#270： Becoming a Tactical Athlete
Episode Stats
Summary
Rob Shawl is the founder and president of the Mountain Tactical Athlete Institute, a research organization dedicated to creating fitness programming that takes workouts outside the gym and gives them a mission-centered focus. He believes that soldiers, first responders, and folks who participate in strenuous mountain activities like rock climbing and backcountry skiing should view themselves as professional athletes, and train not just to train but for a purpose outside of the gym.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast where we don't
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normally think of soldiers and first responders as professional athletes but that's exactly how
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my guest today argues they should see themselves his name is rob shawl and he's the founder and
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president of the mountain tactical institute it's a research organization dedicated to creating
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fitness programming that takes workouts outside the gym and gives them a mission-centered focus
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rob believes that soldiers police officers firefighters even plumbers and hvac guys and
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folks who participate in strenuous mountain activities like rock climbing and backcountry
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skiing should view themselves as professional athletes and train not just to train but for a
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purpose outside the gym and today on the show rob and i discuss what makes the mountain tactical
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institute's mission-focused approach to fitness different from other organizations why it is
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that soldiers and first responders should think of themselves as professional athletes why soldiers
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serving in afghanistan started following his fitness programming for mountain climbers why there's so
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many out of shape first responders on active duty and how to train to become a tactical athlete even if
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you're a civilian great show packed with information after the show's over check out the show notes at
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aom.is slash tactical athlete where you can find links to resources we can delve deeper into this topic
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rob shawl welcome to the show well thank you brad good morning uh so you uh own a company founded a
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company called mountain tactical institute back in 2007 uh originally was a mountain athlete but you
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now it's now called mountain tactical institute i'm curious before we get into talking about mti what was
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your background before that what prompted you to start um mountain athlete uh lifelong gym rat on the
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fitness side um with the coast guard academy was in the coast guard for five years after school and
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military then went got my master or my master's degree actually in political science is my education
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and uh and then i uh moved back to wyoming and uh started a company um and uh did that for 10 years and
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uh decided to sell that and wanted to do something else and i just one of those guys you kind of
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would go to the gym and train and pretty much uh other guys would other people would see me train and
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want to start training with me and uh there was a i was just in a small town in wyoming a little bit
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south of jackson here where i grew up uh just training in a physical therapy like little gym um was the
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only thing we had in this town pretty much a universal machine a few free weights some dumbbells
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and uh that the lady you owned that said hey i want you to start coaching for me and i kind of
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started doing that and uh one thing led the other and just kind of worked out where i wanted to go
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ahead and transition into into coaching and that's kind of what got me there i jackson where the town i
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was in uh it's a little bit too small for what i wanted to do and so um jackson is a really interesting
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place and i started a company called mountain athlete i wanted to come up here and work
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with some of the athletes up here specifically mountain guides and so i came up here and reached
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out to one of the guiding companies said hey i'll train your guys for free and made a lot of early
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mistakes um and everything's kind of developed uh from that so what's mti's focus i mean it's called
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mountain tactical institute so i'm guessing it's mountain athletes and tactical guys
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yeah kind of our company mission is to um improve mountain and tactical mission performance
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um and keep these types of athletes safe um so that's really our focus we for years had primarily
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um emphasized fitness programming and fitness training um we did some other stuff too on the
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tactical side we actually developed a system to train accurate marksmanship under stress believe it or
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not did a lot of shooting um but then just uh about a year and a half ago two years ago we expanded our
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reach um to start taking a look at um policy safety issues gear and so now we're pretty much a research
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institute we we cover all those different areas um anything that has to do with the mountain or tactical
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performance um and mission success we're interested in taking a look at so with the mountain athletes why
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why why do you think these folks needed specialized fitness programming isn't doing their job or
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activity enough i mean if you want to get better at skiing like just go backcountry ski a lot
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you're right there was really no um and there really is no strong condition of gym-based
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fitness programming for mountain athletes especially on the recreational side
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um now the the high level athletes do this type of stuff the high level rock climbers and
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obviously the alpine race skiers um us ski team those types of folks do a lot of
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gym-based programming but for even the backcountry skiers or the alpinists there was really no um strong
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tradition of that and um my uh approach was just to get in there and see what we could do and uh and
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develop a programming that transferred um to mission performance i think that as more and more athletes
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started doing these sports we saw a couple things first um because of the x games and uh free ski world
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tour there was a little bit more money and emphasis and media attention on some of these sports and
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what that did was it started attracting a higher level of athlete here in jackson it's pretty amazing
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how many collegiate division one athletes come into the gym to train and they're here you know ski
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bumming or trying to develop their their alpine mountain athlete type resume um and so i think that
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the sports started attracting better athletes and those athletes had a background in uh strength
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conditioning especially a lot of collegiate athletes and then also because of the attention
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um on the media side um the competition for attention and what people were doing on the
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outside just kept on increasing and decreasing so all those different factors have worked together
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i'll be the first to admit that um it's still not strong in these communities that's one of the
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things that we've always kind of struggled with and we i've kind of got away from trying to convince
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people how um on the mountain side how um proper programming will improve their performance um we've
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just been doing it too long now now we just do it and let our athletes speak for us um and we've had
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some really great success with some athletes so your initial programming was geared towards mountain
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athletes rock climbers skiers things like that how did your programming come to the attention of
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military members and um how did that transition into tactical or military athletes
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yeah 2008 2009 you know i remember um we would just put our sessions up online and i remember just
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getting emails from um guys downrange iraq and afghanistan um mad at me because i hadn't got the
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the session up for that day online yet of course they were ahead of us or behind us on and it just
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started building and building and um especially on the afghanistan side we had military units who were
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deploying to really mountainous regions at altitude and their patrol mission set included a lot of up
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and down hiking under load and they just were getting there unfit for it and so our work on the mountain
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side we had guys reach out to us to start developing programming to get guys ready and we developed a
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program we called the afghanistan pre-deployment training program which we gave away
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and uh we gave that away to thousands of guys we had battalion commanders deploy it with their
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entire battalions lots of individual guys lots of platoon leaders and squad leaders and up and down the
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chain and it was just a uh a program we developed from what we learned working here on the mountain
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side and how to get athletes ready in a gym-based setting where you don't have a mountain outside if you're
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in fort campbell kentucky or fort bragg north carolina you can't go hike up and down a mountain
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um but to to kind of use what they had really basic equipment and do the best we could to get
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them ready to go down range so that's kind of what it got us our start so i mean like what what do you
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think is lacking in the default physical training the armed services currently where you had guys in
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afghanistan and iraq saying i'm going to go to this outside source to get my physical training in
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really just knowledge um just how do you train to climb up and down you know mountains when you first
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once you because guys would deploy and get down range and you know the next day to be out on patrol so
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how do you train for that and the the traditional we were coming along um you know crossfit had a huge
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impact on military um guys also um greater than us um and uh and so guys would do crossfit or they
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would do typical military pt which is running push-ups and sit-ups and uh fine they got down
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range and they just were performing well when they did their patrols um so that kind of led to them
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seeking us out just in that aspect of that it was just a knowledge of how you program and train for that
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um and that kind of got us going on this idea of working with the different sports that we work
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with and then with these different mission sets on the tactical side it helped us get more and more
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focused on designing sport-specific or event-specific or mission-specific programming fitness programming
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for whatever that mission is going to be so we went from designing a general training program for
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mountain athletes to designing a season-specific program for lift-assisted
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alpine skiing designing a really mission-specific programming for one of our athletes who attempted to
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to ski to climb and ski a major peak in the wrinkle that ones up in alaska so we uh what we found is that we
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as we started doing more and more programming our stuff got more and more specific from a general
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training program for mountain athletes all around mountain athletes to a season-specific programming for
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something like lift-assisted skiing to a really specific program for an athlete who's going to do a
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backcountry major ski mountaineering expedition a single 24-hour push for a
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a peak in the wrinkle mountains in alaska and all those different types of programming from the
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fitness perspective are different and what we've developed is a methodology on how to identify
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the fitness demands of the sport of a season of a specific event work backward from those demands identify
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the fitness programming which trains those demands and gets an athlete ready sport specifically for that
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event or mission or sport or whatever it is so our
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our currency in terms of athletes that we work with is that methodology how we put all that stuff
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together to develop programming that really transfers outside the gym to mission-specific performance
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okay and we'll talk a little more about what your programming looks like in a bit here
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but let's talk about uh military athlete a bit so you know as you the number of requests you were
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getting from for mission-specific and more tactical specific programming increased you started military
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athlete um let's say i'm sure there's plenty of listeners who are listening the show right now and
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they're thinking of joining the military or they want to get selected for special forces
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um based on your experience with working with thousands of different um of individuals in the
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the military world what are the most important things that listener should know in order to prepare for
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for for the physical training portion of that not to assume that just being fit in one area will make
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you fit for what you're going to face at boot camp or at special forces selection or whatever
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um what we say is that the further you are away from the event the more general your programming can be
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and as you get closer the more specific it should be so for example um um guys you do a lot of crossfit
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can't assume that because they're smoking these three to five minute super intense gym-based exercises or events
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and you know crossfit that that's going to transfer over to being able to rock 12 miles with 45 pounds
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you know in three hours at the end of a long 10-hour day of getting smoked by the cadre
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um so there's just uh the idea is to focus on or identify kind of what what you're going to be facing
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and then train for that um and just understand that not all programming transfers well
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and identify the programming it transfers well or the preparation that'll transfer well to the event
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that's that's great um and i've also noticed on your site too that you've also expanded into creating
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programming for law enforcement officers and fire and rescue professionals first responders
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um and i guess there was a need for that i mean you you had a blog post where you talked about the
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the number of first responders who are out of shape like not just like they can't run very far like
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they're obese or whatever do you have any statistics about the number of out of shape first responders
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in the u.s out there not to that level we do know that for example in 2015 the number one cause of
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firefighter deaths was cardiac arrest um which is just heart attacks um and that's consistently
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the issue we we kind of happened was we had many military guys were moving out of the they get out
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of the service and they would go uh to the first responder world especially in the law enforcement
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side and then we also got some currency within the law enforcement guys on the side who were in there
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already you found our stuff and started wanting us to start programming for um cops and detectives and
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swat teams and the programming is different than the military stuff but amongst the first responder
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community in general there is not a strong fitness culture one of the things the military has that
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many or the vast majority of first responder units doesn't have is an annual high jeopardy fitness
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assessment high jeopardy means you don't do well it can lose your job many um all the academies for
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the fire academies or the law enforcement academies they have entered entry-level gait fitness
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assessments and fitness is a big part of the academy but once guys and women i guess get out of the
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academy they go into their units or their departments there's no more for most units there's no more
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um fitness assessments or if there is a fist assessment it doesn't have high jeopardy or
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the standards are so low that it's a joke um and so what we've kind of found is that we've actually
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studied um we set some researchers just to study the fitness culture at um a uh a fire department in a
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mid-sized city in the midwest and we developed i sent a phd and another researcher and that was one
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of the things we want to take a look and see you know can we develop a fitness culture assessment
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so we took a look at you know individual interviews we interviewed the command we kind of observed to
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see how much guys were training at this uh department every every station had kind of a tiny little
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fitness room where they had some you know dumbbells and uh and plenty of stuff to train equipment's no
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reason but um this department there was actually a requirement that um the firefighters train every
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day they were on duty and they had to sign they had to sign something or their um department or their
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station captain had to sign something to verify they did it and there were some integrity issues guys
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were signing and they weren't training it was just part of this kind of culture certainly there
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were guys at this uh department who were very fit um but many of them were fit not for work
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but for their sport so there were some triathletes who just did endurance stuff and some power
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lifters who just did powers you know heavy lifting you can kind of see how that works but as a
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so what we found was there's a lacking kind of uh programming um to train for their work their job their
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profession and then also just a pretty poor culture we actually took a look at our articles that we
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wrote last year in 2016 and identified which ones were the most read and the one that was the most read
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was uh i wrote a article was titled you know first responders how come you tolerate unfit police and
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firefighters we had heard when i went i worked with lots of these guys and taught courses at departments
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and there's lots of excuses on why first responders as a as a general they're just not a strong fitness
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culture and i just started thinking about it that it's an incredible safety issue um an unfit fireman
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or a police officer can get himself killed or herself killed and some of the people in the department
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no matter what it is killed also it's a huge safety issue um but it's not really thought of that that
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way one of the there are some other things that are that kind of prevent a strong fitness culture from
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being developed one is that unions often fight fitness standards or fitness assessments down in
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colorado springs a couple years ago really enlightened colorado springs is where the headquarters of the
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national um strength conditioning association is and the local police department kind of worked with the
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nsca um kind of enlightened um chief at the police department to implement a high jeopardy fitness
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assessment at that department and um and they had a gentle on-ramp for this fitness assessment to let
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everybody in the department know it was coming everybody took it you know they had a chance to get up
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uh and do it well um plenty of time you know coaching was offered and it wouldn't it finally got jeopardy
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when it was finally implemented um several of the female members didn't pass the assessment and um one of
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the first it was a jeopardy assessment so one of the first things that happened is if you didn't pass you
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you were taken off the street and put on desk duty until you passed it and uh
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there was a lawsuit that came out of that the uh the officers you didn't pass sued the department
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a judge put a stay on the fitness assessment this is a fairly common thing so there are just some
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things on the military side in terms of culture in terms of high jeopardy fitness assessment that is
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done every year how it's related to you can't be an up-and-coming officer in the in the army these
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days and not have a pretty smoking pft score it's going to get you're going to it's going to hurt your
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performance evaluation all those things make it easier to have a stronger fitness culture in the military
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and those tools aren't there on on the first responder side the other thing that's really
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interesting on the first responder side there's just so many interesting things about it is that in the
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military if you get you know past 40 40 you're pretty much done being on the tip of the spear you know
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even even on the listed side you're you're high enough ranked where chances are you're not running
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and gunning with the boys anymore but on the first responder side that's not the case um i just saw a
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statistic today where um the average or the biggest block age block for firefighters in the nation is like
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41 to 50. so it's entirely possible to be a policeman or firefighter in your late 40s or 50s and actually
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be you know the guy on the on the nozzle going in to fight the fire and we work with several guys who do
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that um so they can work uh longer at you know kind of the tip of the spear and be in danger which is
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even which would point to even greater need for fitness but you've got this thing that's called
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legacy members is the term for it these legacy guys are like you know i'm too old to do that or
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you know i didn't do that when i was coming up so i don't need to train now or i'm so street smart or
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fire aware that i'll never get myself in a situation where i'll need to to you know have a great fitness
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it's just an interesting um dynamic that really works against developing a fitness culture
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the other thing that is kind of interesting as i've worked with first responders especially on
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the law enforcement side but really both how much respect i've gained for them um
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in the military unless you're well even if you're at a tier one special forces unit
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those guys generally know when they're going to be in harm's way and when they aren't
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but for a policeman or a firefighter it's like they're deployed all the time
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you know any normal traffic stop could result in you know a dangerous situation
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so um it's just in i really have developed a high level respect for these athletes
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and we've just been trying to work with them we again kind of like on the mountainside we we kind
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of step back and trying to convince people why fitness is important and we're trying to identify
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the people who agree with us in the first responder side give them the tools they need to train
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support specifically for for their uh their job and just let others take notice um we kind of found
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that in general the top performers in the military first responder side also happen to be pretty darn fit
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and uh there's a reason for that fitness improves everything um we you know if you have a
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uh a cop who just depends on his fitness his body um to keep himself safe and his partner safe and he's
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obviously deconditioned it makes you wonder about how how that cop is doing the other aspects of his
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profession you know is he doing his paperwork properly you know is he going to the range and
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he's spending time with his weapon um is he reading the latest on case studies i mean what we've kind of
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found in general is that and this is across all the communities that we work with um we the guys
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who are the athletes men and women who come in and train with us or follow our programming
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are also the top levels of the other elements of their profession so fitness trains everything we
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here in jackson the guides the mountain guys professional mountain guides who spend the most
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time with us are the most experienced highest level mountain guides the young guides aren't in their
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training with us it's the older guys who know the most who are in their training with us they've come
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to realize the importance of fitness and how they want to be professional about that element of their
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job just like everything else well i think it's interesting you've been as you've been talking you've
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been referring to uh police officers military guys uh firefighters as athletes and i think that you
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it's a big thing you you hit on your site and with what you do is you you want first responders and
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military individual folks in the military to think of themselves as professional athletes or tactical
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athletes why do you think that why do you think it's important that they have that mindset and think of
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themselves that way well if you if you're a cop and you get injured you know you you can't do your job
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you're not going to get paid so there's a direct link between health and fitness for a first responder
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a mountain guide or a tactical athlete and their paycheck just like there is for an nfl quarterback
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um if the nfl quarterback gets injured because he's unfit or um isn't fit coming into camp
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he can lose his job it's a direct link to his paycheck that's kind of how i define an athlete in that
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sense we have a term we've used before called industrial athletes plumbers carpenters um you know hvac
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guys those guys are athletes too you know if they get hurt um or something and they're not fit enough
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to do the job they're just not going to get paid so it's almost an economic point that i want to make
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but also there's an idea it's kind of cool to be a professional athlete you know i'm a i'm not i'm
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a strength conditioning coach so um uh i kind of work out for a living right but there's no real transfer
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over to my real to my real job we we purposely use that term we call the the people who come to our gym
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athletes we don't call them clients um the semantics is important i think it it lays a uh
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it brings a a level of um currency to the work that they're doing if they think themselves of athletes
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i think it just helps them um embrace this idea that um they're training for their job and and their
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fitness is an important part of their profession a really important part of it and hopefully it'll
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encourage them to invest in it do it well get get self-educated and also set an example for
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other first responders or military guys or mountain people out there to kind of follow their lead
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what's the overarching philosophy behind becoming a tactical athlete and i mean are there different
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fitness or skill aptitudes a tactical athlete should have yeah we've we've actually uh even broken it
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down further um we've identified five types of tactical athletes and fitness demands for each type
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many of the the fitness demands carry over um but um some have all of them and some don't so for
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example a uh um a military um you know like an army ranger or infantryman or a special forces guy
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um they need a high relative strength um relative strength is strength per body weight we're not
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trying to develop olympic weightlifters or world champion powerlifters or bodybuilders we just want
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athletes who have high relative strength um our strength standards for tactical athletes are not super
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aggressive aggressive and ambitious in the strength world they're you know relatively moderate but for
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athletes who have a myriad of fitness demands um you know they're uh they're fairly high level we want
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them to have a high level of work capacity but when we talk about work capacity it's not like it's just any
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type of work capacity tactical athletes um law enforcement fire rescue military they need to be able
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to do repeatable they need to be a work capacity side they need to be able to sprint repeatedly sprint
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recover sprint recover sprint recover so not only they need high work capacity for multimodal stuff
00:28:40.500
we're not sure what type of event they're going to face on the field but we do know um that in general
00:28:46.100
um they need to be able to sprint um on the endurance side our military athletes or mountain
00:28:54.340
athletes need a high level of endurance but it's not just any type of endurance um military athletes
00:29:01.380
don't need to bike they don't need to row you know they need to be able to run and they need to be able
00:29:06.420
to ruck run or ruck well for long distances and recover from it um on the mountain side um athletes need
00:29:14.980
to be able to run and hike uphill under load and recover from it um on the law enforcement side one
00:29:23.300
of our fitness attributes for law enforcement guys on the patrol detective side is upper body hypertrophy
00:29:30.900
um a cop who has a big chest and biceps that could be actually a tool to intimidate bad bad guys from
00:29:38.740
trying something stupid um so we actually train our programming for cops we'll have upper body
00:29:44.340
hypertrophy in there and we'll manipulate our sets and reps to and have different cycles which emphasize
00:29:50.580
upper body hypertrophy um so uh yeah we we have identified fitness attributes for tactical athletes
00:29:58.500
and then amongst that community which ones apply to the different professions and then we program from
00:30:05.060
there for those individual professions and i also noticed you also put emphasis on um durability with across your different athletes
00:30:14.100
yeah my the more i've done worked with durability the more
00:30:19.140
i guess contrarian to what generally happens in the strength conditioning world i've become
00:30:26.100
early on we we kind of jumped into the idea of durability and i went and got fms certified through
00:30:32.900
great cook and we implemented the fms are you familiar with the fms brett it's functional movement system
00:30:38.100
right yeah it's called the functional movement screen and uh and uh for our listeners who aren't familiar
00:30:46.580
with that can you explain what that is the functional movement screen is developed i don't know a decade
00:30:51.780
or so ago by um a couple of pts on east coast and what they claimed it did was it was just a screen of
00:31:00.660
different movements and exercises that they could put athletes through that had some predictive value on
00:31:08.420
injury in the event or whatever they were doing so if athlete didn't score above a certain level in
00:31:15.540
these in the screen um their chances of getting injured were greater is what the fms founders or designers
00:31:24.900
claimed initially um and so this is a great all of a sudden it's a great tool this is the idea the idea
00:31:31.380
in general is that really proper movement transfers to durability and these guys claimed that they had a
00:31:39.780
a screen to identify what was a proper level of of movement and then based on how you did on the exercises
00:31:48.580
they had um on the screen they had exercises you could train to get better at the screen
00:31:54.580
and we initially really jumped on that idea and did it with all our athletes and and uh implemented
00:32:01.300
their exercises and we also followed what was going on with other pts and other type of mobility and
00:32:08.020
durability um thought out there but the more and more i worked with that type of stuff the less and less
00:32:15.220
value i thought it had um and that's continued um right now my my durability equation is uh durability
00:32:25.620
equals 95 sport slash missions flash event fitness plus five percent durability and mobility um there's
00:32:36.980
an emphasis on the fitness side for sure um and so we've kind of come to the point where
00:32:41.860
being sport specifically fit for whatever you're going to do is a greatest buffer you're going to
00:32:47.460
have to stay durable and when we started to take a look and there's been several studies have come out
00:32:52.580
now who have questioned the fms's ability to predict durability there was a one of the studies that
00:33:01.300
initially caught my eye was it was of several hundred marine corps ocs candidates and uh they they were
00:33:10.580
given the fms and and they and the way i understood it was that the fms predicted you know fairly well
00:33:19.540
how much energy would come out of ocs but then when they started taking a closer look at it now it was
00:33:25.780
the fms plus their usmc pft scores that really was the greatest predictable um when they put them
00:33:31.860
together and then when you broke it out a little bit further the pft ski scores were the really the
00:33:36.900
great you know had a greater uh alone than the fms anyway as we've as we've uh moved down and and
00:33:45.140
become and had more experience programming for athletes um we've identified the idea that we
00:33:51.700
really want to make guys durable but a huge part of that is getting sport specifically fit for their
00:33:57.140
event in this world of strength conditioning and i'm sure you've seen this in the interviews and stuff
00:34:02.260
that you've done i guess everything works and nothing works forever and whenever i when i first
00:34:07.860
started uh programming and designing i was so righteous about so many things you know i'm never
00:34:12.740
going to do this i'm never going to do that or that's you know and uh the the or the more i've done
00:34:19.460
it the less righteous i've become in general um but also the more skeptical i've become of of
00:34:26.420
single bullets that seem to just do more than or just too good to be true i guess and uh so from
00:34:34.340
our perspective the durability is primarily just a high high degree of relative strength um high
00:34:40.740
degree of sports specific fitness so if you're a guy going down range and you're going to go to a
00:34:47.780
tactical situation on the military side chances are if you do come under fire you're going to be sprinting
00:34:53.860
hitting the ground and shooting and get up and doing it again and uh if you're not used to doing
00:34:58.580
that you're not going to have the work capacity to do it if you're not used to doing it under load
00:35:02.420
you know with your kit and your weapons and all your ammo you may not have the um mid-session
00:35:08.740
strength um under especially if you do it for a while the strength endurance and all that stuff
00:35:14.980
could lead to injury so durability is a huge part of what we do obviously and our focus is just
00:35:21.620
getting guys specifically fit for what they're going to be facing right so foam rolling is it
00:35:26.100
going to help you carry load sprinting we yeah we uh we do a little bit of foam rolling uh but it's
00:35:33.140
not a huge part of what we do um we all of our sessions include generally you know mobility exercises
00:35:42.420
we'll plug in mobility exercises especially in strength circuits in the strength circuit to keep guys busy
00:35:47.940
give them something to do as they're resting between sets um but also um we do know it carries
00:35:54.820
there is some carry over but um it's uh there's having a great overhead squat does not mean you won't
00:36:03.060
get injured um if you're not a sport specifically fit at the same time i mean i've seen you know it's
00:36:09.700
just uh what i've kind of found anecdotally is the the the really good athletes and i had to find a
00:36:15.460
really good athlete uh as someone who really moves well in space um and so they'll they're the ones who
00:36:23.620
smoke the fms i found they're delicate um for whatever reason part of that might be that really
00:36:31.780
good athletes are much more in tune with their body and so a little ding will will make them you know
00:36:38.340
freak out and uh other athletes kind of like me we don't score well in the fms but i'm like an f-150
00:36:46.980
you know my first truck was old 79 f-150 and uh you know that thing got dinged and beat up and uh you
00:36:53.860
know i run into walls with it and it just kept on going it was very durable so uh i guess taking a
00:37:01.060
step back we just kind of found that the best thing i do for my athletes on durability side
00:37:05.380
is increase their relative strength and get them to sport specifically fit for the event or the
00:37:10.820
mission or the job they have that's the best thing i could do rob do you think there's any value for
00:37:15.780
civilians striving to become a tactical athlete you know i think uh the best thing that anybody can do for
00:37:22.500
their their fitness life what i've kind of found over over the years in uh as a guy who's been a
00:37:36.740
if you do your own programming no matter what it is you end up doing what you're good at or what
00:37:43.540
you've always done it's really easy to get into a rut and so if you're a civilian and you have an
00:37:50.020
office job you really don't have a you know a a job that demands a certain level of fitness
00:37:56.100
what i recommend is there seems to be this this path for civilians they they kind of get in the
00:38:04.580
gym they come in or whatever fitness perspective they do especially if they don't have a collegiate
00:38:10.420
athlete background it may be high school athlete they'll get out you know they'll go to college they'll
00:38:15.620
play intramurals or whatever and then they'll get to their their work life and uh they'll end up
00:38:22.500
doing aerobics or maybe get endurance stuff and then crossfit or something similar we'll get them
00:38:27.380
back in the gym and they'll kind of be all i'm excited about that for a while and it seemed the
00:38:32.980
evolution of the sport of fitness which is pretty much what crossfit is is now athletes will take that
00:38:41.140
fitness and they'll start doing stuff outside um and it seems their first stepping stone will be
00:38:46.820
a tough mudder or spartan sprint race um or maybe a go rock event one of these kind of manufactured
00:38:54.580
artificial outdoor events they're definitely physically challenging um but are still artificial
00:39:03.780
what i kind of find is my prediction for the next step is is athletes you know the civilian side we're
00:39:09.860
kind of seeing this now going ahead and saying okay i've i've kind of done a tough mudder event or
00:39:15.060
whatever now i want to go on my own and do a rim to rim you know push of the grand canyon or i want to
00:39:22.900
come and uh you know hike the uh bridge or teton wilderness highline trail you know 50 miles in uh
00:39:30.100
in a week backpack or i want to go climb rainier or denali or um i want to get into rock climbing so
00:39:39.220
what is kind of interesting from a fitness perspective is all those different things you're doing outside the
00:39:43.940
gym if you're programming and training for those specifically in the gym it keeps your gym life
00:39:51.540
kind of really there's just a lot of variety that you're going to be doing and it'll keep you in the
00:39:55.860
gym where you know if you're just going to do the same thing all the time or or train for appearance
00:40:00.900
really um it can get so stale so fast but training for outside events it just opens up a whole new
00:40:08.580
incredible world to you not only for the events but also for for your gym life certainly that's been
00:40:13.780
my experience and and the athletes around the world who follow our stuff you know they kind of fall
00:40:19.460
into that it's interesting how you know people have been following our stuff for years they're like
00:40:23.380
you know i did this you know i you know i went and climbed rainier you know i just did a go rock
00:40:31.380
i'm going to go do a three gun you know shooting contest
00:40:33.700
you know this summer i'm looking at a 50 mile you know 50 mile ultra race and uh they're able to use
00:40:42.100
our programming for all those types of events and you can imagine their their gym life it's so so much
00:40:48.020
variety is so interesting right so yeah i guess having that mindset as a professional athlete tactical
00:40:52.500
athlete as someone you're training to do the thing you like to do outside the gym that can really help
00:40:58.340
civilians out a lot yeah especially as a especially when they're the programming or training starts
00:41:05.940
getting stale having an outside something outside to train for it can really enhance their training
00:41:10.980
life so let's let's talk about more specifically the the what programming looks like at uh mti um
00:41:17.540
i mean your workouts i've seen a few of them they look they look crossfit like but it's not really
00:41:22.900
crossfit um because you're doing things you're doing olympic lifts you're doing sandbags things like
00:41:27.940
that sprints um what do you think the difference between what you do at mti and what you might see
00:41:35.300
at a crossfit workout what is interesting about um our programming is in general that the sessions
00:41:44.420
every session has a certain goal um and so it's been a long time since i've taken a look at
00:41:50.500
it at and and within the crossfit world there's you know all the different gyms have different
00:41:56.260
approaches and crossfit is known primarily for their work capacity short hard work capacity events
00:42:02.980
and we deploy some of that similar programming in our stuff um but every session will have
00:42:08.820
a different training objective and right now in general we have um four or five different training
00:42:14.820
objectives one is just relative strength and other is work capacity which i spoke of a little bit
00:42:19.780
before another is chassis integrity which is our approach to mid-section strength training
00:42:25.940
mid-section strength and strength endurance um on the tactical side we have something called taxipa
00:42:31.940
which stands for tactical speed explosive power and agility and then um for both the tactical and
00:42:39.780
mountainside we have endurance programming that we do and then uh on the mountainside we have climbing
00:42:45.700
training programming so um as part of our general programming for mountain athletes um one or two
00:42:52.020
times a week we've got them in a rock gym you know doing intervals on a system board or bouldering
00:42:57.380
problems or something like that so it's difficult to look at one of our individual specific training
00:43:02.580
sessions and and say you know this is what we do all the time um but in general every session will have
00:43:10.820
uh training objective um what is the main difference between us i guess is crossfit is we're training
00:43:18.180
for outside performance and um and so um that is what gives us the liberty really to take and have
00:43:26.740
these different focuses for the training sessions the other the other areas that we probably do a lot more
00:43:33.300
endurance than than they do in the typical crossfit side and when i say endurance you know we're not
00:43:39.940
into the i mean we do some long running and some long rucking some long endurance um we i believe you
00:43:48.260
have to go long to train long to go long and so that's a big part i guess it's kind of hard to take a
00:43:53.620
one session snapshot and say that way we do that's what we do um and perhaps that's the biggest difference
00:43:58.420
between us and crossfit is a lot of times you can take one session of a typical crossfit workout
00:44:05.140
and everything is going to be fairly similar it's not the case with us um i mean uh it's much different
00:44:11.620
for us well let's take a look at uh with the strength side what what are you guys doing is it
00:44:16.980
body weight stuff lifting weights what what kind of thing do we see on developing that relative body weight
00:44:21.940
strength um yeah we do um we've developed actually five or six different strength progressions
00:44:28.260
over the years that we used um to develop relative strength and most of those are barbell based
00:44:36.340
but when i say strength progression you know for example the 531 which is a popular 555 is popular
00:44:42.580
strength progressions we've developed our own strength progression so um we use a barbell strength
00:44:49.300
we use everything from one rm and then broken down from that percentage based progression based on one rms
00:44:56.660
we use um something we call big 24 where we'll have an athlete to work up to a 3 rm and to do a
00:45:03.700
progression based on a 3 rm we have a progression we call 357 where we'll deploy a one rm a percentage
00:45:12.340
based um effort based on that one rm in the same session and then also have right after that a hard
00:45:20.020
body weight based work capacity effort three to seven minutes long which complements the strength
00:45:26.340
word that was done previously complements meaning deploys the same movements and uh muscles movement
00:45:32.980
patterns and muscles and the idea is to elicit some of that hormonal flush to kind of get out of a crossfit
00:45:38.740
to enhance the the strength strength work um so um and sometimes we'll take and we'll step out of
00:45:48.820
barbell work to do uh body weight focused um cycle of strength training um primarily just to unload for
00:45:57.300
a while um when i say relative strength i mean strength per body weight that doesn't mean body weight
00:46:02.580
strength for example our strength standard for tactical athletes is a 1.5 body weight bench press
00:46:11.220
and front squat so if i weigh 150 pounds i want to be able to front squat and bench press 225 that's
00:46:18.500
one of our strength standards for um tactical athletes so it's not like we want to be able to do
00:46:25.300
you know so many air squats in a certain time that's strength endurance we're interested in relative
00:46:29.540
strength so so i mean i i know you can't uh get like a broad sweeping look at what a program looks
00:46:36.500
like but it sounds like you're gonna have a workout where you'll do some strength followed by some work
00:46:40.420
capacity and then the next day you might do some endurance work depending on what your um mission
00:46:46.740
specific goal is right either the mission specific goal or and again in general the way our programming
00:46:53.300
work is the more the further you are from the event the more general your programming can be
00:46:57.460
and we call that general programming we call that base programming mountain base military base law
00:47:05.060
enforcement base that general programming isn't totally random there's definitely a focus to that and in
00:47:11.380
that focus is training those different attributes that we want to train so for example let's say we have
00:47:17.060
a guy who's going to uh sfas which is green beret selection and he's got um six months to train
00:47:27.700
our green beret selection specific program we call the rook base selection training program is eight weeks
00:47:33.620
long we want him to do that program right eight weeks right before he goes to selection so that's two
00:47:40.580
months we've got four months for him to do other stuff and that other stuff is what we call our tactical base so
00:47:46.820
he'll be working on cycles that train um relative strength work capacity endurance um tactical sepa
00:47:55.940
um and chassis integrity so his typical week may monday's coming in and he's doing um taxi agility and
00:48:04.100
strength tuesday's coming in and he's or tuesday he's out rucking um with a 45 pound pack for you know six
00:48:12.900
miles was a comes in he does another um half session of relative strength the second half is work
00:48:19.060
capacity thursday he's uh he's going to go out and do um uh 800 intervals based on a three mile run
00:48:27.860
time he did before okay we're working on his speed over ground for running um friday comes in he does
00:48:34.900
work capacity and chassis integrity and then saturday is another long ruck so you can kind of see how
00:48:40.340
that kind of works together we're trying to train all those different attributes concurrently now when
00:48:45.380
it gets to that eight weeks before um selection the idea of training that stuff concurrently goes out
00:48:52.420
the window we're not concerned about that anymore we want to get that athlete sport specifically ready
00:48:58.180
for special forces selection what does that mean means we're going to greatly increase his rucking
00:49:04.020
he's going to do a lot more rucking the first thing he's going to do when he gets there he's going
00:49:08.420
to have to do the apft the army physical fitness test push-ups sit-ups um three mile or two mile run
00:49:15.540
so we're going to the first day of the of our plan he's going to take the apft and we're going to use
00:49:20.580
his scores on that apft that initial one and for specific progression as he works through our plan
00:49:29.540
he's also going to get um team events and and just work capacity smokers that selection
00:49:34.580
long days will just come out and they'll mess with the guys right um we'll brew so he's developed um
00:49:40.420
work capacity events sandbag work dumbbell work stuff in a vest or iba individual body armor
00:49:48.660
his his uh now a sports specific plan will train all these different attributes get him specifically
00:49:54.260
ready for um special forces selection it includes a saturday long ruck um so he'll work up i think
00:50:01.700
like 18 miles on a saturday it's just a ruck um it's a very intense um super focused on the fitness
00:50:08.980
demands at selection it includes a taper the last week is a taper it's assessment based so the athlete
00:50:16.500
will come in the first week is an assessment week um the he'll he'll do programming based on his
00:50:22.900
assessment results uh week four we'll reassess him we're assuming he's going to get more fit and then
00:50:28.340
we'll reset all the progressions for the last few weeks and then the last week is a taper week so
00:50:33.220
hopefully we're sending him in to sfas um sport sickly fit sport specifically fit for that event
00:50:41.300
but also relatively fresh so it can hammer and get ready to hit it hard when he gets there that sounds
00:50:46.260
awesome i'm a civilian i don't plan on joining the green berets it sounds like an awesome program i mean
00:50:50.980
so after that like what do like what does a maintenance program look like let's say you you've you're a
00:50:55.300
first responder you're a police officer you're in the military you're on active duty uh you've passed
00:50:59.780
the test um does is there like a set maintenance program do you follow or are you all always
00:51:05.460
constantly updating that to i don't know make it exciting make it fresh um but also ensure that these
00:51:12.180
guys are ready to do their job yeah when they once he gets done with selection he's going to drop back
00:51:18.660
into that tactical based programming the tactical based programming has its own over the years um
00:51:27.140
we've each cycle each each tactical based programming cycles even on the mountain side and all of our
00:51:34.100
cycles now are six weeks long and each of them has a certain emphasis so we'll be training on the
00:51:40.020
tactical side and the military side you know relative strength work capacity endurance chassis
00:51:44.980
integrity taxi concurrently but within each cycle we'll take a couple of those attributes and we'll
00:51:51.220
place some emphasis on them so for example this cycle um a base cycle maybe there's emphasis on
00:51:57.460
strength and work capacity and unload week the next cycle will be emphasis on chassis integrity and tactical
00:52:03.540
agility and unload week the next emphasis will be on endurance so the athlete is still trading all
00:52:09.620
those different fitness attributes but each cycle has a little bit of emphasis to get that athlete
00:52:15.300
better in that attribute and what we've kind of found is that methodology creates a pretty incredible
00:52:25.620
variety for the different athletes we talk about what we call the burden of constant fitness for tactical and
00:52:32.900
and even mountain athletes professional mountain athletes but especially
00:52:36.180
tactical athletes military fire rescue and um law enforcement these guys are these athletes i hate to say
00:52:43.780
say guys work with plenty of female athletes but these athletes they can never really afford to be out of shape
00:52:49.780
and so they got to be constantly training that creates a burden can really lead to stillness in your
00:52:54.420
programming if you're if you keep on doing the same thing over the years we found that
00:52:59.620
our base fitness cycles really do a great job of um addressing the stillness and keeping things
00:53:07.860
interesting generally in a base fitness cycle you know there will be some type of assessment
00:53:15.700
so for example i mentioned the one earlier maybe he'll be you know come out in the first week of the cycle
00:53:21.540
the athlete will need to do a one mile or a three mile run for time and they will
00:53:25.860
do progressions based on that assessment the middle cycle reassess it and that assessment
00:53:32.340
and kind of measuring yourself really helps keep things interesting as well our programming is
00:53:39.060
continually evolving just last year we i mean just this past couple years we introduced we changed the
00:53:46.820
way we train mid-session strength completely with our new chassis integrity theory
00:53:51.780
um we introduced tax sepa so it's not like our programming is static we're continually evolving
00:54:00.100
it as we look to find things that work better work well one of the changes that we made just this past
00:54:08.020
year was we got away from what i call garbage reps um i'm 48 i've probably been doing my programming
00:54:13.780
longer than anybody and my knees are just stiff they're pretty damn stiff all the time now and
00:54:21.620
i wonder if all the lightly loaded squats and lunges i did in the past kind of following you
00:54:28.420
know like a a bunch of thrusters to a run or something if that had impacted my knees so we've
00:54:34.740
gotten away from if we're going to work a deep squatting movement we're going to go either really
00:54:40.100
heavy or body weight we're not going to do just moderate loaded stuff we so our programming i guess
00:54:45.620
i'm trying to impart is that we're always evaluating what we're doing trying to do it better thinking
00:54:51.380
about mission performance long-term longevity for the athletes mission durability all those types
00:54:57.620
of things and if you're doing your job well no matter what your profession is you're always looking
00:55:01.940
to continuously improve and with that continuous improvement uh from the athlete's perspective
00:55:07.540
is this programming that hopefully is getting them ready for their job but also is really interesting
00:55:15.220
and intriguing to do um and hopefully keeping them interested in their programming and their
00:55:20.260
training and uh making them fit for their jobs awesome well rob this has been a great conversation
00:55:26.260
where can people go to learn more about what you do at mti and find out more about signing up for some
00:55:30.100
of your programs you have available yeah just our website just uh mtntactical.com and uh
00:55:37.860
everything's right there rob shawl thanks so much for your time it's been a pleasure thank you so much
00:55:43.380
brett my guest today was rob shawl he's the founder and president of the mountain tactical institute
00:55:48.340
you can find more information about the programming they do there at mountain tactical institute by going
00:55:52.260
to ntntactical.com also check out our show notes at aom.is tactical athlete where you can find links
00:55:59.060
to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the art
00:56:12.100
of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website
00:56:16.100
at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy our show appreciate it if you give us a review on itunes
00:56:20.020
or teacher it helps us out a lot as always thank you for your continued support and until next time