Any Given Day means being an expert generalist, jack of all trades and master of none, managing minimums to always be an asset and never a liability.

Former Army Ranger and Special Operations Human Performance Coach, Nate Palin, offers a reality based approach to coaching the warfighter on how to shoot, move, and communicate more effectively on the front lines and the home front. I reconcile high performance ideals with an often volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous reality faced by the warfighter - so you can focus your effort where it matters most. 

Any Given Day read is characterized by physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual resilience.

Resilience Phases 

• Resist (build your armor)
• Rebound (bend but don’t break)
• Rebuild (rise like a phoenix from the ashes)

Resilience Characteristics 

• Physicality - movement competency, output, and capacity
• Mentality - competent, confident, positive (views stress as an opportunity)
• Emotionality - self awareness & vulnerability (authenticity x risk), mindfulness (create space between stimulus and response), aware of others (empathy) 
• Spirituality - believe in something bigger than yourself and act in faith

Any Given Day approaches these characteristics of resilience through four cornerstones:

• MOVE your body - Recon, Physicality, Constructs, Reality 
• HONE your craft - Skills, Techniques, Tactics, Strategy
• ENGAGE to lead  - Self, Connection, Influence, Creation
• ADAPT to stress - Sleep, Fuel, Attention/Energy, Activity 

Cornerstones are interdependent and situationally relative.

Lethality.... Longevity (immortality) 

Hemingway: "Every man has two deaths: when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name."

Any Given Day is saying yes to cool shit because you're physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually prepared. Be ready when they call - whoever, whenever, wherever, for whatever.

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Are most warfighters overtrained? Unlikely. Most are overextended and overstressed - and often UNDERtrained...

Former Army Ranger and Special Operations Human Performance Coach, Nate Palin, offers a reality based approach to coaching the warfighter on how to shoot, move, and communicate more effectively on the front lines and the home front. I reconcile high performance ideals with an often volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous reality faced by the warfighter - so you can focus your effort where it matters most.  

Visit the Any Given Day website HERE.

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Warfighters struggle to achieve and maintain athleticism, in part due to lack of consistently touching deliberate movement. Warmups not only prepare for impending strength and conditioning sessions, they provide touchpoints for enhancing movement competency. Maybe most importantly, warmups serve to maintain momentum when total training is not logistically feasible. 

Build a better warmup by incorporating major movement patterns and their supporting cast of flexibility, mobility, and stability exercises, challenging balance, including enjoyable activities, and elevating the heart rate - all while minimizing rest and maximizing flow. 

Former Army Ranger and Special Operations Human Performance Coach, Nate Palin, offers a reality based approach to coaching the warfighter on how to shoot, move, and communicate more effectively on the front lines and the home front. I reconcile high performance ideals with an often volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous reality faced by the warfighter - so you can focus your effort where it matters most.  

Episode Topics

Warmups provide low barrier opportunities to enhance athleticism, serving as stand alone sessions and gateways to more extensive training sessions. 

“Better” Warmups…

 Include major movement patterns:

• Hinge / Deadlift
• Squat
• Lunge / Step
• Push & Pull Vertically & Horizontally 
• Rotate
• Locomote (Crawl, Walk, March, Skip, Run, Sprint, Swim, Climb, Shuffle, etc.) 
• Core (Generate, Resist, & Transfer force through the mid section) 

Target Weaknesses

• Flexibility
• Mobility
• Stability
• Patterning (dynamic stability) 

Are Enjoyable 

• Novel
• Challenging
• Silly
• Competitive 
• Relevant 

Challenge Balance 

• Single Leg
• 2 or 3 limbs 

Elevate the Heart Rate and Increase Exertion 

Progress (generally) from: 

• Slow to Fast
• Simple to Complex
• General to Specific
• Static to Dynamic
• Stable to Unstable 

Accumulating thorough warmup sessions can move the needle of movement competency, enhancing warfighter positions and rhythm of movement - aka their athleticism. 

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Victory > Victimhood

Before teaching a man to fish, be sure he has a reason to fish. And that reason must be his and not yours. 

Warfighters don’t need a formal education in exercise science to own their own physical fitness. First and foremost, they need an influential reason to value physicality. Second, they need to understand their starting point, their endpoints or waypoints, and the terrain that exists between them. Lastly, they need to apply some essential tools like basic principles (cardinal directions) to stay oriented and training variables (map reading) to adjust course as obstacles come into play.

Former Army Ranger and Special Operations Human Performance Coach, Nate Palin, offers a reality based approach to coaching the warfighter on how to shoot, move, and communicate more effectively on the front lines and the home front. I reconcile high performance ideals with an often volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous reality faced by the warfighter - so you can focus your effort where it matters most.  

Episode Topics

Ownership = own your shit. Agency. 

1. Attach Value to Physical Fitness (WHY)

• Professional performance 
• Athletics 
• Adventure
• Aesthetics 
• Parenting 
• Longevity
• Accountability

2. Understand Principles of Strength & Conditioning (HOW)

• Overload 
• Progression 
• Individuality 
• Variety 
• Specificity

3. Learn How to Manipulate Variables

• Movement (Exercises)
• Intensity (Output)
• Volume (Capacity)
• Interplay (Trade Off)

4. Don’t Forget Lifestyle Factors!

• Sleep (Quantity & Quality)
• Fuel (Macros & Micros)
• Stress Management (mindfulness, therapy, exercise, sleep. . . )

Resources

10 Garage Gym Favorites Blog

Yellowstone Playlist on Spotify

The Serenity Prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I. cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference
-

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Hybrid is all the hype for a military friendly approach to physical training. It’s certainly not ALL hype, with huge value in dispelling cannibalization myths and developing both extremes of strength and aerobic capacity. However, we need to keep in mind that movement competency - including multidirectional movement - is foundational to transferability from fitness to warfighter tasks. It is also foundational to achieving longevity that extends a military professional’s career and extends beyond a military professionals career. 

Former Army Ranger and Special Operations Human Performance Coach, Nate Palin, offers a reality based approach to coaching the warfighter on how to shoot, move, and communicate more effectively on the front lines and the home front. I reconcile high performance ideals with an often volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous reality faced by the warfighter - so you can focus your effort where it matters most.  

Episode Topics

Hybrid defined - sometimes implies well rounded physical fitness but more often implies a focus on strength (typically associated with powerlifting)  and endurance (typically associated with running or other linear, cyclical modalities)

Power

• Include exercises that develop velocity or the “speed” side of the strength-speed continuum
• Develop power for all movement patterns that have tactical relevance 

Multidirectional Movement

• Train in all planes of motion (frontal, sagittal, transverse)
• Load multiple vectors across all planes 

Intermittent Conditioning 

• Include repeated bouts of effort at higher intensities and not just steady state or long & continuous 
• Condition various movement patterns that are not all linear or cyclical 

Movement Opportunities 

• Warm Up
• Cool Down
• Superset
• Compound Set
• Contrast Set
• Accessory / Auxiliary Exercises 
• Stand Alone Sessions - priming or reset / recovery

Keep the main thing the main thing. Physicality is not the goal, it’s a means to an end state where a warfighter’s fitness best supports the execution of skill based tasks that include the implementation of strategy, tactics, skills, and techniques under stressful conditions. 

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Every soldier is a soldier just like every Marine is a rifleman. “Combat” oriented physical training gets a bad rap because it’s neither combat nor physical training; however, I build a bit of a case supporting its occasional inclusion as a PT session. Randomness can be detrimental to progress when it’s all you do but beneficial as a check on fitness. There are also several pros to combat PT beyond the x’s and o’s of strength and conditioning. 

Former Army Ranger and Special Operations Human Performance Coach, Nate Palin, offers a reality based approach to coaching the warfighter on how to shoot, move, and communicate more effectively on the front lines and the home front. I reconcile high performance ideals with an often volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous reality faced by the warfighter - so you can focus your effort where it matters most.  

Episode Topics

You’re either an asset or a liability.

Non combat arms professions still need to maintain a minimum level of combat proficiency and physicality. Traditional strength and conditioning should be the primary means of physical development but not necessarily the only means of physical development. The military has less an issue with how physical fitness training is conducted and more an issue with it not being conducted at all. Regardless of whether it’s helping initiate or elevate PT, “combat “focused” physical training has as much a  place as traditional training approaches - Less as a substitute and more as an additional option. 

The Pros of Combat PT:

• Face Validity - soldiers buy in because it looks like soldiering
• Leader Led - leaders take responsibility because it’s within their comfort zones
• Teamwork - nobody wants to be the weak link
• Skill Opportunities (tactics & techniques) - touch on infrequently trained skills while under physical duress
• Equipment aka Gear - test out gear in a safe but feedback rich environment 
• Check on Fitness - ensure raw physicality supports mission relevant demands 
• Ergonomic Unfriendliness - picking up a barbell and a body are not the same 
• Terrain - the weight room is built for safety while the world is less forgiving 
• Weather - if it aint raining you aint training 
• Cognitive Elements - physicality’s value is in how it supports more cognitive demanding tasks

= Beneficial Randomness

Resources

Valued Physicality Blog

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“Don’t train for the test” CAN be decent advice for some warfighters some of the time but I’m more often in favor of training for the test, especially when it’s a decent test - Not to be confused with training WITH the test. This episode builds a case in favor of training to improve at the Army Combat Fitness Test. 

Former Army Ranger and Special Operations Human Performance Coach, Nate Palin, offers a reality based approach to coaching the warfighter on how to shoot, move, and communicate more effectively on the front lines and the home front. I reconcile high performance ideals with an often volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous reality faced by the warfighter - so you can focus your effort where it matters most.  

Episode Topics

Job Simulation Test vs Fitness Test

• Ranger Physical Assessment Test
• Army Combat Fitness Test 
• Face validity vs twice removed from the job

APFT vs ACFT

• Events - Pushup, Situp, 2-Mile Run, Deadlift, Standing Power Throw, Hand Release Pushup, Leg Tuck, Plank, Sprint Drag Carry 
• Components of Fitness Tested - Narrow vs well-rounded 

A Case for Training WITH the Test

• Familiarization
• Confidence
• Short window for improvement 

A Case for Training FOR the Test

1. When you need something to train for - provides purpose: Inspiration, motivation, gauge of progress
2. When your programming knowledge is low - provides structure (ideal vs enough to move the needle)
3. When the assessed qualities align with physical job demands - enhancing assessed qualities = improving at the job 

Assessed Qualities by Event 

• Deadlift - Grip, Lower Body Strength
• Standing Power Throw - Total Body Power (Force and Velocity)
• Hand Release Push-Up - Upper Body Pushing Endurance 
• Spring Drag Carry - Output & Capacity, Multidirectional Movement, Load Carriage, Change of Direction, Deceleration, Acceleration, etc. 
• Leg Tuck - Upper Body Pulling Strength, Core Strength
• 2-Mile Run - Capacity

More important than HOW you train is THAT you train.

Resources

ACFT Landing Page

Unofficial RPAT Description

ACFT Preparation Book

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Slow and silent vs fast and violent represent two ends of the spectrum when it comes to movement. Military professionals are best served bringing both intention and attention to slower and faster elements of their physical training. 

Former Army Ranger and Special Operations Human Performance Coach, Nate Palin, offers a reality based approach to coaching the warfighter on how shoot, move, and communicate more effectively on the front lines and the home front. I reconcile high performance ideals with an often volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous reality faced by the warfighter.

Episode Topics

Slow & Silent Movements 

• Mobility and dynamic stability emphasis 
• Coordination development 
• Eccentric component of compound lifts
• Muscular endurance and hypertrophy 
• Single joint exercises that target supporting musculature 

Fast & Violent Movements (Explosive)

• Sprints
• Sled Work
• Plyometrics
• Weightlifting & Variations / Alternatives
• Concentric component of compound lifts 

... And the pitfalls of the apathetic middle ground.


Resources

Weightlifting vs Powerlifting Squats Video

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