On this episode, we sit down with a recently graduated and qualified Special Forces officer and non commissioned officer. They will discuss their personal motivations to pursue a Special Forces career and their experiences during their time in Special Forces Assessment and Selection and the Special Forces Qualification Course.…

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,…

On this episode, we delve into the culminating exercise that is Robin Sage. This is the event all students must face in order to become a qualified operator. Here, students will be required to apply everything they have learned throughout their training to effectively work as a team in a simulated special operations mission.…

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 deliber…

This week we sit down with the Small Unit Tactics Command Team to discuss how operators shoot, move and communicate and gain experience for real word operations.By U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School

Meet the new Pineland Underground hosts. The crew will be discussing any and all things related to Army Special Operations this season!By U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School

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 measurin…

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 audienc…

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 episod…

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 enco…

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 …

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. Fi…

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 at…

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 marat…

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 resea…

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 …

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…

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 maste…

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…

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 abo…

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 discu…

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 thi…

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…

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 agric…

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…

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 qu…

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 Univers…

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…

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). …

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 professiona…

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? L…

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 m…

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…

Did you know we can trace the Psychological Operations Regiment to a single person? Did you know PSYOP played a role in the Office of Strategic Services? They were there at the landings of Normandy, in the planning for Desert Storm, and remain a critical component to military victory in the modern age. Join us as we host Dr. Jared Tracy, the Army S…

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…

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 …

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…

"Without sustainment, you're just camping with guns." Did you know it takes quite a lot to sustain an organization like the Special Warfare Center & School? Join us as we discuss sustainment for the organization, sustainment for Special Operations, and how logistics wins wars. About the guest: Lt. Col. Pete Van Howe served as the G4 for SWCS and pr…

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 an…

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…

Did you know the Special Forces Operation Detachment Alpha hasn't always had twelve people in it? Did you know only 1% of the first official Special Forces organization was made up of members of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)? The history of Special Forces is a tapestry, weaving together organizations like Merrill’s Marauders (or Unit Galah…

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. A…

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 profession…

Corie Weathers is a licensed professional counselor, speaker, consultant, and author focusing her career for the last 20 years as a clinician specializing in marriage, military and first responders, the service culture, and its impact on families. We sat down with her to speak about the challenges of communication within military families and relat…

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 r…

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 lea…

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 …

Did you know Civil Affairs Soldiers were on the beaches of Normandy and tasked with addressing the cattle killed from the combat operations so that disease outbreaks could be mitigated? Or that Civil Affairs prevented cholera outbreaks during the Korean War? Combat is only one aspect of conflict and war. We dive deep in this episode where we cover …

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 pric…

Preserving and capturing the lessons learned from the Global War on Terror; what is keeping the newest generation of Army Special Operations Forces (SOF) up at night; how can we continue to develop professional military writing in Army SOF; how to we modernize such efforts? We tackle all of that and more in this episode with two great Special Opera…