit about the politics) of how the Army determined that the APFT was an inadequate physical assessment, and how we got to the current version of the ACFT.
If you want to read the BSPRRS itself, you can find it here: https://www.iadlest.org/Portals/0/AD1097586%20Baseline%20Soldier%20Physical%20Readiness%20Requirements%20Study.pdf?ver=lI8Q0CmCEx_rmeabYlwG4Q%3D%3D
We also mention Dr. Chip East's history of Army physical training and testing which you can order in hard copy from Amazon, or you can access it digitally for free here: https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/APRT_WhitfieldEast.pdf
Six months into making this podcast, we wanted to take a pause to talk about how it's going, and more importantly where it's going in the future. There are way more of you listening than we could possibly expected, and we always appreciate your feedback, so this is a quick break for us to talk directly to the audience. It's a short one, but hopefully you like what we're trying to do with this platform.
As mentioned in the episode, if you want to provide feedback, you can reach us at mopsnmoes@gmail.com
As our first repeat guest, we brought Chris back to have a conversation about thinking. Specifically, we wanted to cover several logical fallacies that often disrupt well intentioned planning and evaluation. Chris is a seasoned special operations veteran and emergency medical professional with numerous combat deployments, an accomplished coach, and an impressive athlete in his own right. We highly recommend that you listen to Chris' previous episode about assessments before diving into this one. We can't promise that knowing about these will make you immune to them - we're all guilty of these - but they will give you the tools to better assess your own thinking.
Topics we covered:
What is "MOPs & MOEs" all about?
Goodhart's Law
McNamara Fallacy
Survivorship Bias
Path Dependency
Bonus Topic: Dunning-Kruger Effect
Our guest for this episode is former Navy SEAL Jamie Monroe, who still lives near Coronado and has remained involved in the SEAL community including mentoring aspiring candidates. Jamie was a SEAL from the mid 90s through the early 2000s, serving on SEAL Team 1 and eventually transitioning into the Reserve. After his military time he got an MBA from Pepperdine and started pursuing entrepreneurial projects which have included everything from running a hair salon to managing sporting events. Incredibly, he also recently won an Emmy for his work with NBC Sunday Night Football. We wanted to talk to him about the recent news that a BUD/S candidate died shortly following Hell Week. You can find plenty of coverage about this on several news outlets, but when we refer to "the article" we're talking about the New York Times piece in particular, although some of the other pieces published recently are even more guilty of omitting relevant details. We dive into the specifics in this conversation, but suffice it to say that steroids were involved (among other drugs).
NYT Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/30/us/navy-seal-training-death.html
Sometimes Instagram drama can be productive, and this conversation is proof. After joining in on a classic MOPs & MOEs debate about periodization, Dr Jordan Feigenbaum of Barbell Medicine joined us on the podcast to continue the conversation. While "Doctor of Medicine" might overshadow the rest of his certifications, his perspective is uniquely shaped by the rest of the list which includes Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, ACSM Health and Fitness Specialist, USA Weightlifting Level 1, CrossFit Level 1, and Starting Strength Seminar Staff. As usual, our conversation spanned a wide variety of topics including injury risks in training, social determinants of health, and a really interesting conversations about the role of coaches in promoting health. We think you guys will really enjoy this one, and hopefully this shows how debates can add value as the tactical human performance space expands.
The Future Soldier Prep Course, an effort to help aspiring soldiers meet the physical and academic standards for enlistment, has received a lot of media attention lately. As always, there are plenty of critics on the internet, but there's also a tremendous amount of potential if something like this is executed well. We went straight to the source for this episode: Remey is directly responsible for overseeing the fitness and body composition component of this project. Her background (she's certified as a Physical Therapist, Athletic Trainer, and Strength and Conditioning Coach, among other things) makes her uniquely suited for the task, and it's obvious in our conversation that she's passionate about ensuring this program succeeds. At a time when our military is struggling to find eligible recruits, a program that helps people improve their health and fitness has ramifications not just for national security, but across all of public health.
Our guest on this episode is Rob Orr, who was just honored as the Tactical Strength and Conditioning Professional of the Year! Rob leads the Tactical Research Unit at Bond University in Queensland, Australia, and continues to serve in the Australian Army Reserve. His active duty career started as an infantryman, led to becoming a physical training instructor, and ultimately becoming a physiotherapist. If you've heard his name, it's likely because of his work study load carriage. Almost any evidence based recommendations for rucking load, volume, and frequency these days include citations of Rob's work. We had a great conversation about the realities of physical training within the constraints of a tactical environment, got some insight into Rob's career in the field, and heard about the really interesting work happening at the TRU!
David DeGroot's Army journey from enlisted soldier to senior research physiologist provides him a unique perspective on how we approach health and fitness. He describes himself as a mediocre scientist, but looking at his publication record we disagree. In addition to numerous studies on heat (and cold) exposure, he has published research on postpartum recovery, body composition, and fitness assessments across tactical populations. This conversation stems from some ongoing dialogue we've had on social media about training in the heat, but the breadth and depth of Dave's expertise means we'd be happy to have him back to address other topics if you guys are interested. For the nerds out there, the episode ends with a fascinating dive into some issues surrounding what research gets funded and published that we think you'll really enjoy.
If you interested in learning more about Dave's research, check out his ResearchGate page! https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David-Degroot-2
Since we mention Dave's contributions to the Warrior Heat and Exertion Related Events Collaborative (WHEC), anyone interested in more information on that effort can start here: https://www.hprc-online.org/resources-partners/whec
Lots of you ask questions on the MOPs & MOEs social media platforms that require more in depth answers than it's possible to provide in a quick DM or comment. This episode is our first hack at collecting some of the most frequently asked questions and providing the thorough answers they deserve. Topics in this episode include what programs we do (and don't) recommend, why MOPs & MOEs hasn't shared any actual programs, how to improve human performance in your organization even if you don't have a staff, and how to break into this field (since many tactical professionals seem to see it as a desirable transition plan).
If you have a question that we don't get to here, please send a message letting us know what you want to hear about!
Many of you have sent in articles or asked questions about the news around Space Force's fitness test (or lack thereof), so we thought we'd bring on an expert to talk about what they're doing. Shep is currently the Senior Human Performance Specialist at the United States Space Force. His three decade career in human performance has spanned everything from orthopedic rehab to world class athletics. His background includes serving as a Combat Medic in the Army, competitive powerlifting, Masters Degrees in both Physician Assistant Studies and Exercise Science, teaching at the collegiate level, and strength and conditioning roles in settings ranging from the Army, to Fire/Rescue, to now the Space Force.
Disclaimers:
The Space Force does not yet have an official policy on this stuff published, they're under a one year exception from existing Air Force policy. As a result, we could not discuss specifics in this conversation, but we do talk about their intentions.
To set the record straight, there's a comment in this episode that implies Drew served in the military. He worked for the Air Force for several years and now works for the Army, but he has not served in uniform.
Alec Blenis is a lot of things: Georgia Tech physics grad, former professional Spartan Racer and competitive ultramarathoner, current Murph world record holder, Instagram Q&A master, and coach at Complete Human Performance. With a background like that, it makes sense that he specializes in coaching people who also want to do a lot of things. Specifically, he coaches people who are looking to pursue "concurrent training," with goals spanning both strength and endurance simultaneously. The relevance of this for tactical professionals is obvious, so we brought him on to have a conversation about how he approaches this kind of training as both an athlete and a coach.
There is probably not a Human Performance demographic that Coach Taysom hasn’t had experience with at this point. He's trained everyone from children to Olympians and NFL players, he's taught high school and college classes, he's worked in senior care and of course the tactical setting. The program he built at Fort Carson, initially known as the Tactical Athlete Program (TAP) and later the Ironhorse Human Performance Optimization Program (IHPOP), has been cited as one of the direct examples of what grew to become H2F. In his own athletic pursuits he was Strongman national champion in 2016 and has a few top ten finishes in the world. The common thread between all of these things is his passion, which is immediately apparent in every conversation with Mark, this one included. Make sure you have a pen and paper for this one, you're going to want to take notes.
We recorded this presentation just prior to a briefing Dan Bornstein gave to Congress on the threat to national security posed by the physical inactivity of America's youth. The briefing discussed the ways that the National Physical Activity Plan, of which Dan is the Chair for the Military Sector, proposes to address these challenges. In 2012, after many years training athletes, Dan completed his PhD in Exercise Science at the University of South Carolina and joined the faculty at The Citadel where he built their tactical strength and conditioning programs. His research and commentary have been featured in numerous scientific journals and over a hundred media outlets including USA Today, Newsweek, Stars and Stripes, and NPR. You may have encountered his research on regional trends in which military recruits are most likely to get injured, which has received significant attention, and we discuss it briefly in this conversation.
We promised a few links would be in the show notes, so here they are:
National Physical Activity Plan: https://paamovewithus.org/national-physical-activity-plan/
National Youth Sports Strategy: https://health.gov/our-work/nutrition-physical-activity/national-youth-sports-strategy/about-national-youth-sports-strategy
CDC Physical Activity Page: https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/index.html
"The Naperville Study" (also know as "Zero Hour PE" and "Learning Readiness PE"): https://iphionline.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/P.E._Case_Study_Naperville.pdf
Vince Paikowski has multiple combat deployments with the 75th Ranger Regiment, won the Best Ranger Competition in 2021 with his partner Alastair Keys, and has been involved in overhauling how the best teams now prepare for the competition. Teams using his training framework recently took 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 7th in the 2022 competition. Vince's training approach has been heavily influenced by Uphill Athlete, so this serves as something of a continuation from our conversation with Scott Johnston. This discussion focuses on the importance of cardio base building and strategies for incorporating it into your training, but other topics include goalsetting to maintain motivation, strength training to support endurance events, and more.
On this episode we welcome Drew's hero to the conversation: Dr. John Kiely. He established himself as a serious athlete with several Irish national championships in kickboxing and Muay Thai and ultimately won the Irish heavyweight boxing championship twice. After his competitive career he set out on his career in strength and conditioning which has taken him to the highest levels of sport in Europe. He's coached world champions and Olympians in a wide variety of sports, he's coached teams at the highest levels of soccer and track and field. But what he's best known for now is his writing, much of which is critical of periodization theory, especially the way many of its traditional paradigms are based on outdated stress science. At its root, this is a conversation about how humans are not robots, and the non-physical components of training are almost certainly more important than the details of the physical aspect.
You can find his publications here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John-Kiely
You can learn about the Professional Doctorate in Human Performance and Innovation program he works with at the University of Limerick here: https://www.ul.ie/gps/human-performance-and-innovation-professional-doctorate
Chris Pokorny is a chaplain with Air Force Special Operations Command, and in addition to his Master of Divinity, also has a Master of Social Work degree. It doesn't hurt that he also observes weightlifting as a spiritual discipline, which undoubtedly helped him integrate with the human performance teams he has been a part of in his military career. His dual credentials mean he's very passionate about research at the intersection of spirituality and mental health. We brought him in to have a conversation about the many challenges that surround integrating spirituality into human performance operations, but if you listen you'll also learn a fun story about his un-chaplain-like taste in music.
Sleep is foundational. Insufficient sleep compromises almost everything: marksmanship, leadership, interpersonal skills, decision making, weight loss, and of course physical performance. For this episode, we have an awesome conversation about sleep for tactical professionals with one of the foremost experts in the field. On top of being one of the Army's few active duty neuroscientists, Allison Brager is also a multiple time CrossFit Games athlete, astronaut candidate, frequently published researcher, and author of Meathead: Unraveling the Athletic Brain. There are few people more qualified to talk about sleep in the tactical space, so we hope you enjoy hearing from her!
We invited Chris McNamara onto the pod to talk about assessments in tactical strength and conditioning. Chris is both a seasoned special operations leader and an accomplished athlete and coach. He's the owner of Evolution Athletics, a training facility near Fort Bragg that is home to some incredible athletes, and he's also an accomplished emergency medical professional with numerous combat deployments. This combination gives him a unique perspective for a discussion on how we test tactical professionals' fitness, and some ways we could potentially do it better.
What makes training "tactical"? Is it working out in a uniform? Is it wearing body armor? Is rucking tactical? So many questions, and so few clear answers. In this episode we discuss the concept of "tactical PT" and why the lack of a clear definition is such a problem.
Don't want to listen to the full episode? Here's the secret: it's all about what you wear. If you look tactical when you do it, that's all that matters. Probably.
From starting out as a D1 collegiate swimmer to coaching Olympic medalists to training operators for the most elite selections, Scott Johnston has a lot of experience when it comes to knowing how to produce high performance. A core element of his methodology is a massive emphasis on aerobic base building, and his results speak for themselves. In the most recent Best Ranger Competition six of the top ten teams prepared by following training from Uphill Athlete, Scott's company. In this episode, Scott explains the foundations of his approach and why methods developed for training mountain athletes work so well for tactical athletes.
A month ago a study on injury prediction technology was released that got the tactical human performance space EXTREMELY riled up. Today, we have the authors of that study on to discuss what they found and the state of the search for the injury prediction holy grail. This team has done some serious work with Air Force Special Warfare to put the latest technology to the test, and as the military pursues ways to address critical levels of injuries and disability, their findings are extremely relevant.
Lt Col Ben Hando is a physical therapist and clinical researcher in the US Air Force. He recently served as the Research Flight Commander at the Special Warfare Training Wing and he is currently a Research Fellow at Kennell and Associates. He serves on numerous Air Force and Joint level committees as an orthopedic physical therapy expert.
Dr. Sid Angadi is an assistant professor at the University of Virginia in the Department of Kinesiology and a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine. He's a cardiovascular physiologist by training, with research focusing on the use of exercise to improve outcomes for patients with cases from heart disease, to kidney disease, to cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.
Dr. Casan Scott is currently a Senior Data Scientist with NCCI. Previously, he worked as a Research Analyst with the USAF Special Warfare Human Performance Squadron and as a Data Scientist with the Army's 1st Special Forces Group THOR3 human performance team.
Do pedometers work in space? As the Space Force works to implement a wearable device-driven fitness standard, we're here to ask the important questions. Join us as we discuss all this and more. From types of data to influencing behavior change, this episode is an overarching conversation on the various applications of technology in the tactical human performance space, with a critical look at when it is - and isn't - useful. It also serves as an introduction to the next episode, in which we'll dive into more specifics with a team that has been researching this topic over the past several years.
Evan Peikon is a physiologist & bioscientist who focuses on human performance, including consulting for elite athletes and military special operations. If you've read any of his content you know he has a particular interest in how the body utilizes oxygen, and how better understanding that can enhance our training protocols. Our conversation is all about changing paradigms in tactical strength and conditioning, so be prepared to have some of your foundational assumptions challenged.
You guys have nutrition questions, but we aren't nutrition experts, so we called one in to help out! Sam Leyh is a Performance Dietitian working in Air Force Special Warfare. Listen to this episode to learn how abs are made at Burger King and why you start sweating if you eat too much meat. There might be some other more useful content too, but it will be mixed in with plenty of bad food puns.
Sponsored by broccoli™
Our guest on this episode, Brendon Huttmann, recently transitioned into tactical human performance after a long and accomplished career in professional baseball. He held major league strength and conditioning and sports science positions with the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Los Angeles Dodgers after working his way up through minor league jobs with the Cleveland Indians, Colorado Rockies, and Kansas City Royals organizations. Join us for a conversation about the similarities and differences between professional sports and tactical.
In this episode we take on the classic question: which is more important for tactical athletes, strength or endurance? For once we have an answer that's better than "it depends," but it also took us down a few rabbit holes. Luckily the conversation brought out a few really valuable points that we hope you'll find useful in your training. Or maybe it will just make you mad, in which case we look forward to the comments.
In our first full episode we have a conversation with the one and only Nate Palin about whether "tactical athlete" is a useful term. Nate has been a big part of shaping what tactical strength and conditioning is today, and offers a great perspective. Are tactical professionals athletes? Is the athlete mindset helpful in a tactical environment? Can coaches expect the same things from tactical professionals as they can from athletes? Join us as we dive into all this and more.
Welcome to the MOPs & MOEs podcast! In this pilot episode we'll introduce ourselves, explain what the "MOPs & MOEs" concept is all about, and lay out the way ahead for the podcast. This is where we'll have the longer form conversations that social media doesn't really allow for.
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