Building the Elite Podcast

Dr. Alex Hutchinson is an author and journalist based in Toronto, Canada. His latest book, Endure: Mind, body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, is an exploration of the science and mysteries of endurance.  Alex is a contributing editor for Outside Magazine, writing a Sweat Science column. He also writes a column for The Globe and Mail and Canadian Running magazine. He’s also...

The curse of knowledge occurs when an individual, often unknowingly, assumes that others have the background or knowledge to understand a particular topic. Once we know something, it's tough to remember what it's like not to know it and to factor that into our communication.  This leads to misunderstanding, frustration, inefficient or ineffective learning environments, and mango trees wi...

This is part two of our interview with Shaun Taylor, a founding member of Canada's tier-one SOF unit, JTF2. Shaun has also managed to fit numerous other careers into his lifetime, ranging from coffee shop owner to computer systems teacher to a world championship title in 24-hour solo mountain bike racing, followed by 15 years as a professional coach. In this half of the interview, we talk abo...

Shaun Taylor has had a dizzying array of careers and life experiences.  He was one of the original members of JTF2, Canada’s tier-one special operations unit, and retired as a warrant officer.  Shaun was also a Use of Force instructor for a Canadian Police college, and shortly after that, he became a computer systems engineer and was a full-time teacher in that subject. The experience he gained th...

One of the most common training mistakes is the all-or-nothing trap: alternating between phases of intense effort and consistency and doing nearly nothing. The fitness industry consistently reinforces the ‘go on a diet’ or ‘get ripped in 30 days’ mentality. Unfortunately, this is also a recipe for frustration and poor results.  A much better approach is to view things through the lens of sprint an...

This is part 2 of our 2-part episode with Dr. Christopher Lowry, a professor of Integrative Physiology, Psychology, and Neuroscience, specializing in the gut microbiome. If you haven’t listened to the first half of this interview, we recommend starting there first.  His research program at CU Boulder focuses on understanding stress-related physiology and behavior, emphasizing the microbiome-gut-br...

Christopher A. Lowry, Ph. D., is an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder in the Departments of Integrative Physiology, Psychology, and Neuroscience, the Center for Neuroscience, and the Center for Microbial Exploration.  He has additional appointments in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and the Center for Neuroscience at the University of Colorado Anschut...

"The hardest part of the day is getting out of bed" is a common phrase among successful SOF selection candidates.  Aside from serving as the sort of inside joke that helps people bond and encourage one another while doing difficult things together, it also conveys some essential concepts related to resilience and motivation and helps to reinforce the types of mindsets that excel in diffi...

Casey Glass has been a strength and conditioning coach at an active-duty special operations unit for nine years. Alongside helping the operators she works with to excel in their training workups and deployments, Casey also manages their preparation training for selection into tier-one units.  In this episode, we speak with Casey about training for longevity. This is an important issue for anybody...

Stew Smith is a former Navy SEAL Lieutenant and an NSCA CSCS who graduated from the US Naval Academy and Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training, also known as BUD/S. For over 25 years, he has been writing workout books that prepare people to ace fitness tests and selection programs. People from all fitness levels use his military preparation products for help with everything from losing weight...

After 15 years of preparing individuals for SOF selection programs, we have seen many mistakes and their consequences. This podcast covers the most common mistakes we've made and sees trainees make before they start working with us. In this episode, we won't discuss training specifics, like sets and reps. While those things matter, they are far less important than a robust strategy. Whil...

Dr. Douglas Casa has been the CEO of the Korey Stringer Institute since it was founded in 2010 and has been a professor of Kinesiology at the University of Connecticut since 1999.  The mission of the KSI (ksi.uconn.edu) is to provide research, education, advocacy, and consultation, to maximize performance, optimize safety, and prevent sudden death of athletes, warfighters, and laborers. Dr. Casa h...

We often think of leadership, particularly in special operations, as manifest in the form of some big heroic act. That can be the case; the military is full of those examples.  But far more often, a person’s character is revealed in the small moments that will never find space in the trailer of an action movie.  Much of the respect and loyalty earned by somebody in a leadership role comes from the...

This is the second half of a two-part episode with Sebastien Lavoie. Please check out the first episode if you haven't listened already. In that episode, we discussed Seb’s early career, his time on the Emergency Response Team and how that shaped his perspective as he grew into a leadership role as an operator, his work in designing his unit’s combatives program, and his perspective as a memb...

Sebastien Lavoie, a veteran of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Canadian Armed Forces with over two decades of dedicated service, is now the CEO of Raven Strategic Inc. after retiring as BC Divisional Sergeant Major from the RCMP in 2021.  His professional journey spans from being an Air Marshall to a Chief Warrant Officer, roles in which he has honed skills in crisis management, e...

SOF selection is an equalizer. It's an egalitarian machine designed to reveal what's inside each candidate when suffering. It's in this suffering that your character - the raw material that determines whether you have the potential to become an effective special operator, is revealed. The suffering is the point.  It doesn’t matter how good you are. You can't out-exercise the ma...

When we fail to examine our expectations, and they don’t become a reality, we can have strong feelings of disappointment, resentment, anger, frustration, discouragement, or resignation. Expectations are another word for predictions. Our senses of predictability and control are the primary variables determining how strong our stress response is within any situation. A higher degree of both equals a...

In this episode, we talk about stress, training, and adaptation. This is a big topic, so we’ve broken this into a two-part podcast. This is part two of that series, so you might want to check out the previous podcast if you haven’t listened to it yet.  We wrapped up part one by discussing why and how you manage stress to ensure you adapt to your training. In this episode, we discuss what specific...

In this episode, we talk about stress, training, and adaptation. This is a big topic, so we’ve broken this into a two-part podcast. To understand programming, you must first understand how and why your body responds to training. When you understand that framework, things like how much running to do, how fast, and how often become much easier to program and adjust. Like programming, adaptation is a...

SOF selection requires that you develop a close relationship with pain. This doesn’t just mean lots of dramatic grimacing for the camera. Eventually, successful experiences teach us that pain can be just a signpost along a familiar path. It tells you something about where you are, but it’s not a stop sign or even a warning sign. It’s just a signal to be calibrated. If the painful sensations of fat...

People in the special operations community often find themselves learning to be human swiss army knives. They do intensive courses in anything from second languages to advanced trauma medicine, where their ability to succeed depends on their ability to manage their time, attention, and energy and study and learn effectively.  For instance, we did an episode recently on how to be successful in the...

Everyone wants to know the ‘secret’ to motivation. Like most topics, this isn’t as simple as repeating cliches like ‘just don’t quit’ or ‘stay hard’. These sayings can be useful as simple reminders of more complex concepts, but only if you understand the underlying process and skills that lead to that outcome. Without those underlying processes and skills, phrases like “just don’t quit” are no mor...

Darkhorse Benefits is a special operations veteran-owned charitable organization. Many of their members are former medics who are actively involved in the tactical medicine community as instructors. Not long after Russia invaded Ukraine, Darkhorse medics traveled there to train, advise, and assist people ranging from soldiers to schoolteachers in tactical medicine. They’re helping to bring in life...

Injuries happen. Even if your training program is well thought out, sometimes you’ll run into small issues or you’ll injure yourself playing your sport or doing your job. These inevitable setbacks, while annoying, don’t have to crush your fitness and lead to long periods of doing nothing followed by the long slog just to get back to your baseline.  Fixating on your limitations is the same thing as...

The goal of programming is not to develop specific abilities, but to develop specific skills. The difference might seem trivial - it isn’t. An ability is the raw capability to perform a task . It means you have the physical tools to run five miles at an 8-minute per mile pace. A skill  is the capacity to predictably display that task in a specific environment . This means that you can run five mil...