MOPs & MOEs

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 [email protected]

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.

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.