MOPs & MOEs

MOPs & MOEs

Changing the fitness culture of the force. Your one stop shop for all things fitness for tactical professionals.

  1. 6d ago

    The Core Four

    MOPs & MOEs is proudly sponsored by Teamworks — the performance operations platform trusted by elite military units and professional sports organizations worldwide. Teamworks brings your scheduling, communications, athlete monitoring, and readiness data into one unified system — so your leaders stay informed, your people stay connected, and your unit stays ready. No more scattered spreadsheets or missed messages. Just one platform built for organizations where performance is the mission. Learn more at teamworkstactical.com We are also supported by TrainHeroic — the coaching and programming platform built for strength and conditioning coaches who train serious athletes. Whether you're programming for a military unit, a tactical team, or individual athletes, TrainHeroic gives you the tools to build and deliver professional training programs, track athlete progress, and communicate directly with your people — all through one app. Your athletes get world-class programming on their phone; you get the visibility to actually coach them. Start your free trial at trainheroic.com The Core Four — Four Cognitive Traps Killing Military Human Performance Drew and Alex gave a standing-room-only breakout at the H2F Symposium on this. Now they have time to actually unpack it. Four heuristics that show up everywhere in military human performance — and in every human-run organization. You can't escape them, but you can at least recognize them.  What we get into: Goodhart's Law — when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. The AFT was designed to signal readiness. The moment it became an incentivized metric, people started optimizing the score instead of the fitness. Same thing happened in Vietnam with body counts. The cure: use multiple metrics, reward more than test scores, and acknowledge what the assessment was actually supposed to tell you. McNamara Fallacy — only what can be quantified matters. The first step is measuring what's easy. The second is disregarding what can't be measured. The third is assuming the unmeasurable isn't important. The fourth is deciding it doesn't exist. Sound familiar? Social cohesion, trust, culture, the music playing in the gym — none of these show up on a dashboard. All of them matter enormously. Every minute a coach spends measuring is a minute they spend not coaching. Hammond's Corollary — what gets measured gets managed, but what most needs managing isn't always measurable. The soldier with a perfect AFT score who can't pick up a ruck without throwing out his back. Fitness versus capability. Athleticism versus fitness. You know it when you see it — and just because you can't put it on a graph doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Nazareth syndrome — no man is a prophet in his own home. The one place Jesus got the most skepticism was Nazareth, because they knew him as the carpenter. The embedded human performance team dealing with real constraints gets ignored. The outside consultant with slick branding and a two-day seminar gets the senior leader's full attention. You can't eliminate this one — but you can use it to your advantage. Mentioned in this episode: Drew's article — The Death of Periodization at mopsandmoes.com Chris Frankel — assessment framework: camera, map, crystal ball, engine VF Ridgway, 1956 — the actual origin of "what gets measured gets managed" Justice Potter Stewart, 1964 — the porn quote. You know it when you see it. The Tyranny of Metrics — Jerry Muller Long and Strong — the Mops and Moes training program on TrainHeroic Views expressed are those of the speakers and do not represent any official organization.

  2. Jul 26

    The Death of Periodization

    MOPs & MOEs is proudly sponsored by Teamworks — the performance operations platform trusted by elite military units and professional sports organizations worldwide. Teamworks brings your scheduling, communications, athlete monitoring, and readiness data into one unified system — so your leaders stay informed, your people stay connected, and your unit stays ready. No more scattered spreadsheets or missed messages. Just one platform built for organizations where performance is the mission. Learn more at teamworkstactical.com We are also supported by TrainHeroic — the coaching and programming platform built for strength and conditioning coaches who train serious athletes. Whether you're programming for a military unit, a tactical team, or individual athletes, TrainHeroic gives you the tools to build and deliver professional training programs, track athlete progress, and communicate directly with your people — all through one app. Your athletes get world-class programming on their phone; you get the visibility to actually coach them. Start your free trial at trainheroic.com The Death of Periodization — Drew and Alex Go to War Drew wrote an article called "The Death of Periodization," posted it on LinkedIn to see what would happen, and then got into fights with people on Instagram for a week. This episode is the full breakdown — what periodization actually is, why it doesn't work for tactical populations, and what to do instead. What we get into: Defining the thing first — because not a single person in the online discourse could do it. The NSCA definition: the logical and systematic process of sequencing training interventions to achieve peak performance at appropriate time points. Every version of periodization, whether block, linear, nonlinear, conjugate, or West Side, shares the same five assumptions. The most important one: that biological adaptations follow a predictable course. They don't. Why periodization is a Soviet export — and what that means. Most of the foundational periodization literature is mapping sports science onto communist economic planning. General adaptation syndrome is not a predictive model. It's a descriptive model. Hans Selye never explained what makes something stressful, never told you how much stress causes adaptation, and never specified when the resistance phase begins or ends. Also, his exhaustion phase was death. Not fatigue. Death. The field of stress physiology left him behind decades ago. The Milo and the bull problem — and why progressive overload is almost universally misunderstood. Milo didn't get stronger because the bull got bigger. He was able to lift the bigger bull because he got stronger. The causal arrow runs the other way. What to do instead — navigating versus forecasting. Shorten the prediction window to what the environment actually allows you to control. A week at a time. The low-hanging fruit problem. You've got people debating intricately periodized strength plans for soldiers who are failing a two-mile run where the passing standard is a ten-minute mile pace. That's what this conversation is really about. Also in this episode: Joey Chestnut vs. Usain Bolt in the Glizzy Gauntlet — one hot dog, then a hundred meters. The Army's new testosterone testing program — rapid fire thoughts, concerns about fertility consequences, and thoughts and prayers for military endocrinologists. Mentioned in this episode: Drew's articles — The Death of Periodization and The Art of Training at mopsandmoes.com John Kiely — Periodization Theory: Confronting an Inconvenient Truth; Periodization Paradigms Thomas Kuhn — The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, paradigm shifts Franco Impellizzeri — operational frameworks and self-fulfilling prophecy in periodization Matt Clark — Eight Myths Weaken Combat Readiness Long and Strong — the Mops and Moes training program on TrainHeroic Views expressed are those of the speakers and do not represent any official organization.

  3. Jul 19

    The Fittest Middle School in America

    MOPs & MOEs is proudly sponsored by Teamworks — the performance operations platform trusted by elite military units and professional sports organizations worldwide. Teamworks brings your scheduling, communications, athlete monitoring, and readiness data into one unified system — so your leaders stay informed, your people stay connected, and your unit stays ready. No more scattered spreadsheets or missed messages. Just one platform built for organizations where performance is the mission. Learn more at teamworkstactical.com We are also supported by TrainHeroic — the coaching and programming platform built for strength and conditioning coaches who train serious athletes. Whether you're programming for a military unit, a tactical team, or individual athletes, TrainHeroic gives you the tools to build and deliver professional training programs, track athlete progress, and communicate directly with your people — all through one app. Your athletes get world-class programming on their phone; you get the visibility to actually coach them. Start your free trial at trainheroic.com The Best PE Program in America Nobody's Heard Of — Prescott Junior High Somewhere in Modesto, California, middle schoolers are running sub-five-minute miles, doing a thousand push-ups unbroken, and earning colored trunks through a fitness program that's been running since the 1970s. Drew and Alex sit down with Garrett Beal and Jason Avalar, the PE teachers keeping it alive. What we get into: The program traces back to Mark Wilson, who saw a La Sierra documentary on TV in the seventies, pitched his superintendent, flew out to observe, and came back and built something that's now outlasted everyone who started it. Twenty different physical fitness tests. A colored trunk system where gray is where everyone starts and purple is where almost no one finishes. Records on the wall dating back to 1974 that still haven't been broken. How the point system works — every kid tracks their own progress, logs every test, and gets graded on improvement not just raw performance. Stars for progress, colored trunks for excellence. A 300-pound kid with a perfect attitude and an A in PE because he showed up and worked every single day. The PE assistants — eighth graders who apply in writing, get selected on citizenship and leadership not athleticism, and can lose their shirt for bad grades or bad behavior. Some of the shyest kids in school become the ones leading warm-ups for forty classmates. The records. A girl who ran a 12:27 two-mile as an eighth grader. A boy who did a thousand push-ups unbroken, in perfect form, over an hour. An eighth grade girl who did 143 push-ups and 36 bar dips in a single session. A kid who did 6,500 sit-ups starting at 9am. The mud obstacle course on the last dress-out day of the year. Bear crawls, hurdles, a mud pit, lame dogs, and a fire hose at the finish line. Why this would be nearly impossible to start from scratch today — and why admin support, teacher commitment, and parent buy-in are the three pillars that have kept it alive for fifty years. Alex's commitment on air: connecting Prescott with the folks working on the Presidential Fitness Test rollout. These kids will not struggle. Mentioned in this episode: La Sierra High School PE program — the original inspiration Prescott Junior High Instagram — @prescottstandard Long and Strong — the Mops and Moes training program on TrainHeroic All Access Bundle - All of our training, injury prevention, AFT improvement, and more Views expressed are those of the speakers and do not represent any official organization.

  4. Jul 12

    Army Body Composition Policy: Changes Effective Immediately

    MOPs & MOEs is proudly sponsored by Teamworks — the performance operations platform trusted by elite military units and professional sports organizations worldwide. Teamworks brings your scheduling, communications, athlete monitoring, and readiness data into one unified system — so your leaders stay informed, your people stay connected, and your unit stays ready. No more scattered spreadsheets or missed messages. Just one platform built for organizations where performance is the mission. Learn more at teamworkstactical.com We are also supported by TrainHeroic — the coaching and programming platform built for strength and conditioning coaches who train serious athletes. Whether you're programming for a military unit, a tactical team, or individual athletes, TrainHeroic gives you the tools to build and deliver professional training programs, track athlete progress, and communicate directly with your people — all through one app. Your athletes get world-class programming on their phone; you get the visibility to actually coach them. Start your free trial at trainheroic.com The Army Just Changed Body Composition Standards. Here's What It Means. Army Directive 2026-13 dropped on the seventh. Drew and Alex break it down — what changed, what was lost, who's affected, and why some very fit people are about to have a very bad time. What we get into: Waist-to-height ratio is now the only authorized standard. Height-weight screening tables are gone. Secondary methods like DEXA, BodPod, and InBody are gone. The AFT fitness exemption is gone. If your waist divided by your height is 0.55 or above, you are out of compliance. Everyone. No exceptions. Why the research actually supports waist-to-height ratio — as a population-level screening tool, not an individual-level diagnostic. The same literature that backs it up also says it should trigger further assessment, not be the final word. The fitness exemption was one of the most progressive things the Army had ever done on body composition. If you performed above a certain threshold, your body composition didn't matter. That's gone now. Commander's discretion replaces the old progression model. No more monthly measurements, no more defined progression requirements. Whether you're making progress and how long you stay enrolled is entirely up to your chain of command. Who's getting tripped up: postpartum women, shorter stockier men with wide torsos, and apparently some serious competitive athletes in very military-relevant sports. Alex's hot take: this feels like malicious compliance by the Army. They spent years and serious money on the Army Comprehensive Body Composition Study. This directive undoes a lot of that work with a two-page memo. No separations will be completed for 180 days while the Army conducts an assessment. Drew and Alex are collecting stories — if this new standard is catching fit soldiers, they want to hear from you. Mentioned in this episode: Secretary Hegseth memo — Military Fitness Standards, September 30 2025 → https://api.army.mil/e2/c/downloads/2025/09/30/9c939542/military-fitness-standards-osd010715-25-fod-final.pdf Under Secretary memo — Additional Guidance on Military Fitness Standards, December 18 2025 → https://media.defense.gov/2026/Jan/12/2003855613/-1/-1/1/ADDITIONAL-GUIDANCE-ON-MILITARY-FITNESS-STANDARDS.PDF Army Directive 2026-13 — Army Body Composition Program → https://home.army.mil/carson/8117/8345/8209/ARMY_DIR_2026-13_ABCP.pdf Army DVIDS video — Army Updates Body Composition Program → https://www.dvidshub.net/video/1013878/army-updates-body-composition-program-abcp Long and Strong / Workhorse — the Mops and Moes training program on TrainHeroic → https://marketplace.trainheroic.com/workout-plan/team/leg-tuck-nation

  5. Jul 5

    You Probably Don't Need Electrolytes with Dr. Alan McCubbin

    MOPs & MOEs is proudly sponsored by Teamworks — the performance operations platform trusted by elite military units and professional sports organizations worldwide. Teamworks brings your scheduling, communications, athlete monitoring, and readiness data into one unified system — so your leaders stay informed, your people stay connected, and your unit stays ready. No more scattered spreadsheets or missed messages. Just one platform built for organizations where performance is the mission. Learn more at teamworkstactical.com We are also supported by TrainHeroic — the coaching and programming platform built for strength and conditioning coaches who train serious athletes. Whether you're programming for a military unit, a tactical team, or individual athletes, TrainHeroic gives you the tools to build and deliver professional training programs, track athlete progress, and communicate directly with your people — all through one app. Your athletes get world-class programming on their phone; you get the visibility to actually coach them. Start your free trial at trainheroic.com You Probably Don't Need Electrolytes — Dr. Alan McCubbin Alex posted something skeptical about electrolyte supplements and people lost their minds. So he went and found one of the leading researchers in the field. The answer was pretty much what he suspected. What we get into: Why the post-COVID boom in daily electrolyte supplementation is largely commercially driven — and how the "water doesn't hydrate you" marketing message gets built from a study done on people who were already fully hydrated and didn't need the water they were drinking in the first place. Why milk scored higher than water on the beverage hydration index, and why that has almost nothing to do with electrolytes and almost everything to do with gastric emptying rate — and why adding solid food to the equation makes the type of drink you consume essentially irrelevant for fluid retention. The actual threshold for when sodium supplementation starts to matter: more than four continuous hours of exercise, replacing at least 70% of fluid losses, with total sweat losses of around five liters or more. If that's not you, it's probably not your problem. Why urine color and urine specific gravity are measures of what your kidneys are doing, not direct measures of hydration — and why they're particularly unreliable during or immediately after exercise. The five-hour treadmill study — nine ultrarunners, either replacing 100% of sodium losses or zero, completely blinded. No difference whatsoever in temperature, heart rate, thirst, RPE, or fluid intake. They lost eight to nine percent of their total body sodium and nothing happened. Why sweat testing technology is outpacing the research on what to actually do with the numbers it produces. Season to taste — for anything under four hours, just pick what tastes good and helps you drink an appropriate amount of fluid. Mentioned in this episode: Waterlogged — Tim Noakes This Is Your Mind on Plants — Michael Pollan Beverage Hydration Index study, 2016 Lawrence Armstrong — assessing hydration status, the elusive gold standard, 2009 Lewis James, Loughborough University — placebo-controlled hydration research Fueling Endurance — Alan's podcast for runners, cyclists, and triathletes Long and Strong — the Mops and Moes training program on TrainHeroic Views expressed are those of the speakers and do not represent any official organization.

  6. Jun 28

    How We'd Fix Military Human Performance

    If We Built It From Scratch — Drew and Alex Redesign Military Human Performance No guest. No plan. Just Drew and Alex with keys to the kingdom. If you handed us the whole thing tomorrow, what would we actually change? MOPs & MOEs is proudly sponsored by Teamworks — the performance operations platform trusted by elite military units and professional sports organizations worldwide. Teamworks brings your scheduling, communications, athlete monitoring, and readiness data into one unified system — so your leaders stay informed, your people stay connected, and your unit stays ready. No more scattered spreadsheets or missed messages. Just one platform built for organizations where performance is the mission. Learn more at https://teamworks.com/ Also supported by TrainHeroic — the coaching and programming platform built for strength and conditioning coaches who train serious athletes. Whether you're programming for a military unit, a tactical team, or individual athletes, TrainHeroic gives you the tools to build and deliver professional training programs, track athlete progress, and communicate directly with your people — all through one app. Your athletes get world-class programming on their phone; you get the visibility to actually coach them. Start your free trial at https://account.trainheroic.com/create-account What we get into: Coach pay comes first. The DOD is on track to become the largest employer of strength and conditioning professionals in the world, which means contracting companies will be too. The contracting model is a race to the bottom on price, with staff salaries absorbing the cuts. That has to change. The five pillars get a rebrand — move, eat, think, recover, connect. Why dropping a dedicated spiritual pillar doesn't mean spirituality doesn't matter — it just means it's woven into everything else. Branding and marketing are undervalued. Embedded human performance has to compete for attention in a way that S1 never does. Drew's pitch: hand the whole thing to an ad agency and see what happens. The personal services contract problem, explained plainly. Coaches meet every FAR criterion for personal services but get treated as non-personal services. Cleaning this up would mean better pay, better working conditions, and actually being able to choose who you hire. GS billets for lead coaches — at minimum the lead strength coach and athletic trainer should be government employees with real career progression, same pay grade as the PT and dietitian. The coach-NCO relationship. Coaches exist to transport people from A to B — that's literally where the word comes from: a 15th century Hungarian horse-drawn carriage. Some coaches are getting fired for leading PT sessions. That's insane. Extender courses are teaching the wrong things. Periodization and physiology when people actually need interpersonal skills and session flow management. Data — stop making it the mission. Just watch what happens to the numbers that justified these programs in the first place. Wearables — a closet full of devices, service members pick what they like, a small subset of data flows to the HP team for trend monitoring and outlier detection, nobody touches a custom military interface. Policy — the Randolph Sheppard Act of 1936 and military dining, credentialing through MTFs vs operational leadership, and why language in DODI 1308.03 may have killed the original ACFT. Mentioned in this episode: Ben Bergeron — move, eat, think, recover, connect framework Kat Oswald — recent podcast guest, helped implement the five factors at Alex's day job Rachel Chamberlain — community-based blueprinting, podcast appearance incoming DODI 1308.3 — DOD physical fitness and body composition program instruction Randolph Shepherd Act, 1936 — federal law governing vending and dining on government property Long and Strong — the Mops and Moes training program on TrainHeroic Views expressed are those of the speakers and do not represent any official organization.

  7. Jun 21

    Navy Human Performance Is Coming with CDR Kevin Bernstein

    MOPs & MOEs is proudly sponsored by Teamworks — the performance operations platform trusted by elite military units and professional sports organizations worldwide. Teamworks brings your scheduling, communications, athlete monitoring, and readiness data into one unified system — so your leaders stay informed, your people stay connected, and your unit stays ready. No more scattered spreadsheets or missed messages. Just one platform built for organizations where performance is the mission. Learn more at teamworkstactical.com We are also supported by TrainHeroic — the coaching and programming platform built for strength and conditioning coaches who train serious athletes. Whether you're programming for a military unit, a tactical team, or individual athletes, TrainHeroic gives you the tools to build and deliver professional training programs, track athlete progress, and communicate directly with your people — all through one app. Your athletes get world-class programming on their phone; you get the visibility to actually coach them. Start your free trial at trainheroic.com Navy Human Performance Is Coming — Commander Kevin Bernstein Returns Kevin Bernstein is back for round two, fresh into a brand new role as Director of Human Performance for naval aviation on the East Coast. He's six weeks into building something the Navy has never had: a real program of record for the sailors flying, fixing, and fighting from carriers and squadrons across the fleet. What we get into: Why Navy's body composition data is the worst of any service, and why basic readiness tasks like firefighting and damage control on a ship demand a level of fitness the current PT test doesn't measure. The staffing model Kevin's building, borrowed from what's already worked at Naval Special Warfare — sports medicine physicians, physical therapists, strength coaches, dietitians, and cognitive specialists all under one roof, no turf wars, all reporting to the operator's needs. Why staffing needs differ wildly by platform — fighter jets versus cargo aircraft versus rotary wing all create different injury patterns and demand different specialists, and Kevin's building ratios around that instead of a one-size-fits-all model. The credentialing fight nobody talks about — whether embedded providers get privileged through the local hospital or through service leadership that actually understands the mission, and why that distinction will shape every branch's human performance program going forward. Scope of practice in the field — Kevin's blunt take on doing an ultrasound exam in a squadron space versus a sterile OR, and why "industry standard" sports medicine practice shouldn't get flagged just because it's happening outside a hospital. The Federal Acquisition Regulation deep dive — Drew and Alex make the case for a personal services contract exemption for strength coaches, and Kevin confirms he's quoting the same FAR language in the contracts he's writing right now. The actual rollout plan — POM-29 request for 73 new billets, a phased approach starting with strike fighter wings, and a realistic timeline stretching from 2028 to 2033. A surprisingly deep tangent on Pilates, Joseph Pilates' origin story rehabbing WWI soldiers, and why it might become part of the Navy's spine preservation programming. Mentioned in this episode: WPO — Warfighter Performance Optimization, the Pentagon-level effort referenced throughout Vice Admiral Vi and Rear Admiral Hancock — instrumental in standing up the human performance center at Camp Lejeune's School of Infantry East Long and Strong — the Mops and Moes training program on TrainHeroic Views expressed are those of the speakers and do not represent any official organization.

  8. Jun 14

    Psychopaths, Purpose, and the Price of Vulnerability with Newton Cheng

    MOPs & MOEs is proudly sponsored by Teamworks — the performance operations platform trusted by elite military units and professional sports organizations worldwide. Teamworks brings your scheduling, communications, athlete monitoring, and readiness data into one unified system — so your leaders stay informed, your people stay connected, and your unit stays ready. No more scattered spreadsheets or missed messages. Just one platform built for organizations where performance is the mission. Learn more at teamworkstactical.com We are also supported by TrainHeroic — the coaching and programming platform built for strength and conditioning coaches who train serious athletes. Whether you're programming for a military unit, a tactical team, or individual athletes, TrainHeroic gives you the tools to build and deliver professional training programs, track athlete progress, and communicate directly with your people — all through one app. Your athletes get world-class programming on their phone; you get the visibility to actually coach them. Start your free trial at trainheroic.com Psychopaths, Purpose, and the Price of Vulnerability — Newton Cheng Returns Newton's back for his fourth appearance. Fresh off 17 years at Google, a keynote at the H2F Symposium, and a hospital room that reordered his priorities entirely. This one goes well past fitness. What we get into: What Newton saw at the H2F Symposium that Google never gave him — a room full of people who had dedicated their careers to a mission with no big financial payoff at the end, and actually meant it. Corporations as machines — why purpose-driven language at large companies eventually stops holding water, and what the difference looks like when the mission isn't profit. Strategic vulnerability — it's not open sharing, it's context-dependent and calculated. Vulnerability builds trust unless it reveals incompetence at a core responsibility. That distinction matters a lot in the military. The senior NCO who posted his failed two-mile run on social media — Drew, Alex, and Newton work through whether that was useful vulnerability or a self-own. The psychopathy of organizations — Newton's framework: psychopaths rise because they feel nothing, emotionally repressed leaders accumulate moral injury until they go toxic, and emotionally integrated leaders are the best case but the rarest outcome. Lying to Ourselves — the 2015 paper on dishonesty in the Army profession, and new data showing that reported unit readiness is moderately negatively correlated with actual performance at combat training centers. We're here to love and take care of each other, and that's it — Newton's first principle, arrived at in a hospital room after his daughter's leukemia diagnosis. She's doing well. Mentioned in this episode: Incorruptible — Eric Reese's new book on corporate governance and why even purpose-driven companies abandon their ideals Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession — Leonard Wong, 2015 A Clearer Mirror: The Promise of Combat Training Center Data — sent in by Lieutenant Colonel Dawe The Art of Community — Charles Vogel, former podcast guest Antoine de Saint-Exupéry — if you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood Long and Strong — the Mops and Moes training program on TrainHeroic → https://marketplace.trainheroic.com/workout-plan/team/leg-tuck-nation?attrib=565490-web Views expressed are those of the speakers and do not represent any official organization.

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About

Changing the fitness culture of the force. Your one stop shop for all things fitness for tactical professionals.

Information

  • Creator
    MOPs & MOEs
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    228
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © MOPs & MOEs
  • Show Website
    MOPs & MOEs

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