Building the Elite Podcast

Those with a more internalized locus of control - who believe that they determine their path in life through their own decisions - are less susceptible to learned helplessness and are much more likely to succeed in SOF selection. 

Some sled dogs will put just enough pressure into the harness to appear to be working while they’re actually taking a break. “Honest dogs” throw their full weight into the straps no matter how tired they are or how much further there is to go. These dogs take the lead positions in the harnesses so that they can set the pace for the rest of the team.Much of SOF selection is separating the honest dogs from the dogs who are going home.

On this call, we’re speaking with Chris Merritt, a human performance coach at a tier-one special operations unit. Chris has developed a set of principles that guide his training process: modular, mobile, and ready.Chris’ goal isn’t to make the operators he works with good at exercising. It's to make them good at doing their jobs and to stay that way for the duration of their careers. This is an important distinction. The purpose of their training does not come down to run times or deadlift numbers. It’s about leaving on a helicopter at midnight, executing a dangerous and difficult mission, and then being ready to do it again when you get back home, for years on end. This kind of career means a hectic schedule, constantly shifting access to training facilities, and a lot of mental and physical wear and tear.This is why the concepts of modular, mobile, and ready are so useful as guiding principles. During this call, we’ll talk about what each of them means, and why they’re important in this environment. ----------If you’d like to stalk Chris, you can do so on his Instagram, @chrisbeyondstrength, or at @itsbeyondstrength. The website for his civilian-side training facility is bspnova.com, and if you’d like to learn more about his career as a subway sandwich artist you can email him at chris@beyondstrengthperformance.com.

Contrast feeds appreciation. We value warmth a lot more when we've just come in from the cold. Food tastes better when we're hungry. We're better able to enjoy the company of friends and family when we know what it's like to wonder if we'll ever see them again.In this episode of the BTE podcast, we discuss the inherent tradeoff in doing difficult and meaningful things: Without risking and accepting the lows, the highs become empty or unattainable. If you've chosen a challenging path in life, you have to want the entire range of experiences - to know that hardships are inevitable - and the pain of those experiences is what makes success so meaningful.

A common mental feature in successful SOF candidates is that it's not just about them.When they reflect on their reasons for being there and suffering for the sake of a long-term goal, their thoughts often go to other people in their lives: people like their close friends, their teammates, and their loved ones back home. This helps them to view the world through "self-distanced perspective-taking," which shifts their perspective toward long-term goals, rather than reactive short-term logic. In the ultra high-stress world of SOF selection, this helps to reduce impulsivity and keep people from making a rash decision and quitting when they hit low moments. Researchers as early as WWII came upon this phenomenon while they were seeking to understand what motivated soldiers in battle, and it still holds true today. In this episode, we look at some of the factors that make good teams, and good team members. These characteristics of effective teams are part of the reason that special operations units are so effective. They're made up of highly capable individuals who become even more capable as part of a tightly-knit team.  

A recent study on BUD/S students looked at the roles of mindsets around stress, willpower, and failure.The primary focus of the study was "stress mindset." This is whether you view stress as either enhancing (stress helps me perform) or debilitating (stress is bad and should be avoided).Those who view stress as a necessary and welcome part of coping with challenges did better. They had greater persistence through training, faster obstacle course times, and fewer negative evaluations from peers and instructors.A second focus was on the perception of failure. Researchers made a test with questions like “Experiencing failure improves performance and productivity.” Students who scored highly on the "failure-is-enhancing" assessment had lower persistence, were less likely to complete first phase, and were slower on the O course.That second finding may seem odd - that people who thought of failure as a helpful tool didn’t perform as well in BUD/S. In most settings, those who seek to learn from failure and embrace negative feedback are more successful, especially in the long term. However, when we look at a career, most of the time we're not in a testing setting. We're practicing, training, and developing. We can learn from failure, come back, and try again.Embracing failure is beneficial in *learning* environments. But, it can be harmful in *testing* settings.In this episode, we discuss differences in psychological strategies depending on your environment - whether you're in a setting of testing or training. We look at this through the lens of an idea we've been talking about lately with our clients, that pain during intensely difficult events comes in three stages, and that how you manage those stages plays an important role in your mindset, coping mechanisms, and resilience. 

Edith Eger, an Auschwitz survivor turned author and trauma therapist, has a saying:"Trying is lying. You're either doing it or you're not.""If you say, 'I'm trying," she writes, "you don't actually have to do it. You're letting yourself off the hook. Stop trying and start doing."With that as our foundation, we'll discuss how to reframe the concept of effort and to more effectively think about making changes in your lives. 

In this episode we have a conversation with Casey Glass, who has been a strength and conditioning coach at an active duty special operations unit for the past eight years. Alongside helping the operators she works with to excel in their training workups and deployments, Casey also manages their preparation training for selection into tier one units. On this call, we discuss the framework that she and the rest of her human performance team use for training special operators, viewed through a model she calls the big five. These five categories make up the biggest pieces of a successful training process. If you’re an active duty special operator, or trying to become one, this is a really helpful model that you can use to evaluate or design your own training process. 

This this episode we talk about how our stress responses and pain perceptions work, how they’re affected by training, and how we can develop our capacity for productive suffering. 

You don't know somebody until you've seen them make hard decisions.It's easy to be kind when kindness is easy.It's easy to be generous when generosity is easy.Until doing the right thing is also the hardest thing to choose, you don't know what kind of person someone is at their core.