Speaker 1: Ah beaute force. If it doesn't work, you're just not
Speaker 1: using enough. You're listening to Software Radio Special Operations, military
Speaker 1: news and straight talk with the guys and the community
Speaker 1: Software Radio on Time on Target really excited this show.
Speaker 1: We have Doug in studio with us, who's a former
Speaker 1: Air Force PJ. We also have Gens on, who you
Speaker 1: guys know from the load out room really as Rex
Speaker 1: the Norum, which I forget sometimes, uh, Gen's I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna call you rights Um, because I remember when we
Speaker 1: had you on, like really briefly at last year's shot show.
Speaker 1: I was always under the impression that you wrote as
Speaker 1: Gen's and then I was like, looking back on the website,
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, I'm wrong. No, you know, is that
Speaker 1: like your name in the Necromandican or something like that. No,
Speaker 1: not quite. It's um, No, it's right, nick name just
Speaker 1: translated to Latin. Yeah. I was running into issues Google
Speaker 1: my actual name. You're gonna get a lot of very
Speaker 1: not safe for work results for a certain film star
Speaker 1: work coriminated and I had no idea. I wouldn't recommend it.
Speaker 1: I really don't. That's all right. To avoid any confusion
Speaker 1: with that guy and uh, you know, keep my name
Speaker 1: clear so to speak. Um, I went ahead and use
Speaker 1: my nickname. I never heard that story, but it kind
Speaker 1: of makes a gens ever, it sounds like a good base.
Speaker 1: So alright, So anyway, before we get into everything with
Speaker 1: you and get into everything with Doug, of course, want
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Speaker 1: the site that gens or Rex is a part of.
Speaker 1: UH I did some great reviews of it, so check
Speaker 1: out the load out room. Load outroom dot com. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: you know what, we'll get into Rex's background or Gen's background.
Speaker 1: I feel like I have to say both names because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of readers who know you as Rex Um.
Speaker 1: But first, you know, just briefly before we get into
Speaker 1: our feature interview with Doug, if you want to get
Speaker 1: into who you are, and I also want to butcher
Speaker 1: your last name, which I'm guessing is our median because yeah,
Speaker 1: the I n Yeah, yeah, my name is Dug a
Speaker 1: chi Jin. I was a power rescuement in the Air
Speaker 1: Force for thirteen years, actually the whole time with the
Speaker 1: Air National Guards, so I can get into that whole
Speaker 1: story when we get into the feature interview, but it's
Speaker 1: one of the best kept secrets of the Military Guard PJ.
Speaker 1: And then I run a private practice physical therapy clinic
Speaker 1: actually a couple of blocks south of here, so it's
Speaker 1: pretty easy to hop in the studio and like kind
Speaker 1: of like a sports performance consulting companies well with my
Speaker 1: two business partners. So that's the down and dirty, and
Speaker 1: I guess we can talk more later. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I was looking at the website. I mean, what you
Speaker 1: guys are doing is is really awesome. Uh and Jen's
Speaker 1: if you want to just briefly mentioned your background and
Speaker 1: then we'll get into what went down a Shot show
Speaker 1: since none of us were there this year, but you
Speaker 1: guys were sure and well, as stated Jen's hammer right
Speaker 1: under Rex and the Norum Um writing to load at
Speaker 1: Room for almost three years now. Just recently Um jumped
Speaker 1: on with hamml Land as well, be writing the first
Speaker 1: artup with them. Shortly. Yuh. It served in the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army Second Range of Italian for four years. I got
Speaker 1: out after five deployments and uh, it took a while
Speaker 1: to find my next gig, but eventually got back into
Speaker 1: civilion life and figured out what the hell was going
Speaker 1: on and got back on track. Very cool man, Well,
Speaker 1: pretty much every year I've been at Shot show, I
Speaker 1: think you've been there. So which what number of Shot
Speaker 1: show is this for you? This is my third one? Oh? Really?
Speaker 1: I thought I thought you were more for some reason, because,
Speaker 1: like Jack, you've been to how many enough to have
Speaker 1: a star over my c I B I think I
Speaker 1: did like seven seven Shot shows in a row, so
Speaker 1: this is the first time I took off. Um, But man,
Speaker 1: that's an experience. Yeah, I would agree. Going as many
Speaker 1: times as I have, not not quite seven. But jen's
Speaker 1: what was unique about this year? What did you enjoy?
Speaker 1: What what new innovations are out there? Sure? Well, first
Speaker 1: I had a lot of people ask you know, what
Speaker 1: kind of what's different about this year and being my
Speaker 1: third year? Um, the experience itself is different. You know,
Speaker 1: your first year you really fight the venue. I mean
Speaker 1: just trying to figure out where the hell everything is,
Speaker 1: how it's laid out, where all these signs pointing me? Um.
Speaker 1: Last year, my second, I got into the swing of things,
Speaker 1: and then you're kind of fight in appointments. You want
Speaker 1: to make so many appointments so you can feat so
Speaker 1: many things and and really end up running from one
Speaker 1: appointment to the next, missing all the cool books in between. UM.
Speaker 1: This my third or I had a lot more time
Speaker 1: that was unscheduled. I just kind of free form and
Speaker 1: get out there and check out some of the lesser
Speaker 1: known booths. UM. I think for me, the theme I
Speaker 1: saw this year was kind of a little bit smaller,
Speaker 1: a little bit lighter, a little bit more expensive. UM.
Speaker 1: A lot of iterational improvements for for some companies, UM
Speaker 1: Loophole jumped back into the red Dot game. They had
Speaker 1: a really nice one back when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: and get picked up my first loophole red Dot when
Speaker 1: I was like sixteen and lasted almost ten years. Pretty
Speaker 1: rough abuse. They've got the v X Freedom red Dot.
Speaker 1: They've generally generationally improved their l t O tracker to
Speaker 1: the two and the two h D as well. One
Speaker 1: of the big drawbacks to their little handheld demo is
Speaker 1: that it just wasn't quite enough, not enough range, not
Speaker 1: enough resolution. Everyone who used one agreed it's pretty cool, um,
Speaker 1: but it was just a little bit limited. And now
Speaker 1: they've really widened their scope. No punt ended um X products.
Speaker 1: You know, they've had their their flamethrowers and their can
Speaker 1: launches and stuff. A few years they came up with
Speaker 1: the XM forty two light, a little shorter, little lighter
Speaker 1: a couple of seconds last runtime on the flamethrower. Um,
Speaker 1: if I remember right off the top of my head,
Speaker 1: there they're old X forty two flamestor at like a
Speaker 1: thirty two ft range, just one has and burn time
Speaker 1: is reduced by three or four seconds. This is an
Speaker 1: actual flamethrower that they're selling, actual flametoor. Yeah, it runs
Speaker 1: on fifty fifty gas and diesel. M The diesel give
Speaker 1: us it a little lower volatility and a little more
Speaker 1: range since a little bit denser liquid, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: ignite quite so quickly. You really spit it out there. Um,
Speaker 1: I've got to get my hands on one. They you know,
Speaker 1: they're not really interested in a whole lot more media coverage.
Speaker 1: You're pretty saturated and and I'm glad that they've done so.
Speaker 1: But they're just down the street here in Portland. I've
Speaker 1: got to go get one. We said it was like
Speaker 1: four d bucks dealer costs. I've got to find an excuse.
Speaker 1: I gotta burn something useful for cleaning out Japanese pill boxes,
Speaker 1: yep or industrial lawns. You know, whatever you've got lying
Speaker 1: around it just needs to go now. Um. Also down
Speaker 1: the street, danner Um they've got their new full board boot.
Speaker 1: I've done a lot of work with dan over the
Speaker 1: last couple of years. I did a factory tour. They're
Speaker 1: always quick to send out new products because I guess
Speaker 1: the boot markets pretty tough to really get an edge in.
Speaker 1: But I'm excited to check that out. It's a newer,
Speaker 1: bigger beef. You're yet lighter boot. UM. I don't have
Speaker 1: all the spects. I'm excited to check it out. UM.
Speaker 1: You know a bit of well known. They've got a
Speaker 1: real badass shotgowne, they've got the echo trigger, and in
Speaker 1: the last couple of years they've getted into the lightweight
Speaker 1: are market making magnesium parts. Back when they were Jesus
Speaker 1: was mag Tech, they had they bought another a magnesium
Speaker 1: lower um equipment and the problem was the old company
Speaker 1: they were having magnesium lowers split on them. So they're
Speaker 1: hyper light, but there they were self destructive. And then
Speaker 1: now they've got a magnesium aluminium alloy, so these lowers
Speaker 1: are incredibly light. I mean you pick one up and
Speaker 1: it feels like a little handful of paper clips. And
Speaker 1: now we've got them to where they should be a
Speaker 1: lot more durable. One of the bigger announcements Glock. You know,
Speaker 1: they came out their forty three X. It's just like
Speaker 1: their forty eight. The subcompacts single stack nine millimeter, which
Speaker 1: one has a little bit of the extended slim frame,
Speaker 1: a little bit higher capacity. I'm still a bit short
Speaker 1: on the slide, so it should be a good cherry gun.
Speaker 1: I got to handle one but little was too long
Speaker 1: a range day if that was a busy, busy booth
Speaker 1: five eleven. Every year they come out with cool gear
Speaker 1: and I got to top with the air backpack designer.
Speaker 1: I forget his name. I think it was Scott. It
Speaker 1: was a It was a great guy and we had
Speaker 1: about a two hour conversation. The line of their backpacks,
Speaker 1: the Apex line, and they're they're really cool. They're oh
Speaker 1: and there's so many layers all the way from why
Speaker 1: they chose this Danye fabric all the way to it
Speaker 1: is like has stopped resistance. Um, but we can use
Speaker 1: the light of fabric and get away with There's extra
Speaker 1: zippers that way. No matter if you if cameras zipper
Speaker 1: all the way to the right, there's still another one
Speaker 1: over on the left. Wherever you reached, you're gonna have something.
Speaker 1: They've even got a couple of hidden pockets that they've
Speaker 1: used bypass certain areas with with ease even a packs.
Speaker 1: I think they have the twelve hour of the twenty
Speaker 1: four and I got the seventy two. Um, A rough
Speaker 1: estimated how long you could you could survive out in
Speaker 1: the field with that thing. But it's a it's a
Speaker 1: really comfortable piece of gear. I'm excited. I've only had
Speaker 1: it for a couple of weeks now, of course, but
Speaker 1: I really want to dig into that thing and see
Speaker 1: what it can do. And one of the last things
Speaker 1: I saw it was pretty cool. I went to the
Speaker 1: Norma booth, the Swedish Amma I'm owned by their parent company,
Speaker 1: rug Ammo tech Um. They had a lot of good
Speaker 1: AMMO there. I mean, they're they're really pushing hard. They
Speaker 1: all of those brands in the Norma and and ruag line.
Speaker 1: I'd kind of gone under under the level, so to speak,
Speaker 1: the last few years. I haven't had a lot of
Speaker 1: pub city, not a lot of big releases, and now
Speaker 1: they're back and they're pushing a ton of new products.
Speaker 1: All the way from this super quality sev HMR match
Speaker 1: grade stuff was pining a one inch steel circle at
Speaker 1: a hundred yards with no problem, was holding over with
Speaker 1: little iron sights um all the way up to their
Speaker 1: normal broad strike new hunting line. It's a boat tail
Speaker 1: fish design polymer kid it still expands. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's a pretty good heavy animal realm or a few
Speaker 1: other things I saw. I mean, there was a ton
Speaker 1: of other stuff I saw, and it's really nice to
Speaker 1: go and see all the people you've been working with
Speaker 1: over the years and in really such space and get
Speaker 1: a good briefing of what's new, and you make a
Speaker 1: lot of contacts and really get to get a whole
Speaker 1: year's worth of gear lined up to review one one
Speaker 1: little show. That's for sure. Any trends in the industry,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you mentioned that, you know, things
Speaker 1: are getting a little bit lighter, a little bit more expensive.
Speaker 1: But there any other like prevailing trends that you see
Speaker 1: as far as where um, I guess you could say
Speaker 1: the tactical gear or um, you know, tactical firearms market
Speaker 1: is heading you know over maybe in the next twelve
Speaker 1: to twenty four months. Sure the gear, um, it seems
Speaker 1: like a lot of people are going back to the
Speaker 1: the less than tactical approach. I mean, every every company
Speaker 1: is going to have their their tactical timmy lineup of
Speaker 1: flat dark Earth and olive drab and molly gear everywhere.
Speaker 1: But a lot of companies are coming out with a
Speaker 1: little bit more of discrete designs, backpacks that don't look
Speaker 1: like backpacks, They don't have pash squares of velve grow
Speaker 1: all over the place, and you know, usually more muted coloring,
Speaker 1: the Wolf grade gaining a lot of popularities because it
Speaker 1: looks more casual. Eleven Apex line comes in a nice
Speaker 1: blue and it does have a hex grid on the back,
Speaker 1: which stands out a little less than the molly writing that.
Speaker 1: They also let me know they were going to come
Speaker 1: out with kind of a cover patch, so essentially they
Speaker 1: get six by eight inch flap of fabric with velcro
Speaker 1: on the back, so it covers up that entire hex
Speaker 1: creative molly webbing. Yeah, I have a I have a
Speaker 1: ruck sack made by kafar U, which is a terrific rucksack.
Speaker 1: I paid a lot of money for it, but it's awesome.
Speaker 1: The only problem with it is it's all tactical, doubt,
Speaker 1: it's got like the molly webbing on it. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's in khaki or whatever, coyote, whatever the color they
Speaker 1: call it. So I mean I don't travel really overseas
Speaker 1: with it for that reason. I mean, it just looks
Speaker 1: too paramilitary. You know. It's uh, whether you get going
Speaker 1: to get detained by somebody going through customs because of that,
Speaker 1: or I feel like it just paints a target on
Speaker 1: your back too, if for you know, um, you know,
Speaker 1: criminals or terrorists or whoever. I mean, they look at
Speaker 1: that and they say that guy must be in the military. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: You know, any time you go traveling overseas, you don't
Speaker 1: want to stand out for any of the wrong reasons,
Speaker 1: and looking like somebody who might be a target or
Speaker 1: should be a target to certain groups, that's a quick
Speaker 1: way to stand out of the crowd in all the
Speaker 1: wrong ways. They do make some more civilian looking backpacks
Speaker 1: now and like, um, like day packs, but they're still
Speaker 1: kind of paramilitary looking. And what about you, Doug, do
Speaker 1: you have any like go to brands, whether it's tactical
Speaker 1: or just like outdoor gear. Um, you know, I know
Speaker 1: you're you're an active dude. Yeah, I mean one of
Speaker 1: the nice things about the Air Force was that we
Speaker 1: pretty much got everything we got like tactical tactical gear wise,
Speaker 1: we got the civilian version as well. So I mean,
Speaker 1: forget like the security reasons, like I just don't I
Speaker 1: don't feel right traveling you know, commercial aircraft, like wearing
Speaker 1: anything that looks military, because it's only something bad can happen, right,
Speaker 1: Nothing good happens when you engage in a conversation with
Speaker 1: tactical gear and it's just like I don't like the attention.
Speaker 1: And I mean there was a time whatever, like ten
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago when you had contractors or like special
Speaker 1: Ops guys and they would wear like tactical civilian clothes
Speaker 1: but have a beer, and it was like they were
Speaker 1: fooling people. But everyone in the chow hall, even the
Speaker 1: the person who's been working there for two weeks, knows
Speaker 1: exactly who the special Ops guys are. So you're not
Speaker 1: fooling anybody with your you know, mollied out like tan backpack.
Speaker 1: So um yeah, I would say, like, luckily I got
Speaker 1: enough gear where I could get the civilian version of
Speaker 1: whatever tactical gear we were initially issued, and so a
Speaker 1: lot of it was more like civilian mountaineering gear, um
Speaker 1: really really versatile and just holds up to the weather
Speaker 1: and the elements, but doesn't draw a lot of attention.
Speaker 1: And if it does, somebody's probably gonna say, hey, are
Speaker 1: you a climber. They're not gonna say, oh, are you
Speaker 1: like put the military. And I'd rather pretend to be
Speaker 1: a climber than you know, yeah, yeah, I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: like I think my first deployment to Afghanistan and we
Speaker 1: all had our cold weather gear was like Polly Pro
Speaker 1: and then what was the other system was like the
Speaker 1: black fleece. Yes, that was the cool new thing. Uh
Speaker 1: do you know what I'm talking about? Gen's Yeah, the
Speaker 1: LEPs I think what was it called? Yep, that's it, um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the Air Force guys had like brand new
Speaker 1: mountain hardware, like they were like ready to go climb
Speaker 1: Mount Everest or something like that. I wore here today.
Speaker 1: I've got my Arctic's Guide patrolled jacket and my black
Speaker 1: Diamond uh, you know fleece there. So yeah, you know
Speaker 1: what's the irony of this, by the way, is that
Speaker 1: you guys are all, you know, for military guys looking
Speaker 1: to look civilian, and then you always see the civilian
Speaker 1: guys who want to look like they're that's tactical. And
Speaker 1: then there's also just like the fashion stuff today of
Speaker 1: like I was actually at a Chick fil A the
Speaker 1: other week, right, and I saw a black dude who
Speaker 1: was probably about like, I don't know, eighteen twenty years old,
Speaker 1: wearing this jacket that had a bunch of military patches
Speaker 1: and it had like a Macvie Sag patch. I'm pretty sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he probably didn't even know Macvie Saga was. Who knows,
Speaker 1: But it's it's just like that's become like a fashionable thing.
Speaker 1: So it's it's it's just not funny that you guys,
Speaker 1: I don't want to look like I'm you know, military.
Speaker 1: But the explanation for why and the suspicion makes sense.
Speaker 1: It's amazing too, how many people here in U in
Speaker 1: New York City or master sergeants in the Air Force.
Speaker 1: We're in the old d U s, you know, with
Speaker 1: the chevrons, and it's like wow, like that's the our
Speaker 1: uniform fifteen years ago. So who knows, Like I probably
Speaker 1: have a teammate who you know throughout their b d
Speaker 1: u s, and now someone's wearing it here. I see
Speaker 1: a lot of assault packs in New York City. A
Speaker 1: lot of people carry them, and I don't think they
Speaker 1: were in the military. I think it's just practical or
Speaker 1: or it looks cool. I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1: But and then also if you ran until like hipsters
Speaker 1: where you live in Brooklyn would be like just because
Speaker 1: of dress this way, it doesn't mean for military. Well,
Speaker 1: like I've said, in the past, Like, how ridiculous is
Speaker 1: it that the military is constantly looking at the corporate
Speaker 1: world to figure out like tips and tricks, how can
Speaker 1: we better lead our men? But then meanwhile, the corporate
Speaker 1: world is like, oh, we need to get like General
Speaker 1: McCrystal in here to teach us how military leadership is.
Speaker 1: Like who the fund is teaching who? Everyone's trying to
Speaker 1: sell the same problems. It's a really good point. Not
Speaker 1: nothing is unique. No one's encountering these truly unique issues
Speaker 1: that no one else is solving. I mean everyone's struggling
Speaker 1: to deal with the same same problems for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so gen's before we let you go. Um. I
Speaker 1: also want to hear about, of course, the Create Club party,
Speaker 1: UM Oasis for Villains. How was that? That was pretty wild?
Speaker 1: Every time great club throws on a party, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a little bit mind boggling. I'm a I'm a
Speaker 1: pretty small town guy of modest means, and I walked
Speaker 1: into this place and it's at the end of this low, lonely,
Speaker 1: deserted street and you wouldn't even know that there's this
Speaker 1: massive mansion back there, and all of a sudden, on
Speaker 1: the horizon you see these huge gates, new approach and
Speaker 1: there's a security guard out front, and we see a big,
Speaker 1: leggy blonde walking in and you say, well, I figured
Speaker 1: this is probably the place, and so we could show
Speaker 1: our passes. We got into and this place was sprawling.
Speaker 1: I mean, the pool had its own swimming pool, the
Speaker 1: hot tub had an annex hot to the place was
Speaker 1: massive and it was beautiful and many many people there,
Speaker 1: a lot of cool folks. Have to meet folks from
Speaker 1: H and K. You got to meet our new uh
Speaker 1: CFO of Hurricane groups too. We had a good time.
Speaker 1: It was it was some poker table there with a
Speaker 1: couple of Japanese guys and we did a little gambling,
Speaker 1: even though none of us knew much about poker. We
Speaker 1: got through the basics, I suppose, but James Bond, we
Speaker 1: were not a good time picturing like you know, gift
Speaker 1: bag stand out where they're like Russian oligarchs and Serbian
Speaker 1: war criminals and uh and you were playing cards with
Speaker 1: the yakuza. Yeah, I'd like to picture it that way,
Speaker 1: but in reality, it's probably just a really cool group
Speaker 1: of normal folks, um knowing no other differences that we're
Speaker 1: co hosting there or some of them at least there
Speaker 1: were a few car dealerships from Vegas and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Cost bonsoring Um. It was just a really cool group
Speaker 1: of people. You know, you'd think that was a bunch
Speaker 1: of millionaires themselves, that most of them are just guys
Speaker 1: like us, just happy to be such an awesome party.
Speaker 1: And you know, seeing my editor Scott Wittner going to
Speaker 1: the back secret room there with gray Man, what goes
Speaker 1: on at the secret room? Jen's I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: not allowed, and to be honest with you, probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: be allowed in there now. I'm very curious. I did
Speaker 1: see pictures of him like getting a suit fitted. Was
Speaker 1: there like there was like a sea mistress there or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: gray Man, I don't know if it's pretty fantactical or
Speaker 1: just gray Man and co Um. They're a suit manufacturer
Speaker 1: and they make some fantastic suits. A lot of this
Speaker 1: stuff isn't available or hasn't been available on the civilian
Speaker 1: market as I understand it. Maybe done a lot of
Speaker 1: government work, state department stuff like that, and their suits
Speaker 1: are really designed around that. So you have r f
Speaker 1: I D blocking pockets, you have um slashers and some
Speaker 1: sleeves and a little bit more stretched in the shoulders
Speaker 1: and fasting you to draw a side arm. Um, really
Speaker 1: well thought out, kind of the James Bond suit. And Scott,
Speaker 1: you got a little discount code and went and got
Speaker 1: fitted for a suit. Um, and I saw a couple
Speaker 1: of suits. Are look fantastic. That's very cool man. And
Speaker 1: then I guess last thing before we wrap up, since
Speaker 1: we got Dug here and I want to get into
Speaker 1: everything with him. Were you at the cry Precision party?
Speaker 1: Because I know that every years always a blast. I
Speaker 1: had an invite and I had one last year as well.
Speaker 1: I've kind of made a habit out of getting ready
Speaker 1: to go and then crashing on the couch and falling
Speaker 1: asleep and sleeping right through it. Um. Now I didn't go.
Speaker 1: I got to take a couple of videos and pictures
Speaker 1: when when Scott and our other writer, Eric Meisner came
Speaker 1: back from the party, it looked like a pretty wild event.
Speaker 1: But I gotta admit it's not my scene so much.
Speaker 1: I have. I liked my quiet nights and a really
Speaker 1: bad time, so I'm getting the old I'm like that too.
Speaker 1: I had I had a good time at the one
Speaker 1: that I went to it was the year it was
Speaker 1: the Mario Kart theme. And then also it's just funny
Speaker 1: to think back. She is married now, but I remember
Speaker 1: on the podcast it became like an inside thing of that.
Speaker 1: I had this crush on the Olympic shooter Amanda Fur
Speaker 1: that we would have on and I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm finally get to hang out this girl. Shot showing
Speaker 1: I met her at the cry Precision part it was.
Speaker 1: It was a very fun time. But yeah, man, I
Speaker 1: that was and I don't have Mario karts. The Marri
Speaker 1: card theme was cool. I saw people dressed up as
Speaker 1: like Luigi and Mario. I have a picture with Amanda
Speaker 1: Fur where you have people in the background just like
Speaker 1: Luigi and the Princess. Um. Yeah, she's no longer amandat
Speaker 1: first she's Amanda something else because she's married. But yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, I remember her back in the day. She
Speaker 1: was on a few episodes. Cool man, Well, I I
Speaker 1: appreciate the recap of everything, and any guy who's you're
Speaker 1: enthusiasts just weren't going to want to hear all about it.
Speaker 1: And I know at the load out at a load
Speaker 1: out room dot com, you can see all of that
Speaker 1: anything else that you're you're promoting. Note, I'm excited to
Speaker 1: dig into some of these reviews. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: really cool to see a lot of the new stuff,
Speaker 1: but it's hard to tell what's what's form over function
Speaker 1: and what's the other way around. So I gotta get
Speaker 1: my hands on some of the stuff and beat the
Speaker 1: crap out of it, so we'll see awesome. Man. Admittedly,
Speaker 1: sometimes you guys have said that I forget about blad
Speaker 1: out Room on this podcast, and it's also because none
Speaker 1: of the guys live around. We gotta have you guys
Speaker 1: on the show more consistently. Sure, And I'll jump in
Speaker 1: here in a couple of months and give you a
Speaker 1: little update what I saw the show that's ended up
Speaker 1: being a good product. All right, perfect, cool, Thanks man,
Speaker 1: appreciate you coming on. All right, Thanks you a good
Speaker 1: all right, thanks Jens. Al Right, Well, with that, I
Speaker 1: want to get more into your background. I know that
Speaker 1: you gave like the quick recap and also I want
Speaker 1: to hear about you guys going to Columbia and all that,
Speaker 1: but let's just hear like a little bit more in
Speaker 1: detail about being a PJ because we don't have many
Speaker 1: guys with your background on the show. Yes, so obviously
Speaker 1: it's not one of the more publicized type of jobs
Speaker 1: and special operations community. And how I found out about
Speaker 1: it was I was a senior in college in September
Speaker 1: of two thousand and one, and obviously nine eleven happened.
Speaker 1: Then I wasn't one of those people who was like, oh,
Speaker 1: nine eleven happened, I'm gonna join the military. That's like jack, right, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: sense yeah, oh yeah, we're about the same age, I guess.
Speaker 1: But so as a senior in high school, okay, so
Speaker 1: I'm older than you, then yeah, I would think, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: even more distinguished beard though. But yeah. Anyway, so, like
Speaker 1: there was a lot more publicity and stories about the
Speaker 1: military because the military sort of became a lot more
Speaker 1: relevant after nine eleven once we went into Afghanistan and
Speaker 1: I saw, like, you know, I think it was a
Speaker 1: story on one of the news stations about Pea Rescue UM.
Speaker 1: And at the time, I was premed, applying to medical
Speaker 1: schools and interviewing at medical schools, and I had always
Speaker 1: been intrigued by some of the special operations types jobs
Speaker 1: in the military because I like the idea of like
Speaker 1: that physical and mental challenge, but there wasn't really a
Speaker 1: particular job that appeal to me as far as like,
Speaker 1: because yeah, the challenge and the selection is great and
Speaker 1: you sort of prove something to yourself, but you still
Speaker 1: have to do a job ultimately, and I didn't. There
Speaker 1: wasn't a job that I really liked that much. And
Speaker 1: then when I found out about Pea rescue, it combined
Speaker 1: kind of that, you know, that the physical challenge with
Speaker 1: some of the more medical emphasis. So it was it
Speaker 1: was I think because of nine eleven there was more
Speaker 1: exposure to the military, and then when I found out
Speaker 1: about pet rescue. You know, when I was initially exposed
Speaker 1: to it, I was intrigued and kept reading about it
Speaker 1: and researching it, and the more I learned about the
Speaker 1: more intrigued I became. To the point that I decided
Speaker 1: to you know, not go the medical school route and
Speaker 1: to join the Air Force, much to my parents surprise.
Speaker 1: Uh they're supportive, but you know, kind of wish that
Speaker 1: somebody else's kid had done it. I thought, like all
Speaker 1: military parents, you know, um, not that not unique there.
Speaker 1: But so initially I went to an active I knew
Speaker 1: nothing about the military, like most people who want to
Speaker 1: join you kind of go in You're like, I want
Speaker 1: to do this. So I called an active duty recruiter
Speaker 1: in my area and I was like, he's like, why
Speaker 1: do you want to join the Air Force? And I'm like,
Speaker 1: I want to be a PJ. And he actually tried
Speaker 1: to talk me out of it. He's like, well, it's
Speaker 1: got a pretty high attrition rate. Most people don't make it.
Speaker 1: You should consider doing something else. And I'm like, I
Speaker 1: only want to. I understand that if I don't qualify,
Speaker 1: I'm subject to the mercy of the Air Force. It
Speaker 1: might be reclassified to whatever job, but I at least
Speaker 1: want a contract where I'm gonna have the opportunity to
Speaker 1: at least try out for it. And he's like, all right,
Speaker 1: like let me call you back in whatever a week.
Speaker 1: And so a week went by and I called left
Speaker 1: the message like hey, we're supposed to follow up. And
Speaker 1: this went on for a few more weeks, to the
Speaker 1: point that I just didn't hear back. So it was
Speaker 1: almost a blessing in disguise because that forced me to
Speaker 1: do more research, and that's when I found out about
Speaker 1: how you can actually join the Guard and be a
Speaker 1: PJ and I grew up on Long Island, and there's
Speaker 1: were on Long Island, by the way, like Nassau County Manhasset.
Speaker 1: So it's like, dude, I'm from an Ascid. Are you really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Did you get high school? So I did you? That's crazy.
Speaker 1: I did not know that. Okay, so you guys are
Speaker 1: getting live TV like you know, it's funny by the way,
Speaker 1: Well not this, I shouldn't say funny, but interesting, you know,
Speaker 1: because we're just talking about the nine o eleven thing,
Speaker 1: you know, the you know tower, the top of the tower. Um,
Speaker 1: when nine o even happened. I had a class there
Speaker 1: Mr Blish Schools English class. I don't remember Tony Bligh School.
Speaker 1: Very um passionate reader. But yes I was up there
Speaker 1: and you can see the smoke from the towers from
Speaker 1: from the top of the tower. Manhasset, real, yeah it was.
Speaker 1: It was pretty eerie. But anyway, I mean yeah, and
Speaker 1: Obviouslyn Hassett was a very hard hit community. I mean
Speaker 1: you hear the stories of on nine eleven, like that evening,
Speaker 1: like all the cars that were still on the parking lot,
Speaker 1: and um, I was I was a lifeguard at a
Speaker 1: country club Manhasset the summer before nine eleven. I just
Speaker 1: remember seeing, you know, kids playing with their families and
Speaker 1: they were a couple of families from that pool, and
Speaker 1: I lifeguard at where the next year when I also
Speaker 1: left guarded after I graduated college, while trying to segue
Speaker 1: into the military, where you're seeing these kids who you know,
Speaker 1: the year before that their father was throwing them around
Speaker 1: of the pool, and then that wasn't happening. So I
Speaker 1: believe manhas It was hit the hardest of just about
Speaker 1: any house. It's been documented, yeah, because there's been stories
Speaker 1: on Manhassean. I mean there's just there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people from Manhasset who worked on Wall Street and would
Speaker 1: make commute every day. So when I knew Chris Quack
Speaker 1: and pushed like a big hedge fun guy who passed away.
Speaker 1: I think there were a couple of places in Queens
Speaker 1: too that got hit really hard where firefighters lived. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Jersey as well, brought the rockaways for the firefighters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: New Jersey suburbs the same thing. A lot of New
Speaker 1: Jersey suburban uh, you know dads who commute to New
Speaker 1: York who are hedge fund guys. Wall Street guys right
Speaker 1: same in the in the area I grew up in Westchester,
Speaker 1: people taking the Metro north back and forth. Yeah, but so,
Speaker 1: and that's so basically like I had this sort of
Speaker 1: negligent recruiter which ended up, like I said, working till
Speaker 1: my benefit because the more research I did when I
Speaker 1: found out about the Guard option, there was actually a
Speaker 1: Guard unit an hour east of where I grew up
Speaker 1: in West Hampton. And you know, so that I read
Speaker 1: to end up bringing the perfect storm because that the
Speaker 1: Long Island PJA unit was featured in that. And so
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, so now it's it's a PJA unit,
Speaker 1: it's the Guard's you actually get to pick your duty station.
Speaker 1: There happens to be a duty station an hour from
Speaker 1: where I grew up. And kind of one of the
Speaker 1: selling points of the Guard was that they did domestic
Speaker 1: civilian rescues in addition to being deployed doing the combat
Speaker 1: search and rescue. So, uh, the New York unit civilian wise,
Speaker 1: rescue wise, wasn't as active as like maybe the team
Speaker 1: in Alaska where you've got people getting into trouble all
Speaker 1: the time, but that was you know, between the potential
Speaker 1: for civilian rescues the fact that it was right in
Speaker 1: my backyard, um, and I like the idea of the
Speaker 1: Guard and that I always went in initially with the
Speaker 1: intention like I'm gonna do this full time. But there's
Speaker 1: the option where you can kind of do as much
Speaker 1: or as little as you want once you sort of
Speaker 1: go through your initial selection and training and then you do,
Speaker 1: you know, going to deployment or two you have the
Speaker 1: option of going part time and you know, so to me,
Speaker 1: that's the coolest job in the world, like a part
Speaker 1: time PJ. I mean, ultimately I went to grad school
Speaker 1: for physical therapy while on the Guard, and that was
Speaker 1: kind of like my summer jobs is a great way
Speaker 1: to make extra money and do fun things. And I
Speaker 1: still was deploying and very active, and I mean, it's
Speaker 1: tough to maintain your proficiency as a part timer because
Speaker 1: even when you're full time and any soft job, you
Speaker 1: don't have enough time to do everything you need to do.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, unless you're maybe like a
Speaker 1: really high level unit where the funding and the time
Speaker 1: and the support or conducive to it, like, you can
Speaker 1: never really train enough. So that became a little bit
Speaker 1: of a challenge. But the Guard. Once I found out
Speaker 1: about it was sort of a no brainer. And when
Speaker 1: I called the Guard unit, I mean the recruiters like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can, let's take a PT test tomorrow, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's like they're much more responsive to So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a case where the military sort of
Speaker 1: bureaucracy work to my favor. We went to school with
Speaker 1: a couple of guys. Well, there's a number of guys
Speaker 1: who are in the Special Forces National Guard, and I
Speaker 1: mean I think it worked out pretty well for him.
Speaker 1: I even met a f D n Y guy who's
Speaker 1: in the SF National Guarden, an actual actual firefighter. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think, like you know, now, once the nine eleven
Speaker 1: kicked off, I mean there wasn't really the stigma with
Speaker 1: the Guard where I don't know what it was like
Speaker 1: in the soft community, but prior to nine eleven, you
Speaker 1: know that the Guard didn't really wasn't asked to do
Speaker 1: that much. But I mean, our our deployment cycle was
Speaker 1: pretty much on par with active duty. That the length
Speaker 1: of the cycle was the same, the train ups and
Speaker 1: all that, and when you go overseas, your health to
Speaker 1: the same standards. So um, and a lot of times
Speaker 1: the Guard units had more experienced people like you might have.
Speaker 1: You had a lot of people who maybe did one
Speaker 1: or two tours on active duty. So it was good
Speaker 1: and it was bad. It was good because we had
Speaker 1: a lot of experience, but it's also very top heavy,
Speaker 1: um where you know, like sometimes you can have too
Speaker 1: many people who are experienced on a particular team or
Speaker 1: on a mission. But um, yeah, so like there was
Speaker 1: no degregation and skill or that. The quality of I
Speaker 1: think what was being offered by the Guard was on
Speaker 1: par with active duty and it allowed for more flexibility.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of how I ended up doing that.
Speaker 1: And then I spent um between full and part time
Speaker 1: service thirteen years. Yeah, and I segued into physical therapy
Speaker 1: when I knew I didn't want to make a career
Speaker 1: out of it. And actually, like after I graduated physical
Speaker 1: therapy school, before I could even start a job, I
Speaker 1: had to go into deployment. I went to the Horn
Speaker 1: of Africa, and so that sent me back, you know,
Speaker 1: career why, I don't want to say set back, like
Speaker 1: it was like a negative thing, but like you know,
Speaker 1: six months, um, and I tried to run my own
Speaker 1: practice and then do the Guard thing and it's like
Speaker 1: that's where it became tough because if you have like
Speaker 1: a you know, government or a civil service job, like
Speaker 1: they're required to give you military leave, and it's much
Speaker 1: more conducive to you can't really do one week in
Speaker 1: a month, in two weeks a year and be a
Speaker 1: pj OR. I think to do it well and be
Speaker 1: proficient requires a couple of months a year of training
Speaker 1: and when you're running your own business and getting paid
Speaker 1: by the hour, basically starting over every time you come
Speaker 1: back from one of those deployments or like a long
Speaker 1: training trip. So it just became too difficult to do.
Speaker 1: But both, but there's definitely things about that I miss,
Speaker 1: and there's you know, experience I wouldn't trade for anything.
Speaker 1: Still really close with the guys because they're only an
Speaker 1: hour away from where I work, and in the capacity
Speaker 1: that I am now as a physical therapist and with
Speaker 1: some of the performance stuff, I'm still very much involved
Speaker 1: in the community, whether it's like with pj OR or SOFT.
Speaker 1: So I think that's help with the transition, because if
Speaker 1: I had to be totally cold Turkey detachment, it would
Speaker 1: be tough. Just like, you know, what would you experience
Speaker 1: Jack as a host doing this. Yeah, just pop smoke,
Speaker 1: you leave, you know, brag or whatever, wherever the hell
Speaker 1: you are. And but again, if you were in SF,
Speaker 1: a lot of guys can transition into the National Guarden.
Speaker 1: I know a bunch of people have done that. If
Speaker 1: you're in like Ranger Battalion or something like that, when
Speaker 1: you're out, you're out. Yeah, because there isn't really a
Speaker 1: Guard but battalion there, and there there are very few
Speaker 1: National Guard infantry units. Um, you can still leave the
Speaker 1: Ranger Battalion and go be in the National Guarden. There's
Speaker 1: nothing stopping you from doing that. Um, maybe you'd have
Speaker 1: to re class. I don't know, but yeah, going back
Speaker 1: to where we're from, I was just curious of this.
Speaker 1: There's there's pretty much no soft community in Manhasset. But
Speaker 1: the only guy that I could think of that's probably
Speaker 1: I think your age giver take a year or something,
Speaker 1: was James Reagan. I know exactly you're gonna say that
Speaker 1: wearing the bracelet. Oh wow, I didn't. He's just a
Speaker 1: guy who was We we got together and he he
Speaker 1: ended up going to Shamanad High School, which was like
Speaker 1: a private Catholic school, maybe twenty minutes away. I didn't
Speaker 1: know you guys knew him, Yes, so I played personally.
Speaker 1: Not his sister was in my grade, but you know
Speaker 1: it's she's got two sisters. Okay, so one of them
Speaker 1: was in my grid. But it's just when you think
Speaker 1: of special ops guys from Manhasset, the only name I
Speaker 1: honestly think of his James Reagan. Because there's a road
Speaker 1: named after him. There's a monument for guys killed in
Speaker 1: combat in Manhattan, and the only name you see from
Speaker 1: the current war is James Reagan. So yeah, that's I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not surprised that that you know him. But yeah,
Speaker 1: let's get it. We we grew up together, played like
Speaker 1: C y O basketball together, um. And there was two
Speaker 1: public elementary schools in Manhasset, so we went to different
Speaker 1: elementary schools. But yeah, through like sports, I knew him
Speaker 1: pretty well. Um. And then he ended up going to
Speaker 1: the Catholic high school and I went to the public
Speaker 1: high school. But I mean, speaking of it, I actually
Speaker 1: went to my senior prom with his, um, his sister
Speaker 1: that's older than than you are, um. And ironically enough,
Speaker 1: it was at Windows in the World in the World
Speaker 1: Trade Center, so to think that, you know, I'm going
Speaker 1: to my senior prom with his sister and then a
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of years later, the towers fall.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I mean, even if it wasn't directly like,
Speaker 1: it's probably safe to say that somebody from Manhasset who
Speaker 1: had just got into law school probably would not have
Speaker 1: joined the military if not for something like nine eleven.
Speaker 1: I know that he was inspired by that. And then
Speaker 1: you know, sadly he was killed in in Iraq a
Speaker 1: couple of years after that. Um, but I don't know
Speaker 1: if you're familiar with the work that his father has done.
Speaker 1: So his father was like in the finance community here
Speaker 1: in Manhattan and started a charity called Lead the Way Fund,
Speaker 1: which is basically to kind of fill in some of
Speaker 1: the gaps between like what the government provides and then
Speaker 1: what the families of rangers who are like injured or
Speaker 1: killed in combat need. So, I mean, his charity is
Speaker 1: doing things like building like adaptive houses for people who
Speaker 1: maybe like the where the government didn't provide some of
Speaker 1: those services. He's raised quite a bit of money. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's had fundraisers like on the Intrepid here in Manhattan,
Speaker 1: which is you know that's that's a pretty high profile
Speaker 1: place on the venue because Jimmy Regan played lacrosse for Duke.
Speaker 1: Mike Sachowski was the keynote speaker. So I mean, he's
Speaker 1: he's drawn a lot of attention for some of the
Speaker 1: for this cause, and like there's a lot of ways
Speaker 1: to handle that kind of tragedy. And I can't imagine
Speaker 1: being a father and having to to bury your son,
Speaker 1: and I mean he would be totally justified and just
Speaker 1: not wanting anything to do with the military and totally
Speaker 1: separating himself from it, but like to turn that kind
Speaker 1: of a tragedy into into what he has and to
Speaker 1: have done so much good for the community. So I
Speaker 1: can't I mean, I didn't know you're gonna ask me.
Speaker 1: It's totally spontaneously. I just can't say enough good things
Speaker 1: about Lead the Way and and Mr Reagan with James Reagan,
Speaker 1: and that's just the work that they've done. It's truly, uh,
Speaker 1: truly incredible, and like, you know, just how all these
Speaker 1: things are kind of tied together and how small the
Speaker 1: world is. When I was at Blade for my first deployment,
Speaker 1: there was like a picture of you know, all the
Speaker 1: people who operated out of a blade at the time.
Speaker 1: Who are you know killed in operations? And so like
Speaker 1: to get the ballade to go on the talk and
Speaker 1: then to see Jimmy's picture on the wall. I mean,
Speaker 1: the world is a large place, but sometimes I can
Speaker 1: follow you wherever you go. And that was you know,
Speaker 1: it's a good reminder like obviously first deployment, the ship
Speaker 1: is for real, but at the same time sort of
Speaker 1: like all right, like you're inspired, like this is uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they could kill one of your friends, so
Speaker 1: like let's go. It's amazing. Yeah, I didn't know him personally,
Speaker 1: I knew of him, and I think I was in
Speaker 1: Griffin group down in Florida when I found out about that.
Speaker 1: And actually another guy who I was in range of
Speaker 1: battalion with uh Sean who's a warrant officer now, he
Speaker 1: told me he mentioned something in passing about about Reagan
Speaker 1: having been killed, as like what really, Yeah, it sucks.
Speaker 1: Leo has been on the podcast for Leo Jenkins, who
Speaker 1: knew James Reagan. But the fact that you knew him
Speaker 1: as like a younger kid, people might be curious as
Speaker 1: he's a name that a lot of people in this
Speaker 1: community have read about what type of a guy was
Speaker 1: Jimmy Reagan. Yeah, I mean it's always like easy to
Speaker 1: say like great things about people after the fact, but
Speaker 1: I can legitimately say, like truly like one of those
Speaker 1: people that everybody liked. You know, when you're like in
Speaker 1: high school, junior high like especially, guys can be like
Speaker 1: assholes and they can you know, you're trying to fit
Speaker 1: in with certain crowds, and to fit in with certain crowds,
Speaker 1: you have to treat other crowds a certain way. Jimmy
Speaker 1: was universally liked by everybody because he was just truly
Speaker 1: a nice guy, like more sort of quiet, but also
Speaker 1: very sort of intense and focused, even at a at
Speaker 1: a very young age. And um, I think that reputation
Speaker 1: carried him. I mean everybody that I talked to in
Speaker 1: Ranger Battalion said the same thing, where it's just like
Speaker 1: one of those guys were just not not a lot
Speaker 1: of bravado, which inspires you through his actions. And uh,
Speaker 1: he was always like that. And I could truly say
Speaker 1: that even after the fact, like, yeah, that's that's just
Speaker 1: the kind of guy was well, I mean, as sad
Speaker 1: as it is that you know, he was lost I
Speaker 1: mean it's great that he's still remembered in this way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he always I mean, if his dad has anything
Speaker 1: to do with it, he always will be and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think that's a good thing. That's amazing. Um.
Speaker 1: I guess you know, since what Ian was saying before,
Speaker 1: we have an unfortunate lack of Air Force guys on
Speaker 1: the podcast. We always end up talking a lot of Marines.
Speaker 1: I don't know how marines sneak on here all, but
Speaker 1: especially in Columbia, right yeah, where you at. Um, A
Speaker 1: lot of Army dudes, UM, but not not enough Air
Speaker 1: Force guys. Definitely not enough UM guys from the Air
Speaker 1: Force Special Operations community other than you know, Mike Lampi
Speaker 1: has gonna Um, I think we haven't scheduled to come
Speaker 1: on again. Don't the legend right there? Yeah yeah, Bull
Speaker 1: Simmons award, isn't Is he the one who like drove
Speaker 1: the motorcycle into Iran? He may have. He was definitely,
Speaker 1: he was definitely at Desert One. So we have to
Speaker 1: do the second part of the interview. We did the
Speaker 1: first part and we got up to like lause, we
Speaker 1: didn't even get it, but he was he was in.
Speaker 1: You know, he was there for the whole genesis of
Speaker 1: Special Operations and Special Operations Command. So we have to, um,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do part two of that. UM. But I
Speaker 1: was wondering if you could get a little bit into, UM,
Speaker 1: what Pair of Rescue is, because I feel like everyone's
Speaker 1: kind of heard of it. But there are a variety
Speaker 1: of people listening to this podcast. Some of them are, UM,
Speaker 1: you know, former Special Operations guys who know who you
Speaker 1: are and what these guys do. But then there's also
Speaker 1: a lot of like young guys who were like eighteen,
Speaker 1: they're in the position me or you were in at
Speaker 1: one time, and they're like, what the fund do I
Speaker 1: want to do with my life? And I just wonder
Speaker 1: if you could talk a little bit about what pjs are,
Speaker 1: what their mission is, UM, so people can hear it
Speaker 1: from the horse's mouth. Yeah, I mean, and specially operations,
Speaker 1: Like the unifying thing is, Okay, you're probably gonna get
Speaker 1: some form of parachute training, maybe dive training, You're gonna
Speaker 1: have you know, basic small unit tactics training. UM. And
Speaker 1: then obviously every Special Operations unit or team has its
Speaker 1: own sort of identity, so and and Pair rescue. The
Speaker 1: identity is technical rescue and medicine. So we would differentiate
Speaker 1: a PJ from even like an eighteen Delta special Forces
Speaker 1: medic or a seal or like a Marine corpsman, is
Speaker 1: that if you're a medic on like in an O
Speaker 1: d A, you're not going into a mission necessarily with
Speaker 1: the expectation that you're going to be medically treating somebody.
Speaker 1: You're you're effectively a shooter first, and you're going in
Speaker 1: really hoping that you don't have to do any medical
Speaker 1: treatment at all, right, because I in an ideal world,
Speaker 1: a you know, uh, a teen Delta or a seal
Speaker 1: corman would never have to treat anybody, right as a
Speaker 1: as a PJ, you're not for the most part, you know,
Speaker 1: unless you're in a certain type of unit where maybe
Speaker 1: you're embedded with assault team and you're serving as the
Speaker 1: medic on the assault team. Because in a lot of
Speaker 1: like you know, the higher level Army and Navy units,
Speaker 1: the corman don't want to do any medicine. They want
Speaker 1: to be shooters um and at that level they're trained
Speaker 1: to be truly shooters first, and their medicine kind of
Speaker 1: gets discarded. And that's where that you might have a
Speaker 1: PJ who basically is the effectively the corman on those
Speaker 1: on those hits, but a PGA team operating unilaterally like you,
Speaker 1: you don't have a mission unless something bad happens to somebody. Now,
Speaker 1: the exception to that is if there's more of like
Speaker 1: a technical rescue or a precious cargo type scenario. Like
Speaker 1: half the missions that I had overseas, we're recovering you know,
Speaker 1: sensitive items from like from an aircraft. So that is
Speaker 1: a situation where you wouldn't be doing any medical treatment.
Speaker 1: But if you're gonna be working with human beings on
Speaker 1: the ground outside of your own team, something bad has
Speaker 1: to happen to somebody for you to get called upon.
Speaker 1: So what the what technical rescue means is you know,
Speaker 1: say like the helicopter crashes. For the most part, when
Speaker 1: a helicopter crashes, the patients don't just present themselves to you,
Speaker 1: like you have to go into not just laying on right.
Speaker 1: So like even on a on a hit, like if
Speaker 1: someone gets shot, there's no extrication. It's like they're right
Speaker 1: next to you, and you go up to them and
Speaker 1: you put them behind cover and treat them and act
Speaker 1: them but in a technical rescue usually require some type
Speaker 1: of like an extrication to gain access to those survivors
Speaker 1: if there are any. So that's why pgs will carry
Speaker 1: extrication equipment that maybe like what a fire department would carry,
Speaker 1: but obviously a much smaller, more compact version. They can
Speaker 1: carry it on their backs, So extrication is a huge
Speaker 1: part of the technical rescue. Then there's things like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, like rope rescue. So basically, anywhere a d
Speaker 1: O d asset can get into trouble, a PG has
Speaker 1: to be able to go there. So that can include
Speaker 1: someone gets caught in the mountains somewhere and you know
Speaker 1: you have to maybe performed like lower yourself to a
Speaker 1: survivor and then create a mechanical advantage system with the
Speaker 1: ropes to raise that person up. So, um, it's cool
Speaker 1: that it provides a huge variety of rescue skills combined
Speaker 1: with the with the medicine. But you know, in most
Speaker 1: situation sations you're there to first extricate and then stabilize
Speaker 1: a patient and that usually requires some kind of technical
Speaker 1: rescue expertise along with the medical piece. So there's obviously
Speaker 1: a lot of overlap and redundancy between some of the
Speaker 1: soft teams. But I think what differentiates parta rescue is
Speaker 1: like generally your missions are deliberately for personnel recovery or
Speaker 1: like a mass casualty incident or some kind of a
Speaker 1: technical rescue versus you're overtly looking for confrontation and then
Speaker 1: you're only on call if something you know, if someone
Speaker 1: gets like shot or you know, or hurt on the mission. Um,
Speaker 1: You're you're going in for the most part knowing that
Speaker 1: something bad has already happened to somebody, and that obviously
Speaker 1: changes how you plan and it changes the tactics. Um.
Speaker 1: That's if pges operate unilaterally. There are some pgs, like
Speaker 1: I said, who maybe get farmed out to particular special
Speaker 1: operations unit and they serve as like more of a
Speaker 1: traditional medic type role, but they're still going to carry
Speaker 1: all their extrication equipment and technical gear because they have
Speaker 1: that capability, so they want to bring that to the
Speaker 1: fight as well. So hopefully that kind of answered the question. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: And the other thing I think that's worth mentioning is
Speaker 1: you know, all of you guys are dive in free
Speaker 1: fall qualified right because and correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: The reason being because you have to get where we are.
Speaker 1: So if O d A gets into trouble, when somebody
Speaker 1: gets hurt, you need to be able to get to
Speaker 1: whatever ship they got into. Yeah. And the weird thing
Speaker 1: with the dive is I never had a dive mission,
Speaker 1: but there's been a lot of dive missions actually, like
Speaker 1: in Iraq, where like a vehicle was that a bridge
Speaker 1: crossing a river, I d hits it. Now the vehicle
Speaker 1: has fallen into the Tigris River or whatever. And I
Speaker 1: mean usually dive missions are recoveries, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: not that ideal, but to bring the bring the bodies back.
Speaker 1: There's been quite a few search dives and whether it
Speaker 1: was like Iraq or Afghanistan or you know, some kind
Speaker 1: of a ua V crashes you know, off the coast
Speaker 1: of Africa, So there have been quite a few dive missions. Um.
Speaker 1: I would say probably PAS have been the most active
Speaker 1: in the soft community doing dive missions because for the
Speaker 1: most part there have been too many dive infills. Some
Speaker 1: of the more units combat iver or underwater demolitions. I mean,
Speaker 1: we haven't seen that really much if all. And to
Speaker 1: be like transparent, like the dives and peaches are doing
Speaker 1: are not like combat dive scenario where you know, we
Speaker 1: we went to dive school and spent four weeks doing
Speaker 1: close circuit, but we didn't really train it that much
Speaker 1: because for the most part we're doing recoveries where it
Speaker 1: is a little bit more over. You're going to have security,
Speaker 1: and I mean you're not you know, you're not gonna like,
Speaker 1: you know, you're not doing a recovery mission while like
Speaker 1: bullets are going off right right, you know. But it
Speaker 1: is an an austere environment. I mean, it sucks. It's
Speaker 1: dark and it's murky, and it's not using cold I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's like, it's not recreational scuba diving, and military
Speaker 1: tends to take the fun out of a lot of things,
Speaker 1: whether it's skydiving or scuba diving. And that's why I'm
Speaker 1: not been into diving even after I having gotten out,
Speaker 1: because I didn't have like great experiences with it. It's
Speaker 1: usually throwing up on a boat and then going down
Speaker 1: to the cold water where I can't see and putting
Speaker 1: my hand on the ground and doing a search pattern
Speaker 1: looking for something. The free fall course is probably like
Speaker 1: the most fun, definitely the most fun course I went
Speaker 1: to in the Army. But yeah, even then, it's all, oh,
Speaker 1: you like you like skydiving, all right, we're gonna put
Speaker 1: you on oxygen. You're gonna jump at eighteen thousand feet.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do it at night, and uh, here's the
Speaker 1: ninety pounds of ship to strap to your body. We're
Speaker 1: gonna you know, you just you just kind of waddle
Speaker 1: to the ramp and to fall out. Yeah. I was lucky.
Speaker 1: I went to the Navy free fall course. So you know,
Speaker 1: you're staying staying at a hotel in Chula Visa, which
Speaker 1: is right outside San Diego. And I knew right away
Speaker 1: that it was different than the Army school because the
Speaker 1: first day there was the threat of bad weather. There
Speaker 1: wasn't It wasn't like she was like chance of rain
Speaker 1: and you know, poor visibility and low ceilings. And so
Speaker 1: we got a call from somebody at the school, like
Speaker 1: before we'd even met them, like, hey, the whole training
Speaker 1: is canceled for today because it might rain. Whereas if
Speaker 1: you're at an Army course, you're you're gonna stay there
Speaker 1: until sev undred no matter what. Well, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: they were pretty good about it out at Yuma, um
Speaker 1: and and there wasn't rain out in Yuma, Arizona. But
Speaker 1: if phill winds are too high, they'll just said there
Speaker 1: were days when Yeah, there were days when we came
Speaker 1: in and it was like nine am and they're like,
Speaker 1: just go back, you guys have released for the day.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess because of the high winds and
Speaker 1: because we're inexperienced students there. It's like I don't want
Speaker 1: to mess around. Yeah, but yeah, and so you mentioned
Speaker 1: that the dive in the free fall capability. I mean,
Speaker 1: if we're being honest, like most there have been too
Speaker 1: many free fall missions UM in the last like ten years,
Speaker 1: have been a couple. But it's like it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where you're you trained forward a lot and
Speaker 1: it takes up I think a disproportional amount of you're
Speaker 1: training time for something that you may never do, but
Speaker 1: you still have to train it. But that's where the
Speaker 1: civilian stuff comes in, because a lot of pjs are
Speaker 1: more likely to do a civilian free fall or parachuting mission.
Speaker 1: I mean our combat one especially, we've been establishing some
Speaker 1: of these theaters for so long that there really isn't
Speaker 1: much need for a jump capability. And now we have
Speaker 1: helicopters like the CV twenty two with longer range. But
Speaker 1: like in the Alaska unit, you know, you've got all
Speaker 1: these people, a lot of private pilots. They crash into
Speaker 1: a glacier and the only way to get there, or
Speaker 1: to get there quickly enough is to is to jump.
Speaker 1: So like that, you know, no know, gets quite a
Speaker 1: few jump missions. I'm glad you brought that. I want
Speaker 1: to ask you about that because I mean the both
Speaker 1: static line and free fall, I mean it has it
Speaker 1: gives you this capability of getting into some pretty austereo locations.
Speaker 1: Is that that is a capability that gets used for
Speaker 1: rescue missions. Yeah, even in California, there's a unit right
Speaker 1: in like Silicon Valley there. I think they actually share
Speaker 1: the airport with Google. They've gotten a few jump missions
Speaker 1: off the coast of of Mexico and off California where
Speaker 1: you know it's a ram's mission. Usually where um you
Speaker 1: have the zodiac you kind of deflated, fold it up,
Speaker 1: put some cargo netting around it. It has an engine
Speaker 1: attached to it, you know, put a big shoot on it,
Speaker 1: throw it out, the plane jump out after it, getting
Speaker 1: the water, undo the cargo netting, UM swim out the
Speaker 1: nose and then inflate your scuba tank and then you've
Speaker 1: you know, de water the engine and you're and you're
Speaker 1: off UM. Now, usually in a civilian situation there isn't
Speaker 1: much of a need for the free fall capability per se,
Speaker 1: and now that they have the square shoots, But when
Speaker 1: they only have the round shoots and that was the
Speaker 1: only way to do static line, then you're probably better
Speaker 1: off even doing even though free fall is a little
Speaker 1: bit more risky because of the canopy control, which if
Speaker 1: you're jumping into a small glaciers, small DZ, you want that.
Speaker 1: So now with them they have the static line square
Speaker 1: shoots where you can static line from pretty much any altitude,
Speaker 1: and so even if you have a bad exit for
Speaker 1: the most part, you're gonna have a canopy overhead. But
Speaker 1: now you've got that precision cannopy ability. So usually on
Speaker 1: a civilian rescue, whether it's like ocean or the stuff
Speaker 1: they do in Alaska, it's typically going to be those
Speaker 1: static line square shoots and they can adjust the you know,
Speaker 1: you're gonna the lower the better if you can, because
Speaker 1: it's not a tactical environment. But There's even been situations
Speaker 1: where because the minimum jump altitude for those static line
Speaker 1: square shoots is higher than it would be for a
Speaker 1: round shoot, depending on whether you still need that round
Speaker 1: shoot capability. So I always hated jumping round shoots because
Speaker 1: to me, it's like a ankle or an e sprain
Speaker 1: sort of waiting to happen. But you still have to
Speaker 1: trained for it because on the off chance that you
Speaker 1: did a like a civilian or a combat mission where
Speaker 1: the ceilings were low, you have to be able to
Speaker 1: do it. But I hated it always seemed to me
Speaker 1: um and this is just me spitballing that you know,
Speaker 1: we have all these Special Forces guys and all these
Speaker 1: pjs who are trained in this with this capability, like
Speaker 1: in a scenario like like what happened down in Puerto Rico,
Speaker 1: like that to me is like an ideal time, like
Speaker 1: let's just static line jump teams into this area after
Speaker 1: the in an aftermath of a hurricane or an earthquake,
Speaker 1: and they start doing like their civil assessments on what
Speaker 1: needs to be brought in here infrastructure wise, rescue wise.
Speaker 1: I think we should use it more often, but I'm
Speaker 1: not a rescue expert either, yeah. I mean in theory,
Speaker 1: it's a good idea, but you know how like especially
Speaker 1: commanders are when you're getting these big government bureaucracy bringing
Speaker 1: their hands and for for like a civilian you know,
Speaker 1: rescue relief. I just feel like, yes, like that's a
Speaker 1: technically sound way to do it in a lot of cases.
Speaker 1: But I can just see someone behind a desk being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna jump in like special obs because the optics,
Speaker 1: you know, the media could spend some of those those optics. Right.
Speaker 1: So for me, it's also like it's a it's a
Speaker 1: civil non violent I mean, maybe maybe they just need
Speaker 1: to carry side arms if if that, Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you're putting the teams at risk too though, because like
Speaker 1: they're I mean, I've you know, there there's been situations
Speaker 1: where in some of these places where that they don't
Speaker 1: always cover it, but they're like there's stuff that goes
Speaker 1: on where you're you need to have some kind of protection. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know for sure, like Hurricane Katrina. Right. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a little sketchy, um, but I mean I've in my
Speaker 1: mind it can be used to you know as a
Speaker 1: civil uh civil assistance mission that also doubles as you know,
Speaker 1: some real life experience on the infiltration technique and and
Speaker 1: on the medic skills as well. Yeah, for sure. I mean,
Speaker 1: and the the key thing is like early mobilization. So
Speaker 1: whatever you're going to do, whether it's jumping in or
Speaker 1: getting teams in by helicopter, there needs to be can
Speaker 1: planned so that I think, you know, the issue with
Speaker 1: after Katrina was that there wasn't really a lot of
Speaker 1: impetus to get people there early. Now I think they
Speaker 1: almost overreact, where at least, you know, when I was
Speaker 1: still in, anytime mother Nature would even fart or cough,
Speaker 1: it was like, we're going to mobilize you guys, and
Speaker 1: it's like you know, a four and snowstorm. It's like
Speaker 1: we're gonna get like special ops rescue guys to be
Speaker 1: on call. But I don't know what the happy medium
Speaker 1: is there, because yeah, I mean, you're probably better off
Speaker 1: over preparing than under, but then you're twiddling your thumbs
Speaker 1: and doing nothing. But what we can pay for it
Speaker 1: to sit around to do nothing. Politicians look so bad
Speaker 1: after Katrine, you know, and that's why George Bush sent
Speaker 1: eighty second airborne down there after it was already all over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit about like some of
Speaker 1: your deployments as far as like where you where you went,
Speaker 1: what you did, what, what it's like being a PJ,
Speaker 1: you know, deployed in support of you know, a task
Speaker 1: force or whatever. Yeah, the cool thing about being a
Speaker 1: pH is like you don't always do the same thing
Speaker 1: under deployment. So my first deployment, I was basically doing
Speaker 1: like combat search and rescue for like some of the
Speaker 1: assault forces that were down there. So you're you're I mean,
Speaker 1: you're more of a contingency and that's where for the
Speaker 1: most part, you're hoping that you don't get a mission
Speaker 1: because you're you're there to support some very specific missions
Speaker 1: and objectives, and if you're the wise, that means that
Speaker 1: like one of your fellow Americans, you know, a casualty
Speaker 1: on target, So you don't want that. But it was
Speaker 1: a good first deployment just because you're was in the
Speaker 1: aircraft a lot. I got to sit in a lot
Speaker 1: of the briefs with the assault units and so you
Speaker 1: just get to see how how they operate, and from
Speaker 1: like a situational awareness standpoint, it was very helpful just
Speaker 1: to be constantly listening and knowing what's going on. The
Speaker 1: only actual missions I got on that deployment was just
Speaker 1: some U A V recoveries, um, and then toy airplanes crashed. Yeah, exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: From my first deployment, I actually went right to my
Speaker 1: second deployment without obviously had the option to like go
Speaker 1: home for a month or to just stay in country
Speaker 1: and and then go from Iraq to Afghanistan. And I
Speaker 1: was like, if I have to go home for you know,
Speaker 1: three to four weeks, like it's gonna be much harder
Speaker 1: to come back, right, So I was like, I'll just
Speaker 1: stay there because basically I volunteered for an additional deployment
Speaker 1: outside of my team, and then when my my actual
Speaker 1: unit deployed, I met them in Afghanistan and that was
Speaker 1: more doing um, you know, certain combat search and rescue
Speaker 1: for the whole theater, not just for like a Special
Speaker 1: Operations task Force. And everybody is always enamored with like
Speaker 1: special ops stuff, but I mean some of the stuff
Speaker 1: that pj's were doing for the like that just the
Speaker 1: theater y, like we're doing way more dangerous missions because
Speaker 1: for the most part, like task force people have all
Speaker 1: the assets, they're very good at what they do, so
Speaker 1: they're generally not getting into trouble, which is a good
Speaker 1: thing when you're on the hook for anything that can
Speaker 1: happen in a particular region of Afghanistan, Like just things
Speaker 1: happen no matter what. So from like a medical standpoint,
Speaker 1: you're getting a lot more UM, you know, medical treatment,
Speaker 1: medical experience, some some experience on the ground, depending on
Speaker 1: you know, what happens to the people you're responding to UM.
Speaker 1: And there there's a little bit of overlap between like MEDEVAC, KASOVAC,
Speaker 1: and CSAR, and that was kind of a point of
Speaker 1: friction with a lot of pjs because pigs are like, well,
Speaker 1: we want to do all this like tactical, high speed stuff.
Speaker 1: But then if you're if you're waiting for like the
Speaker 1: the black Hawk down scenario and that's why you want
Speaker 1: to be in theater, you might go on to diploma
Speaker 1: and not have any work. And the way the military works,
Speaker 1: as you know, is like if you're not doing stuff
Speaker 1: all the time and you're deemed to be not relevant.
Speaker 1: It's why you have even very highly trained units now
Speaker 1: who are volunteering from missions or assignments that they probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't have wanted to do. Ten or fifteen years ago
Speaker 1: because you just want to stay sort of relevant. Um,
Speaker 1: But so, like I think the CASAVAC thing was good
Speaker 1: because like, all right, at least we're there and we're
Speaker 1: doing something versus waiting for like the really crazy sophisticated
Speaker 1: mass casualty scenario from an I D or like a
Speaker 1: down bird. You were doing some more traditional metavac CASOVAC
Speaker 1: type stuff, but it's not like it was coming at
Speaker 1: the expense of something else besides maybe bruising your ego
Speaker 1: a little bit. But what were some of the scenarios
Speaker 1: are rescue situations that you and your team got called into. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean so a lot of times you're you're treating
Speaker 1: like indigenous people right because they're the bulk of the casualties.
Speaker 1: So you know, like different maybe like a like a
Speaker 1: ranger team or like an s F unit is working
Speaker 1: with like a partner force on an ops. We responded
Speaker 1: to a lot of those situations. Um, not me persly,
Speaker 1: but like there's been die missions in Afghanistan, there has
Speaker 1: been some really involved extrication missions where you've had like
Speaker 1: even like a guy from my team like a partner
Speaker 1: force or of like a not a partner force, but
Speaker 1: like I think it was like a Danish team was
Speaker 1: hitting like a really severe i e. D. And you know,
Speaker 1: like the the vehicles on fire and guys are going
Speaker 1: in putting the fire out and doing like surgical airways
Speaker 1: while the fire still going on before the person is
Speaker 1: fully extricated, just to get an airway and do some
Speaker 1: of these lifesaving interventions. Souh. It's it's like anything that
Speaker 1: can you can imagine. It could be like any other job.
Speaker 1: The bulk of the time, you would regard it as
Speaker 1: relatively routine from the standpoint like you have a casualty,
Speaker 1: your air landing right next to it, you know, picking
Speaker 1: the person up, and then because a lot of the
Speaker 1: fobs in Afghanistan especially or even a rack, we're so
Speaker 1: close together, you have a short transport time. But there
Speaker 1: are even some fop to fop transports where people were like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is this is bullshit, why are we doing this?
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, like you're a
Speaker 1: highly trained medical person and that's still someone's life and
Speaker 1: if you're the best person to provide that treatment, then
Speaker 1: again she put your ego aside. So um, there was
Speaker 1: that I've been to deployments on the Horn of Africa
Speaker 1: where I actually was formed out to like another service
Speaker 1: and they were doing some you know, some fit stuff
Speaker 1: over there um and you know on some ops where
Speaker 1: you know that the partner forces got into some ticks
Speaker 1: and got got to do a lot of high level
Speaker 1: medical treatment. And then because you're in some of these
Speaker 1: remote places and you can't always evacuate the partner forces
Speaker 1: to higher care, got to work with some of the
Speaker 1: like the surgical teams, the American surgical teams that were
Speaker 1: embedded there and do a lot of the follow on care.
Speaker 1: So it's a really cool variety of experiences where there's
Speaker 1: not just one type of mission set much like an
Speaker 1: O d A, where you know you could do something
Speaker 1: like direct action, you could do fit, you could do reconnaissance,
Speaker 1: so we could be involved in those kind of missions
Speaker 1: as well, but the emphasis is always on the on
Speaker 1: the medical part, whereas you know, for someone like you
Speaker 1: might be the weapon's aspect or the intelligence aspect to
Speaker 1: the comms aspect. So yeah, I mean any special operations job,
Speaker 1: it's a great the experiences you can have, and a
Speaker 1: lot of it's being in the right place at the
Speaker 1: right time. But Again, it's a double edged sward with
Speaker 1: pair rescue because if something happens, you want to be
Speaker 1: the person to help out, but you're not like necessarily
Speaker 1: looking for work, right, So yeah, that's where that that's
Speaker 1: kind of the ethical dilemma there. Yeah, I mean we
Speaker 1: all like to do our job, but you know, in
Speaker 1: the military, you know your job. It's kind of ugly sometimes,
Speaker 1: right for like an assault team, I mean, there's always
Speaker 1: gonna be some somebody for you to go after, right,
Speaker 1: but like you're not hoping for like a casualty a
Speaker 1: p so you can you can be busy, but there's
Speaker 1: always you know, people you could be chasing if you're
Speaker 1: an assault tyas so heavily involved in the trauma medicine,
Speaker 1: but it sounds like also there's some like more long
Speaker 1: term medicine treatment that you were involved in two over there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the way what. I don't know if
Speaker 1: this has changed, but when I was in what like
Speaker 1: pair rescue, and I think a lot of the soft
Speaker 1: at least prehospital people advertises that they could stabilize the
Speaker 1: casualty for seventy two hours and then beyond that probably
Speaker 1: need like a higher level of care like a storical
Speaker 1: capability or something. So you know, just because of the
Speaker 1: theaters that we were in, probably I didn't deploy until
Speaker 1: I think two thousand seven or eight something like that.
Speaker 1: By then, we've been so established in both the primary
Speaker 1: theaters of Iraq and Afghanistan that there weren't very long
Speaker 1: transport time, so there wasn't a whole lot of prolonged care.
Speaker 1: It was what was the whole thing with the gold
Speaker 1: what is it, the golden Golden hour, which I mean,
Speaker 1: like anything, the golden hour is probably the kind of
Speaker 1: an arbitrary thing, like whether or not, like the hours,
Speaker 1: the magical number doesn't really matter. It's that you want
Speaker 1: to get people to surgeries as soon as you can,
Speaker 1: and we have the infrastructure in Iraq and Afghanistan to
Speaker 1: do that. Iraq is also more sort of urbanized and
Speaker 1: more conducive to having shorter transport times. I would imagine
Speaker 1: the Afghanistan like two thousand one and two, you know,
Speaker 1: when you have teams flying out of like Uzbekistan or whatever. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe the prolonged or at least then the prolonged field
Speaker 1: care was a much more relevant part of the job.
Speaker 1: But that's where you know, the thing with soft is
Speaker 1: or even the military in general. Whatever is like the
Speaker 1: hot thing could train for right now, that could change
Speaker 1: very rapidly. So then going to like Africa, where I
Speaker 1: mean we're responsible for a much greater um area as
Speaker 1: far as like rescue capability, I mean it's it's almost
Speaker 1: like half the continent now you could have multi day
Speaker 1: transport times where you might have to even switch aircraft
Speaker 1: and go from commercial to civilian and or even a
Speaker 1: lot of overland stuff, vehicle stuff. So that's where the capability,
Speaker 1: you know, the prolonged field care capability was much more
Speaker 1: important was in Africa. And it's like sometimes it's hard
Speaker 1: to train for all these things because to get really
Speaker 1: proficient in something like prolonged field care, you probably have
Speaker 1: to work in like an intensive care unit and do
Speaker 1: almost like what a what a nurse does. I mean,
Speaker 1: even little things like someone's been laying on a litter
Speaker 1: for four hours straight, like changing their position, changing their
Speaker 1: their dressing so they don't get infected. It's stuff that
Speaker 1: you don't think about if your mindset is TE triple
Speaker 1: C and stopping bleeds. So it's it's a it's a
Speaker 1: paradium shift for sure, And I mean, a lot of
Speaker 1: it was done just like learning on the job, because
Speaker 1: you we just have time to be exposed to those
Speaker 1: kind of things. That's where having like the medical handbook
Speaker 1: and medical s ops is really important. Telemedicine, like our
Speaker 1: flight surgeon in New York was the overall flight surgeon
Speaker 1: for para rescue. Like when I was in Africa, I
Speaker 1: would I'd call him on a SAT phone and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is what I got going on without revealing you know,
Speaker 1: like operational security details, and I'd say like medically, what
Speaker 1: should I do with this person? Or and a lot
Speaker 1: of times, you know, the flight surgeon is a generalist,
Speaker 1: not a specialist. Like they might not know if someone
Speaker 1: has a rare skin skin condition or infectious disease. So
Speaker 1: then then the flight surgeon calls the infectious disease person
Speaker 1: in d C. And so having that like good comps
Speaker 1: is really important because you just you can't know everything. Right. Actually,
Speaker 1: I'm just reminded me of something, and I'm glad you're
Speaker 1: here because we got an email. Actually on the last
Speaker 1: podcast that I tried to answer, I gave like a
Speaker 1: half as stancwer Um, But what was the question about
Speaker 1: the special operations that there, there's that endeavor and it's
Speaker 1: a specific unit where they will like basically put surgeons
Speaker 1: on target. Yeah, so in soft medicine, the key sort
Speaker 1: of thing they're grappling with is, Okay, we know that
Speaker 1: surgical providers are the definitive treatment for really severe trauma.
Speaker 1: So it's like, do you want to get the surgeons
Speaker 1: closer to the objective or do you want to take
Speaker 1: your pgs eighteen deltas and give them more training on
Speaker 1: top of what they already have. There's pros and cons
Speaker 1: to doing it either way, right, because I mean as
Speaker 1: a PJ and i'd imagine eighteen delta too, like you're
Speaker 1: already so saturated with things that you need to be
Speaker 1: efficient abilities. But like my sort of bias or opinion
Speaker 1: is that I think that we should have had less
Speaker 1: capabilities than more because a lot of times, like what
Speaker 1: you're advertising, like, yeah, you could do it, but are
Speaker 1: you really great at it? By the way, I have
Speaker 1: the email if you want to get a more concise
Speaker 1: answer from Doug here. So originally from Paul carry hay
Speaker 1: Ian and Jack. I'm a longtime listener of Software Radio
Speaker 1: and a newly certified e M T. I'm working towards
Speaker 1: going to medical school and want to eventually serve I
Speaker 1: recently found out about the Special Operations Surgical Team s
Speaker 1: os T. The information about s os T is very
Speaker 1: limited online and would love to hear some firsthand experience
Speaker 1: from members of those teams. UM really interested in learning
Speaker 1: the selective training, pipeline, types of missions, scope of practice,
Speaker 1: and any other resources to check out. So yeah, that'd
Speaker 1: be a good question. Yeah. So segueing into that question
Speaker 1: would be, they're trying to get the surgeons as far
Speaker 1: forward as possible. So what these surgical teams do is
Speaker 1: they get as close to the point of injury as
Speaker 1: they can. That's also commensurate with their tactical capability, So
Speaker 1: they don't I mean yeah, like they might go to
Speaker 1: like some shooting courses and stuff like that, but you
Speaker 1: don't want the surgeon or the anesthesiologists right to be
Speaker 1: like firing rounds on target. So our p A killed
Speaker 1: a guy on target in five really, yes, that's awesome, Um,
Speaker 1: But also a lot of times like they'll like I
Speaker 1: mentioned I did some CSR deployments. Sometimes the surgical teams
Speaker 1: might be flying like an airborne alert in a in
Speaker 1: a helicopter and this is like all open source stuff. UM,
Speaker 1: that's probably as far forward as they as they will get.
Speaker 1: They you generally don't want to put them on the ground.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe it's something like an like an o
Speaker 1: r P where you could set up like a triage
Speaker 1: for a huge mission with multiple layers of secure like
Speaker 1: the bin laden raid or something. Maybe you have an
Speaker 1: MSS right on the border exactly where the surgeon could kill.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if that's exactly what they did,
Speaker 1: but that's that seems like something they would probably do.
Speaker 1: UM where you know, maybe it's a short flight to
Speaker 1: the surgical team. So let's say if you're definitive care
Speaker 1: center is let's say it's like a three hour flight.
Speaker 1: Rather than having the pre hospital provider or the soft
Speaker 1: medic do that three hours of medical treatment, you might
Speaker 1: put a step in between where now the soft medic
Speaker 1: or prehospital person is doing an hour or two an
Speaker 1: hour and a half a treatment, but that that extra
Speaker 1: hour and a half could make the difference between life
Speaker 1: and death in a lot of cases. So these surgical teams,
Speaker 1: they want to get them as far forward as possible.
Speaker 1: They usually consist of like an e er doctor A,
Speaker 1: a p A more like a trauma oriented p A,
Speaker 1: probably like put you encountered the range of battalion um
Speaker 1: either an anisthesiologist or a certified nurse an esthetists, so
Speaker 1: basically someone to put the patient to sleep for the
Speaker 1: surgery UM. And then maybe like this variates like an
Speaker 1: orthopedic surgeon if there's you know, like a blast injury
Speaker 1: and orthopedic trauma, or maybe more like a general type surgeon.
Speaker 1: And then there's always like a calm person as well,
Speaker 1: like just we're not a medical product, just pure communications, right,
Speaker 1: So usually they're doing a lot of their medical care
Speaker 1: in like either a fixed wing or rotary ring aircraft,
Speaker 1: not so much on the ground. And if they are
Speaker 1: doing stuff on the ground, it's probably going to be
Speaker 1: at more like a FOB or an MSS. The training
Speaker 1: pipeline for it, I don't know who a lot about
Speaker 1: it cause it's it's really selective. I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: getting into a very upper echelon assault unit, Like they
Speaker 1: have their own criteria. Obviously you've got to start by
Speaker 1: being a credential surgeon, surgeon, e ER doctor, um, CRNA
Speaker 1: whatever that can become a surgeon. By the time you
Speaker 1: make surgeon, you're like, what thirty exactly, Yeah, Um, So
Speaker 1: there's probably I know that you know, for a lot
Speaker 1: of the soft units, there's like a support pipeline where
Speaker 1: they're not making them do everything physically that like the
Speaker 1: assaulters would do, but they have to do a lot
Speaker 1: of it. And so you know, depending on how far
Speaker 1: they want to take these medical providers, if you were
Speaker 1: doing an overland infil these guys need to be in
Speaker 1: your girls need to be in sufficient enough shape to
Speaker 1: be able to make that overland movement. So I'm just
Speaker 1: speculating that there's probably some kind of physical selection, um,
Speaker 1: and then there's going to be like a medical assessment
Speaker 1: as well. But it's gonna I mean, I think it's
Speaker 1: a noble sort of ambition to have. I would say,
Speaker 1: just start by getting into medical school, doing really well there,
Speaker 1: and then once if you decided to join the military.
Speaker 1: I doubt there's like a guaranteed pipeline to do this,
Speaker 1: because it's like a guaranteed pipeline to be in a
Speaker 1: very you know, specialized unit um. And I'm saying specialized
Speaker 1: even above what like a PJ or a seal or
Speaker 1: an SF would be right. So, um, you've got to
Speaker 1: distinguish yourself in your military career to be eligible to
Speaker 1: even try out for that kind of job. But UM,
Speaker 1: just start, you know, one thing at a time. But
Speaker 1: I think it's a good thing to to look into,
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe to set yourself up for success,
Speaker 1: you might want to, um, you know, gravitate towards more
Speaker 1: like a trauma based specialty. Um, if you have the opportunity,
Speaker 1: you know, try to get in with like an infantry
Speaker 1: unit versus like a support unit. And then maybe if
Speaker 1: you're in the army, like a ranger battalion or an
Speaker 1: SF team would probably be making you a better applicant
Speaker 1: than if you were with a conventional unit. So just
Speaker 1: whatever you can do to distinguish yourself, um throughout that
Speaker 1: pipeline or the process, I would try to do. This
Speaker 1: also minds me of you know, kind of the flip
Speaker 1: side of this conversation about you know, the Golden Hour.
Speaker 1: I had this conversation with Rocky far who I believe
Speaker 1: you retire to Chief Warrant Officer five. Um, really interesting guy.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know or not, Doc far Um.
Speaker 1: These are Green Beret and I believe you wrote a
Speaker 1: whole white paper about this topic. He said, we're kind
Speaker 1: of um, I mean, it's all well intentioned, but we've
Speaker 1: kind of screwed ourselves with the notion of the golden
Speaker 1: hour because in the future, um or even today, are
Speaker 1: special operations guys who have to work in an unconventional
Speaker 1: warfare environment. They're not going to have all that infrastructure
Speaker 1: built up that you were just mentioned. You might have
Speaker 1: to treat your casualty for five days in a barn.
Speaker 1: You know that that could very well be the case
Speaker 1: in the future. And that's the difficult part about training.
Speaker 1: It's like what do you prioritize because it's always the
Speaker 1: missions are always changing. But I mean, if you read
Speaker 1: the unclassified National Defense Strategy, like the biggest threats that
Speaker 1: they name are not these nonstate actors. It's like these
Speaker 1: you know, cyber warfare and China and Russian all these things.
Speaker 1: And if I mean, I hope that we can avoid
Speaker 1: any kind of armed conflict with you know, countries like
Speaker 1: that that are like like legitimate, like military right, but uh,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna have seventy two or you know, one
Speaker 1: hour transports and one hour to a medical facility early
Speaker 1: on in most type of campaigns, right, so, or even
Speaker 1: some of the things that we're doing like in Africa
Speaker 1: or wherever. So, Um, yeah, it's it's I mean, I
Speaker 1: think you should always train to what's what's gonna be
Speaker 1: the most that's asked of you. Now that can come
Speaker 1: at a cost, because now it's like you could you
Speaker 1: could justify, Okay, well we're gonna do free fall training
Speaker 1: every day when you're not likely to use it. But
Speaker 1: I mean, if you can treat somebody for seventy two hours,
Speaker 1: you can treat somebody for one hour, right, Um, So
Speaker 1: you know it's a little bit of different skill set.
Speaker 1: But like somebody who works in an I. S U
Speaker 1: Is probably comfortable putting a tourniquet on somebody and stopping
Speaker 1: a bleed and intubating somebody. Uh where medicine is really
Speaker 1: tricky as some of this prolonged field care and more
Speaker 1: of these medical type situations, because trauma is really what
Speaker 1: you see is what you get. Um, Like, something is bleeding,
Speaker 1: you stop the bleeding. Someone can't breathe, you instart a
Speaker 1: hole for them to breathe. But where you know when
Speaker 1: some of these like multiple systems start to interact, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty four hours after a trauma, where now you've got
Speaker 1: to measure things like you're an output and you know
Speaker 1: different um like levels of pH and the blood to
Speaker 1: make sure someone's not going into shock and all these things.
Speaker 1: That's where you really need that expertise. But it's difficult
Speaker 1: to do that when you have to shoot, do tactics,
Speaker 1: do mountaineering, you know, scuba dive. It's like a lot
Speaker 1: of trial and error is gonna It's gonna take a
Speaker 1: lot of trial and r to figure out what the
Speaker 1: right balance is. Yeah, I feel like a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't understand that, like the amount of responsibilities and
Speaker 1: the amount of skills that these guys are supposed to
Speaker 1: be a percent perficient on at all times. I mean,
Speaker 1: a special Forces medic has to have all his medical training, um,
Speaker 1: his refreshers. Maybe he's a qualified sniper, so he has
Speaker 1: to go and do the sniper refresher course. Uh maybe
Speaker 1: he is, um, you know, the eighteen fox, So he
Speaker 1: has to do the intelligence stuff. Um he has to
Speaker 1: you know, know, his source handling and all that other
Speaker 1: kind of jazz. I mean's and then and then the
Speaker 1: infiltration techniques. Uh, you know, like our team was a
Speaker 1: free fall team, so we had to know how to
Speaker 1: do that. I mean, it's just incredible the amount of
Speaker 1: stuff that you're inevitably something has to fall by the wayside,
Speaker 1: like especially with all the other bureaucratic crap that's dumped
Speaker 1: on you, like something to give at a certain point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's where it's like language capabilities, Yeah, what do
Speaker 1: you what do you prioritize? And I think people tend
Speaker 1: to put the military and especially like special operations community
Speaker 1: on the pedestal. And you know, we would go to
Speaker 1: like civilian drop zones to jump one time a couple
Speaker 1: of times, and like you're wearing like your cry uniform,
Speaker 1: and I think that the civilian population has this perception
Speaker 1: that like because when we were in cries and we're
Speaker 1: scuba diving or Scott having a we're the best Scott
Speaker 1: hovers that drop zone. But I'm like not even that.
Speaker 1: Like Stoner dude who's skyd having like ten times a day,
Speaker 1: Like he's a way better skytiver than me. Like you mean,
Speaker 1: you've you've got to be able to skydive safely, land
Speaker 1: on your on the drop zone with your team so
Speaker 1: you can do your actual omission. So it's like he's
Speaker 1: got to figure out what's the what's the good enough
Speaker 1: standard where like you're safe to do something. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't think you need to skydive ten times a day
Speaker 1: to be able to do that, right, But it's I
Speaker 1: think it's harder with medicine because probably more than once
Speaker 1: every six months. Yeah, and with with medicine, medicine is
Speaker 1: even harder because I mean, there you know there were
Speaker 1: times when like I went months without treating a patient
Speaker 1: or even doing like a simulation. Right. And then usually
Speaker 1: before we deployment, when you know you're going to be
Speaker 1: called to do these things, you ramp up your training.
Speaker 1: But like if you're on the hook for a civilian
Speaker 1: mission and you haven't intubated somebody in four months and
Speaker 1: now you've got to do it in dark helicopter, like,
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty stressful. So um, And like you said,
Speaker 1: there's so many additional bureaucratic constraints and requirements that are
Speaker 1: thrown on top of the actual training that it can
Speaker 1: make it very difficult to be truly prepared, right. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's something I think's gonna struggle with pretty much
Speaker 1: forever because You're you're the ultimate like generalist. But that's
Speaker 1: what makes you unique is that you're like you're you're
Speaker 1: providing medical care in a place that a surgeon doesn't
Speaker 1: the capability or maybe the desire to go to. But
Speaker 1: that comes at a cost where you're not you're not
Speaker 1: providing that same medical capability, but you're the only one
Speaker 1: is willing to do it, right. Yeah, I just kind
Speaker 1: of like giggle at it when I see like some
Speaker 1: of the things they're trying to do, This whole idea
Speaker 1: that like the future of SF is going to be,
Speaker 1: you know, two green Berets camped out in a safe
Speaker 1: house with laptops doing cyber warfare and running sources and
Speaker 1: do and like, dude, none of that's gonna happen. Come on, man,
Speaker 1: Like you can't dump all of this stuff on one
Speaker 1: force and just expect them to be able to do everything.
Speaker 1: Like Jason Bourne is not a real person. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you want that, just develop the artificial intelligence and
Speaker 1: replaces with robots, because that's that's I think that too
Speaker 1: much is asked up stuff, especially especially O D A S.
Speaker 1: I mean, doing like ground level diplomacy, having minimal support,
Speaker 1: like you don't know who you can trust. It's our
Speaker 1: own fault too, because we sell ourselves that way because
Speaker 1: we want to, like you said, we want to keep
Speaker 1: ourselves relevant. Like Navy seals on paper, there are proficient
Speaker 1: at all of these different things, but in reality, well
Speaker 1: they're probably proficient on a couple of those things. But
Speaker 1: it's who know. I mean, like, and you want to
Speaker 1: do war on the cheap these days, so like soft
Speaker 1: is the answer to everything, um, and you and I
Speaker 1: both thought that it's not right. So it's like a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff is dictated by strategically, what are
Speaker 1: you trying to achieve? And I think that you know,
Speaker 1: seft on a tactical level, like no one does it
Speaker 1: better on a tactical level. But if strategically, which is
Speaker 1: that's determined outside the military. If you if you're like
Speaker 1: trying to engage in you know, like anywhere there's a terrorist,
Speaker 1: you're gonna you can justify setting a soft unit. After
Speaker 1: a while and it's already happened. You're gonna be stretched
Speaker 1: too thin. And now now how do you how do
Speaker 1: you cultivate all these abilities if you're constantly deployed too,
Speaker 1: because you're not you can't really train when you're deployed.
Speaker 1: If you're doing the missions, I mean, you're only doing
Speaker 1: what you're exposed to, Like you you can't develop these
Speaker 1: new capabilities, so um, none of the stuff exists in
Speaker 1: a vacuum of Like, if you're strategic objectives don't marry
Speaker 1: with tactically what you want to do, then there's always
Speaker 1: gonna be this disconnect. And I think that's kind of
Speaker 1: where we are now, where it's just like people are
Speaker 1: asking way too much of soft, and part of it,
Speaker 1: like you said, his soft's own fault. Part of it,
Speaker 1: I think is that divide between the civilian population and
Speaker 1: the military, where soft is put on too much of
Speaker 1: a pedestal. And I think that we people like who
Speaker 1: used to be in the community could do a better
Speaker 1: job of like like these are regular people. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Like, Hey,
Speaker 1: this dude has been deployed fifteen times, Like he needs
Speaker 1: some time with his family. Now, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: UM on the conventional side to um, there's some truth
Speaker 1: to it that an increasingly smaller and smaller segment of
Speaker 1: our population is being expected to shoulder so much of
Speaker 1: the burden. I mean, I was one of the lucky ones.
Speaker 1: You know, I deployed three times. You gotta do some
Speaker 1: cool stuff in the military. I was a single guy.
Speaker 1: I think about the guy who stayed in he got
Speaker 1: married and had kids and he's still in the soft
Speaker 1: community today. So deploying over and over and over and
Speaker 1: over again, I mean, is again something has to give. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I've heard of like like a sick and
Speaker 1: airborne during interacting, like eighteen month deployments, Like that's absolutely insane. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know what they were doing in like World
Speaker 1: War I mean I've watched like civil war documentaries where
Speaker 1: it's like your your deployment is the length of the war,
Speaker 1: Like you don't get to go home. But in two thousand,
Speaker 1: you know, nineteen should we be having eighteen month deployments? Like,
Speaker 1: I just don't know how sustainable it is. In World
Speaker 1: War Two, I mean, you got drafted and you're in
Speaker 1: for like a year, you saw some ship, but then
Speaker 1: it was over, you know, you went home. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: for the strategic return that we get, right, it's one
Speaker 1: thing you for like literally saving the world. But it's
Speaker 1: like you can make a case that if we did
Speaker 1: a lot less, the world wouldn't be that much different.
Speaker 1: So yeah, um, so just shifting gears again a little bit.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about, Um, you know you're going
Speaker 1: to Columbia, you continue to further your own education and
Speaker 1: stay in the I mean, are you I'm done there now, right,
Speaker 1: But I mean your degree was it sports physiology, physical therapy,
Speaker 1: physical therapy? Yeah, so what made you decide you want
Speaker 1: kind of um the part with the military and pursue
Speaker 1: you know, the sports therapy. Yeah. So, like I said,
Speaker 1: when I was prior to pair rescue, I was like
Speaker 1: thinking about going to medical school, and I was pretty
Speaker 1: deep into the process. Even at that time, I thought
Speaker 1: I wanted to do primary care and non surgical sports medicine.
Speaker 1: Is I always liked sports and was active and then
Speaker 1: then obviously changed when I joined the Air Force, So
Speaker 1: I know I wanted to get back into that field
Speaker 1: in some capacity. And the nice thing about having gone
Speaker 1: through that pair rescue experience was you work a lot
Speaker 1: in hospitals, get a lot of actual medical experience, and
Speaker 1: it made me realize that like probably I didn't like
Speaker 1: I didn't like the hospital based setting, which is more
Speaker 1: of what you would get if you'd gone to medical
Speaker 1: school and became a physician. It's to me, it's just
Speaker 1: much more like sort of sterile environment. I like the
Speaker 1: more active environment. I mean, if you googled physical therapy,
Speaker 1: you would see things that weren't too like invigorating, but
Speaker 1: at least at least like as a physical therapist, I
Speaker 1: felt like I can kind of shape how I wanted
Speaker 1: to deliver that care and do you know, more focus
Speaker 1: on preventative things and a more active population less of
Speaker 1: like a medicalized or pathologized population. Like for the most part,
Speaker 1: I deal with generally healthy people who have more of
Speaker 1: a performance related goal. And I'm I mean, I have
Speaker 1: the utmost respect for people who work with more like debilitated,
Speaker 1: uh you know, unhealthy population. But just if I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do something every day I want to, you know, that's
Speaker 1: it was a better fit for me. So I mean,
Speaker 1: even physical therapy, it's like there's probably not a single
Speaker 1: profession that totally conforms to what I want to do
Speaker 1: on a day to day basis. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: a compromise, like this is the least worst fit. And
Speaker 1: then you know it's a cost benefit calculation between like well,
Speaker 1: I can go to school for three years, so I
Speaker 1: can go to school for eight years, and then it's
Speaker 1: like I can go to school for three years with
Speaker 1: physical therapy still have a good degree of professional autonomy,
Speaker 1: good earning potential if you know how to you know,
Speaker 1: manage the business side of things. So and I was
Speaker 1: like thirty years old when I wanted to like leave
Speaker 1: the military full time and switch gears. So three years
Speaker 1: seemed like a better better deal at that point than
Speaker 1: eight years, which is what it would have taken to
Speaker 1: do primary care sports as a physician. UM. And I
Speaker 1: like the more like the exercise aspect of it more
Speaker 1: than like doing injections and the surgeries and the more
Speaker 1: invasive things. So physical therapy as a whole is more
Speaker 1: like exercise based than like what like a primary care
Speaker 1: sports medicine physician would be. So uh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I went to school for it was graduate school for
Speaker 1: three years at Columbia, and then deployed UM and then
Speaker 1: ended up sort of like by accident, starting my own practice.
Speaker 1: I had no idea what I was doing. You don't
Speaker 1: get any business uh to lege your mentorship when you're
Speaker 1: in physical therapy school, or you can get like an
Speaker 1: hour of it, um, but maybe from the military. I was.
Speaker 1: I was kind of like tired of working for so
Speaker 1: many different people that I just want to do my
Speaker 1: own thing and be independent. And when you come out
Speaker 1: of that background, to you like think you can do anything,
Speaker 1: like well I did think that and I was totally wrong.
Speaker 1: Um and I got I mean, I got my ass kicked,
Speaker 1: and I learned a lot of hard that what happens
Speaker 1: sometimes like the best way to do something is just
Speaker 1: to immerse yourself in it and not be prepared. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was lucky because I had but you know, when
Speaker 1: you're in the military, you don't spend any money, so
Speaker 1: I had a lot of money saved up. The g
Speaker 1: I Bill paid for my graduate school. I didn't join
Speaker 1: the military with the intention of, like I'm doing this
Speaker 1: to get money for grad school, because I wasn't even
Speaker 1: sure if I wanted to do it at that point.
Speaker 1: But the post nine eleven g I Bill was a
Speaker 1: nice benefit that made it easier for me to take
Speaker 1: on some of these professional risks when I graduated, because
Speaker 1: I have classmates who were like two in grand in
Speaker 1: debt between undergrad and grad school, and like effectively with
Speaker 1: the Yellow Ribbon program, like I got paid to go
Speaker 1: to school, which is which is awesome. And then when
Speaker 1: I wasn't in school, I was doing the PGA thing
Speaker 1: and then getting paid that way. So it wasn't as
Speaker 1: much of a burden for me or a risk to
Speaker 1: like start my own practice. I could get away with
Speaker 1: not making not making that much money initially, and like
Speaker 1: if I if I wasn't making any money, I could
Speaker 1: always just like sign up for you know, to get
Speaker 1: on on orders with my guard unit and then support
Speaker 1: myself that way. So I was lucky that a lot
Speaker 1: of kind of stars aligne that made my professional incompetence
Speaker 1: less sort of costly, you know, but I mean it
Speaker 1: worked out. And it's one of those things where that's
Speaker 1: why learning experience. Yeah, you read these business books or
Speaker 1: whatever and people try to like reverse engineer their success
Speaker 1: and like, well, like if you do these things, then
Speaker 1: this will happen, and like that's complete bullshit. There's no
Speaker 1: way that you can predict some of this stuff. There's
Speaker 1: so much luck involved in so many variables that have
Speaker 1: to sort of align for people to be successful. And
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not where I want to be, but
Speaker 1: I'm lucky that some of those things have happened. And
Speaker 1: I'm kind of on the right trajectory. But looking looking
Speaker 1: at the website itself, which is Resilient Performance dot com,
Speaker 1: you're doing a lot more than just one thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: looking at the different tabs on the website, it's sports medicine, performance, training, education,
Speaker 1: and consulting. So it's it's more than just physical therapy,
Speaker 1: as you were saying, and it's very active. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the thing with any this is like what's your identity
Speaker 1: going to be? And I've got my day to day
Speaker 1: like clinical treatment, um, which is great, but I'm kind
Speaker 1: of at the point now where like when And this
Speaker 1: is one of the things too. When you get paid
Speaker 1: by the hour, you're incentivized to work a lot more
Speaker 1: than you normally will. Like if I was on a
Speaker 1: salary job working for somebody else, I would take every
Speaker 1: single vacation day that I was allotted. If you told me,
Speaker 1: like you've got to be here between you know, eight
Speaker 1: in the morning and five at night, like I probably
Speaker 1: leave it five, right, But when you're you're getting paid
Speaker 1: by the hour, it's like, well, you know, it's what's
Speaker 1: what's another hour? And then next thing you know, it's
Speaker 1: nine pm and you're like you're storting, you're going home
Speaker 1: when you got there at seven or eight. So I've
Speaker 1: got to learn how to kind of like scale things
Speaker 1: and dial to dial back a little bit. Where the
Speaker 1: answer isn't just to keep working more, but so having
Speaker 1: like the multiple streams where like we do some consulting,
Speaker 1: we do some online education, and then even with like
Speaker 1: physical therapy people, most people are coming in, especially if
Speaker 1: they're like somewhat athletic, if your goal is to you
Speaker 1: want to get ready for like a ski trip or
Speaker 1: whatever you want to get ready to. Even if you're
Speaker 1: like an operator, right like doing a bunch of isolated,
Speaker 1: banned physical therapy exercise is not going to prepare you
Speaker 1: for those things. That's why I like, I don't really
Speaker 1: see much of a differentiation between like fitness development or
Speaker 1: performance training and physical therapy because the bottom line as
Speaker 1: you're prepared to or not. And that's where I think,
Speaker 1: having come from the military background, influence my clinical thinking,
Speaker 1: where it's like you you need to be truly prepared.
Speaker 1: There's no false confidence, and a lot of people will
Speaker 1: succeed medically in spite of what you do. But I
Speaker 1: don't like that. I was uncomfortable with the idea of
Speaker 1: somebody coming to me with like a higher level movement
Speaker 1: or performance related goal and having them leave not being
Speaker 1: truly prepared and confident in that. So that's where, like,
Speaker 1: you know, we say it's like performance training, but to me,
Speaker 1: the distinction between physical therapy and fitness training is totally arbitrary.
Speaker 1: It's like, you're ready for your goal, you're not. The
Speaker 1: difference in the physical therapy setting is that a lot
Speaker 1: of times people are coming in with an injury or pain,
Speaker 1: So that might change what you do initially, but it
Speaker 1: shouldn't change what you do once you get closer to
Speaker 1: that person's goal. Because let's say you have like a
Speaker 1: football player who's coming off an a c L surgery,
Speaker 1: like they tore ligament in their knee. Well, yeah, the
Speaker 1: day after their surgery, when they're like immobilized and they
Speaker 1: have all the swelling, maybe all you can do with
Speaker 1: that person is just like been their need a little
Speaker 1: bit to get range of motion back. But seven months later,
Speaker 1: when they're about to play football again, you need to
Speaker 1: do things that look like football, right, So how do
Speaker 1: you say, like, okay, well now we're we're still doing
Speaker 1: physical therapy, like at that point, your rehabilitation is scrimmaging,
Speaker 1: it's sprinting, it's changing direction rapidly. UM. So there's no
Speaker 1: one sort of school of thought or profession that like
Speaker 1: owns preparation. It's like, just do what it takes to
Speaker 1: um to get the job done. But you know, when
Speaker 1: you have medical insurance and regulation and governing bodies, they
Speaker 1: create these arbitrary definitions like well, this profession should do this,
Speaker 1: and this should this, one should do this, and a
Speaker 1: lot of times those sort of systemic things getting the
Speaker 1: way of what you can achieve with people. But a
Speaker 1: lot I'm lucky enough that my practice is it's out
Speaker 1: of network with insurance, which means that it limits who
Speaker 1: I can see obviously, but I'm not as constrained by
Speaker 1: like that some of the parameters that an insurance company
Speaker 1: imposes from a treatment standpoint, I can see each patient
Speaker 1: for an hour, you know, for every session, and that
Speaker 1: allows me to see them a lot less than maybe
Speaker 1: they would normally go in and kind of save them
Speaker 1: time ultimately, but it also allows me to just pretty
Speaker 1: much do what I want for the most part, without
Speaker 1: having to dictate, you know, having it dictated by like
Speaker 1: an insurance company. The Bilding code, So you know that's
Speaker 1: where all these things fit together. Strategically and micro level,
Speaker 1: we can talk about like soft and how they want
Speaker 1: to expand their capabilities because strategically they're probably being overutilized.
Speaker 1: Like medicine doesn't exist in a vacuum. You have these
Speaker 1: systemic and these healthcare and things that that are that
Speaker 1: are that are influencing how medical care is being delivered.
Speaker 1: So it's not just like about what's best medically for
Speaker 1: the person, it's about, well, what's best medically with all
Speaker 1: the constraints that you have from the outside. So it's
Speaker 1: it's all the same. That's what we're talking about. Like before,
Speaker 1: it's people aren't solving unique problem. Like everyone's got constraints
Speaker 1: that they operate on or they have to make the
Speaker 1: best that I've often a bad situation. One of the
Speaker 1: things I did want to ask you about is I
Speaker 1: maybe I'm wrong, but I get the sense that you
Speaker 1: have a bit of a different approach to physical fitness
Speaker 1: than a lot of this stuff. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of bullshit out there if you go looking for it
Speaker 1: um or or even if you go looking for good
Speaker 1: health advice, good physical fitness advice. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: bs out there, uh, And I sense that you have
Speaker 1: a really like down or earth kind of perspective on it.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if there's like if the right
Speaker 1: question is to ask about like your philosophy towards physical
Speaker 1: fitness or um, maybe what you think about some of
Speaker 1: the directions it's going in right now or where it
Speaker 1: should be going. But um, I was wondering, because I
Speaker 1: think you're a pretty smart guy on this subject. I
Speaker 1: was wondering if you could you know, share some thoughts. Great,
Speaker 1: that's a great question. Um. Yeah. I mean ultimately it
Speaker 1: should be about as a professional, like you always want
Speaker 1: to show people how much you know and you always
Speaker 1: want to be the reason why somebody succeeds. But that
Speaker 1: can get you in trouble because you like physical therapists
Speaker 1: care about things, is that their patients and their athletes
Speaker 1: don't often care about. So it has to start with,
Speaker 1: first of all, like what's the person's goal, Because if
Speaker 1: it's a sixty year old person who just wants to
Speaker 1: be able to cross the street without the countdown on
Speaker 1: the you know, clock expiring, or and to be able
Speaker 1: to pick up their grandkids without the running out their back.
Speaker 1: They don't need to do like power cleans, you know what.
Speaker 1: So um, it's it's got to be about like the
Speaker 1: person and not about you. A lot of people like,
Speaker 1: because they've done things a certain way, they expect everyone
Speaker 1: else to enjoy the same thing. So it's got to
Speaker 1: be sort of like patient or patient or athletes centric um,
Speaker 1: and then figure out what their what their goal is,
Speaker 1: and figure out like how to how to physically slightly
Speaker 1: over prepare them. Right, So, if you're talking about like
Speaker 1: a like a soft operator, there's this whole tactical fitness
Speaker 1: movement where it's like there's this perception that to be
Speaker 1: in soft you have to be this like elite athlete
Speaker 1: who is like a borderline Olympian or a cross fit
Speaker 1: Games champion. And I know plenty of people who are
Speaker 1: great operators. I was like way fitter than but they
Speaker 1: were more competent than me on a mission. So like,
Speaker 1: there's only it only takes you so far. It's like
Speaker 1: the Kenny Powers thing. I'm I'm trying I play real sports.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to be the best of exercising. He's
Speaker 1: founded down. It's one of the just bizarre, most bizarre
Speaker 1: things I've seen is UM taking the train through Irvington,
Speaker 1: New York, which is like one of the most yuppie
Speaker 1: towns in Westchester County. I grew up in the next
Speaker 1: town over, and there's a big CrossFit gym right there. Um.
Speaker 1: And as I'm we're going past in the on the
Speaker 1: Metro North, I see all these dudes coming out of
Speaker 1: the CrossFit gym and they're like doing windsprints, wearing fucking
Speaker 1: like cry precision plate carriers. I'm like, where am I
Speaker 1: right now? Like the weirdest thing. But anyway, police continue, No,
Speaker 1: I mean and and And that's you know, if people
Speaker 1: enjoy that. Like, it's not my place to tell somebody
Speaker 1: what they should shouldn't do, But it's if you're talking about, like,
Speaker 1: let's say, like an athlete in the abstract, it's how
Speaker 1: do you slightly over prepare them for what they need
Speaker 1: to do. So if you if the most physically demanding
Speaker 1: thing you're gonna have to do on a mission and
Speaker 1: SAFT is like, say, walk fifteen miles through adverse terrain,
Speaker 1: well you don't need to be a professional ultra marathon
Speaker 1: or to do that. But if all you can do
Speaker 1: is walk fifteen miles through adverse terrain at a certain clip,
Speaker 1: and like you're totally I mean, that's a percent of
Speaker 1: what you can do. Now when you get to the objective,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna be able to perform because you've already
Speaker 1: basically expanded yourself. So the idea is to figure out,
Speaker 1: like what do people need to be able to do
Speaker 1: for their life or their goal, and then give them
Speaker 1: a little bit more of what they need, whether it's
Speaker 1: like strength or endurance or speed or flexibility. But like
Speaker 1: you know, to be a soft you know, an operator,
Speaker 1: you don't need to be a circus of late performer
Speaker 1: from a mobility standpoint, so like yeah, it's good like stretch,
Speaker 1: get more mobile, but you don't need to do a split.
Speaker 1: So a lot of times people chase these sort of
Speaker 1: arbitrary standards where they get emotionally attached to certain exercises
Speaker 1: or ways of training. So like if you're if you're
Speaker 1: in the military, if you like to do Olympic lifts,
Speaker 1: like that's great, but you don't need to do them.
Speaker 1: You don't need to do like barbell back squad. It's
Speaker 1: like I like some of that stuff and I do
Speaker 1: with a lot of people, But there's every exercise is
Speaker 1: means to an end. It's kind of like saying, you
Speaker 1: know what's the best, Like, if you want to shoot,
Speaker 1: you have to use this one optic, Like you should
Speaker 1: be able to shoot iron sights, and if you can't
Speaker 1: do that, there's a lot of optics that work pretty well.
Speaker 1: So are you a big proponent of combat focus PT?
Speaker 1: I mean that's what we called it back in the day. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I I think that people should be able to do
Speaker 1: whatever they want once they're selected, and as long as
Speaker 1: they're performing on the job, um that they shouldn't be
Speaker 1: held to these kind of communal type standards. But what
Speaker 1: I mean as far as like you're even if you're
Speaker 1: doing PT on your own, I mean, it is what's
Speaker 1: the UM, I don't know, preferred method? Oh um, well,
Speaker 1: we're talking about like in the in the military. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've got to be kind of like a little good
Speaker 1: and everything, but not great at anything. So my my
Speaker 1: template for probably like the average like military person or
Speaker 1: like even law enforcement would be I'd probably do some
Speaker 1: kind of like strength training two days a week. I
Speaker 1: alwould do something that's more like speed oriented one day
Speaker 1: a week, maybe like not like all out sprinting like
Speaker 1: a track athlete, but something we're just moving a little
Speaker 1: bit faster. Um, one day a week, I might do
Speaker 1: something that's more like a locomotion driven so like a
Speaker 1: rock or like walking on a treadmill with a pack,
Speaker 1: or pushing or pulling a sled, that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: because that has a lot of transferred to like you
Speaker 1: know what what you would do if you were like
Speaker 1: in the military or in a law enforcement or fire
Speaker 1: type job. And then maybe like one day of just
Speaker 1: like more of a low impact cardio type thing. Like
Speaker 1: it's it's way more simple than what most people would
Speaker 1: make it. Um, everything now is about like a tension
Speaker 1: and with like Instagram and social media, like the basics
Speaker 1: don't really sell that well, but the basics go a
Speaker 1: long way. Just like in shooting or any other military discipline,
Speaker 1: so just really basic web gear and a rifle that
Speaker 1: doesn't have all this crap on it. Yeah, the other
Speaker 1: key principles like risk rewards. So if you can achieve
Speaker 1: the same endpoint by doing something that's less an cprently risky, like,
Speaker 1: then why would you do something it's more risky and
Speaker 1: has more potential for harm? So like a lot of
Speaker 1: what we see now in the training in the fitness
Speaker 1: spaces stuff that it's like, first of all, they had
Speaker 1: like a freak of an athlete who's doing something that
Speaker 1: none of us could do, no matter how much that
Speaker 1: we trained, And they're doing things like, yeah, you might
Speaker 1: get stronger doing that, but you can get stronger doing
Speaker 1: something that's way less risky too. So, just like in
Speaker 1: the military and not a unique question, physical therapy and
Speaker 1: fitness training is really just risk mitigation because to to
Speaker 1: get the adaptation you want from the body, you have
Speaker 1: to stress the body, otherwise you won't you won't grow
Speaker 1: and develop. But at the same time, like it's almost
Speaker 1: like the immune system. You want to give someone a
Speaker 1: little bit of a vaccine, but you want to give
Speaker 1: them a disease because then they get the disease, right, So,
Speaker 1: and we want our operators to be able to have
Speaker 1: a twenty year career if they choose, you know, we
Speaker 1: want that longevity. Yeah, And there's data showing even from
Speaker 1: Journal of Special Operations Medicine, which is like basically a
Speaker 1: medical journal put out by SOCOM. This is maybe data
Speaker 1: from the last ten years that they studied the arm
Speaker 1: SF population and found that over three quarters of the
Speaker 1: injuries that kept the operators off status were deemed to
Speaker 1: be preventable, not like you're jumping out of a doing
Speaker 1: a stack line jump and you sprain your ankle at night,
Speaker 1: which that's like an inherent risk of the job, no
Speaker 1: matter how well prepared you are. That's happened to all
Speaker 1: of us. It's not guys getting shot on target. It
Speaker 1: was basically people doing like dumb things and their personal
Speaker 1: PT program. So if longevity is the impetus for a
Speaker 1: lot of these movements, you can almost make a case
Speaker 1: that a lot of military folks we be better off
Speaker 1: not doing anything in the gym and just doing their
Speaker 1: job training and they would be healthier and probably better
Speaker 1: prepared for their job than if they were doing some
Speaker 1: of these workouts. It's like, no one wants to hear that.
Speaker 1: It sounds crazy, but that's so that's been the impetus
Speaker 1: for a lot of these like human performance programs. And
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, like any of the military
Speaker 1: is almost overreacted. They're they're spending so much money on
Speaker 1: this stuff now when it doesn't need to be that hard.
Speaker 1: But I think it's a well intentioned movement. Like, yes,
Speaker 1: getting a strength coach and a physical therapist at these
Speaker 1: soft units is ultimately a good thing. Um, But then
Speaker 1: it's still an issue with like are are they being utilized?
Speaker 1: And so you know, operators are stubborn people and they
Speaker 1: often want to do things that like quote unquote work
Speaker 1: for them, but oftentimes what works for them is not
Speaker 1: what they think work works for them. So it could
Speaker 1: be it could be tough. That's no, it's very interesting. Um.
Speaker 1: So you think that it's actually much more basic and
Speaker 1: much more simple than what we make it out to be. Totally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean a couple of like really basic movements because
Speaker 1: within any exercise program, like whether you do a front squad,
Speaker 1: a back squad, a squad with a kettlebell in front
Speaker 1: of you, like that's kind of arbitrary. Like it's just
Speaker 1: you're working a certain movement pattern and you're strengthening the
Speaker 1: way that your hips, knees, and ankles extend against gravity. Right,
Speaker 1: So you could I mean, you could do a step
Speaker 1: up or a lunch they're all kind of doing the
Speaker 1: same thing. So no emotional attachments to exercises is really important. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's already especially like with the military and even
Speaker 1: sports enough inherent stress in the job itself that why
Speaker 1: are people doing things like you shouldn't be getting hurt
Speaker 1: in the weight room because your job is not the
Speaker 1: lift weights. One thing. If you're like a professional Olympic
Speaker 1: lifter powerlifter, and you compete and you get paid based
Speaker 1: on your ability to lift weights, like, if you're gonna
Speaker 1: get hurt, it should be doing a jump. It should
Speaker 1: be doing your job. If you're a basketball player, it
Speaker 1: should be you know, like um, getting elbowed trying to
Speaker 1: go for a rebound and like that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: It should not be that. I mean, I've don't. I
Speaker 1: work with so many athletes and even people in the
Speaker 1: military who it's like, oh, what's bothering you? And they're like,
Speaker 1: my shoulder hurts, and I'm like, well, when does it
Speaker 1: bother you? And they're like, oh, it only hurts doing
Speaker 1: muscle ups, And I'm like, why why are you doing
Speaker 1: muscle ups? I mean, like, you don't need to be
Speaker 1: able to do that, And so, yes, I could I
Speaker 1: had counter that and say, okay, I'm gonna teach you
Speaker 1: to do a muscle up. Well, but what if that
Speaker 1: person doesn't have the requisite mobility and strength and all
Speaker 1: their individual joints to do that. To me, you're better
Speaker 1: off just not doing it, because if you can do
Speaker 1: everything in your job and your shoulder feels fine, why
Speaker 1: would you risk now not being able to do your
Speaker 1: job and further injuring your shoulder doing something that you
Speaker 1: don't need to do for your It's like it's it's
Speaker 1: so intuitive, but people still like don't subscribe to it.
Speaker 1: It strikes me that in the there's a in the
Speaker 1: current kind of fitness world or current fitness movement, whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call it, it seems like they're almost
Speaker 1: selling you more of an experience. Then that's a great point.
Speaker 1: Physical exercise, your physical fitness, Yes, and that's the difference
Speaker 1: between Look like, if you're in the general population and
Speaker 1: you have like a sedentary job, that experience might be
Speaker 1: really important because there are a lot of people who
Speaker 1: don't like to exercise, and if if if part of
Speaker 1: what gets them to want to do it is that experience,
Speaker 1: even if it's not maybe the most ideally suited training
Speaker 1: program for them, I consider that a net win. I'm
Speaker 1: talking more about like the military or professional sports, where
Speaker 1: you actually have a job. It's very physically demanding. That's
Speaker 1: where like, look, you're a professional at that point your
Speaker 1: workout maybe shouldn't be the goal of your workout should
Speaker 1: not be to have an experience. It should be to
Speaker 1: enhance your preparation in your job. And that's not always
Speaker 1: on because like is it fun to dry fire your
Speaker 1: pistol or to go to the range? Like it's not fun,
Speaker 1: But the answer is yes, yes, but that's what you
Speaker 1: have to do to be to be good. Right, to
Speaker 1: be a professional. So, um, training general population and training
Speaker 1: like like someone who's a professional athlete or even like
Speaker 1: a you know, professional rescuer or law enforcement soldier needs
Speaker 1: to be different because if you if you work behind
Speaker 1: a desk and you hurt yourself doing a workout, you
Speaker 1: can still do your job. Um. So, like the downside
Speaker 1: is different depending on what you're experiences. It seems like
Speaker 1: a lot of the fitness programs out there, the idea
Speaker 1: is that like it's good, it's designed to blast you
Speaker 1: and just like where you down and destroy you. It's like, um,
Speaker 1: there's another example, um, talking to a friend of mine,
Speaker 1: if you go and take a martial arts course, Uh,
Speaker 1: and it's the goal is self defense. I mean really
Speaker 1: the first thing they should probably teach you is how
Speaker 1: to extract of aid and escape right to avoid confrontation.
Speaker 1: But because you're going to a martial arts class, it's
Speaker 1: like the people who go want to learn how to
Speaker 1: choke dudes out or do striking punch people in the face. Um,
Speaker 1: and that that's cool, you should know how to do that.
Speaker 1: But because you're going with the intent of having an experience,
Speaker 1: maybe they're teaching you something different than what they ought to. No,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a that's a that's a great point.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's yeah, the martial arts analogy is a
Speaker 1: good one. It's kind of like if you if you
Speaker 1: were untrained and you want to learn how to box,
Speaker 1: most boxing coaches aren't going to have you spar every
Speaker 1: day in the first week. And that's what's happening a
Speaker 1: lot of these fitness programs where and the irony is
Speaker 1: if you're not that fit, you can actually get away
Speaker 1: with doing some of that stuff because you're not capable
Speaker 1: often of enough output to hurt your body. But the
Speaker 1: fitter you are, the more you can kind of to
Speaker 1: your physical potential. So now when you're I think that
Speaker 1: the problem with fitness now is that it's not skill
Speaker 1: based enough. It's not like no one cares about technique.
Speaker 1: It's all about output and not every every sort of
Speaker 1: workouts the competition against yourself or against other people. So
Speaker 1: if your goal is to just outperform yourself or somebody
Speaker 1: next to you, then you're not gonna be too concerned
Speaker 1: about technique. And movement is still a skill. It's like
Speaker 1: if you um using a soft analogy, like if you've
Speaker 1: had an assault team and the assault team has to
Speaker 1: do like a long infill through adverse terrain and somebody's
Speaker 1: tired and basically shoots the hostage at the objective, you
Speaker 1: can't during your debriefs say well, I was tired from
Speaker 1: the the INFI um so like I didn't I took
Speaker 1: the wrong corner, or like I I didn't have a
Speaker 1: good stance when I shot, or a good site picture.
Speaker 1: I just went in the room and started shooting because
Speaker 1: I was tired. Like that does that doesn't fly right?
Speaker 1: It's like or if you're a basketball player and you're like, well,
Speaker 1: it's it's the end of the game, and I took
Speaker 1: a a three a three point shot with the game
Speaker 1: on the line, But like my shot went to hell
Speaker 1: technique wise because I was fatigued. So these things still
Speaker 1: require skill. Um, and if you're not, if you don't
Speaker 1: have a skill emphasis and your only emphasis on like
Speaker 1: just making yourself as tired as you can, then I
Speaker 1: think you're putting yourself more risk for injury. And ultimately
Speaker 1: your training is going to plateau because you give and
Speaker 1: develop that technique. So I think that the martial arts
Speaker 1: analogy is a good one. Like you need to throw,
Speaker 1: you need to know how to throw a jab before
Speaker 1: you can spar. And you have people who are like
Speaker 1: very very unfit, immobile, unskilled, and like they're doing these
Speaker 1: very complex movements to fatigue early on, and a lot
Speaker 1: of times what saves them is that because they're just
Speaker 1: so underprepared, they don't even know how to hurt themselves.
Speaker 1: But the fitter they get, if they never developed that
Speaker 1: technique base now they're more likely to probably plateau and
Speaker 1: their training. I mean, you can't predict injury. I can't say, well,
Speaker 1: they're gonna get hurt, but you're more likely to plateau
Speaker 1: if you don't have that skill. Sort of like what
Speaker 1: I was asking Gen's earlier about future trends in the
Speaker 1: firearms industry. I'd like to ask you the same thing
Speaker 1: because I think, again, you do have a pretty good perspective.
Speaker 1: I think on this, like where do you see the
Speaker 1: fitness world going, or how we apply fitness to our
Speaker 1: population or future trends I mean, or maybe the pitfalls
Speaker 1: where you see maybe going in your opinion, where maybe
Speaker 1: you think it should be going instead. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the hard part is because a lot of stuff is
Speaker 1: so commercially driven. If you need to if you want
Speaker 1: to run a business for like a fitness class, you
Speaker 1: need to sell the experience. So if like if my
Speaker 1: only goal was to make as much money as I
Speaker 1: could and fitness, I would get get a room with
Speaker 1: like a bunch of exercise bicycles or something and blast
Speaker 1: music and make people feel like they're at a club
Speaker 1: and create this like a lot of like high energy.
Speaker 1: They just opened the Orange Theory near me, what that is?
Speaker 1: I think they might do a little bit more. But
Speaker 1: the thing is, like a skill based approach to fitness
Speaker 1: is like labor and resource intensive. People have very low
Speaker 1: sort of attention spans these days, So oftentimes like what's
Speaker 1: kind of like best from a training standpoint, isn't necessarily
Speaker 1: going to to sell because people don't want like they
Speaker 1: don't want to buy the basics now, so you have
Speaker 1: to account for him. It psychology when you're doing these things,
Speaker 1: because you can have the best idea in the world,
Speaker 1: but if nobody cares about it, then that's you're you're
Speaker 1: not going to sustain your business. So I'm not in
Speaker 1: the group fitness thing, but I guess if I was
Speaker 1: consulting with a group fitness company, I'd probably say, look like,
Speaker 1: if you want to create a truly good training experience,
Speaker 1: all the the energy and everything you're trying to do
Speaker 1: in the camaraderie is great, but maybe utilize lower skilled
Speaker 1: movements so that people can push themselves really hard, but
Speaker 1: where the technique is not going to be a limiting factor.
Speaker 1: I think there's ways to do that, But now we've
Speaker 1: sold everybody on like you have to do Olympic lifts
Speaker 1: and muscle ups and cartwheels and all these different things
Speaker 1: that now everyone's expectation when I go to a fitness classes.
Speaker 1: If I'm not doing this, then I'm not getting a
Speaker 1: good workout that which can be very hard to change
Speaker 1: that mindset. But like people, you know, people talk about
Speaker 1: like machine training and how machine training is no good
Speaker 1: but for a lot if you if you want to
Speaker 1: work really hard and just get tired, you're almost better
Speaker 1: off doing it on the machine where you can't really
Speaker 1: screw it up. Um, so where you can have a
Speaker 1: very high output. But it's a low skill movement. So
Speaker 1: um it's hard because people people don't always need what
Speaker 1: they think they want, and when those two things are
Speaker 1: at odds, it can be very difficult to deliver the
Speaker 1: deliver the product because what might be the best thing,
Speaker 1: like on paper, is not what people are going to
Speaker 1: pay for, right They they're buying the experience more than
Speaker 1: the fitness. We're all very set in our ways. I
Speaker 1: mean in range of battalion, there's like the guys who run,
Speaker 1: and there's the guys who lift weights and never show
Speaker 1: the two meet always. That's how it was back in
Speaker 1: the day. I think they've done a lot better over
Speaker 1: the years and evolving, um, getting more into that like
Speaker 1: functional fitness. But I was saying that, yeah, like you
Speaker 1: said it to. We have a very emotional attachment to
Speaker 1: I think the way we exercise because we've made such
Speaker 1: an investment in it over the years. The same as like, uh,
Speaker 1: someone who's a black belt in a certain sort of
Speaker 1: sort of martial arts, like you spent your entire life
Speaker 1: working up to this. Like you don't want to say
Speaker 1: maybe that's not the right way to do things, right,
Speaker 1: It's it's hard to be self reflective. Um, And like
Speaker 1: I said, like people, most people don't need perfection. I
Speaker 1: think at the highest level of sport of the military,
Speaker 1: this conversation is more relevant. But like for most people,
Speaker 1: just doing any kind of exercise is good. And so
Speaker 1: for them going to a group class, I mean, we
Speaker 1: could nitpick about like oh I wish they were using, um,
Speaker 1: developing skill and technique more. But if for a lot
Speaker 1: of people, the alternative is not exercising at all, So
Speaker 1: if it's do this class that I don't think is ideal,
Speaker 1: not that on the arbiter of like what ideal training is.
Speaker 1: But if the alternative is not doing anything at all,
Speaker 1: then what they're doing is good. Um. It's kind of like,
Speaker 1: I mean, to use an SF analogy, the alternative to
Speaker 1: isis and Syria isn't like Western democracy, it's al Qaeda, right,
Speaker 1: So it's like it's not it's not always what we
Speaker 1: what we want to be the alternative. We have to
Speaker 1: be realistic about the alternative actually is so do you
Speaker 1: think the way forward and then it is more personalized
Speaker 1: UM fitness and personalized medicine. I think, well, I think
Speaker 1: it's more web based and tech based. UM. I think
Speaker 1: that from a business standpoint, the personalized thing, yes, because
Speaker 1: it's going to resonate with people. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of the personalized medicine stuff is actually bullshit. UM. You
Speaker 1: know you're gonna see all these genetic companies coming out
Speaker 1: and saying, well, you've got like a you know, better
Speaker 1: chance than the average person of getting this type of
Speaker 1: disease or whatever. I think it's going to lead to
Speaker 1: a lot of overtreatment because this stuff is so complex,
Speaker 1: like multiple genes interact with the environment, but someone's going
Speaker 1: to like isolate, well, this gene influences this gene, which
Speaker 1: influences this behavior or and people are going to want
Speaker 1: to overly intervene. But everyone loves the idea that like,
Speaker 1: I'm so special and that this thing is customized towards me.
Speaker 1: So I think that there are going to be people
Speaker 1: who are trying to sell thiss like customized experience to people.
Speaker 1: And I think in the short term, it's going to
Speaker 1: be pretty lucrative, and then when people realize that it's
Speaker 1: not that effective, it's gonna fizzle out. Yeah, we had
Speaker 1: a guy come and talk to us. I'm like, we're
Speaker 1: supposed to get our poop analyzed, the blood tests so
Speaker 1: we can figure out what are for foods are. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a poop analysis that you're saying that and I
Speaker 1: think blood. I mean, this guy is into all of that,
Speaker 1: seeing everything specific to you. I have not done any
Speaker 1: of it, and we don't even actually know if that
Speaker 1: stuff does what it says that it does, so but
Speaker 1: we like the idea of it. But I mean, most people,
Speaker 1: there's so much lower hanging fruit than getting your ship analyzed.
Speaker 1: Like most people don't sleep, yeah, like they I mean
Speaker 1: they eat fast food three times a day. So I
Speaker 1: would say, if you're doing everything, like if you're living
Speaker 1: like a monk, then get your poop analized. But how
Speaker 1: many people are actually doing that? Right? It's like people
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, some of these like different diets,
Speaker 1: and the people I was thinking the same thing, like
Speaker 1: everyone is on the Keto diet now and then and
Speaker 1: then the even more extreme version. I know you've talked
Speaker 1: about Jordan Peterson on the podcast. You could probably speak
Speaker 1: to this. This carnivore diet seems really extreme to me
Speaker 1: of strictly eating meat, you know, no vegetables, no carbs.
Speaker 1: You know, it's seems pretty Dyah. I think if it's
Speaker 1: if it seems ridiculous on the service that it probably is.
Speaker 1: Like and a lot of people who will do those
Speaker 1: things are so disciplined and everything else that they do
Speaker 1: that they're going to attribute or we're going to attribute,
Speaker 1: like their health too. I did the paleo diet when
Speaker 1: they also exercise a lot, they take care of their sleep,
Speaker 1: they don't like drink or do drugs. Right, So, and
Speaker 1: what does the paleo diet even mean. If it means
Speaker 1: that you don't eat a lot of processed foods, then
Speaker 1: that's probably a good thing, Like you don't need to
Speaker 1: only eat like free range grass fed wild animals and
Speaker 1: leafy greens. But if you're if you're not eating Just
Speaker 1: like the thing with all the stuff is whether it's
Speaker 1: exercise or nutrition, the issue is not lack of knowledge,
Speaker 1: it's the behavioral modification that it takes to do the basics. Well.
Speaker 1: So it's like people people we don't have like an
Speaker 1: obese the epidemic in this country because we don't know
Speaker 1: the ideal ratio between like protein, carbs and fats, or
Speaker 1: like how you know what how many vitamins or supplements
Speaker 1: should be taking. It's like it's systemic things. It's behavioral choices,
Speaker 1: it's lack of access to quality food and education in
Speaker 1: certain parts of the country. It's like, it's all these things.
Speaker 1: It's not because you didn't get your poop analyzed. And
Speaker 1: you know what's funny, I mean the whole trend of
Speaker 1: the paleo diet. Right you're not eating rice, but and
Speaker 1: people are talking about the obesity. But if you go
Speaker 1: to Asia, there's no obesity epidemic over there, and those
Speaker 1: people I mean culturally are eating a ton of rice,
Speaker 1: a ton of carbs. So I would say it's it's
Speaker 1: more than likely not that you're eating non organic vegetables.
Speaker 1: It might be that you're eating McDonald's, you know, six
Speaker 1: times a week. Your lifestyle is totally different, and you're
Speaker 1: active and you don't I mean, who who knows. But
Speaker 1: I think anything that comes off as overly dogmatic I
Speaker 1: would sort of be skeptical of. I mean even you know,
Speaker 1: the paleo people now have kind of changed their tune
Speaker 1: and now they're they're allowing certain starchy things like even
Speaker 1: like white potatoes or even some rice, because like the
Speaker 1: reality is people aren't getting disease they're obese because they're
Speaker 1: eating too much white rice or too many kidneys. I mean,
Speaker 1: originally when the paleo thing came out, it was like,
Speaker 1: don't even eat beans, Like is that really the problems
Speaker 1: that people are, Like there's an epidemic of over consumption
Speaker 1: of beans. Like if you're eating no to low carbs,
Speaker 1: you're also eating no fruits, and fruits are not bad
Speaker 1: for you, or sometimes no vegetable. There were even people
Speaker 1: who are saying like, oh, like you know fruits have
Speaker 1: fruit toast in them. That's gonna make you, like turn
Speaker 1: you into a diabetic. It's like, again, yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: eating a gallon of ice cream every day and then
Speaker 1: eat fruit afterwards, that's probably not great in peel mi grapes.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I get like people people aren't unhealthy
Speaker 1: because they're over consuming fruit, Like that's that should be
Speaker 1: the least of our problems in society. So some of
Speaker 1: the stuff is just ridiculous. But people like they want
Speaker 1: to believe stuff right, and people want to be part
Speaker 1: of a tribe, and these are just other forms of tribalism.
Speaker 1: For for me, um, because I don't have the medical
Speaker 1: background that you have, I find that there's too much
Speaker 1: information out there. And it's like how it's so hard
Speaker 1: to be consumer of of healthcare these days? It's like
Speaker 1: how the fund do I sort through all this ship?
Speaker 1: It's like anything else, you've got to find people that
Speaker 1: you trust and just rely. I mean, it's like I
Speaker 1: don't know much about how to fix my car, so
Speaker 1: I've got friends who are know about cars and they
Speaker 1: can tell me how to vet the guy that's trying
Speaker 1: to sell me on all these things that are wrong
Speaker 1: with my car. Right, it's gonna be the same thing,
Speaker 1: because it's just you can't know everything. It's like, so
Speaker 1: if you can't be great at everything, you already have
Speaker 1: a job, Like how are you supposed to know all
Speaker 1: this stuff when it's so confusing? Or I was just
Speaker 1: gonna say these like YouTube people, because there's so much
Speaker 1: in the YouTube fitness community. I'm into some of it,
Speaker 1: but the people who tell you nothing about nutrition and
Speaker 1: yet they're like you gotta take creatine, You've gotta take
Speaker 1: B C A s Like I would think, you know
Speaker 1: what you're eating on a daily basis, you know, woads
Speaker 1: more important than that, definitely. Yeah. Well I went on
Speaker 1: that slow carb diet at one point. It was like
Speaker 1: really strict about following it, and I actually found like
Speaker 1: it had an effect on my brain. I couldn't think
Speaker 1: quite right really, Like you know, UM they say that
Speaker 1: effect that UM people have when they work in like
Speaker 1: Antarctica or something. They don't get any sunlight. What is
Speaker 1: a vitamin D deficiency? And they talk about how lethargic
Speaker 1: they are, and like they'll just sit there like looking
Speaker 1: at this coffee cup in front of me, thinking about
Speaker 1: like what do I do with that? Like I had
Speaker 1: that effect on my brain because I wasn't eating carbs.
Speaker 1: I guess whatever was with my body chemistry. I will
Speaker 1: be looking at my computer screen for like thirty seconds
Speaker 1: straight like what am I supposed to be doing right now? Well,
Speaker 1: And the thing with a lot of these like nutritional
Speaker 1: systems is that they're so overly dogmatic that if you're
Speaker 1: trying to take someone who has terrible habits, the easiest
Speaker 1: way to get someone to not comply in the long
Speaker 1: term is to be like have them do a complete
Speaker 1: one eight. So I mean, if you had someone, let's
Speaker 1: say McDonald's three times a day with a large like
Speaker 1: non diet soda for the first week, it should be like, okay,
Speaker 1: for for for lunch one day, for you know, for
Speaker 1: for lunch each day, keep everything the same, except have
Speaker 1: a diet soda instead of a full calorie soda like
Speaker 1: that's and then sto McDonald three times a day and
Speaker 1: then when you you prove it you can do that.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like one small modification at a time.
Speaker 1: But the reason why the compliance is so low is
Speaker 1: because people like they're they're being asked to do too
Speaker 1: much initially, and like change is hard and they're just
Speaker 1: gonna resist it. And the people who can do these
Speaker 1: things and like are are able to to adhere to it,
Speaker 1: they already started out is so disciplined anyway that it
Speaker 1: wasn't a huge lifestyle modification for them. So a lot
Speaker 1: of times people in like fitness and nutrition, because they're
Speaker 1: so passionate about it, they expect everyone else to be
Speaker 1: passionate as their livelihood. You know, your body is your advertisement, right,
Speaker 1: So Yeah, Like a lot of people don't care about
Speaker 1: working out, Like I have a lot of people who
Speaker 1: aren't that active, but they want to feel better. So
Speaker 1: it's like, all right, like what's the one or two
Speaker 1: things we can do to make you feel better. I
Speaker 1: don't expect you to work out, you know, five five
Speaker 1: hours a week um, which is like for some people
Speaker 1: it's not even that much. But like I'm like, can
Speaker 1: you give me five minutes a day to just do
Speaker 1: this like one stretch or whatever. So you've got to
Speaker 1: kind of know your audience. Uh, But a lot of
Speaker 1: like the really strict dogmatic stuff, it's not it's not
Speaker 1: impacting the people who need it the most. It's it's
Speaker 1: reaching people who already like believing that stuff and we're
Speaker 1: already probably doing it, and it's more like just confirmation bias.
Speaker 1: And it's like, depending on what your political ideology is,
Speaker 1: you're only gonna watch one news station and it's more
Speaker 1: of like an echo chamber that really impacting the people
Speaker 1: who need it. Right, it's back to the UM martial
Speaker 1: arts analogy again. It reminds me of that dude that
Speaker 1: Chinese mm A fighter who keeps challenging like Tai Chi
Speaker 1: grand masters. You've seen these videos at all? Are you
Speaker 1: talking about the videos where the guy is like beating
Speaker 1: people in his mind, he's like making movements are falling.
Speaker 1: So like tai chi and other their traditional Chinese martial
Speaker 1: arts very important in their cultural heritage. And there's this
Speaker 1: one guy, he's a Chinese mixed martial artist and he
Speaker 1: is trying to break into this into martial arts in China.
Speaker 1: Very difficult to do. I think he's found because there
Speaker 1: are these traditional martial arts and so what do you
Speaker 1: do is challenge these like ran masters in tai chi
Speaker 1: and um pummel them just like hands down, no questions asked,
Speaker 1: just like destroying them. And it created a ships ship
Speaker 1: storm in China because it's like you're uprooting this cultural
Speaker 1: tradition Um, and he's like had all kinds of retaliation
Speaker 1: and all sorts of stuff happen. But it's like, I
Speaker 1: think most people who have like half a brain know
Speaker 1: that someone who does tai chi isn't gonna like win
Speaker 1: the UFC. So it's like, why there is any claims
Speaker 1: that they can, like, I don't think there's even a
Speaker 1: conception of the UFC in China right there, there that
Speaker 1: the masters are who they are and like Wing Chung
Speaker 1: or whatever. Yeah, I mean if they're making claims like
Speaker 1: this system is going to make you like unbeatable or whatever,
Speaker 1: then yeah, I guess they deserve to have some skin
Speaker 1: in the game and have to prove that. But but
Speaker 1: that's that's the echo chamber, right. Yeah. Yeah, there's an
Speaker 1: incestuous martial arts system. And I know people in the
Speaker 1: in the you know, shooting who run shooting courses and
Speaker 1: Marksmanship Corps says they talk about the same thing that
Speaker 1: there's this very incestuous kind of relationship in that world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean humans are humans, like this is the phenomenon
Speaker 1: and it transcends the whatever it is that they're doing.
Speaker 1: This has been awesome, man, I mean I think we've
Speaker 1: covered a lot of ground. We've gone two hours here
Speaker 1: Resilient Performance dot Com at Resilient PPT, on Twitter and
Speaker 1: on Instagram. I saw Doug's personal Twitter is at Green
Speaker 1: Feet PT. Wrapping things up here, though, I do want
Speaker 1: to talk about what we have going on here in Hurricane.
Speaker 1: Be sure to check out Great Club. We have different
Speaker 1: tiers of membership depending on how prepared you want to
Speaker 1: be and gift options are available as well. I actually
Speaker 1: just got a message back from the guy won our
Speaker 1: Email of the Week and he was like, this phishing
Speaker 1: spear is awesome. Love getting that people. That's like a
Speaker 1: big item. And the funny thing is, you know, I
Speaker 1: was talking to Brandon off air and uh, it is true.
Speaker 1: And then he's like, I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: like the most practical item, but people love it. He's like,
Speaker 1: he's one of our most popular items. Yeah. So that
Speaker 1: was in a recent Create Club Scott Whittner from the
Speaker 1: Load out Room, Drew Wallace who's an army ranger, and
Speaker 1: all of these guys you've heard on the show. They're
Speaker 1: working to put together great stuff with Create Club, putting
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Speaker 1: It's a club four men by men. You can check
Speaker 1: that all out of Create Club dot Us. Once again,
Speaker 1: that's Create Club dot Us. Also, as a reminder for
Speaker 1: those listening, now is the time to sign up for
Speaker 1: the spec Ops Channel. That's our channel that offers the
Speaker 1: most exclusive shows, documentaries, and interviews covering the most exciting
Speaker 1: military content today. The spec Ops Channel premier show Training
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Speaker 1: as access to our team of experts and analysts. Just
Speaker 1: go to the finn Rep tab that's at the top
Speaker 1: of the news rep dot com to sign up. That's
Speaker 1: finn Rep right at the top of the news rep
Speaker 1: dot com and you'll see that prompt if you want
Speaker 1: to subscribe and become a member. Uh. Man, we've covered
Speaker 1: so much ground today and really small world known we
Speaker 1: both grew up in hast and it just happened out
Speaker 1: of nowhere, just dict like we didn't know this going in,
Speaker 1: so really cool man. And and also your background with
Speaker 1: James Reagan. I think that's a guy that that listeners
Speaker 1: of the show would love to know about. And hearing
Speaker 1: your background was really cool because I know Leo has
Speaker 1: spoken highly of highly of him, but if someone who
Speaker 1: grew up with him, that was really cool to hear. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I'm glad to uh talk about people people more people
Speaker 1: should know about him. So well. Once again, the website
Speaker 1: is Resilient Performance dot com and then you'll see links
Speaker 1: to everything from there. Is Is there anything else we
Speaker 1: haven't covered because it's been a long episode. I think
Speaker 1: we've covered a lot of great ground. No, I think
Speaker 1: that's think that's good. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll have to do it again. Uh. You know, I've
Speaker 1: been wanting to have you on this podcast for a
Speaker 1: while actually, and um, I'm sorry it took so long
Speaker 1: to get around it. No where it's easy, so I'm
Speaker 1: right down the streets. So yeah, we'll have to do
Speaker 1: it again sometimes. Okay. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Thanks guys.
Speaker 1: And every now and again we do get into the
Speaker 1: fitness stuff with different people. We have with Ricky Pose on,
Speaker 1: um C J Woodruff who is on, So it might
Speaker 1: be cool to have you guest on some of those
Speaker 1: episodes too. And you know, because you're you're definitely an
Speaker 1: expert in the field. Yeah, Doug really knows his stuff.
Speaker 1: It's like when we have Jim that's on to talk
Speaker 1: about martial arts and Doug is the guy to have
Speaker 1: on to talk about physical fitness. It makes sense. And
Speaker 1: every now and again you're away, So I think it'd
Speaker 1: be cool to have you on, you know, as long
Speaker 1: as you're open to it and maybe interview some people
Speaker 1: in that world. Yeah, because it's there's there's such a
Speaker 1: cross section with this audience and people into m m A,
Speaker 1: people into fitness, and that's why we try to cover
Speaker 1: those grounds. I mean I even did a whole episode
Speaker 1: with former co workers Sewn the Butcher from Sirius XM
Speaker 1: and Pat McNamara talking metal just because there's that's another
Speaker 1: cross section of this audience. So I mean it just
Speaker 1: makes sense to cover that ground. You can't talk spec
Speaker 1: ops every single episode. You could, but we probably shouldn't.
Speaker 1: You know, well, you know every now and again when
Speaker 1: we don't, I get like, you know, how come this
Speaker 1: podcast is is like steering away from that and you
Speaker 1: just guys just want a big general audience, like when
Speaker 1: we talk aboutbout like comic books and we have comic
Speaker 1: book writers. Yeah, yeah, I mean you gotta mix it
Speaker 1: up there where this is gonna be like what episode
Speaker 1: four five or something? Let me see off the I
Speaker 1: forget off the top of man. I think it's let's
Speaker 1: see we are now at we're an episode fo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you gotta mix it up. I agree, I would
Speaker 1: get bored, but you really appreciate having you on. Yeah. Thanks,
Speaker 1: you've been listening to self rep Radio. New episodes up
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Speaker 1: That's self Rep radio