Building the Elite Podcast

Daniel Allen is a doctor of clinical psychology and a strength and conditioning coach specializing in preparing candidates for military and special operations service in New Zealand. He spent 6 years as a medic in the NZ Army before leaving to fulfill a dream to compete as a professional Muay Thai and MMA athlete and embark on a decade-long formal training in clinical psychology.  He has worked wi...

One of the most common training questions we answer, particularly in the winter when people’s kids are going back to school and concocting new diseases, is about training when sick.  While the answer is obvious if you’re bedridden or can barely feed yourself ( Do not work out), how you manage yourself from when you begin to feel symptoms to when you’re back to 100% will make a big difference in yo...

Scott Ryder served for 22 years with the Australian Army, including 16 years as an operator with the 2nd Commando Regiment. He served in East Timor and multiple tours of Afghanistan and Iraq. He holds numerous commendations and a Masters of Business, and he works in veteran charities to improve the life of veterans and their families. He’s the author of the book Forged in Fire: An Australian Comma...

Chris Frueh, PhD is a professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii.  He has over thirty years of professional experience working with military veterans, servicemembers, special operators, private defense contractors, and firefighters; and has conducted clinical trials, epidemiology, historical, and neuroscience research. He was previously a professor of psychiatry at Medical University of S...

Nico Seedsman spent 13 years in the Australian military, first as an electrical engineer in the Navy, then with a Recon unit in the Army, before spending his final eight years in the SAS.  Nico left the military after suffering catastrophic multi-system health issues and eventually brought himself back to health through a combination of stem cell therapy, indigenous medicine, and an intensive focu...

Many types of fear are learned responses based on memories from previous experiences. There are, of course, also innate fears. Like other animals, we’re naturally prone to be highly vigilant the first time we’re exposed to things like heights, deep water, snakes, and spiders. But, for most things in life, fear is not a primal instinct but a learned association.  These learned associations can come...

Lt. Col. Matthew Perry is an active-duty Marine with over 16 years of experience in the infantry and reconnaissance community. He has served in all four Marine Divisions and deployed throughout the Pacific and in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. As an infantry officer, he served in the 7th Marines as a rifle platoon and 81mm Mortar Platoon Commander, with the 2nd Marine Division as an infant...

Tristan Irwin is a nine-year veteran of the United States Army, where she served as a special operations Civil Affairs Officer. As a CA Team Chief, she led a four-person team in Moldova, conducting community-level development assistance to strengthen Moldova’s resilience and support its partnership with the US.  She graduated from Yale University with a dual Master of Forestry and Public Policy de...

Kevin Smith, Founder of Terminator Training Method (TTM), specializes in virtual fitness coaching tailored for those prepping for Special Operations Forces (SOF) selection courses, especially SFAS.  Born and raised in Maine, Kevin's dedication to hard work started as a young multi-sport athlete, inspired by his father and later refined through over a decade in the Army Special Forces as a Gre...

Alex Fichtler is a 9-year Navy SEAL combat veteran with operational experience in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Africa. He is a Naval Special Warfare Sniper, Assaulter, Intel Specialist, and Communications Specialist and served as Troop Lead Sniper during his time with SEAL Team 7.  Alex led the West Coast NSW Close Quarters Battle (CQB) training cell, providing thousands of active duty SEALs...

Alex Fichtler is a 9-year Navy SEAL combat veteran with operational experience in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Africa. He is a Naval Special Warfare Sniper, Assaulter, Intel Specialist, and Communications Specialist and served as Troop Lead Sniper during his time with SEAL Team 7.  Alex led the West Coast NSW Close Quarters Battle (CQB) training cell, providing thousands of active duty SEALs...

Senior Chief Candace Esquivel joined the Navy in 2005 as a cryptologic technician with advanced training in signals exploitation systems. From there, she went to the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, where she worked as a SIGINT Geospatial Analyst.  At Dev Gru, she was selected as an Intelligence Detachment Leading Chief Petty Officer (LCPO) for Tactical Evaluation and Development Squadron...

We all must pay for our food.  We can't choose not to pay; we only decide how.  We can pay with our time.  We can pay with our money.  Or, we can pay with our health.  You can invest time to learn how nutrition works and how to cook good meals, and then do the shopping, prep, cooking, storage, and cleanup. With practice, this all becomes easier and more efficient. The longer you go without in...

The idea that no one gets left behind is such a common phrase associated with the special operations community that it’s almost become a cliche. We can hear and say it without thinking about what it means.  But it’s a critical concept in military operations, particularly in the SOF community, where people often work in small groups behind enemy lines doing dangerous things.  It’s not enough to car...

Andrew is a strength and conditioning coach, business owner, national team powerlifter, and veteran with a tactical operations and physical training background. As a former Maritime Assault Operator in the U.S. Coast Guard’s Deployable Specialized Forces, Andrew has firsthand experience in high-stakes situations, including anti-terrorism operations, drug and human smuggling interdiction, anti-pira...

Tiffany Myrick-Woodley served two decades in the US Army, and played an essential role in the integration of women into the Army’s Combat Arms occupations. She served as a member of Cultural Support Team – Two (CST-2), enabling the 75th Ranger Regiment and Naval Special Warfare Development Group by engaging the Afghan female and adolescent populations prior to the lift of the Combat Exclusion Poli...

After working with thousands of clients over the last twenty years, we tend to see people make the same mistakes when struggling to work toward their goals. They tend to fall into one of four categories:  Trying to do too many things.  Their values and time & energy allotment are not in alignment. Spending time and energy struggling against the things they can’t change while not fully committi...

Kathleen Oswald is a Strength and Conditioning Specialist with a Master's in Exercise and Sport Science and is earning her Ph. D. in Cognition and Instruction. She works at Peterson Space Force Base and is the first human-performance professional with a cognitive performance background to work with Space Force Guardians.  Before that, Kathleen worked under the Cognitive Performance Specialist...

In this episode, we discuss the first mental skill we have all of our clients work on developing: mindfulness.  Mindfulness is the process of observing one's stream of consciousness or mental environment. It’s a form of attention in which one actively attends to one's internal and external experiences.  You might wonder why we focus on mindfulness first. It probably seems a bit abstract...

John Spencer is one of the world’s leading experts on urban warfare.  He currently serves as the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute, codirects the Urban Warfare Project, and hosts the Urban Warfare Project Podcast at West Point. In addition to personal experiences from 25 years as an infantry soldier and officer in the US Army, including urban battles in Iraq in 2003 and th...

Meg Tucker began her career as an Army Kiowa Warrior pilot. After the Kiowa was removed from the Army inventory, Meg was assessed and selected for Army Special Operations as a Psychological Operations officer. She has served in several conventional, Joint, and SOF roles in South Korea, El Salvador, and Syria. She left military service as a Major in 2023.  In 2018, Meg founded The Valkyrie Project...

Meg Tucker began her career as an Army Kiowa Warrior pilot. After the Kiowa was removed from the Army inventory, Meg was assessed and selected for Army Special Operations as a Psychological Operations officer. She has served in several conventional, Joint, and SOF roles in South Korea, El Salvador, and Syria. She left military service as a Major in 2023.  In 2018, Meg founded The Valkyrie Project...

Lt. Col. Tom Schueman served in Afghanistan for sixteen months, including the single bloodiest battle of the war in Afghanistan, as a platoon commander with the Third Battalion, Fifth Marines in Helmand Province. He redeployed to Afghanistan as a JTAC and advisor to the Afghan National Army while he was a member of First Reconnaissance Battalion.  Schueman went on to get his master's in Engli...

In this episode, we explore how post-WWII Air Force pilots faced numerous crashes, not due to mechanical failures or pilot errors, but because of a fundamental flaw in cockpit design based on the "average" pilot.  This led to Lieutenant Gilbert Daniels's findings, who discovered that designing for the "average person" did not fit anyone. This discovery led to a revolutiona...

Jeff Depatie is a former sniper with Canada’s tier-one unit, JTF-2. He has vast experience in tactical shooting, elite team selection, and human optimization. He was part of the sniper team holding the world record for the longest confirmed kill at 3.5 km and has trained incoming tier-1 operators in shooting and tactics. After his military career, Jeff turned his focus to addressing PTSD and trans...