MOPs & MOEs

After a lot of questions we decided to do a podcast on how to get hired in tactical. Whether it's in uniform, as a federal civilian, or as a contractor, we lay out the basic requirements, pros and cons, and how to set yourself up for success. This is a rapidly growing space, and in addition to coaches getting curious about the tactical space, a lot of people in the military seem interested in purs...

When leaders across the Department of Defense have questions about biosensing, wearable devices, or human performance data, Josh Hagen is frequently at the top of the list of experts they reach out to. He has his Bachelors in Chemical Engineering, Masters in Materials Engineering, and PhD in Materials Engineering all from the University of Cincinnati. Josh executed his graduate research in bioelec...

Scott's first appearance was our most popular episode of 2022, so we're kicking off 2023 by bringing him back to answer your most frequently asked questions about Zone 2 training! This conversation covers everything from how to implement it in group training settings to incorporating rucking and low impact modalities. It's one more step in our mission to #MakeEnduranceGreatAgain. Scott is an accom...

If you asked Santa for more MOPs & MOEs for Christmas, your wish has come true! 2022 is coming to an end, and we wanted to look back at all the ground we've covered in our first year of podcasting. Well, technically it's 3/4 of a year in review since we started this adventure in April. In this episode we shout out our most popular episodes from the first year of the MOPs & MOEs podcast and...

We're trying something new with this episode and diving into the research a little bit. We're reviewing the International Olympic Committee's consensus statement on training load and injury risk. They assembled a panel of international experts and pulled together a huge amount of research to come up with some actionable recommendations for anyone who supervises physical training. This discussion i...

You guys have been asking for a cognitive performance episode for a while, so we brought Mike on to dive into it. We knew he would bring a valuable perspective when he said he had a particular interest in measuring the effectiveness of cognitive interventions. Mike has worked in a variety of research and human performance roles, starting with the United States Naval Academy until he decided he wan...

Reilly is a legend up in the frozen north where he runs JBER Strength and Conditioning. It took us a while to get him on here, but he's definitely the most requested guest we've had on the podcast and the wait was worth it. Especially because all of those requests came from soldiers he has trained who can vouch for the impact he has on everyone who comes through his facility. After well over a dec...

In our continuing effort to not get fired and/or go to jail over this podcast, we thought it might be prudent to talk to a legal professional. Matt's background as an infantry officer turned lawyer gives him a unique perspective on military issues, and as you'll hear in this episode he has a special focus on social media policy. In fact, his work has been a driving force behind recent updates to D...

No guest this time, just Alex and Drew trying to answer one of the most commonly asked questions we get here at MOPs & MOEs. Many of you are tactical professionals out there leading your teams without access to professional coaches. Or there are a lot of you training on your own with no guidance at all. So how do you build a plan that will produce results? This conversation will provide you wi...

Continuing our side quest of talking to the professionals calling BS on their professions, we're chatting with Chiropractor Aaron Kubal. He works specifically with chronic pain patients whose previous treatments have failed. Utilizing education & exercise, Aaron delivers a unique model of care that involves no manipulations whatsoever but rather focuses on graded exposure and patient empowerme...

Angus Bradley is the quintessential Australian. He's a surfer who dropped out of college to tour with his band before getting into Olympic weightlifting which led him to his current career as a personal trainer (although he might really be a comedian). He now operates out of Sydney, Australia training people across the spectrum from gen pop to professional athletes and hosting the Hyperformance po...

On this episode we welcome the owner of what may be the coolest job title on the planet: COL Nick Gist, the Master of the Sword. He leads West Point's Department of Physical Education, which is both an academic department (teaching the Kinesiology major along with a couple fundamentals of fitness courses) and responsible for delivering the physical courses that all cadets must take. We ended up ha...

This time the tables were turned and we were guests on the Not Your Typical Doctors podcast. We're airing it on our feed to give you guys a taste of their content, and if you like what you hear we'd encourage you to go check them out. Sarah and Alyse discuss very similar topics, but from a different perspective that offers valuable insights. In this particular conversation we covered wide ranging...

Based on popular demand from many of you who listened to his previous episode, we brought LTC David DeGroot, PhD back to dive into the research process that led to the development of the ACFT. If you're familiar with the Baseline Soldier Physical Readiness Requirements Study (BSPRRS) he is one of the authors, and therefore played a key role in the creation of the test as we know it. In this conver...

Six months into making this podcast, we wanted to take a pause to talk about how it's going, and more importantly where it's going in the future. There are way more of you listening than we could possibly expected, and we always appreciate your feedback, so this is a quick break for us to talk directly to the audience. It's a short one, but hopefully you like what we're trying to do with this plat...

As our first repeat guest, we brought Chris back to have a conversation about thinking. Specifically, we wanted to cover several logical fallacies that often disrupt well intentioned planning and evaluation. Chris is a seasoned special operations veteran and emergency medical professional with numerous combat deployments, an accomplished coach, and an impressive athlete in his own right. We highly...

Our guest for this episode is former Navy SEAL Jamie Monroe, who still lives near Coronado and has remained involved in the SEAL community including mentoring aspiring candidates. Jamie was a SEAL from the mid 90s through the early 2000s, serving on SEAL Team 1 and eventually transitioning into the Reserve. After his military time he got an MBA from Pepperdine and started pursuing entrepreneurial...

Sometimes Instagram drama can be productive, and this conversation is proof. After joining in on a classic MOPs & MOEs debate about periodization, Dr Jordan Feigenbaum of Barbell Medicine joined us on the podcast to continue the conversation. While "Doctor of Medicine" might overshadow the rest of his certifications, his perspective is uniquely shaped by the rest of the list which includes Cer...

The Future Soldier Prep Course, an effort to help aspiring soldiers meet the physical and academic standards for enlistment, has received a lot of media attention lately. As always, there are plenty of critics on the internet, but there's also a tremendous amount of potential if something like this is executed well. We went straight to the source for this episode: Remey is directly responsible for...

Our guest on this episode is Rob Orr, who was just honored as the Tactical Strength and Conditioning Professional of the Year! Rob leads the Tactical Research Unit at Bond University in Queensland, Australia, and continues to serve in the Australian Army Reserve. His active duty career started as an infantryman, led to becoming a physical training instructor, and ultimately becoming a physiotherap...

David DeGroot's Army journey from enlisted soldier to senior research physiologist provides him a unique perspective on how we approach health and fitness. He describes himself as a mediocre scientist, but looking at his publication record we disagree. In addition to numerous studies on heat (and cold) exposure, he has published research on postpartum recovery, body composition, and fitness assess...

Lots of you ask questions on the MOPs & MOEs social media platforms that require more in depth answers than it's possible to provide in a quick DM or comment. This episode is our first hack at collecting some of the most frequently asked questions and providing the thorough answers they deserve. Topics in this episode include what programs we do (and don't) recommend, why MOPs & MOEs hasn'...

Many of you have sent in articles or asked questions about the news around Space Force's fitness test (or lack thereof), so we thought we'd bring on an expert to talk about what they're doing. Shep is currently the Senior Human Performance Specialist at the United States Space Force. His three decade career in human performance has spanned everything from orthopedic rehab to world class athletics....

Alec Blenis is a lot of things: Georgia Tech physics grad, former professional Spartan Racer and competitive ultramarathoner, current Murph world record holder, Instagram Q&A master, and coach at Complete Human Performance. With a background like that, it makes sense that he specializes in coaching people who also want to do a lot of things. Specifically, he coaches people who are looking to p...

There is probably not a Human Performance demographic that Coach Taysom hasn’t had experience with at this point. He's trained everyone from children to Olympians and NFL players, he's taught high school and college classes, he's worked in senior care and of course the tactical setting. The program he built at Fort Carson, initially known as the Tactical Athlete Program (TAP) and later the Ironhor...