MOPs & MOEs

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. 

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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:

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.

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.

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:

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:

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.

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.

On this episode we're diving into the mental health conversation, and we hope it's only the beginning.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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:

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.

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.