Dr Rob Orr; Tactical Physical Training for Peak Performance

Hello and welcome to the Optimising Human Performance Podcast. I'm Martin Jones, a human performance specialist, researcher and educator. And I'm John Paul Niven, a former Royal Army Physical Training Constructor, turned academic. Each week we talk to world leading experts about how to unlock the full potential of those who operate in high-stress, high-stakes environments. We discuss the latest science, innovative strategies, practical wisdom and inspirational stories in the rapidly evolving world of human performance optimisation. The Optimising Human Performance Podcast is produced in partnership with The Weevil Room and the Tactical Artweep Performance Centre at Buckinghamshire New University. In this week's episode we welcome Professor Rob or to the show. Rob served in the Australian Army for over 23 years as an infantry soldier, physical training instructor, uniformed physiotherapist and human performance officer. As Director of the Tactical Research Unit at Bond University, Rob provides research, consultancy and educational services for law enforcement, military and firefighters across five continents. In our conversation with Rob, we focus on optimising training for physically demanding tasks and sentry working. We look at the relationship between physical fitness and cognitive performance and uncover the value of an individualised approach to training. Rob, welcome to the Optimising Human Performance Podcast. How are you today? Great, thank you. Thank you for having me. No, it's a pleasure. I've been a follower of your work for many years over a decade now and it'd be really good for us and us just to get sort of an intro to yourself and your backstory, what's taking you to where you are now? Well, as I only would have it, I moved over from South Africa to Australia with my parents when I was about 15 years old because my parents didn't want me to be conscripted into the South African Army and then two years later I joined the Australian Army. So I dropped out of high school and I joined the Australian Army at the age of 17. I went into infantry as most young people do. So I spent several years in infantry carrying a pack up and down every mountain in Mulhill. But then I decided, you know, I like those guys running around in their short shorts and the tight singlets. So I wanted to become a physical training instructor. So I went off to do my PTI training, qualified and then spent 10 years as a PTI. So a physical training instructor, a variety of postings, training establishments, operational establishments, trust service establishments, all that good fun stuff. And then the Army actually turned around and said to me, look, do you want to be a uniform physiotherapist? Oh, that sounds like a great idea because at that stage they had physical training instructors which were all non-coms and then they had physiotherapist which were all specialist service officers. And they're finding this big disconnect between injuries and recovery and took it within the first six months or so of injuries, people being re-injured again and again and again. And they found out there's a disconnect from when physiotherapy hands over to physical training instructors. And then they come back too soon and they get broken and how can we less that better. So they asked me if I wanted to do the physiotherapy course and I said, yeah, sure why not? And I went and got my master's in physiotherapy and then I served as a clinical physiotherapist for several years in uniform and I still taught at the PT school. So I'd go down and run the rehabilitation module and actually prepare the PTIs to assist in that transition. During that time I got asked to run a couple of human performance optimization projects. So the first one started for the Recruit Training Centre, then went to the Royal Military College and then I finished off my full-time service in Socom, same sort of role. But whilst I was doing all that, I decided I wanted to start my PhD as well. So I started my PhD in Combat Load Carriage. And then as I finished my PhD, I got poached by university and I thought this was great. I didn't have to move every year. So I decided to step aside from full-time service, transfer to the reserves and I've now been at one university since 2011. In about 2015 I set up the Tactical Research Unit with a long-time mentor of mine, that primary aim of doing research, consultancy and education to optimise the health and well-being of all tactical personnel because once we started working with these different populations, we realised that many of them are fighting the same battles, being under-resourced, not being fit enough, too many injuries. And once we started to realise these similarities, we thought well how can we align these and coalesce these better to knowledge share and basically that's where we took off from and that's where we are now. So it's just sort of going back, I thought I popped in my head, to go from being a PTI to being a physiotherapist is a bit like turning into a dark side. Oh yeah. How did you find that transition? Were you able to bridge what sometimes can be quite a big gap in terms of understanding? Yes and no. I think one of the lucky things for me at the time, there were only seven uniform physiotherapists in the Australian Army. The rest were civilian. So the civilian physiotherapist looked at the military physiotherapist sideways anyway. I wasn't that much of a change for them and that the PTIs were great. They accepted it, you know, because they knew that when I was looking at all the rehabilitation all these processes going forward, I was looking at it through the lens of a PTI. I knew what skills they did have so the best thing about it was I could be the bridge between both. I can turn around to the physiotherapist and say actually the PTIs have been trained this way. They do have this background, whereas I know for a fact that your background of the series is weak. But conversely, I would say well the PTIs don't really cover this, whereas the physiotherapists do. That's great. Can we go back for a second, Rob? You mentioned your tactical research unit and training tactical athletes. What a tactical athlete first and foremost? The tactical athlete. The one that doesn't exist. The reason we, I mean, I know, look, ironically enough, the person who actually coined the term tactical athlete, Mark Stevenson, coined it when he was at the NSEA. And his primary aim behind using that term was to actually get people aware of the little support that tactical personnel get, given the jobs and the nature of their tasks and what we're asking them to do it. It's beyond elite athlete. You look at the decisions they've got to make, life or death, and they're putting themselves in harm's way in our steer environments, where the enemy doesn't play by the same set of rules. So he wanted people to be aware of all the support that you give to athletes. Why don't you give them to tactical personnel? And then, of course, it's been taken down sideways thinking that they're all the special type of athletes. But we know from reality and having served that there's a lot of people who are tactical that are not athletes. They couldn't run out of sight in a dark night. So a lot of military people, law enforcement, foreign rescue don't train because they want to train. They train because they have to train. If you've got somebody who's really good at manning systems and tracking threats, they don't need to be able to run all over the place. So that tactical athlete is a bit of a misnomer. But what it does mean is we should afford the same level of care that we would turn athletes to these tactical personnel. We should optimize their recovery. We should make sure they eat well, make sure they sleep well, make sure they're rehabilitated and conditioned properly. Give them all the support that you would turn a lead athlete because their job is way beyond elite. Yeah, I agree. Absolutely. You mentioned then law enforcement, fire, I'm thinking paramedics and ambulance. Those are clusters. These tactical personnel as well. Indeed. So we do work with wilderness paramedics. We do work with paramedics in general. Who defines what as tactical personnel varies a little bit? Threats that somebody puts their life on the line for the betterment of the community. You go, you know, ambulance officers don't. Well, ambulance officers are getting stabbed from one of the last reports that read around a third of all M's in the UK are now wearing anti-stab body armor. You know, they're getting one hit punches and they're getting beaten up by family members or friends of the person they're trying to treat. So yeah, they're putting their lives on the line to assist the community. Yeah. It's a tough job. It's a tough job often not recognized in the same levels as what I think of as the traditional tactical personnel, but just as important, right? Indeed. So Rob, considering the requirements of those individuals who work in the show in his context. Also, load carriage is a fundamental requirement, especially for a mild personnel, but also for those other organisations. So based upon your extensive body of published work over the years, what sort of conclusions of you came to as an individual in regards to optimising load carriage performance? May that be for a mild personnel or boy like Matrix? The reality is there is no point where you can condition the body that it will be able to attend or every single load. And everybody thinks that, you know, if we condition you enough, you can carry any load. That's not the case. There is a point where your body will break. But what we can do is try and make sure that that point lasts as long as possible. You've got as much physical redundancy in your system as possible. And there are two things you need. If you want to be good at load carriage, there's two things you need. It's like a car. You need a big engine, but you need a strong framework. And if you've got a big engine and a small framework, it doesn't work. If you've got a strong framework and a small engine, it doesn't work. So you need that combination of aerobic fitness. Just pure beast aerobic fitness, but you also need strength, real strength. And we're not talking just absolute strength here. We're talking about relative strength, the ability to move your own body weight. Do you feel the pain drums may be swung somewhat? We used to do a lot of endurance-based type training to help in aerobic capacity. But it seems almost the last decade because of the SNC bandwagon that's went completely the opposite way. And I know within certain quarters, within the U.K. That's an issue which is being discussed now. Before there were people who went, well, we can't do long distance steady state running to develop aerobic capacity, because it increases the likelihood of injury. So we'll just go into the gym and do loads of strength training, for extreme conditioning type programming. And then what they're finding is this other than an adverse effect on people hitting minimum standard for load carriage. Indeed, and it's not only physiological, it's psychological as well. There is something about keeping your brain active when you're running 5, 10, 15 kilometers. When you're carrying a pack on your back and you've got nothing to think of, but how much there's sucks, keeping your brain active. And the gym, when you're doing short-sharp sets, you're done. If you're doing hit workouts, you know that you've only got to push yourself for a short period of time. But when you just got that thumb and bum mud and neutral, just keep going, keep going, keep going. Unless you develop it, you're not going to have it. How do you train both those things at the same time? So you said the strength, the aerobic fitness, and the robustness to put yourself in that place psychologically. So if you look at all the little cheer and load carriage, optimizing load carriage performance, you make sure they've got a couple of strength sessions in there, you make sure you've got a couple of aerobic sessions in there. But once every 7 to 14 days, you have a pack march. You want the load weight, you want the terrain type, the terrain grade, and then the actual speed of march to all be similar to what you require. So it's no good going out and doing a 5k stop as fast as possible, but you're going to be going out field, doing patrols at 3 km/h for 8 to 12 hours a day, if not longer. That's what you've got to develop yourself. Then look at how you do it. So if I'm doing it by myself, you know, say you can't go out, say you're in an area where you've got confined space. So you can't just go out 15km/h into the middle of nowhere. You get on a treadmill and do it, great. But what you do is you face the treadmill towards a white wall. And you stare at that wall when you walk. No music, no sound, no movies, nothing. You stare at the fricking wall and you walk. If you've got the capability, you're moving with a unit, you're doing a pack march as a unit. What you do is you put up figure 11 targets, you put up number plates, you put up bits and pieces, Kim's games, bits and pieces of information on the ground as they walk. And then you test them. All right, there's 16 objects that could have been used by the enemy. What were they on the march? And now, not only do they have to make sure that they stop thinking about other things, but they've now got to focus and scan for ground-mid ground-fire ground as they walk. So it's not thumb and bum mind and neutral now, they've got to try and pick out information. So, you give them something to do with their brain while they're actually walking. Unless you want to get them to that point where if it sucks, you've got to keep going, then you give them no input at all, except their own brain and their own pain. One of the students on RMSC program made a brilliant point in one of his submissions. And it was exact to that, you've got to suffer and you've got to embrace the suffering. To carry loads, heavy loads, and indeed, if the operational loads carry them recent theaters, and sometimes up to 70 kilograms for people. If you've not had that physical, psychological exposure to it, in the form of some stress and ocultation training, because that's fundamental what it is, you're going to get your bum handed to you for one of a better word. I think in some quarters, people seem to be risk averse to load carriage. They think, "Oh, if we do load carriage, it's going to injure us." And it's like, "Well, anything can injure you." We can't prevent injuries. We can reduce the likelihood. But where's the balance to be had? I think you raise a really good point. And it's one of the funniest things that you'll see, "Oh, we won't go out and do a pack march because people might get injured." But let's go to the gym and put a loaded vest on, and do burpees and jump heaves and that. But it's load carriage training because we were wearing a weighted vest. By the way, there was absolutely no evidence for weighted vests. Yeah, they look cool. They look cool, Rob. They look cool. They do have one benefit that isn't towards pure strength. And that's that discomfort, getting used to something rubbing and annoying. But it also has the rassic impedance, which is the resistance against your chest while you're trying to breathe. You actually weight training with your breath. You do have those benefits, but I don't think that's why they're doing it. If that's why they're doing it, great. If they're doing it because that is now the new load carriage, I go, "Well, I think there's something else you could be doing." The number one biggest predictor of future load carriage performance is previous load carriage performance. End of story that is always the biggest. A number of years ago, you mentioned a topic, which I hadn't heard of, of Pico, program induced coma of overload, recognizing, "Oh, the stimuli, which someone operates in these environments may be exposed to." Do you think this concept of Pico is well understood within tactical populations per se, or is it something that's just on the periphery? I think it's very much on the periphery. I think quite often because the programs, particularly the conditioning program, is normally done in isolation. So the SNC coach may do it, the PTI may do it, but they're not sitting down with the opso, going, "Okay, on this day, this week here, this is what we want to do, what are they doing?" We'd see it, sometimes we'd go out and do a pack march in the morning, and then only later on find out that that happens to be the day they're doing a navex for training. And out they go and they go to a navex, "Oh, they're going to get ready for the Queen's Birthday Parade." I remember sitting down one day going, "Are you kidding me?" They spent three days on the parade ground after we just did a huge pack march, getting ready for the Queen's Birthday Parade. So we wondered why they all went down with their hydration. So there was a huge disconnect between what ops were requiring them to do as part of training and what we were actually doing. And then that's when we started to realize we need to coalesce these better, because then they could be going to the Muckop team and doing military and armed combat. So they're getting their arms and shoulders torn in the over place, getting flipped onto their backs, and okay, let's now go and do an obstacle course. All the staff would do in-lines training, because the staff platoons would have competitions to see which platoons would get the high scores during PT. So the PTIs would give them a program, then they'd be doing stuff with the ops cell, and then they'd be doing stuff with their own platoons staff. And we wonder why they get cooked. So we do have to consider everything. I mean, you look at some of the latest research on college athletes. We know that when it comes time for exams, their risk of injury goes up. Of course, stress is stress. Your body doesn't know the difference between financial stress, psychological stress, physical stress, emotional stress. Your body responds to stress. And if you keep adding different types of stress without understanding all the things that are contributing to it, your risk of overtraining obviously will go straight up. So if you're walking the broader pictures, walking at police, fire service, emergency medicine, they perform both courage, but in different guises, burden carries, for example, firemen of the carrying hoses up by a lot and so on. How do you think it would be the optimal approach for those populations in regards to developing those occupational tasks, specific capabilities? Sure. So one of the biggest differences between military and police officers in particular, law enforcement tend to wear their load bearing vest in that every day, but it's a lighter load. It's about 10 kilograms, but it'll be every single day for every minute of their shift generally. So you've got 10 kilograms, about 8 to 10 hours a day, every day across your occupational career. Infantry soldier, yeah, they've got 70 to 80 kilograms at worst case, but the deployment cycle won't be as long. And then they'll have an unload cycle. So they've got short, high intense load carriage requirements, whereas law enforcement, I just low-insteady, cook and burn. So they don't really need to do load carriage conditioning in terms of wearing the load because they do that every day on the job. What they need to do is make them stronger, make their aerobic system bigger, and do what we call non-functional trading. Look at how you can unload the system. So if they've been wearing their body armor all day, rather than getting them to do something like a heavy squat, which is more spinal compression, should I be giving them a chin up? So I've got spinal distraction. Should I be throwing them in the water? Because their spine has been compressed all day. The last thing I want to do is compress it more. If I am going to do some spinal compression work, how am I going to decompress the spine? Before I then say, okay, well, now you're about to go and shift, where there's 10 kilograms to the next eight hours. So you need to think about, okay, they have load carriage, they're wearing the load, they're doing that. So what else can I do to optimise their ability to do that, which means unfrog the system, and optimise what they can do? So Maya, no, I've just mined for it. You've probably never experienced load carriage like this, have you? I have two children, JP, I've experienced load carriage. I think we need to get a burger on your back. I've got a 35 kilogram child on my shoulders and carried it up over dark more. So yeah, I'm experiencing load carriage. We need to get you up hurly-fitted burger, which gives you real bad chafs on the back, and then what you have that experience, and you can even comprehend it from a psychologist's standpoint. If I can, just add one variation. We'll talk about the firefighters now, because they're in the middle. They're loads and almost triple that of law enforcement, anywhere between 22 to about 32 kilograms, but the body positions they go into. Quite often, they're down in their knees, crawling, leaning. So they're leaning forward with all this weight on their body. Then they're in clothing that is not really permeable. It doesn't want to let external heat in. So they sweat a lot inside that clothing. They've got thick boots on that prevent range of motion at the ankle, because it's got to be fire resistant and fire retardant. So again, their movement mechanics now under load is very, very different, but it's also intermittent. It's only when there's a fire. If they've gone to a call and they put on their full gear within the last 14 days, you don't need to load them up. They've done that. But you do also need to train them to move under that load. So this is where I would actually see people doing squats, doing deadlifts, doing carries, doing hose drags, whilst wearing their turn out gear, because the movement pattern is very different. Yeah, that's super interesting. What about tactical roles that don't require load carriage? I'm thinking there's many different roles in these defense and security intelligence types of communities. And there might be very sentry that they could have an office-based job. Looking at a screen all day, maybe in a dark room, there's a whole spectrum. Does your research unit at Bond focus on those more sedentary type roles and how do we optimize those? Yeah, definitely. We break them into two general groups, very general. You've got your sedentary group and your kinetic group. Your kinetic group are the ones that his primary job is on their feet doing stuff. Your sedentary group are the ones that are primarily sitting down. We do know that they can change. Quite often you'll be in a sedentary group, but you might have to do your annual requalification. And suddenly you go away and do your use of force training for three days. So you're very sedentary. And suddenly you're kinetic for three days. But what we have found is that those that have very sedentary jobs, they are more likely to suffer health conditions and acute injuries from going to the gym and trying to smash it all out in one hour. I mean, 23 hours of neglect, one hour, I'm going to try to fix my life. So that sounds like me. But then you've got the kinetic person who doesn't really have to worry about their health from not doing enough physical activity because they definitely are. You still got to worry about their diet and all those other aspects of it. But likewise, they're more likely to suffer from those overuse injuries because they're doing the same thing over and over again. But even within the sedentary groups there's differences. So for example, we've done some work with the mounted police. Now the mounted police don't actually get up and run around very much because they're on the back of a horse. But when we looked at their heart rates, every time they're training the horses in a stable, they're doing a hit session, basically. So their heart rate's punching 80% max. Even though they're not physically moving very much. Then you get a highway patrol officer who's speeding in a fast car during a highway pursuit constantly going up and down the highway. Their heart rate can get up to 80% max. And they're not physically moving. But that is because of a hormonal dump. So the difference is one needs to do a lot of aerobic activity. So the sedentary highway patrol officer needs to do a lot of physical activity because even though they're getting the hormonal dump, the heart rate up, they're not actually doing physical activity to do that. Conversely, the mounted police officer is getting their heart rate up and doing physical activity through isometric muscle contraction. So they need to do some more range of motion work because they're not doing any range. They're just sitting in this fixated position. So even sedentary people need to break down what they do and what they have as part of their job and what they're missing. And then obviously that counter-functional, how do we protect them from the impacts of that job? So for people who have got these sedentary jobs, they might be cognitively demanding. But they are doing those cognitive demand tests while stationary, while still probably sat down. Are you aware of evidence that links being more physically healthy with being more cognitively able? Does it improve cognitive performance if you are able to focus more on improving physical health? From the research I've seen it, it's really hard to actually definitively claim that because every individual in a research group would have different levels of intelligence, of cognitive performance in the first place. But generally, if you are more physically capable, you are using less glucose and glycogen. And glucose and glycogen, that's your fuel source for your brain. So if your brain is burning that energy, if you're more physically fit, you've got more of it to use. And you've got more redundancy if you're doing a physical activity with it. Conversely, what we do know and what the research does show is if you're less healthy, well absenteeism is going to be higher. So you're not going to be on the job. And your risk of injury when you then run to the gym in the afternoon, it decides to do your one hour of activity, means you're more likely to be injured. So you're not going to be at your job. Yeah, definitely agree there. In regards to training the medallys, what are your thoughts on the use of extreme conditioning programs such as CrossFit? Obviously, they've gained massive popularity over the past 20 years in line with the growth of the internet. And I would argue that there's pros, but there's a lot of cons. Yeah, look, you hit the nail on the head. There's definite benefits, but there's also potential concerns. Some of the benefits are it's getting a lot of people off the couch and doing something. You're getting women now slinging weights where beforehand, they weren't as likely to get up and do power moves and you know, throw weight around, which is fantastic. Likewise, I think one of the reasons why many tactical populations embrace this is because normally when you go to a PT session, the goal is what survive? Get a nose bleed. There is actually no goal to the session. Whereas when you were doing CrossFit or extreme conditioning programs, you had a goal. Do this number of reps, do it this fast. You actually had something to try and achieve to measure at the end of it. So you can walk and go, hey, this is what I did. So it gave your goal as part of your training. The concern is many people that only go extreme, which means their body doesn't recover. They don't have the skill set to go extreme. And sometimes they don't have the understanding that, for example, just because I do a move like a snatch, which is a power-based move, doing it 30 times is not what a snatch is meant to be done like. It is a power move. It is meant to be done very, very few times, explosively up with no eccentric. It's dropped. So doing a move until you blow out is potentially harmful. So understanding the right exercises that can be used is the key goal. Knowing about recovery, because again, many of the programs, I go, oh, I'll do this one today and I'll do that one tomorrow. Or they just throw a workout of the day up on the board. But if you're just throwing random workouts of the day up on the board, how do you periodize? How do you make sure you load and unload? How do you monitor training load? How do you progress training load? How do you bring somebody back from an injury? This one size fits all approach, as we know, as a one size fits no one approach, and can be potentially harmful. And for sure. You mentioned the word specificity earlier in the context of training. Can you just talk about that as a principle of training? And what are the other principles of training that, if anyone's listening, who's never really done this sort of stuff before, and they're looking to be more physically able? What are the core principles that a novice needs to know? Great question. Great question. OK, well, let's start off where we almost finished off with extreme conditioning programs. The first one is individuality. Every person that comes in is going to be different every time. I mean, even you coming in every single day, you're going to be different. You could have had a bad night's sleep. You know, you could have had a great meal. You could have had a bad meal. You could be getting over a cold. So how you feel during that session is going to influence how well you can perform during that session. How old you are? Your training history. Your injury history is all going to influence your capability. So if somebody is designing your program, they need to take into account your individual capability. And you can do that through things like ability-based training. So that's the first one. The next one is recovery. You know, everybody thinks all the training is what builds you. No, the training is what breaks you. The recovery is what builds you. Your recovery is how you make everything stronger and better. So yes, you need to break it just enough so you can recover it. And then break it again and recover it that little bit stronger. If you break it too much, you won't have enough capability to recover it in time. So it's that optimized balance between breaking and recovering, giving you just enough time to recover stronger. So you've got individuality. You've got recovery. You've got the most important one. Specificity is if you want to get better at swimming, guess what, you're going to have to swim. That's what you're going to have to do. And there's a really good study done by Rudsky in 1989, where he had one of the platoons do a lot of running and one of the platoons just do pack marching. And believe it or not, both platoons increased their VO-2 max, their aerobic capacity, the exact same. But the platoon staff said that those that just did the pack marching were formed better outfield because they were used to the pack. They were used to how uncomfortable it felt, where it rot, etc. So that's specificity getting used to everything and the nuances required of that specific activity you're doing. We know it in sport. We call it the home field advantage because you know how the sun is going to glance off the side of that building at four o'clock in the afternoon. You know which way the wind's going to blow. You know where the divot is in the field. So you don't have to attend any cognitive bandwidth to those processes. You can focus on the game and we see it in the home field advantage. So that's your specificity principle. You've got reversibility. If you don't use it, you lose it. So if you're not, you know, up and doing something physically engaging, you're not physically conditioning. Your body gets what? You're going to lose fitness. In fact, you can lose around 1% VO-2 per day or no activity. So think about it, if you're going to go on leave of a Christmas, don't just sit there and eat cake because you're going to come back. And you know what's going to happen your first day back at the unit. We're going to find the biggest fricking mountain there is and we're going to run up it. And you're going to be sweating out some pretty interesting stuff. So here's a hint. Don't have reversibility. Keep yourself fit over your break. Yeah. I think that reversibility hits home for me as a man in his 40s. Now, I've worked with many different people, different arenas, sport, business, military, all sorts of things. And I've seen it a few times. You've got the 40 plus year old man who is living off that marathon that he ran at 21. And they think they can do that again. Or that, you know, the person who did an arduous course when they were in their early 20s. But now they're in a sentry job and they've not kept up that same level of training and they're trying to go back to that. Maybe the psychology is still there. They still think they can do it. They believe they can do it. But the body maybe isn't quite what it was age 21. How quickly does it happen? You mentioned via two max drops very quickly. But what about things like mobility, strength, power? Do we lose them at the same rates? Not necessarily the same, right? Because our VO2 max will peak at a different chronological age to our strength, for example. We tend to peak in our VO2 at a younger age. Whereas our strength is more, you know, 20, age 32 sort of areas a little bit older. We tend to lose strength less quickly and regain it a little bit more quickly down aerobic fitness, for example. But age sucks. Once you hit 42, your first handbrake comes on. Once you hit about 48, the second handbrake comes on. Once you hit 52, the freaking parachute out the back goes. You just look at a cake now and suddenly you put on five kilos and you just look at the bloody thing. It's a freaking nightmare. Everything slows down. I'm 42 and about three weeks' time. That's awful news. Same detail, I don't hear that. When I was younger, I'd get a cut of my arm and I'd hear like, "F***ing Wolverine." You know, now I've got a cut of my arm. There was there three months ago. Where the hell did that come from? So, yeah, as you get older, there is this effect. And you nailed a very important point. Because they've done the psychological hard yards, they still have that. They still have that belief in themselves. But the body can no longer do it. I used to represent Australia and acrobatics and trampolining. I can still right now close my eyes and picture the perfect movement for a back sum of salt with a twist. If I stood up and tried to do that now, it would be a car crash. But I can still close my eyes and feel the movement. The muscle memory is there. The muscle capability is not. I was thinking of asking you to go and do one more day. We won't do it. I'm not doing it. Don't even think about it. There's sort of got a few stories or reasonable gymnasts in their day in certain PT branches. I've tried exactly that and it didn't work out too well for them. But that's by the by. So, Rob, switch into the complete other end of the spectrum. When people join a tactical population, they come from society. And they've seen society at the moment. The general trend has been that people are more inactive than they ever have been before. The more sedentary and the quality of recruit pool is smaller than it ever has been. As an individual's meeting on minimum standard. And I remember that event over in San Antonio when they say tactical a couple of years ago, one of the key notes was around the fact that this very issue was being deemed as a threat to national security in the US, which was an eye-opener. But then coming back to the UK, we are seeing the same sort of trends here. So, what are your thoughts on this issue? And more importantly, what could be potentially do to address this tidal wave which is coming through? Look, that's a great question. I really like your follow-up question because that is the key thing. We can all talk about what the problem is. But no one actually goes, well, how are we going to fix this? And quite often, I think the way we fix it isn't the right way to fix it. And that's simply the easiest way, which is by dropping standards. So, let's look at the fact, yes, they are generally getting less fit. It's going to get worse. COVID has meant many people have spent two to three years in their homes not doing any physical activity. So, they haven't learned motor patterns. They haven't learned motor skills. So, when they have to now run, they haven't had three years of running training as a youth to develop those skills. They haven't gone out and thrown a ball and caught a ball and done all those other physical activities you do as part of play. How is that going to affect them when they now want to try and do physical, gross and fine motor skills? We don't know. Without them even having had COVID, that's just the period of immobility that's happened. So, yes, there's going to be this decrease in fitness. We're looking at long COVID. What are the impacts of long COVID? There's some research coming out suggesting that they haven't actually lost fitness. What has happened is they just can't access their fitness because their body is fighting a chronic infection basically. It can't access their fitness so it's not like I will do more fitness training, we'll get you fitter. You can't actually do the fitness training because they're a gas, that's it is. So, they need rehabilitation, not reconditioning. Whereas those that we locked up in a fine and didn't actually end up with COVID, they need reconditioning. So, we need to change our mindset on how we optimize this. We need to change how we even think about fitness tests at the moment because I can bet you right now in the UK like many other countries is you've got a whole bunch of personnel who can't pass their fitness tests who are perfectly able to before they got COVID. So, it's not that they've lost fitness, they just can't access it. So, how are we going to deal with that? That's a challenge. But to add to your other point, how are we going to do this with this new generation? Everything's digital. Short attention span, multiple tasks at once that they task switching, a lot of low level physical activity. But let's look at the changing nature of warfare, a lot more drone-based warfare. What does that going to mean? So, we have to think about what's coming, what equipment are we going to use? And then we have to look at, well, this is what we're getting. How do we change to optimize what we're getting? Rather than going, well, if you don't fit our molds, you break, we don't care. We'll try to find somebody else. So, guess what? If they are going to be less fit and they've got less motor skills, etc. or we may need to look at how we condition them, pre-condition them before they get to the front door. How can we ramp them up to be fit enough to then join and serve? Now, there's a couple of benefits to this. Some of the benefits are, even if they don't end up serving. Guess what? You're making them fitter. You're making them healthier. You're giving them a very important skills, which is going to be better from the whole community. It's going to have a potential downstream effect on things like ongoing healthcare, in general for the community. But, likewise, if you can get them physically fit enough, then you've got a good operator. And we see it at the moment. We've got quite a few people that want to join. Mentally, they want to join. They just can't meet the physical standard. Don't drop the standard. We know why the standard's there and it's needed. So, if you're not dropping the standard, these are the people we want, but they're not fit enough. Well, then how do we help them get fitter? We have to change our approach now. It's no longer, hey, you just come to us. It's about, how can we take this journey together and get you to where we need you to be so that you can work with us? Just dropping the standards is not doing demo service and is not doing the institution of service either. Because, as we know, if your fitness levels go down and you keep the standard of training the same, you're going to break them. Totally agree. And it's really interesting. Those observations, which you guys are seeing in Australia, mirror what's being observed in the UK at the moment. People are very quick at identifying the problem and apportioning blame. But then, so, how do we address this? And one of the easiest ones, which I think in my opinion, would be the training pipeline. If we lengthened the training pipeline, yes, there's a cost to be had. But it gives you more time to train these individuals to develop not into the fitness, but also the other skills that they require. You can improve their over readiness, you can improve their robustness, and then output the other side as far better. There's nothing new. We used to see it with junior leaders or apprentices within the military. They had a nine-month training pipeline that was very effective. People are more than happy to spend billions on technology, and maybe on platforms and so on, for example, take just 1% of that and inject in your training budget to lengthen the training pipeline to give this generation the chance, because they can adapt to the same as all of us. But we need to create that environment. But then, at the same time, like you said, go downstream. Get into the schools, work with the schools to improve physical activity levels. There's so much research done in that area now, it's like applying it. There's a wee present of video on one of our programmes. It's about John F. Kennedy and his drive for fitness. Yes. Within America, they had last year at high school and they'd done this experiment in the 60s, and the video sort of reflects upon that. And you have these older individuals talking about their experiences and how it's set them up for life. And they're saying, "Well, I've been here before. Why can't we do it again?" So I think there's a lot to it, but I think if there was a will in the motivation, we could certainly do something about it. We're very good at investing in things, but not good at investing in people. Yeah, a definite societal problem there. I think that's probably way more than we can deal with in this podcast, but yeah, it's true. Rob, I'm potentially going to open a can of worms here. Oh, right. Yes, so get ready for this. I do this in every episode. There's always a hand grenade. So this is your hand grenade. Where does biological sex fit in this? What do we need to think about differently when we are dealing with women? Oh, frag out. Thanks for that. Look, it's interesting, because in general, physiologically, women are less fit than men. They're going to lower VO to it. They've got lower strength. That's fundamentals. And that's typically what we focus on. However, I've seen a 70 kilogram female out-packed march 120 kilogram male, who's had a previous knee-op, you know? So we tend to focus only on sex, but there's so many other factors. You'd have a 25-year-old female who'd probably out-packed march of 40-year-olds. Or you'd have a 40-year-old female out-packed march of 25-year-old male, because they don't have the mental strength for it. So I think, yes, sex is an important thing to consider, because there are bio- hormonal things that need to be considered. But at the end of the day, forget sex. Forget age. Forget height. Forget hair color. Focus on the individual. How do we optimize you as the individual? Because I tell you what, I've seen some of the fittest men. You give them a back injury and guess what? You'll have an 18-year-old female who hasn't walked out of sight in a dark night. You put a pack on a back until you're last longer. And as you've said, you can have the fittest man in the gym. You know, Ripper shirt off and you Instagram's everything he does. And then you put an pack on his back with no cameras. And you get him to walk in a straight line by himself with no noise and no motivation. And he'll crumple after a kilometer. Because he's got no external motivation. He's got no sort of internal motivation. And then you'd have a young female who's purely internally driven. Who outlast him. The concern we have is in general. Females are smaller and lighter. And if you're carrying heavier packs, they are going to be injured. But I'd say don't focus on them because they're female. Because I can tell you what, if you had a 50 kilogram male and you put a 100 kilogram pack on their back, I don't care how muscular they are and how far they can run. You're going to break them. Yeah. And we've shown that now there's a lot of research talking about injuries, differences in injuries between males and females. Once you account for fitness, those sex differences dissipate. It's just that females tend to have a lower aerobic capacity so they tend to have less aerobic fitness. So because they have lower fitness, they get injured more. Not because they are biologically female. Yeah, interesting. In the UK at least, in some of the arduous areas of the military, there are fewer women. There's just not as many. Maybe that will change, but right now, there just aren't as many. But if I look at policing, if I look at the paramedic community, I've done work in both of those communities and it's much closer to 50/50 in those sorts of communities, is that a success story? Do you think they just train differently? Is it the demands of different that allow women to be on par physically? What are your thoughts? I can tell you a perfect example. I was once at a session where there was about 200 military females sitting to a lecture when they first opened up the ability for females to go to the front lines. And they said, "Look, you can now go and join infantry and do all this." And they were getting this great political speech by the civilian. And the female colonel there just said, "Look, can I stop you for a minute?" And turned around to all 200 women there and said, "Who here wants to go to infantry?" And none of them put their hands up. And said, "Well, it's not whether or not they can. It's whether or not they want to." So, setting these 5, 10, 20% targets is ludicrous because when I joined, I didn't want to go to infantry. I wanted to go to int, I got told, you're going to infantry. So, they asked all some cultural barriers, definitely. But I think there's also, they don't want to. And I think those that want to, now that you've given the opportunity, they'll get there because they will have the want to get there. It's a little bit different to that law enforcement and fire and rescue because when you join the police force, while you join the police force to be a police officer, when we're joining the army, you're joining to be whatever they tell you, you're going to be. So, Rob, so, about none of that, I've seen integrating the females in the Grand Coast combat, is an important area within the military and the UK at the moment. And so, all of research being done by several really good researchers across the board. But sort of feeding into that concept of research, what are your sort of main areas of interest at the moment? Well, we're looking at law enforcement's body armor at the moment. Difference is between male and female body armor. And you know, it's really interesting because typically we have females going, "Oh, yeah, this is designed for miles, not designed for females. It's very uncomfortable on the breasts." And yet, when you actually have a look at the mile feedback yet, they don't have any concern about weight on their breasts, but it sits on their stomach. And so, you've got just as many complaints from the miles, just in a different body area. So, it's guess what? Body armor is freaking uncomfortable. And it's going to sit here because this is where your vital organs are, and this is where we're going to protect them. So, for a mile, it's probably going to sit on your stomach and you're going to get uncomfortable for females, probably going to sit on your breasts, and it's going to feel uncomfortable. Can we make the body armor better? Yeah, potentially we can. We can individualize it, customize the fit, etc. But we need to get rid of this concept of designing mailed specific and female specific body armor in particular. Because ultimately, it's got to cover the same area. Every individual is different. So, hopefully we'll get to a point where we don't just have a size small, medium, and large. We can actually start to customize body armor fit more appropriately. And we see that with clothing as well. Yes, there are some differences that we're between male and female clothing. Because of sweat distribution patterns, etc. So, yes, we do see differences in need for a male clothing fit versus female clothing fit. Females will wear a bra. So, that's an extra layer of fabric. How does that layer of fabric react with the overt layer of fabric? And then, of course, add body armor on top of that. Sometimes it's a simple thing like stupidity where we bar the body armor from one company, but we bar the shirt from another and guess what, it's the shirt we've always had, which has those little pockets buttons right here. And now we're going to arrest body armor on those two buttons. I mean, really, it's not rocket surgery people. And yet, they want to then go and change the body armor. Well, guess what, change the undershirt. So, one of the things we are looking at with Australian Defence Apparel, which is the biggest defence company here for clothing. And they do military and law enforcement and everything else as well. Is imagine if, rather than getting bespoke individual bits of equipment, and throwing them on the tactical personnel, whether it be military law enforcement, foreign rescue, like a fricking tactical Christmas tree from all different providers, imagine if you had one provider who designed everything from the skin out. From the underwear, to the fatigue, to the body armor, to the load bearing vest, to every single bit of equipment, so it all fits and coalesces and moves and unity. Imagine that. That would be good, but that's never, well, in the UK, I can never see that happening. I could just imagine the politics of getting involved, but you're right. That is the answer, surely. The boots, the socks, everything. It's interesting over here because when I joined Army in 1997, they were just starting this year in something called Combat 95, and it was supposed to be the big game changer. And it was better, but it wasn't that good. I'm sure some of the listeners are familiar with Osprey, which would be our previous generation body armor. It was there for protection. It wasn't there for comfort, I can tell you that for a fact. But what's funny is things are more could be improved, but the current generation, guess what they'll do? They'll chuck them. They'll think it's rubbish, it could be better, it could be better, it could be better. And the right, there's areas where it could be improved. But I just think back to the days of wearing white weights, a big green jumper and a waterproof jacket, which wasn't breathable. You got wet or wearing it from sweat and frustration. I think now the personal equipment that's associated is more could be better, but it can be better still. I don't know if you've got one in the UK, but I know that in the US and Australia, in the US they've got grunt works. In Australia we've got digger works. Yeah, they've got one here, Tommy works. Tommy works. Of course, that is absolutely fantastic, because it shows that they're now taking it seriously, this, well, if we are getting a bit of kit, how does it interdigitate with everything else? And I think they have been a game changer in helping prevent some of the problems that existed beforehand. And then of course, we've got our DSTG group, and they do a lot of great work. Sometimes where the fall down is that implementation, because they don't have the support to implement, because their job is to come up with the gear. Here's the gear, and then it's like, well, OK, what do we do with the gear? Well, you're the infantry soldier here. You're supposed to know. So sometimes where the rubber meets the ground, where good science meets practical application, there's a bit of friction. And that's normal. They're supposed to be friction, but they don't actually get time and funding to manage that, because it's too late. They've been tasked to go into the next job, and the grunt has now got this pack going. OK, this is my pack and puts it on their back, and off they go with it. So there's never that constant feedback loop, which would happen when that rubber meets the road of that initial phase. Yes, we've got forms, you fill out it. You've got rodents, your pack doesn't fit fill out a rodum, and they'll look at that. But I think if you had a more lively first six to 12 months of constant re-sciencing in the field, it would be useful. Maybe they do that now. I think they're going that way. Rob, I'm just mindful of times. I'm just going to need to fire one final question at you. So obviously you've had a lot of experience. You've had experience. It's our infantrymen. It's PTI. Then you obviously turn to the dark side and become a physio. If you were to give just one piece of advice to a young private robot when you joined the Australian army, what would it be? Now, I must admit, I've been thinking about this for a while because that's a great question. And I know there are many things I could have come up with. And then I thought, no, I thought, no, I'm going to cheat. I'm going to use something that a corporal gave to me when I was going through Capuca just before I got out. He said to me, never say no to a course. Never say no to any training course. No matter what it is, if it's an Excel course, any computer-based course, whether it's a driver's course, whether it's a heavy weapons course, if they offer you a course, take it and get your skill set up. And it does. It opens up so many doors and gives you so much experience and further knowledge about bigger things that I agree 100% never say no to a course. Military civilian, whatever. Always learn. I love that. I think that those are words to live by. People say being a yes man is not a good thing, but in this context, say yes, that's good. Well, it's got a high school dropout like me to someone who's a professor with a PhD. Whenever there was a course, I took it. But then the flipside, there's never volunteer for anything. I was falling told, often, that I was going on a course. So Rob, if people want to know more about you, what's the best vehicle for them to reach you? Is it email, social media? Email's the best. Or just have a look on our website that'll link through to us. That's the technical research unit. So T-R-U-Ed bond. B-O-N-D dot edu dot a-u. Or just through you, it's fine. You know, we're going to find me. We'll put that in the show notes. So just before we wrap up, Rob, I'd like to give you the final word. Anything you want to reinforce, anything we've missed, what would you like to say just to wrap up this episode? I'd like to say thank you. Thank you to all those who serve, who have served, and even those who are thinking of serving, but also those who support that serve. It's a huge thing to go out of your way to serve your community. And I think it is undervalued. And I think that, particularly those that are currently serving and those who have served deserve thanks for stepping forward when many others didn't. Yeah, wise words. I think we all agree with that. Thanks, Rob. I've loved this talk. I've learned a ton, and it's been great. Thank you very much. No, I've always met Bruynch I do. Thank you very much. Thanks, Jent. Hello, and thanks for listening to this Wavel Room podcast. If you enjoy this content, don't forget to like and subscribe and leave comments so we can keep improving. I remember you're going to head to Wavelroom.com to find our latest articles and to sign up for our newsletters, the Sunday Frago and the Edge of Defence. Thanks again.