MOPs & MOEs

We have another research focused episode for you guys this week, and we're diving into the recently published article "Demographic, psychosocial, and physical fitness predictors of successful graduation from U.S. Army Ranger School." We're joined by the lead author, LTC Timothy Benedict, who has a unique background as both an infantry officer and a physical therapist. He is curre...

On this episode we each brought five books that have shaped the way we think about human performance and discussed why they had such an impact. And in classic form, we each also brought a few honorable mentions as well. Drew's books are a little more focused on strength and conditioning, while Alex's books (somewhat unexpectedly) are largely focused on mental health and how exercise affect...

On this week's episode we're headed across the pond. WO2 Steve Turner is a Quartermaster Sergeant Instructor in the British Royal Army Physical Training Corps, and he's here to help us understand how the British Army approaches physical fitness. If you're in the US military, it's worth noting up front that Warrant Officers in the British Army are not quite the same as ours. He&...

On this week's episode we're diving into how strength and conditioning coaches are trained and educated, and we have a perfect guest to tackle this topic. Coach Scott Caulfield is one of the most well-known collegiate strength and conditioning coaches in the industry. He spent 11 years at the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) as a coaching education manager and head str...

This is our heavily anticipated episode on the weight loss drugs that have been receiving a ton of media attention recently, including Ozempic and Wegovy (semaglutide), Mounjaro and Zepbound (tirzepatide), and others. Since these drugs are intimately involved with our bodies' hormone regulation, we had to bring in an hormone expert to break it down for us. Dr. Karl Nadolsky is one of the best...

This episode is all about nutrition in America: How did we get here? (Hint: there are actually some very good reasons for all the processed food) What problems is our diet creating? (Hint: it's more than just obesity) And what can we do to start fixing it? That's a huge topic, but our guest is one of the most qualified person to tackle it. Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian is a cardiologist, Jean Ma...

We have Kechi Anyadike-Danes back for round two to discuss the second installment of his planned three part research series looking into the divide between human performance research and education and the reality of actual coaching practice. This episode is specifically focused on periodization. We chart the history of how periodization theory developed, and then we look at how coaches responded t...

On this episode we have John Mackersie joining us for a little end of year reflection. John is a strength and conditioning coach with over 15 years of professional experience in collegiate athletics and military special operations. He began coaching in Division I athletics and has been working with special operations since 2013. He has spoken and lectured on numerous occasions at national and regi...

We're back with another foray into some topics that are often considered outside the scope of military human performance, but play important roles in whether these programs achieve their goals: mental health, veteran healthcare, and the veteran disability system. Our guest brings 15 years of experience working as a clinical psychologist in the VA, plus extensive work on multiple initiatives wi...

You asked, and now we've delivered. We know the Army runs on checklists. Medevac? There's a checklist for that. Call for fire? There's a checklist for that. Breaching an enemy obstacle? There's a checklist for that. And all of these are simple enough that they can be laminated and stuck in a cargo pocket, or even boiled down to an easily memorized acronym. But the physical training...

If you've spent any time learning about strength and conditioning you're almost certainly familiar with the "energy systems" framework. In this episode we're breaking down why the way these concepts are widely understood isn't supported by the evidence. And don't worry, we're not just here to criticize, we also explore an alternative model that's more up to da...

This week's episode has a little bit of everything. The role of team sports in the military, lessons in leadership, how to stay injury free through a career in the infantry, and the challenges of balancing two careers and family responsibilities in a dual military marriage. Our guest has, on top of his successful Army career, played a key role in leading the All Army Rugby team to a decade of...

You probably know him as "Sergeant Major of the Army Grinston" or simply "SMA," but these days he prefers Tony. After a tenure as the Army's senior Noncommissioned Officer marked by numerous big changes to how the Army approaches health and fitness, Tony is now setting off on a new career as the Director of Army Emergency Relief (AER), which provides grants, interest-free l...

Mindfulness is a hot topic, but how many people even know what the term really means? To dive into it we have one of the world's foremost researchers on this topic. Ellen Langer has been researching mind-body unity for nearly half a century, and her work has influenced everything from behavioral economics to healthcare to positive psychology. We've cited her work on numerous occasions befo...

On this episode we dive into an awesome study that was published recently. It digs into something we often talk about here: the huge gap between sports science research and the actual reality of coaching in the human performance space. Right after it came out we saw people from across the human performance space talking about it, so we knew it would make for a great discussion. The author of the p...

For the final episode of our NASA series we're welcoming Judy Hayes, Chief Science Officer for NASA's Human Health and Performance Directorate. She joined Johnson Space Center (JSC) in 1984 as a research scientist in the Neurosciences Laboratory and established the JSC Exercise Physiology Laboratory in 1987. She was principle investigator on two Space Shuttle experiments studying the effec...

This episode is a continuation of last week's conversation, so if you missed it we highly encourage you to go back and start there. We have NASA's Astronaut Strength Conditioning and Rehabilitation (ASCR) team joining us, including Corey Twine (Strength and Conditioning Coach), Danielle Anderson (Physical Therapist), Bruce Nieschwitz (Athletic Trainer), and Christ Keeler (Athletic Trainer)...

Welcome to episode 2 of our NASA series! This is the first of two conversations we had with the Astronaut Strength Conditioning and Rehabilitation (ASCR - pronounced "acer") team. Much like the interdisciplinary human performance teams supporting military organizations, we'll hear from a Strength and Conditioning Coach (Corey), two Athletic Trainers (Bruce and Christi), and a Physica...

Welcome to the first episode of our four part series with NASA, focusing on how they approach human performance for the unique demands of spaceflight. We're starting with an astronaut and in the rest of the series we'll be talking with the human performance and research teams who support them. Stay tuned! Colonel (retired) Shane Kimbrough is a 1989 West Point graduate where he was captain...

This week's episode is all about work capacity. What is it? How do you train for it? What programming principles apply? This is another one of our recurring "how to" episodes, and it essentially fills in the gap left after our strength and endurance episodes. Somewhere between those two is the fuzzy concept of work capacity, which brings up related concepts like "mixed modal tra...

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 sti...

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...

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&#3...

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 me...

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 prepa...