#70 - Training Around BS Mandatory PT

Mandatory PT can feel like a bad hand dealt. The problem isn't mandatory PT - it's that somewhere along the way we lost sight of the intent.

Maybe you have seen it in your unit: 

• Bear crawls
• Daily time trials
• Thousands of calisthenics
• Ruck and plate carrier runs with no purpose

For what? What's the goal? Are we improving or just getting tired? Do you actually have to be there for an hour or are we just checking a box?

We can't change your PT. But in this episode we break down how to supplement around it, protect your readiness, own your intensity, and stack wins everywhere else - so you're still 24/7/365 ready. 

Lets connect: 

Run with Staying Power - Free 8-Week Running base builder

Uniform Strong -  Carry. Endure. Lift. Recover. - Stop Gambling With Your Readiness

Free Assessment – 24/7/365 Readiness Evaluation

Free Newsletter – Tactical training insights twice weekly 

Website - Everyday Responder Articles 

Instagram – @everydayresponders

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, what's going on, everybody? Welcome to the Everyday Responder Podcast. And we got a fun one today talking about everybody's favorite topic: mandatory PT. We're gonna unpack this from multiple different angles, go over some strategies and tactics. And more importantly, if your unit is doing a bad job with mandatory PT, showcase and give you some strategies and tactics of what you can do to kind of train around it, to be honest. So we'll get right into it. Um, again, this is gonna be all my opinion. This is not, you know, fact, but it's based off of my experience. So, in my experience, mandatory PT should be to bring up the bottom line, right? It's more of a sustainment tool or a spot check or evaluation to make sure that people are doing what they are supposed to be doing, right? In my opinion, you are never going to find or or create elite performance by trying to hit everyone by running the same exact playbook, right? We want to treat it as a spot check or you know, a quick punchy, something like that, where we are seeing, okay, who is training, who is doing what they're supposed to be doing outside of the uniform or outside of mandatory stuff, and and they're they're good to go, right? Who is completely lagging behind and not even close and not even with the pack when it comes to man when it comes to overall execution of the PT, okay, that is the person that we are targeting. We are trying to elevate that, elevate them. So again, if you are already training outside of mandatory PT and you are doing what you're supposed to be doing, it shouldn't be to say, hey, we are going to absolutely freaking blast you with this mandatory PT and make sure that we improve you even more. I think that is where we go wrong. And when we do that, we kind of shoot for everybody and usually we bottom out, right? We absolutely break the bottom. Um, so again, I think that it should be more of a sustainment tool. And for somewhere or somewhere along the way, we we kind of forgot that and get and got lost with it. So, in my experience, uh, you know, I people will say, Oh, you don't have to do mandatory PT Monday through Friday, yada, yada, yada. And to a certain extent, you'd be right. However, I will say that I literally just did mandatory PT with my unit, um, which I am not complaining about. I think it's a great opportunity for everyone, and thankfully it is done right. So uh I will also say that I ran I actually ran the group PT program and facilitated mandatory PT. I actually made it, uh I helped make it, I should say, a thing at the unit. So uh again, I luckily I had great leadership, and I still do have great leadership to the that kind of gave me the reins, me and my uh my coworker the reins and said, Hey, we'll give you top cover, just run with it, do what you need to do. Right. So again, that is phenomenal. I am grateful for that. And I know not everybody has that opportunity, but I wanted to get into some of our tactics that we use that were helpful. Again, if you can't, you know, necessarily change your PT or do certain like do certain things like that. This first portion is gonna be more of like ideas, more things to think about, um, more things to maybe pitch to whoever's running the show, um, whatever that may may be, right? But I will tell you right now, just complaining to somebody is never gonna work. I've always found the tactic of like, hey, we are not going to just whine, bitch, and moan about this. Let's come up with a solution and let's actually pitch a uh flushed out solution so you can just hand somebody a finished product. So do not just sit here and and complain about, oh, this is not doing what it's supposed to be doing. This is not helping, yada yada yada, and and not have a fix. That is not productive and it's just gonna make matters worse. So getting into some of the tactics that we used, again, obviously there's nuance here depending on the size of the unit, depending on the equipment availability, different things like that. But some of the different things though that I kind of focused on with our mandatory PT is the first thing here. Like we we did some things that are that required thinking and strategy. So it wasn't just, hey, we're going to beat the crap out of you for an hour, right? It would be like, hey, we're going to break out in teams, we're going to create a point system, and now we're going to embrace that competitive integrity with everyone. So maybe there's like push-ups, carries, running, planks, etc., and we're going to build point systems, and the team that wins has bragging rights, right? Maybe we're doing a uh 20-minute amrap or a 30-minute amrap and seeing which team has the totals. Now the commander or whoever is going to send out an email talking about the winner, yada, yada, yada, right? Like you're building something bigger than just like is smoking people. So that is on a say, just for example, like a weekly basis or a monthly basis or whatever that may be. But again, not just focusing on okay, we are going to train the test. This is what we were doing, but we're going to use thinking and strategy. So maybe even sometimes like people would hate this, but it's like, hey, the lowest ranking member is going to be the team lead. Or, you know, the the highest ranking member can't do any of the strategy, or whatever that may be. But again, you're trying to have uh, do I dare say fun or like building morale, um, different things like that throughout the process. Now you can formulate it so teams are running by each other, talking shit to each other as you uh as you run by each other, things like that. And before you know it, wow, people are actually having fun and we're moving in the right direction when it comes to mandatory PT. Again, with something like that, you can also see who's kind of dragging ass on your team, right? It's like, okay, this person is not doing, you know, not pulling their weight. Maybe we need to do off the off to the side, um, like in the future, not off to the side of the event. But maybe we could do uh we'll we'll do some focus points or target some weaknesses for this person, right? Another thing that I think is a massive, massive freaking focus is teaching different intensities when it comes to conditioning. We for some reason in a lot of the mandatory PT that I've seen um is you know, all gas, no breaks. We're going to we're going to red line runs, um, don't be last, and we're just gonna full send it every single day, every single run, right? That does not teach much to anything other than you know the the mental capacity portion of the the mental endurance, right? We want to actually teach easy, moderate, and hard. We'll go for you know a certain duration over distance, right? Splitting it up and and treating things with different intensity is going to actually teach us how to dial in our internal monitor so we can actually improve our pacing for something like a two-mile, right? So, with when you're focusing on easy, moderate, and hard, that is such an easy tool to have the person auto-regulate where it's like, hey, easy, everybody's pace is gonna look a little bit different, but make sure you can keep a conversational pace, for example. Hey, we're going to run intervals. Yeah, some people are going to blast to the front, sure, like those are the people that are already doing what they're supposed to be doing. Other people are gonna have to slow down. That is totally fine. But again, the the big purpose here is not just you know running a two-mile until we are falling over or just until it turns into a slug fest. We are actually teaching people how to figure out their pacing to improve their two mile time. So we are training our aerobic capacity, we aren't training the two mile. So uh a couple other examples here, and I don't want to just belabor this, but um, you know, maybe we're doing, you know, mixed modality sessions and we're partnering up with people and one person's resting, one person's working, right? Or we're doing a unit diagnostic, right? Diagnostics are are tools that uh I think are still for some reason underutilized, where they're a free spot check where it's like, hey, we could see where you're at. So there's in my opinion, no reason to fail a PT test, right? Like you know it's coming, you it's an open book test, you know where you need to be. And if we can practice that, why not just do it as a unit that we could see where everybody's at? And at that point, if I am or I am a supervisor, if I have you know some of the troops that I'm supervising falling behind and not even close on their two mile, I'm going to take them aside and we're gonna come up with a game plan. Or, you know, if I have somebody who's absolutely thriving on a diagnostic, it's like, okay, just keep keep doing what you're doing. Um, and at that point, mandatory PT with everybody is, you know, not a huge lift. It's like, okay, we'll just, you know, you should have the mindset of just saying, okay, we'll just get it done, and then I'll go do what I need to do. So the reason why, and uh the reason why like this topic came up is I have a couple of different clients that I'm working with who are in the blender with mandatory PT Monday through Friday. Now, uh again, we we are not doing the training that we have in isolation. That is again the recipe, a recipe for burnout, a recipe for injuries, a recipe for you know just burning the candle at both ends. So what I've been doing is hey, we're going to offset what we're what you are already mandated to do with PT, and we are going to supplement that. So I'm going to talk a little bit about that and kind of our tactics, just so you have some uh some information to go off of if your unit is is uh butchering unit PT. But the onslaught of things, and I leave a slot in our uh in our training so they can plug in you know what they are doing. So again, we have a better idea of how to offset that. And I'm seeing some of the the sessions that they're doing, and it is absolutely insane, right? Like there is no way that some of these sessions that they're doing are sustained or are gonna be sustained for anybody. I don't care how fit you are, right? The the idea here is people are literally just gonna break, and it is the most frustrating thing to sit back and just watch that and be like, this is this is insane. Like we're talking about you know, weekly ruck runs with everybody, we're talking about bear crawls for a certain distance to burpees to uh a mile quote unquote sprint. Like it's just it's it's a bunch of nonsense, and we're not talking about um SF units, and even if we were talking about SF units or some sort of you know, specialized unit that like they still probably wouldn't be training this way. So why are we training this way for um you know for your your average unit, right? It's just it's nonsense to me, but you know, uh and like some of the the tactics that I even gave are obviously far from perfect, but I think that is what I'm really trying to hit home, is that is why you must train outside of PT, right? PT is never going to get you where you need to be because it's almost impossible to hit everybody's weakness, to hit what every single individual needs in a group setting for uh you know 30 to an hour a day, right? So um uh again, I I've seen uh plate carrier runs with no purpose, um, hundreds of reps of calisthenics, like the the toughest mile where we're lunging, you know, like uh 200 meters or whatever that may be, the world's hardest mile. We are, you know, I've seen this too, where we're rotating who is voluntold to run it. So there's absolutely zero continuity with what people are doing on a day-to-day basis. One week it's gonna be this unit in charge, the next week it's gonna be this unit, the next week it's gonna be this unit, and they're not speaking to each other, and there's no progressions, there's no vision. It's just like, okay, we'll just figure out on the fly what we should be doing. And again, that always reverts to hey, let's just, you know, make people tired, right? That is that is what we are targeting here, I guess. I'm not sure, right? So every single time I always ask, like, what is the goal? What is the long-term vision? You know, what is the intent of this session? Like, why are we doing this? And are people actually improving? Are people moving in the right direction? Because again, if we are not doing any kind of spot check or treating it as an evaluation, how do we know what we're doing is working? The only thing that we're gonna see that it that is or why it's not working is more profiles, more injuries, more people falling out. Like, okay, this is not working, let's try something else, right? And that is a terrible way to uh to treat performance and to treat readiness. So, something that comes to mind every time this topic comes up with mandatory PT or uh testing or different things like that, Goodheart's Law always comes to comes to mind. And I've talked about it before in a podcast, but Goodhart's Law is essentially when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. So this is when you know we start, we try to start optimizing for certain things or optimizing for metrics. We stop reflecting on what we are actually supposed to be doing. So again, I've heard I I've actually helped create a client or helped create mandatory PT for a client. And they were like, Yeah, uh leadership thought this was really good. The only thing that they said was, we're not gonna be there for an hour, so we need to stretch it out. I'm like, I'm like, so okay, so we're gonna add a bunch of nonsense to make sure that you are there for an hour. Like, what are we talking about? Um, so that was one thing, and I'm like, okay, I'll add in 20 minutes of stretching or 20 minutes of uh a group walk. Like, what are we talking about? And I to give like some examples for Goodheart's Law that I think are outside, um, you know, at some times, sometimes mandatory PT or different things like that, just to give you some more context on it and why it is detrimental to everything that we're shooting for when it comes to overall readiness. So, one example here somebody who full sends it every 400, they're doing 400 meter repeats, they just absolutely full send it. There's no pacing, um, you know, everything is is kind of falling off the wagon after the first couple ones, and then we just drop down to a slight jog on the last one, right? So eventually we may get some faster 400 times, but we have zero pacing ability and no base, right? So again, if we were to target, you know, just 400 meter, uh uh 400 meter competition, or if you are like a track star, okay, that might be one thing. But if you are trying to improve your two mile, for example, or improve your aerobic capacity, and you are just blasting out of your 400s, you are just teaching yourself how to slow down, right? No good. Another one here is restricted diets for the scale, where it's like we look at the scale and it is like, I need that scale to go down. I need to be an arbitrary 170, 175 pounds, right? So we're going to go on a restrictive diet. Yes, we are going to lose weight, right? That is not hard, but we are not going to lose, uh, we are going to lose muscle and we were going to tank our performance, right? So, yeah, we can play the scale game, but that doesn't mean that everything else is going to be a better outcome. I already talked about, you know, the one hour of PT. That that is something that absolutely blows my mind where it's like, nope, we have to be here for an hour. I don't care if we are finished. We need to be doing something for an hour. So uh, since we need to be here, we might as well do some more bear crawls or let's do another round of this uh insane, you know, 10 exercise circuit. Um, again, just we're we're just accumulating fatigue without any real payoff. So uh and last one here is something that you know gets me fired up, as you could probably hear. It's hey, we're gonna chase dashboards and trackers, right? Let's make sure that everybody is green on the tracker, and and we'll talk about PT here. Let's make sure everybody is green when it comes to PT tests. That's the only thing that I'm looking at. I'm not looking at anything else when it comes to the person's actual performance. I am going to just look at this tracker or this dashboard. Oh, people are getting green. This person's red, they need to fix themselves. Um, but again, we are not, you know, focusing on, we're not looking at or we're not accounting for strength, power, recovery, mental capacity, um, burnout, all those things are invisible with a dashboard or a tracker. So again, if we just were to trace the tracker or just to uh just to chase the the dashboard, we are not seeing, we are blind to all the other things. So, yes, you may look green on paper, but that does not mean you are green in the real world. So, say a deployment came or a school, like maybe you got an opportunity short notice to go to airborne or something like that, and it is like, hey, like this person is green, that does not mean they have the strength or durability or overall physical resilience to be able to handle something like that. So, very, very important. The answer here is not to ignore mandatory PT or ignore your test. Obviously, they are there for a reason. However, if the goal is to build such a broad base that passing anything becomes a product, right? So that is why we need to train for the job, and everything else will take care of itself. So if you were to think about a well-rounded tactical athlete, right, they are strong, they are strong relative to their body weight, they have a good aerobic capacity, they can sprint, they can jump, they can throw, they can hop, right? All these different types of things. They have, you know, work capacity in a certain time domain or time duration. They will be good to go on a test. I don't care what the test is, right? That is the goal with what we should be doing on a day-to-day basis. So I've been ranting here. What I want to do now is get into what I've done with some of my clients who, again, are trying to work around the mandatory madness. Um, and I've already talked about what that looks like, but it is so frustrating to see that. Um, where it's like, oh yeah, we're gonna do, we're gonna do this. Or uh this run was a little bit too easy. Let's add in, let's make sure everybody's in kit, right? Let's make make sure everybody's in kit and let's add 30 pounds to everybody. I know we don't really have an aerobic base, but that's how we'll build it, right? Let's just add 30 pounds to everybody and just accumulate more volume. Oh, let's do uh, you know, uh 10 calisthenic exercises and we'll accumulate over time like 400. Yeah, let's go, let's go 500 air squats over over the course of the session, maybe uh, you know, 600 or 700 lunges. It's like, what are we doing? That is a that is a lot, a lot, a lot of volume. I don't care, you know, if it's body weight, that that still matters. That is something that's definitely overlooked when it comes to calisthenics and something that's not considered where it's like, oh, it's it's lightweight, right? It's light rapes, lightweight. We can go high reps here and and we'll be good to go, right? And it's like, okay, well, um, maybe your your shoulders will start talking to you, or all of a sudden your knees are talking to you, or do I dare say the the words shin splints where it's like, oh, you know, you're not tough enough, you're getting shin splints, but uh again, the uh shin splints are a symptom of of bad programming or progressing too fast, not a diagnosis, right? It's not like oh, you have shin splints, um, gotta gotta sit this one out. It's like, no, let's reflect on what you've done. That is why you have shin splints. So, okay, getting into some of the things that I would focus on. So I always say, especially with any kind of mandatory PT, strength training is you know oftentimes avoided because it requires strategy, it requires equipment, it requires, you know, um a gym location, it requires all those things. And if you have a crazy amount of people, obviously it is unrealistic to say, hey, everybody go in the gym. Oh shit, we only have you know two squat racks, three squat racks. We're not gonna be able to, you know, accommodate 25, 40, 50 people, right? So yeah, that's obvious, and that is the exact reason why we need to be hitting strength outside of mandatory PT. So I personally think that strength training is that leverage point for you know individual tactical athletes that that need improvement, right? This is gonna make us more resilient, it's gonna be able to have us uh be able to handle more impact when it comes to running, when it comes to rucking, those different things. But again, we want to increase that overall resilience, and that is what we need to focus on. So, what is that person's limiter? You know, if they are struggling with a runtime, if they are struggling with overuse injuries, we want to find a pattern that works for them where we can hang out in the lower rep ranges. So we're not accumulating a ton of volume. This is just quick, punchy. Hey, we're going to hang out in the low rep ranges, right? So a couple of different tools is like, hey, we're Going to go for three RMs rep maxes. We're going to go for five RMs, right? In one to five sets, right? So nothing crazy. We want to just hit that strength stimulus, especially if you're doing all these other, all these other things. Hit it and get out of there. So even if it is like a 15 to 20 minute session, maybe you're focusing on two to four movements. Uh again, keeping the volume low, you are already likely accumulating a crap ton of volume. But we can supplement that. Maybe it's two days. Maybe it's, you know, day one is a squat, a row, and maybe some accessory work. Day two, hinge press, maybe some accessory work, and get the hell out of there. Right. So obviously, you know, I think that would be ideal. Um, trying to work through some of the other chaos or some of the other nonsense, but making sure that that you are strong enough to handle the demands is extremely, extremely important. So kind of along the same lines there with strength training, making sure that we are training through a full range of motion. So uh again, I like strength training, in my opinion, is the best form of mobility. Obviously, you could do additional mobility work if you have a certain thing that's bothering you, if you have tight hips, if you have a bad lower back, something like that. Yes, like we could we could do additional mobility. But what I like to do is throw in movement patterns where, yeah, we're not going to be able to load these movement patterns up to say, for example, um get into that three rep max or that five rep max, nor should you. But what I like to do is is kind of throw in some different movement patterns where it's like, hey, maybe we're doing deficit reverse lunges to open up the hips. Maybe we're doing a landmine lateral squat. So again, we can open up the hips. Maybe we're doing deficit push-ups, but more at a tempo type or more with a slower tempo where we are actually sitting at the bottom and getting some mobility and stability with our shoulders. Maybe it's a you know, something like a half-kneeling single arm cable row where we're really stretching out the shoulders, getting a full range of motion with a uh kind of like a rotational pattern there with the back as well, right? We're moving in different planes, we're focusing on different things. Maybe it's machines, so we're not kind of banging you up a little bit. Um, so again, I I think the focus should be, you know, less time stretching or less time trying to get, you know, ahead of mandatory madness, because a lot of times we can't, but more time building in in different ranges of motion, I think will will pay massive dividends. Because, you know, typically people are absolutely smoked and then they just spend more time, you know, ice bath, foam rolling, um, supplements, right? But we want to actually build throughout the process. And again, you could do some of these, even body weight, right? We don't need to load these up super heavy, but treating them more as a mobility stimulus while still doing strength training, I've found is a is a good opportunity or a a uh a good tool that people actually use. Because yeah, I could say, hey, we're going to do this 15-minute, you know, yoga flow, and people would probably look at me like I have four heads. But, you know, we could also do, hey, we're going to do deficit reverse lunges, uh, low, low weight, high intent. Um, let's make sure we we elevate the deficit a little bit higher or make the deficit bigger. And now all of a sudden it's like, oh yeah, I'll do that. That's quote unquote strength training. So uh a little pro tip there. So another thing that I would focus on if you have the the craziness is um some low impact, low impact training, right? So I said earlier that shin splints are a symptom, not a diagnosis. And I think that's very important. Where yeah, if you're doing you know, kit runs or ruck runs or all these different, you know, accumulating a ton of volume that you haven't built for, all those different types of things. Like, yes, you're going to get shin splints, and then you're you're or you may get shin splints, um, or you may just be selling yourself short, right? You're trying to build a a house on a weak foundation. Um, but this is a good way to kind of build a your aerobic capacity without accumulating impact. Now it's not going to necessarily have a direct transfer into your runs, but it's going to increase your aerobic capacity. So this is a good thing for you know active recovery. It's great for just movement in general. Um, it's good for, like I had mentioned, your capacity. So there's always, in my opinion, room for some sort of low impact. For some people, it might be an inclined walk, right? Getting the blood flow, uh, blood flow moving. Uh maybe, maybe it's a bike, maybe it's a rower, maybe you're rotating the the the two or three, maybe it's a stairmaster, elliptical, so on. Like the it kind of um there's there's no necessarily rules here, but the goal is to you know keep building your capacity, capacity, keep building your recoverability when it comes to some of these things without accumulating more impact, especially if you are doing kit runs or different things like that. So that tool there with low impact, it's not obviously going to eliminate some of the nonsense, but I think it can help protect what we need to protect when it comes to readiness, recovery, energy, and most importantly, staying power. So don't feel like if you want to improve your run times, you are already running with PT, and now all of a sudden it's like, okay, well, I need to do more running. Like that's that's what's gonna improve my runtime. Um, obviously, there's nuance with this take. Yeah, that that could help, but it could just put you in a blender. So it might be important to add in some low impact. Maybe that is the the current solution. So another one here that I think is arguably the most important out of all these, um, because it can directly affect your output when it comes to mandatory PT. But I have a rule for my clients and I tell them own the intensity before you walk in. Right. So, what I mean by that is we set up targets and we try to undulate some of the mandatory PT that they are doing by the intent that we are focusing on. So some days it might be, I might put in a note. Hey, the goal here is to keep an easy intent regardless of what you're doing. So, even if you are doing, you know, uh intervals, say your units doing intervals and you're doing speed work, there is nothing saying that you need to just go full bore and pedal to the metal on every single interval. Maybe it's like, okay, I, you know, I was supposed to keep an easy intent here. Maybe I just treat them as easy intervals. And I know that sounds backwards, but that is something that maybe that's the focus for the day. Right? So it doesn't mean that we need to be, you know, all gas, no breaks, regardless of what's going on. So maybe, you know, calisthenics on one day, um, instead of going for total amount of reps or just absolutely blasting through for 30 seconds or a minute, two minutes, whatever you have to do. Maybe it's like, hey, I don't care about my totals today. Maybe our goal here is just greasing the groove. We're going to practice max, max, max intent. We are going to treat these as training reps, not testing reps, right? We're not going to just blast through, go for a total number. Maybe we are just going to kind of go really, really slow, grease the groove, and just essentially practice these movement patterns. Maybe on the two mile, if you have like a two-mile time trial, maybe that day is where we want to be more moderate. We don't want to turn this into a time trial. So we'd put that note. Hey, pick a pace where the you could probably sustain for 10 or 15 more minutes. Right. So I don't care about your times. We want to practice pacing. Let's try to sit at X pace for this run, right? So now we're taking, instead of it being a red line run, we're treating this as practice and we're backing off a little bit, treating it as moderate here. So again, that I think those are the most important ones because it's something that can directly impact the intent of mandatory PT. And this is the hardest one to sell because you know it's one of those things where it's like, oh, I can't fall behind, or I can't be running at this pace, or I can't be, you know, uh falling behind on my push-up numbers against everybody else. So it's very hard to sell, but I think this is the most important one, like I mentioned, especially to staying power. So every session does not need to be putting you through the gauntlet or treating it as a gut check. It could be like, okay, well, I'm going to undulate my intensity. Maybe this day is going to be uh easy, this day is going to be moderate, and this day is going to be hard. So you can kind of create the left and right bounds, like I mentioned, and create your own mandatory PT uh within your mandatory PT, right? So we can uh we can kind of dictate our own intensity. And again, that's gonna help with readiness, recovery, and uh the overall intent. So if somebody is not giving you the vision or giving you the strategy for your PT, I think it's on you to kind of make one, right? And that's not a good solution. I'm not super happy about that, but it it's what we got to do. So the last one here that I'm gonna go over, and then we will wrap, is find more ways to win, right? That is the bottom line where, yeah, it's you're being voluntole to do it, you have to do it, and I I think you should do it, obviously, if your whole unit's doing it. Um, but you know, maybe you were dealt a bad hand with Monday through Friday training, right? So we could either wait and just hope that it gets better or hope that you improve, or we could start switching our focus and focus on things outside of training where you can still collect wins. So maybe that is hey, we're going to really, really, really these next couple months dial in nutrition. So I want to learn a little bit about how my body responds with pre and post fueling, with uh my nutrition. I'm gonna maybe weigh myself, I'm gonna do all these things and we're gonna find some wins there. Maybe we don't want to lose weight too fast. So that's something we're gonna monitor. We're gonna find maintenance, we're gonna find a surplus, and we're gonna dial things in where we can practice. Oh, this meal actually works for me. I felt really good today. That is what I'm gonna have pre-test when that time comes, right? So we can find wins when it comes to, say, for example, nutrition. Maybe it's also an opportunity to lock in some daily non-negotiables where it's like, yeah, I know I know I have PT in the morning. Um, instead of staying up late and scrolling, I'm going to implement a new standard or a new habit where it's like my phone is gonna be down by 8:30 p.m. every single night, no questions asked. We are getting it done. Right. So that is what I'm going to do. I'm gonna put my phone on the charger on the other side of the room, away from my bed. So I get up in the morning and I don't scroll. And that is what I'm gonna focus on. That's gonna be a win for me. Maybe it's gonna be a hydration target, right? So, and honestly, what I will do with the the clients who are doing mandatory BT is I look at it as like our goal with the app that we use. Um, if they don't do a session, it turns red. If they do do something, it turns green. So, my goal for them is we want to see green on a week-to-week basis. So, what are some other ways that we could find wins to see green? Right. And we know that I know that they are doing things outside of if there is a missed session. So I'm not absolutely beating them down, but it is like the thought process is hey, we're gonna put you know 75 uh 7,500 steps per day, and we are going to hit that on a day-to-day basis, right? That is an easy win, not necessarily easy. There's gonna have to be times when you go out for walks and stuff like that. You have to make that conscious effort and conscious decision. But there are gonna be days where it's like, hey, that that's green on the schedule. Um, I did what I could, I had to do this for mandatory PT. Um, it is what it is. It's like, okay, let's flex, let's do the uh the strength that you miss tomorrow, if possible. Right. So for such competitive tactical athletes, we always kind of set ourselves up for failure where it is like, if I miss this, I lost. And it's like, why don't we just find more ways to win? Like, that is not an excuse to just load up the schedule with a bunch of things that you know you can crush, but it's something to think about where it's like, hey, was I consistent with the non-negotiables that I set? Oh wow, that's a win. Was I, you know, did I consistently, can I honestly say that I hit 7,500 steps every day? Where are the numbers? Did I do that? Cool, that's a win, right? Did I read every single night, like I said I was gonna do for 10 minutes, five pages, whatever that may be. Did you? Yes, cool. That's a win, right? So we're we're still keeping that momentum, even though it might not be perfect or seamless with training, because we know that's not gonna be the case. So we don't want to set ourselves up for failure by expecting perfection because we're never gonna hit it. So all those things that I listed, I I will challenge you every day of the week. Those for the most part are in your control, right? None of that requires permission, none of that requires um you to be there at X time for an hour, right? Like you are doing those things and that those are in your control. So get those done, find when's there. So I'm gonna wrap up here. Again, I was asked this question. Uh, I think it's a good, good endpoint, but it's like, what would you do for mandatory PT? Like, how would you structure it? I talked about that a little bit, but I really wanted to simplify it here. Hey, we need strength and power, right? We need strength training, lower rep ranges. We need to jump, throw, hop, multi-directional, get after that on a week-to-week basis, maybe two to three times per week. We need to conditioning, condition at all intensities. I would say for mandatory PT, especially at easy, um, we don't always need to go hard. We don't even need to go that that moderate range tempo threshold-ish. We can go easy for the majority of time. If you want to go hard or you really want to ramp up your uh your your mileage or drastically drop your run times, yeah, you're gonna need to do hard on the outside. But for the people that are barely passing, you know, you do easy conditioning, you will pass your BT test if you're doing that on a consistent basis. So why don't we treat it as sustainment and do um do easy conditioning as a unit, teach people how to do it, teach the intent of it, and then uh people will pass their test and people will improve their aerobic capacity. The people who are already crushing it can benefit from more easy work. Now they have a bigger foundation, they have something more solid aerobic base. Everybody wins. Um, and then the last thing here so specificity, practice, right? That is that is what we can do a couple times per week, maybe once or twice. Now we can focus on calisthenics. Now we can focus on you know pacing practice. Now we can focus on planks, now we can focus on all those things that we need to for a test, but we shouldn't allot all our time, Monday through Friday, an hour a day, just to either make somebody tired, to uh train them like they are going to, you know, be some superhero or whatever that may be, just like training in onslaught of volume and intensity just to to see if they are are mentally tough or to see if they have grit. Um, and now we actually have bandwidth to recover and adapt and create more resilient tactical athletes, not somebody who can just pass a test or uh fall victim to Good Heart's Law.