 Our next caller is Jake from North Carolina. What's up, Jake? How can we help you? Hey guys, what's going on? I'm stoked to be here. So a little bit of background first. I'm a personal trainer and a boxing for MMA coach. My education is in international relations and national security. So through that, I met a lot of special operations guys and it's became kind of a research interest of mine as to how to train them as effectively as possible. So the problem is a lot of their programming really sucks and it's outdated and has them drastically over-training while still neglecting things like agility, mobility, and strength, and focusing a lot on like calisthenics and long form cardio. So a lot of these guys don't have proper weight training until they get to their units and the amount of injuries is really high. So I guess my question is when these people have control over their own training or when we as trainers have control over their training, how do we balance all these adaptations of like building strength, endurance, muscular endurance, mobility, and athleticism and all this stuff while they're still doing things like gunfighting and hand-to-hand fighting and sky and sea diving and all this stuff that also costs time and energy to learn. So how do you periodize that? And then how do you program like even on the small level of the micro cycles and stuff? Cause I hear you guys advise all the time to pick a priority, right? So if somebody calls in and asks you guys, how do I train for a half iron man? You say, okay, well maybe lift one time a week and then focus on the swim, bike, run. So when these guys have all of these things that are priorities, how do they manage that? Yeah, no, that's a good question. Yeah, it's a good question and it's like the million dollar question for anybody who trains people like this. This is actually the most challenging aspect of it. Now, of course there's individual variances and how you would train each person but let's go general first. Here's the beauty, part of the beauty of strength training. You don't have to do a ton of it to reap some of its benefits. Because the people you're talking about are required to have all these skills and all these physical attributes. Strength being a big part of it, I would not need, these people do not need to do more than one or two days a week of traditional strength training. In fact, I would probably do one day a week of traditional strength training. Another day a week where it's more geared specific to what they're looking to do with resistance training. And really the rest of the week, you're focusing a lot on conditioning and skills. Skills being the most important thing. Now you being a boxing coach for MMA, you know probably more than anybody that your skill in boxing is probably the most important thing than second being your ability to have stamina. Well when these guys and girls are engaging with other people, that stamina could be life or death and the skill definitely is life or death. So most of the energy is gonna be focused there. Strength training, resistance training once or twice a week. And once of it, one day a week is gonna be that kind of traditional barbell build kind of that base. And the other day, like I said, it's gonna be a little bit more specific to the individual. Yeah, you're focusing on the things that they lack in, right? So whichever, whatever, if they're less, they have less endurance. So that's how I'm gonna put a little bit more focus on that with that person. If they have less mobility and flexibility and they get injured a lot, then I'm putting more energy in that direction. But you know this question reminds me of, and I'm curious to hear what you guys' opinion on this. You follow the guy, his name, I think his Instagram handle. Tactical. Yes, real world tactical guy. Is that right Andrew, real world tactical, you know who that is? Yeah, I follow that guy. Okay, super badass dude, right? And I'm always curious to like, like people that are following him, like how many of these people are like going and trying to emulate with this? Yeah, cause I don't know if those are his workouts or those are just his video workouts for the media. So that's what I'm trying, and that's what I'm alluding to right now, like do you think that way of training? Like he's like doing crazy, enduring, very cross-fitty type of training. And, but he's also including some of his tactical stuff in there, right? So he'll be like dragon tires and what that, then he'll do like a roll with a gun and then fire it. I mean, I mean, very entertaining to watch. But when I look at it, I go like, you know, I wonder if I were to get a special ops guy if my training would look like this or would I be way more tailored and specific to who I'm training and I wouldn't, this is very flashy cool shit to watch. But in reality, I think I'd be very more specific to my special ops guy and figuring out, oh, where is he lacking? And then building my core around the things that he is the weakest in to develop that and bring it up and probably doing less of what he's really strong in. Yeah, I think it's really difficult to have like a generalized kind of standard for programming this because there's so many different attributes you're trying to acquire. I think like, as far as what I would look at it in terms of priorities, I definitely would want to make sure that there's lots of, you know, recuperative type of, you know, mobility practices instilled every single day. And that's just something that because of it's, they're going through so much body stress, you know, that's something that I would prioritize that, you know, beginning and, you know, all throughout the day to really make sure that longevity is considered while going through all this sort of chaotic type of stress on the body. But to Sal's point, like really just one, two times a week with the actual strength training part, but the skills is what, you know, is the utmost priority with that pursuit. Yeah, and you know, here's a big mistake people like this often make. Is they emulate the training of athletes. Now here's why there's a big difference between the way an athlete trains and the way people like this train. Let's say you're going to compete in, you're going to compete in a mixed martial art event. You are training and peaking for a specific date. Okay, so you're, there's an off season, there's an on season, you're peaking. Okay. These guys have to be ready at all times. There's a timeline there, which yeah, this is all the time. This is an infinite timeline. If you train these people like they're trying to peak, you're going to over train them. Okay, there is no peaking because it happens all the time. So really what it is is you're training them below that peak intensity because they're just ready. They got to kind of be ready all the time. Now, why are skills so important? I mean, come on, you can be the fittest, most awesome person in the world, but if you can't accurately fire your gun or operate under duress, none of that really matters. So, you know, a base of strength, maintain mobility. So you reduce injury, do some athletic training in there and then skills, skills, skills, skills. Let's be even more specific. I feel like we're giving my boy like nothing right now. Just fucking talking about a bunch of stuff that he's already heard from us. Like, so let's kind of build that, right? As generic, but as specific as we possibly can. So would you guys, would it look like this? What's coming to mind to me right now is I think I would have a one to two day a week, very foundational maps, anabolic-esque training routine. And then I would have three to five days depending on what, how much they're handling throughout the week of skills training. And then the way I would dictate the skills training would be I would write a list of all the things from hand-to-hand combat to endurance, to rucking, to body weight strength that have all these priorities of these things that they should be able to accomplish. And then I would have skills training days and we would order them in the order of priority. Meaning that I would do more of whatever I think this special ops person needs the biggest help in. And I would focus mostly on those skill days which, and just compliment one to two days with like a full body type of animal. With a real heavy emphasis on recovery. How to get to that point. And so this is where something like HRV, you know, would be something in my mind would make a lot of sense in this situation because to be able to monitor their overall accumulation of stress would be very valuable to see like, where they're at in terms of the beginning of the day. Versus the end of the day and then the next to be able to manage that appropriately. Now, would you guys agree though that this is the type of client though that you would flirt with overtraining more than under training? Because it's not an athlete who's trying to peek and because I want mental and physical resiliency from this person, I'm probably going to flirt with that line more often than not than the other way around. Because I don't care if he loses a little bit of muscle or he trained a little bit overtrained. So long as I'm looking out for injury and I'm not overtraining in that way, but as far as training their endurance and their mental fortitude to get through because I feel like that's so important. Like you don't want to be so concerned of like, oh, I don't want to like overreach a little bit because I want to build the most muscle for this person. When I know that that shit doesn't matter when they get out into the real world and they got to fucking fight for their life and they got to go for 16 hours straight with no sleep. Yeah, I would go the opposite. No, I would not flirt with overtraining because when you're pushing that line all the time and remember, this is a job. So they're doing it all the time, right? So now you're at the line, you're doing this job all the time, life is stressful. I think that would be a mistake. What I would do is I would play under overtraining. The resistance training I would do is 30 to 45 minutes. That's it. So 30 to 45 minutes once or twice a week. The other three to four days a week, you're looking at about an hour of training and then additional 30 minutes of mobility and that's it. Now that doesn't sound like you're getting them peaked and ready, but what we're talking about is a long-term fitness readiness. I mean, I tell you what, when I'm on the border line of overtraining, I'm not in my peak performance. I'm pushing to get to peak performance, but imagine maintaining that all the time. You don't agree that you're gonna have to flirt with that at least once a week or once a month when you are pushing, trying to push that for the mental fortitude reason and for them to push the intensity like that because they'll probably have days already structured for that. Yeah, and that's gonna happen naturally. And you're talking about people who, and maybe if they're beginners and they just signed up for the police academy and they gotta kind of figure it out. But when somebody's at this point, like they've got what they kind of need, they just need to maintain their health, their fitness. Well, I have not trained a lot of special ops people. So the complete transparency here, so we know that I'm not a fucking expert in this field. So I think I would wanna know that because you have to understand, I agree with you guys if that is built in. But you can't train this person always under a little bit for an hour, then real quick, they're gonna be out in the field for 16 hours and be beat up all day long. And that's like the most intense thing they've ever experienced because you haven't given them that. I think they'll be more prepared and better to deal with those things if they're good fit, but under that limit of over training. I would only do that if I could test it immediately and see like, again, with heart rate and things like that or like, you know, lactate threshold or, you know, whatever, like love those types of tests because then I can actually appropriately see how quickly I can recover from the stress. I love what you're saying there because our good friend Corey Slesinger who shout out to him right now who is out there with the sons who are in the championship right now is the strength and conditioning coach who came on the show and talked about how he utilizes HRV. I think that this would be extremely valuable with these athletes for that exact reason because I feel like there's gotta be when I look at their heart rate variability and go, oh, he's fully rested. Tomorrow I'm bringing the heat on him. I want him to, we're gonna stretch his capacity tomorrow and then I'm gonna back off and then I'm gonna scale back. But I wanna be, I do want to push my special ops guy for the mental fortitude reason. Like this, it's- In this situation, mental fortitude is probably one of the highest priorities. Of course. But it's to be able to get into that calm state is everything. I feel like, Sal, your guy's gonna be a pussy. My guy's gonna beat you up and down all day long, bro. No, they're not. Look, they're gonna be under training them all the time. By the time you're there, that's, you've already proven that. You've already got some of that. And again, the biggest, I've trained special ops. I've trained SWAT people, I've worked with them. When I did Jiu-Jitsu, I had a lot of people- Right after your suit people. At that level. Yes. And you know what the biggest problem was? The biggest problem was people that were always after it all the time. They were just chronically over-training. That's why I brought up the real world tactical guy because I don't subscribe to training like that all the time. Because I know that that type of training day in, day out would be way too much for the average special ops person I'd be training. But you have to agree that, like Justin said, that the mental fortitude has to be one of the top priorities. And so you gotta stretch that capacity sometimes. And you're trying to say that, oh, if they got to special ops, they've done that before. So what, you're just gonna not have to, you're not gonna train that ever? No, it's already part of their training. That's already included. Well, okay, do you know that? I don't know that. I do, absolutely. They still do training on a regular basis. Their practices still involve a lot of that. But I, like I said, I think if you're, it's okay, if you're training somebody who's going to go on a mission, very different than if you train somebody who, this is what they do all the time. It can happen at any moment. Well, Jake, do you know? Sorry, we haven't even brought you in this conversation very much. You're good, you're good. I would say when, so a lot of times their training pipelines are like two years and it's very, very focused on mental fortitude, right? So these guys are just doing obscene amounts of like calisthenics and just tearing their bodies down. And I think a lot of times, once they get to their units, if they're not at a school, like if they're at dive school, it's gonna be like more of the same. But if they're just training and trying to get better, it's a lot of more like, okay, let's actually go for strength now. And let's actually try to build athleticism because I mean, we were selected then because of our mental fortitude that makes it. Okay, okay. So Sal's right, Sal's right here. Yeah, yeah. So if I could kind of like take a step back though, you guys recommended like maybe two foundational, like I should say fundamental strength days. So would you then like, would you take a phasic approach to it and kind of like drop everything else? Like say, you know, your five mile runs for time, would you drop that down to like maintenance volume? And then on the fundamental strength thing, would you take them through like maybe, okay, on our two fundamental strength days, it's gonna be like a mezzacycle of like math, say in a ball like, and then after we get done with that, we're gonna switch to like more of a phase two maths performance type thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would still phase it. And I would do one. If you have the ability to do that. Yeah, and I would do one, you know, longer run during the week. And then the rest of the conditioning is gonna be sprint based. It's not gonna be kind of like these long distance type runs. You're looking at speed, performance, agility, that kind of stuff. I mean, I don't know how often you guys in the field are having to run five or 10 miles. You still need that stamina. But oftentimes, and Mike's from again, from the people I worked with, it's like, you gotta react fast, you gotta be quick and you gotta sprint. And sometimes the sprints are longer than a sprint, but it's typically not like this long six or seven mile, you know, type of pursuit. So I would incorporate that kind of stuff, agility work. And again, even once a week, I promise you, like I said, I worked specifically, there's one guy I can think of right now. He's now actually a high level Jiu-Jitsu competitor, but he was a SWAT team. And he was doing weight training three or four days a week and he was having issues with his joints. And he backed all the way down to one day a week, 45 minutes. His strength went through the roof and he just felt so much better. And he's like, I can't believe this basic and low of volume is making me feel so good. I'm like, well, dude, you do so much other stuff. That's about it. Yeah, if you can structure it in a way where you can actually take that one phase where you have a couple of weeks where you're a little more focused specifically on strength, you bring down the endurance a bit, but you come back to it. So it's obviously like the endurance part is gonna be more of the priority within this setting, but to be able to kind of focus in on that, your body's gonna be able to respond better and get that base level strength more efficiently, but then you're gonna have to cycle back into your heavy endurance. Now, Jake, you said you're a personal trainer. Obviously, you're the way he's talking. Yeah, I'm gonna send, do you have Maps Prime Pro? No, I have Prime, but I don't have Prime Pro. Okay, so I'm gonna send that to you because as a trainer, I think that's gonna have the most value for you. You're gonna be able to apply this with your training and other people's training. You're gonna love that program. Great correctional exercise. So we'll send that over to you. And we appreciate you calling. Yeah. Hey, I appreciate you guys so much. Have a good one. Yeah, I tell you, it's like, the big mistake is like, No, you're right. You wanna peak? You're right, I mean, that was, again, I don't have very much experience training these, so I don't know what their protocol looks like outside of what I would be. And I'm thinking I'm controlling all their activity. If I'm controlling all their activity, I know that I wanna make sure I push that, but based off of what you said and what Jake you confirmed is that, they have so much of that outside of the training with me that you're right. I don't need to push that. They're getting that already. So I'm probably leaning more towards the recuperative and skills training with a very minimal amount of strength training one to two days a week.