MOPs & MOEs

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.