Speaker 1I looked at them all. I was like, hey, this is this is completely an unsatisfactory PT average for infantry brigade. Completely unsatisfactory. So we got to do something differently because whatever we're doing right now, we have to change something. So that was and the sergeant major and I both saw it. And so we knew we had to make some drastic changes.
Speaker 2Team, welcome to another week of the Mops and Mows podcast. Alex, thank you for joining us. This week, a bit of a different I think a bit of a different intro on account of like we're just we're kind of shooting from the hip here. And speaking of shooting from the hip. Chaplains don't wear ranks anymore. Sounds like that's that's the new news. It's not that outlandish, though. And that's what I realized, because I floated this past. Chris Pokorny, friend of the show he's been on before, wanted his thoughts on this as he he was a chaplain with the Air Force. Seems favorable. I didn't realize a lot of other countries do this. But what I was curious about is, as you get to these higher ranks, there's like inevitably with the military, there's decisions that are made at tables where the rank you're wearing matters. So I get it from the standpoint of like soldiers. Having these people be more accessible, but it's an interesting and there's no real policy yet on it. So it's kind of all just, you know, theoretical, but I don't know. What are your thoughts? Wild concept.
Speaker 3I think it'd be interesting to see how it plays out at the end of the day, since they're all still officers, soldiers are going to know they're officers. Like that's unavoidable. But at the same time, I think it does help. Like maybe somebody needs to be doing chaplainy. Stuff, but they're a lieutenant colonel and soldiers react weirdly when they see Lieutenant Colonel. That might make it a lot easier, right? That might work out, but then maybe it hampers them in like the bureaucratic roles they also have to fulfill. So who knows?
Speaker 2It'll definitely be interesting. I think I like it. We'll see, but you know, who I do like is the guys up in Alaska and that is who we are talking to this week. I'm going to turn it over to you. Good transition.
Speaker 3Through not forced at all, not so at all this week on the podcast, we have three guests actually, I think it's mostly done in a while at one time, not since NASA. I don't think if we had this level, it's been a minute.
Speaker 2Yeah. Chaos.
Speaker 3That was a long time ago. That was like two years ago. Wasn't it?
Speaker 2Um, a light year or so speaking of, I saw, um, what's that movie with Ryan Gosling?
Speaker 3Oh, I'm going to get in so much trouble for blanking on it because I, the audio book was amazing.
Speaker 2Oh man, dude. What is it? Why am I dropping the ball? Project, um, hail Mary, hail Mary. I didn't know really anything about it going phenomenal movie.
Speaker 3I, I will pitch some stories are better as audio books than as written books. And this might be one of them. The audio book is phenomenal. I've never read it.
Speaker 2Um, despite being just an absolute liability at corner, uh, Ryan Gosling, I thought did a phenomenal job. Um, and it's just a really cool movie. So there are other movies out there, but shout out to project hail Mary. Anyway, sorry, Alaska. I have not seen it yet.
Speaker 3I will, uh, I'll have to check it out. So today on the podcast, we have Colonel Brawley, Sergeant Major Wagner. They are the command team for first brigade element. They're born up. At Fort Wainwright in Alaska. And we also have their H2F director, Ellie Van Luit. And the reason we have the three of them on followers of the social media will certainly be aware of this because it was a very high engagement piece of content. Um, but their brigade did some pilot testing data collection stuff on what happens when you have flexible PT times. Um, importantly, we are not talking about reverse cycle PT. We are not just switching everybody's PT from the morning. To the afternoon, we are allowing PT to be scheduled at times throughout the day, where it fits with small unit level missions. Um, and they were kind enough to share some of the results of that. We posted it and it got an absolutely massive response on social media. Uh, one of the most engaging things we posted in the last year. Um, some good, some bad, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm. Um, some good, some bad, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm. Um, some good, some bad, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm. Um, some good, some bad, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm. Um, some good, some bad, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm. Um, some good, some bad, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm. Um, some good, some bad, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm. Um, some good, some bad, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm. Um, some good, some bad, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm. Um, some good, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm. Um, some good, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm. Um, some good, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm. Um, some good, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm. Um, some good, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm. Um, some good, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm.
Speaker 2Um, some good, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm. Um, some good, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm. Um, some good, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm. Um, some good, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm. Um, some good, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm. Um, some good, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm.
Speaker 3Um, some good, some really doubting whether it was even possible, some making snarky comments about how the Sergeant major is going to have an aneurysm. of the Arctic. think they looked at like vehicles, drones, batteries, stuff like that. I think we're going to talk a little bit challenges of the Arctic today, but specifically the human element, what it's like to just like live and work in that environment. But before we get to that, there is one massive hot topic that I think we'll spend some time on here. It was, it was a decently big deal on social media. Ellie remembers the amount of engagement the post got. I think a few of your commanders and seniorlisted leaders were involved in the comments section a little bit. But I am curious, it sounds silly for people who aren't like in the army or around the army, but you guys decided to make PT time flexible. And that seems to have been a pretty significant emotional event for some folks. So I guess a place to start. Why offset PT? Like, why did, was that a thing you guys decided to explore?
Speaker 1So when I first got here to First Brigade, we kept on hearing there's not enough gym space, it's not enough gym space. And so, you know, at first I bought into this and we were, we were thinking about like, how do we create additional gym space in the company areas? And then after thinking about it, Sergeant Major Wagner and I looked at it and all the gyms are empty for 90% of the day. And so we thought as a way of fixing the gym space problem, it might help us to just spread units out throughout the day, especially when it's super cold. Like this morning, it was minus 30. And it's really difficult to run or do any, really do anything with below minus 35. And so we started a try out flexible PT hours. Now, when you say, well, a lot of people just think that it just means you do PT later, like, you know, they'll call it off cycle PT where you're just doing it in the afternoon, but that's not really what it is. What it really is, is you do PT when it makes sense for your unit in the training schedule. The second thing that informed the whole thing was I previously commanded 1st Ranger Battalion. And when I was at 1st Ranger Battalion, I basically looked at my company commanders and said, I don't care when you do PT, but you have to do PT every day. Just do it when it makes sense. And we, we did PT, we did a PT test, a Ranger Regiment PT test at the beginning of it. And then we did it at the, on the backend, we did an eight week test, kind of like Ellie ran and the results were shocking. The soldiers were much more, they were much fitter. We, they, they increased their two mile runtime by minutes on average. And so it was a similar idea was let's try something like that here. It solves multiple problems for us. And then I, we, I asked Ellie to run a, run a trial with it, with one company. So that's how it all started. Anything you want to add?
Speaker 4Yeah. When it got after the, the gym space thing, but then when the idea, you know, when Colonel Brawley mentioned it it wasn't a foreign concept to me, I had tried this as a 1st Sergeant in Italy. Except what I didn't do was I did it kind of like, Hey, let's just try this for a few weeks and just later PT. So we come in at eight, do PT. I did it for about a month. Everybody hated it because I was stepping on the chow hall time. I, you know, I hadn't, hadn't considered that. So. They were just doing a quick 34 to like a 45 minute workout real quick, run into the chow hall eating. They felt rushed in the morning and I was shocked, but they didn't like it because like the extra sleep and all that. Um, but when I realized I had put it right on top of chow, I like that was kind of dumb, right? So by, by just doing it whenever it makes sense in the day as Colonel Brawley put out, um, I mean, it's the results kind of speak for themselves, I think.
Speaker 3I, I'm a little curious on your guys' perspective. So like after we posted about, I did hear, um, Sergeant Major Tyler Fillion, friend of the pod has been on before. Hopefully we'll be on again. She mentioned being in your battalion when you guys did that and how successful it was. Um, but as you probably saw in some of the reaction to the social media post about it, there are, there are kind of two camps. One camp is this has been done before. It's not actually exciting. And the other camp is this is impossible to do. It will never work. And I'm, I'm curious your perspective on one. Why, if the data bears out so well, if it's been done before, why isn't it more common? And then two, like why, if there's like proven examples of it working are so many units still so resistant to even the possibility of doing it?
Speaker 1Yeah. So I think there's a, there is cultural resistance to it in the army. Um, you know, the, at the time when I tried it in first range of the sign, uh, the regimental commander was not a fan at the time. And. But he, he trusted me enough to say, he didn't say stop doing it. Um, but, but so there is this institutional resistance, you know, PTs at zero six 30, it has a formation at zero six 30. Um, and that, you know, that's, and that's where the, how the day starts. So I think one of the reasons why it's not more widely done is, is because there is a lot of institutional cultural resistance to it, even actually in the company that did it, uh, that with the, the, the, the start out company, there was resistance there too. And it took a while for them to, to, to really change their minds. And, uh, and I wasn't, you know, we just tried it out. It was complete. It was a complete experiment. One thing that was really interesting about the whole thing was that when we took it to the other battalions, the, some of the other battalions, it just, wouldn't work for, for instance, the BSB, they came back and said, Hey, because of the maintenance schedule, we kind of need ET earlier in the morning, um, in order to get all the things we need done. And it needs to be a set time or it just won't happen at all. And so it doesn't work for all units and it doesn't work for all at, in all, um, different variations of, of organization. Um, but in some units it can work,
Speaker 4really well. And it can change. It doesn't, it's not necessarily a like, okay, this is what we do now. Like depending on what the training calendar looks like or what's coming up over the next quarter, it might be like, Hey guys, for this quarter, similar to BSB, it just, it's going to go back to, you know, the zero six 30, uh, timeframe, uh, uh, like normal. I think on the, on the, on the senior commander's part, whoever's implementing it, whether it's at brigade or, uh, battalion level, I mean, it does require some trust. Right. Because you don't, you all of a sudden you got, you know, six 30 to go salute the flag and you're missing a company or two. And so there isn't good communication of like understanding where they are and when you can expect to see them working out. So you can go spot check or whatever. Um, and, and, and the trust that they're going to still accomplish all the things that need to be accomplished. And it's not just a late call. Um, I think is, you know, it does require some trust there as well. One of the most interesting things about
Speaker 1the trust piece was that in the one company that we tried it with that is that had been executing it all the way till now that that trust then proliferated in everything they did and so when you when you talk to soldiers there's this one the one nco in the company uh who who was kind of the the the the lead the the leader of it um he he literally the way he talks about it he says things like i i never want to be in another unit again um it's it's incredible how that the trust at pt um infiltrates into everything else and general donahue did that did a did a recent podcast or i saw a video of him saying how how you execute pt sets the tone for everything else you do and so if you're trusted if you feel trusted to do pt then that means oh all of a sudden you're trusted to do run your marksmanship range the way that you think is best and it's just been a really interesting vignette into how an organization's culture can change it's based on a very relatively minor adjustment um it's been pretty pretty neat to watch um
Speaker 2what were we've hit on some of the benefits but i'm curious like what were some of the i'll make this a two-parter what were some of the challenges and then what were some of the like unexpected challenges things you didn't even realize would be an issue if that makes sense
Speaker 1i think one of the one of the challenges was certainly supervision because now all of a sudden i don't know when that company is doing pte so you know i try to do pt with a company you know once a week or so and so now it's like oh man i don't even know when that company is doing pte i've got a hot download schedule uh that's probably
Speaker 4been a been a been a challenge um what are some other things the scheduling piece of it so like in order to get everything done that still has to happen because again it's not just a late call um like it does require the coming of platoon leadership company command team to some extent potentially battalion command team to like really have a detailed calendar of like when things are going to happen throughout those duty days and and that you know execution timelines are still being met days weeks and months out um it because it's not the norm um you really do have to forecast out okay what are we going to do for ptn from 13 30 to 1500 you know what does zero you know eight to noon look like and then what does 15 30 to 1700 look like um so they had to be more disciplined i think and more accurate i'd say with their uh the planning and their training schedules
Speaker 5i think that helps morale a lot like predictability right because it's forcing it um and then another thing this company did to mitigate it and like how they're still doing it now is to fix that problem they don't have everyone offset every day they stagger their platoons so there's always at least one platoon on a normal battle rhythm like every day um so them plus like they're trained extender we call them howlers here battalion hdf coach like based on the type of day which is typically their like lift days because that's the day they need the gym space the most those are staggered amongst platoons that's what they're in our facility when the gym is wide open and then they always at least have one um and honestly the leaders there say like even if it ends up being one day a week of offset like that is that gives them the morale boost uh they're they don't really have soldiers complaining like oh we're not offset every day so i don't like this anymore like they've kind of found even one day is enough to keep morale up team this episode of mops and mose is brought to you by
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Speaker 3and i know there's a difference between operations in a garrison environment and operations in the field and then operations deployed but in in either a field operation or a deployed environment you would not expect if you're a battalion commander to see every company every day in a deployed environment you definitely wouldn't expect that right like the amount of area you're going to cover the amount of independent decision making that's happening where you just have to trust people and use mission command like it's it's a little bit surprising to me like in garrison we're afraid to let like a company commander choose what time to do exercise at given the amount of trust we're going to have to place in that person in a in a field or deployed environment i wonder if it's an opportunity to like train and test mission command principles and then you know if you're going to be able to do that in a field or a military field or a military
Speaker 1field and then you know you're going to be able to do that in a field or a military field and then you know you're going to be able to do that in a field or a military field and then you know you're going to be able to do that in a field or a military field and then you know you're going to be able to do that in a field or a military field and then you know you're going to be able to do that in a field or a military field and then you know you're going to be able to do that in a field or a military field and then you know you're going to be able to do that in a field or a military field and then you know you're going to be able to do that in a field or a military field and then you know you're going to be able to do that in a field or a military field and then you know you're going to be able to do that in a field or a military field and then you know you're going to be able to do that in a field or a military field and then you know you're going to be able to do that in a field or a military field and then you know you're going to be able to do that in a field or a military field and then you know you're going to be able to do that in a field or a military field and then you know you're going to be able to do that in a field or a military field and then you know you're going to be able to do that in a field or a military field and then you know you're going to be able to do that in a field or a military And it showed in the company live fire, the platoon live fire, everything that came after it. So I do think it's an interesting insight into how NCOs think about training and training of all kinds.
Speaker 4No, just to your point about the trust and the garrison of a low-risk environment, right? Like, what's the worst that happens? You try it out for 30 days, whatever, give them a PT test at the end of it. All their scores have gone down and they're red on all their HR metrics and nobody's qualified on their gun. Okay, you're done. You're back to 630 PT. Everybody's still alive. It didn't work. You know, it's low risk.
Speaker 1And we've been trying to find ways, like, how do we make NCOs feel like they own training? And it starts with PT. Okay. So the minute that they understand. They own what's happening for PT, they own when it's happening, and they own everything else. It was really neat to see. You can palpably feel it in this company. When you walk into that company. Okay, so he was the first sergeant of that company many years ago. But if you walk into that company and shout, do work. In the company headquarters, literally, everybody in the company will scream, do work at the top of their lungs in unison. As it's just a really neat culture down there. I, you know, it's not the other units that have done it too. They've seen, they've seen, they've seen a lot of benefit to it. And to your earlier question about, you know, there are people that say it will never work. Um, and I think it's very rare to see it. I think it's rare to see it done at scale, you know, that's, that's what I think is different. Sure. Platoons do it, companies do it. But when you start to see like, you know, larger portions of our brigade do it, that's a, that I don't know that I've seen that before. Um, have you ever seen that?
Speaker 5No, not at that level. Yeah. And then I think the people that think they've seen that are the ones where a whole division moved to 1600 PT and it, that didn't work, but that's just not what we are doing at all. I think we've made that clear at this point. But that seems to be everyone's initial response that when they hear what we're doing without asking more questions is we just moved it to the end of the day. But if we did that, we would have the same exact gym problem we started with, and we can't have every unit moving to offset either. So it's, it's important that we have our leaders analyze, like, does this make sense for me? And we have a fraction of them that does. So then it clears up the gym space for those that need it at 6:30, like, like everyone else.
Speaker 2Well, that's, I mean, that's kind of what I wanted to ask. And, and we'll get into, I think some of the more common, I don't know, criticisms later, but like, walk us through the, like, how do we actually pull this off? Right. If somebody is listening to this and they're at some command somewhere and they want to do this, but they don't know how, what does it look like at the different levels in terms of how often am I submitting a change to my plan? Who am I submitting that to? How does H2F get it? Get involved in this? How does like the brigade slash battalion battle rhythm account for all the moving pieces? Like, how does this, for lack of a better way of phrasing this, like, how does this work?
Speaker 1Yeah, that's a great question. So one of the things, one of the criticisms of it, it's really a criticism of H2F that you'll hear is that I don't want to hand receipt my PT to H2F. And so we don't hand receipt anything. Um, the, the PT is run by the NCO Corps, the way it is supposed to. What we get from H2F is this expertise that is reviewing the PT plans. And this is the way it works from the like lowest level and jump in if wherever you want to, uh, you know, the, the, the squad, the platoon, they're submitting their PT plan to the company commander. The company commander is reviewing PL. The platoon sergeant review it first, and then it goes to the company commander and they take a look at the H2F plan and then it goes to over to H2F and then H2F gets a, takes a look at it and writes feedback on it. Hey, think about this. Think about this. Hey, you may need to adjust this. And then it goes back to the company. And then what, what is required is a very detailed company training schedule. That's the critical piece. And we, the army has had a problem with core company training meetings for a very, very long time. And so this is one of the ways that helps you improve your company training meeting and your company training schedule is if, if you don't do the detailed analysis on what you're going to do at what time, then it's going to be a disaster. And so it forced these company commanders to, um, build, you know, build a day, day by day. Hour by hour schedule for their companies, all too often, what you see for a company training schedule is PT 0630 to eight, uh, eight, you know, morning formation company ops from nine to 12 and then lunch from 12 to 1330 and then company ops from 1330. 1430 to 1700 but that's not a training calendar it's just not it's not you need to do the detailed analysis on like okay when when's this range occurring when's the recon for it happening okay and then you have to build your pc around all that and i think that the probably the most important thing to do is you got to get some you got to go to your to a battalion commander or above and get some overhead cover that's probably the most you have to get them on board and you have to show that it's going to work and then you have to show that you're going to do the hard work
Speaker 4to make it happen sorry major uh yeah getting it started um i mean you hit a service like you got to have the have the plan for and then the integration of h2f into it again it's it's a it's a combination of our h2f coaches and the whole enterprise you got to have the plan for and then the integration of h2f into it again it's a combination of our there uh but as well as like our howlers that we have right they go through like the academy so they get trained by our h2f folks on all the you know proper uh how to conduct all the movements properly the lifts properly diet classes um nutrition class and sleep just for general overall um knowledge of those things so then they go back to their units their squads and platoons and so now the pt plan that those like howlers especially the more experienced ones that have the training it's not the pt plan that you know staff sergeant wagner did when i was you know a recce squad leader in 82nd airborne which was five mile kit run boys and pull up still failure i'm like that's what we're going to do three days this week right it's actually has a goal in mind with the you know the science behind and the education behind building a plan that's going to help you achieve those goals without breaking anybody so for a lot of them by the time that plan goes back to the h2f coach just to review they're going to be able to do that and they're going to be able to do that and they're going to be able to do that so a lot of them are almost getting rubber stamped for lack of a better word uh you know because i know that they're good hey solid that that's in line with the goals you're trying to achieve execute then the nco is execute another critical
Speaker 1piece of this is the relationship with h2f so if you ask you know ellie and i talk about this all the time what you know if if h2f is just you know down in the gym i probably talk to ellie 10 times it's probably this is true i i don't even know how often we talk i she i talk to her more than i talk to many battalion commanders um that's how often we chat so having that like her having access to the command group and having the relationship is absolutely critical because she she can she knows exactly what i'm thinking um you know i don't and she can talk you know this is what the commander is thinking about and she can talk you know this is what the commander is thinking about and she this is how he thinks about this upcoming training event and so uh that and then if you look if you go down to the battalion and company level that it's the same thing they have relationships with their coaches and could relationship with the program that is there there is no like wall between h2f and the units the it they're all the same and i think that is absolutely critical that's a you can't you can't you can't even try something like this
Speaker 2so man now i have all these other questions about blurring the lines between my day job
Speaker 5and talking to people a couple things i'll kind of add because we haven't what's what i love about this so far is we have not called this an h2f program or effort or initiative right and do you call it ellie's program any of the what did you say did you just call ellie's this is ellie's yeah yeah you actually that's where i was going but uh just a couple like they you guys really hit on it already but like having leaders willing to trial and error different things is something i've always had here which is awesome especially when you're starting a new you know we started this team almost three years ago uh so leaders willing at every echelon to embrace this uh was i think key this and anything we do i think that's huge um and then the fact that like everything we're talking about it was not h2f decided to do offset pt and we're hosting this offset session that we're hoping soldiers come to like we enabled it we facilitated the survey pre and post shout out dr danielle lang she's still an h2f at fort bragg um she really led the charge on all of that but all of our h2f team like all the domains were built into making the pre-post survey what do we really want to look at what do we expect to see let's see if it actually happened right but everything we've talked about thus far was not h2f's doing um and i think also this this company um already had a really good setup of they were doing good pt already their howlers were awesome uh they were super consistent so like the framework was set we just tweaked one variable we weren't trying to come in and change everything about how they were they were training um and so yeah i think i think we just have really good leadership support to try different things like this whether it's training timing or or really any other initiative uh very thankful for that but because i get to talk to both of them so much we can also move out on ideas really fast i'm not waiting like three weeks to brief them on this idea and i end up getting 10 minutes because the meeting goes long and now i don't have enough information to move out with it like we can make a decision and go so i'm really thankful for that
Speaker 1yeah if you want a mind-blowing podcast for you guys would be we did i don't know if ellie has told you about this but we had her collect data on our company live fire on lethal like lethality data um it we incorporate h2f into everything live fires post you know jpmrc our ctc rotation competitions um it's just uh it's it's it's integrated into everything that we're doing and i think that's that's part of what makes it has made it successful how
Speaker 2okay now i have to ask this right because you hear that a lot and you guys have actually done it so is that like a top-down command directive hey you're doing this here's the op board do the thing you don't have a choice is that a bottoms-up relationship building um going to company training meetings having coaches and other personnel just being around and i think to to give like a very discreet example of that you guys have referenced your how there's quite a bit and given how much autonomy you've turned over to these lower echelons that person seems to play a critical role in that in that whole equation but one of the biggest um maybe sore spots that we hear about with with h2f is you know we train all these soldiers to be call them mfts call them h2o trainers call them whatever you want we train them to do the thing and then they go back to their unit and they just get tasked out with other stuff it kind of falls apart but you guys have done a great job of doing that and i think that's a great way to you guys seem to have elevated that position and actually given it a lot of authority which is ironic because one of the biggest i think h2f big army riffs is like ncos should lead pt no strength coaches should lead pt no but like you guys seem to have figured all of that out so i guess for the sake of putting a question on the end of that how did how did how did the snowball build to have h2f be so meshed with the
Speaker 1culture of your organization so i think uh i think it's it's kind of uneven it's not it's not it's not the same throughout the whole brigade i'd say battalions embraced it more than others frankly and part of that has to do with uh you know some of it was commander personality some of it was company commander personality and first sergeant first sergeants are critical uh one of the things we tell our coaches is like you better know who the first sergeants are and know them you know and be in their office all the time um but i think i think it was a combination of a really really strong h2f team uh ellie and her coaches and the people we have here are really impressive award-winning h2f program before we even started and then i think it was that there there was we kind of knew we cut our pt to be honest with you our pt in the brigade was terrible um when we first when sergeant major wagner and i first showed up and you want to talk about how a difficult problem how do you raise the pt score of thousands of people that that's very difficult to do and through what we've done we've raised the brigade's pt average by 20 points um that's that was really difficult to do i think prioritizing it understanding the um making making it a priority for the battalion commander i looked at them all i was like hey this is this is completely an unsatisfactory um pt average for our infantry brigade completely unsatisfactory so we got to do something differently because whatever we're doing right now has we have to change something um so that was and the sergeant major and i both saw it um And so we knew we had to make some drastic changes. And then, you know, some battalions more than others embraced it and decided that, hey, we're going to make an active effort to try something out. So I think that kind of is how it started. And then once it started to get momentum, it was like anything else. You know, other companies would be like, hey, what's going on over there? And word would spread. And so other companies said, hey, we want to try some of that. There's some good stuff going on over there. And so it started to snowball throughout the brigade, almost through word of mouth, through the NCO Corps, through junior officers, and through the company commander network. What do you want to add?
Speaker 4Part of the relationship that we all have is, you know, it's. To be honest, we got. Kind of lucky, I think. All right. You have a commander like Colonel Brawley. You have an H2F lead like Ellie. Right. Someone, Colonel Brawley, willing to do things differently. All right. And then just propose ideas. And Ellie and all her coaches who are excited for new initiatives, new programs, different ways of thinking, different ways of getting after them. And, you know, he and I will chat. We'll just kind of talk about what we want. What we want to do. Right. He bounces off me. So our major is this crazy. I don't know. I think this is great. We've got to know what we'll kind of provide Ellie and the H2F team like the bones of the thing. And then to her to put the meat on the bones and come back to us. And ultimately, Wolf Six looks at it and says, execute. All right. And then we also get some buy in from our from our, you know, the battalions and company command teams as well. Let them know we're doing this. I mean, I think we asked for a volunteer initially. I remember this thing and it was like and one of the battalion commanders said, you know, I'll take it. I'll find out. And this charger company, one five said, we'll give it a shot. Right. So there was already some buy in on their on their part. It wasn't they weren't told to do it. I think you mentioned that. Like you just saying, do this, move out. And then you just kind of let it happen from there. And if if anything is successful, other people are going to see it and want to do the same thing. Right. So then it just becomes. I mean, to this day, it's not a it's not a directive. It's literally still to all the battalion commanders and company command teams out there. It's on the table for you to do if if it's something you want to do and if it makes sense for you to do.
Speaker 3So I had a direction I thought I was going to go, but I got to follow up on one thing. Colonel Brawley said at the beginning there of like a on arrival, unacceptable physical fitness status for an infantry brigade. And and I'm not really curious to know, like where the fitness level was at the time. I am curious to know, especially in the minds of the three people sitting in front of me here. What does acceptable look like in terms of the fitness requirements for an infantry brigade? And I'm going to I'm going to set it up a little bit because I I worry sometimes that with the transition from the APFT to the ACFT to the AFT. We introduced more components of fitness, but in some ways we let the standards slip on some of those components of fitness. So I look at the AFT score chart and a an 18 year old infantryman can pass with a 1957 two mile or like a 16 minute two mile. We'll get them like nearly 90 points. I know we introduced a bunch of other things. I know they did a sprint drag carry before that, but I'm curious whether it's AFT or whether it's something else. What is acceptable look like to you guys for your organization?
Speaker 1That's a tough one.
Speaker 4That's a good one. We'll start, I guess. I mean, so you have to think, you know, it's an infantry organization, right? But we have a lot of non infantry soldiers in the brigade. Right. And, you know, when you look, if you had every battalion in an infantry brigade and they all had their AFT score or AFT score now on a on a on a wall and there was no logos or anything like that, you would probably be able to pick out. Yeah. I mean, I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point.
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I think that's a good point. pt formation they wouldn't know we were there it would be dark we'd hide in the background and then some nco would come out and be like ah you know uh let's uh let's do uh let's do some push-ups let's do a push-up pyramid and they just make it up as they go along and then you know they the problem with that is it's not part of a program it's not training towards a goal and that's a really good way to break people it's a really good way to um not improve on anything um and so that you know that is largely it's not perfect i'm not saying like our brigade is we got to trust trust me we have our problems but we've made steps towards improving the overall
Speaker 5fitness i think from the the h2f side of all that because obviously there's a lot of you know human formation and stuff like that but i think it's a really good way to break people team people that listen kind of back to drew your question a couple questions ago is like is this pushing orders is this top down is this bottom up and it's like all of the above but not without the relationships i know we're saying that but like i would never go to the three shop and write an order that i don't already have an idea that everyone's probably going to be on board or i've at least like hashed out with battalion commanders what what you know impact this might have on them or i just know them well enough to know that they're not gonna like come back and push back that happens obviously here and there and then um there's i'm not just like pushing an order and we're like let's hope everyone shows up you know uh because that's just not good enough um there needs to be trust from leaders that if something is coming down top down maybe it's a policy letter or an order that involves h2f like they were a part of the development of that like i ask for advice all the time from leaders of what we should do shouldn't do might work for some not all um and same thing with um there's a lot of things that need to be done that need to be done so we're not going back to just like our howl academy or what a lot of other h2f teams do h2f academies h the actual hf academy like we're not you're teaching things that week we're not building proficient howlers in that week the ones we're talking about that are actually doing the thing are the ones that have sought ongoing mentorship with the coach they spend a lot of time with their coach um they still certainly they're not strength coaches now right but they they spent all this extra time and have this trust relationship built up and they're still doing it and they're still doing it and they're still doing built with the coach that the end product looks a certain way because of all of that. It's not just from the one week. And so all of it truly comes back to relationships. But I think what leaders offer us here is their time. They're very generous with their time. I think that's because we've followed through on expectations and we've made sure that we are relevant enough to them that we get their time. But because of that, it just creates this beautiful feedback loop. And then not to mention just, you know, the opportunities for recognition. You both are really quick to recognize our standouts, recognize high performers in our, we have monthly competitions, right? We just got to recognize a handful of our standout howlers. So I think all of that together, other soldiers might see, like, that's the cool thing to do. That's what commanders and leaders care about is getting on board. And that's not something that I could, anyone on an HGF team could create without leaders doing. Doing that part.
Speaker 2Have you, Ellie, found that sort of the ways in which you guys have implemented PT and been flexible about it and handed down a lot of autonomy, like we've talked about, has that opened the door for a lot more compliance or buy-in to the other pillars of H2F as far as the soldiers themselves are concerned? And like, what does that look like?
Speaker 5Yeah, I mean, just from a, like, logistics standpoint, just the time that we have to time, right? Like if I have, right now we have one dietitian on the team, our green suitor replacements arriving in a couple of weeks. She can't go see the whole brigade at 745 to do a turf talk, right? But if there's multiple sessions and we just have, you know, a calendar, everyone kind of can see where, what units are doing PT when throughout a day on any given day, there's multiple sessions happening. So if you just do the math there, a dietitian, for example, you know, could see a company worse in the morning. At the end of their session, some of these smaller groups, like, you know, hundreds in a single day, just because of like, you know, turf talks are really effective. And then at those turf talks, you're finding a couple of people that probably actually like to see you for a one-on-one appointment. So I think just logistically, yes, for that reason, it gives us, we all know soldiers, if they spend more time with H2F team members, they're going to get better. So we create opportunities for them to spend time with us. And in our, you know, non-physical domain folks are really good about getting out to sessions and always meeting, meeting soldiers and all the battalions at different, different times. I think that's probably the biggest benefit it's offered us for all the domains, not to mention all the discussions about sleep. One thing that was really cool just on the survey too, is how many mentioned, well, obviously they were now eating before training, but also just the mention of like, they were more motivated and excited to train. And they were just like, cause they felt better during training, just the morale during a session, right? If you want to talk mental readiness, it is just better. And I think we see that with that, that unit specifically, their culture and whatnot. So you see all these,
Speaker 2it's a snowball effect for sure. I mean, one of the things we've talked about forever, and it may be up until talking to you guys, it seemed like an unsolvable puzzle, but it's like, how do you, how do you create this athlete mindset, right? Like, how do you, how do you create intrinsically within a soldier, the desire to want to talk to somebody about sleep or to pursue better nutrition strategies, or even get into like spirituality. And it seems like something as simple as giving some control over to the PT schedule has kind of triggered a lot of that. It seems as though based on listening to you guys, that PT doesn't feel like some like job obligation that I have to do because the army says it happens at this time. It's more of like, hey, this is what it, this is part of what it means to be a high performing soldier. Is that just like myth-making on my behalf, or is that something that you guys have seen?
Speaker 1I think, you know, we, we definitely have some soldiers that still, that don't want to talk to PT, like, you know, regardless of time. Regardless of time. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. Okay. But I think, you know, we're basically, you're, I think we're, we're trying to build a culture where, which is against what army culture has been a long time. For instance, when I was a field grade officer, it was literally, it was almost like a challenge for who would sleep the least on a, on a combat exercise or, or a CTC rotation. And so what we're trying to create is a culture where Sergeant Major Wagner and I are, you know, trying to beat each other and how much more we slept. And the other one, or, yeah, I, I, I, you know, we just came out of the CTC rotation. How many hours of sleep did we get? Probably at least six. We probably averaged about six. Yeah. And if you ask like most brigade command teams in the army, how much did you sleep? I don't think six is going to be the answer, but we, we, so, and then it's the same for maybe five. And, and, and then. Nutri, you know, nutrition is the same way. I mean, that's probably the, the two probably biggest weaknesses are, are probably sleep and nutrition. When I was in the ranger regiment and Tyler Filion was part, I think he was part of the study. We had, we had some researchers coming in bed with us. And that we, that question we asked them was what is the one thing that if we improved would most contribute to better physical health? And they said, well, we need to improve physical readiness. And their answer was sleep. You guys need to sleep more. If you could get your squad leaders and privates to sleep at least seven hours a night, that is the biggest contributor to, to your physical readiness that you could possibly take. And so it does, you know, I, I don't know that. I, I do think that giving the, giving the companies and their platoon leaders and first sergeants and platoon sergeants. More flexibility. It did empower them to, to, to do things differently in other areas as well, but it also encouraged other conversations about sleep and nutrition that, that I, I don't, I don't know would have happened otherwise.
Speaker 5Speaking of like conversations about sleep, um, on, at JPMRC, our recent rotation, like my heart was so warmed on how often sleep was brought up. monks per game staff when i would just be popping in um obviously like they should have person there let's talk about sleep but like truly um sir i don't even know if you realize this like you ended a meeting make telling everyone to sleep uh i watched you point to a field grade and tell him to go home and sleep like i think you probably would have done that before you met me and before you had an hdf team but if not maybe maybe like 30 more uh so that was it's really awesome just to see how at least at least it's a thought right like at least you're at least thinking about looking for opportunities to improve it even if it maybe doesn't actually happen i saw so much evidence of that you know
Speaker 1it warms my hdl heart for sure it was pretty cool we had this like sleep bay in our brigade talk um for people to go sleep so they were like it was you had earplugs we had 140 eye masks taken
Speaker 5which i think is a win and then we didn't count the earplugs but like even just that like when they're given an opportunity to sleep giving a 50 cent i'm like face masks to cover your eyes so you might fall asleep a little bit quicker so like the window of opportunity to sleep might be limited but you're at least falling asleep quicker and staying asleep like we're just trying to look for those little opportunities any any organization has an hdf team or not go buy sleep masks and give them to your brigade talk at your next ctc right like such an easy adjustment and um definitely saw improvements a lot of people brought it up to us which again way way too easy
Speaker 3adjustment there um i'm going back to like when i was on battalion standings staff and like i remember trying to like sleep under the fuops table like when we had just like given up at a certain point i remember my battalion commander coming in so brutally sleep deprived that he just like fell asleep in the fuops area we just like decided to be quiet until he woke up um it like the culture change you're talking about is pretty drastic for some units um i i'm watching the clock we're getting closer to an hour i want to get one more kind of big question in that we'll hit you with some rapid fires i'm i'm curious about like leadership philosophy on different communication strategies and how candid to be and things like that and i'll provide context by saying that you guys have been pretty candid on this conversation here uh i also very much remember when the instagram post went up about this pilot test i think at least one battalion commander was in the comments i think at least once our major was in the comments by very directly having conversations with people uh some more direct than other readers might think is normal to do on social media and i think that's a very direct conversation with people uh i'm i'm curious about how you guys approach public messaging how you communicate what you're talking about how you communicate internally within the brigade externally out to like other audiences public affairs kind of stuff just curious what you think about that and i know that i'm asking this in a public engagement so i get that
Speaker 4um internally i'll also speak for myself like uh being blunt and having candor is like i think it's a necessity of the profession um you can't um you can't dance around the hard topics or the top topics or whatever and then you know behind closed doors or anything like that you know some oftentimes language that gets used is different right like we're both here we're all here and everyone's you know mildly polished at least you know um and then the but you have to you have to have the conversation all right that's the main point is because you asked about candor and how um you know we are we do that with you know our abcp like we we uh we look at our our numbers every every week every month um and we we have very pointed conversations with battalion command teams about those things i'll have pointed conversations with soldiers in the gym um and ask them about where they know where they're at on a scale um if it needs to be right it's all professional right it's not like down um degrading anybody but uh you gotta you gotta have candor the messaging up and out particularly we start talking social media platforms and all that be honest you kind of get into like a weird space right um um and you do have to i mean i think we had to get a legal review to make sure that we were allowed to do this i think right so you can't just like hop on someone's podcast and you know say whatever you want so um some of that's i think par for the course but um you know the overall thing is like we're going to be honest with you and we're going to tell you what you what we expect out of you and what you can expect out of us
Speaker 1i think people people respond to it builds trust when you feel like somebody is telling you the truth and so i really value can't candor i have this policy of radical candor it's a book um when i was a uh field grade in the ranger regiment i had this lieutenant who was getting out of the army and he he basically said there isn't enough candor in the army you know everybody kind of sheens over stuff nobody has like honest conversations and counseling and so what i've realized is like the higher in rank you get um the more the the more you get fed the things that are not true or they're polished in such in to such a degree that they're meaningless and so i really encourage people to be candid with me because ultimately i'm making decisions based on what people think what they're telling me and so if they're not if you're not getting the candid truth then i'm making my decisions on on water you know it's nothing solid that you can feel and so i try to give the same thing to my subordinates um i and that means i have to have some really hard conversations with people and so that that that that's been my policy i it's probably just like naturally the way i am um i i think it's been it's it's worked well so far so i i i think there is some i think there's not enough candor in the army the number of times that sergeant major wagner and i have had to bring somebody into one of our offices and tell them hey this is where you really stand and oh that show me your ncrs or those are terrible um and you'd be shocked how surprised people are and the number of people who just haven't had that kind of honesty with that and if and my my my true on my true belief in this is if you really care about somebody then you'll tell them the truth about what they're doing well and what they're not doing well and so people that people know where they stand there's no you know wait until your eval or wait until your pt test or wait for anything um i just think i just think there's not enough of it in the army
Speaker 3all right at this point i want to hit a couple rapid fires we did not spend basically any of this conversation talking about arctic specific stuff so that will be some of this um first one and this this might be for the leadership there it might be for ellie i don't know do you incorporate some of this into your work and do you incorporate some of this into your work and do you incorporate any uniquely arctic fitness modalities into your training are guys out snowball cross-country skiing are they out snowshoeing or like is there anything
Speaker 4unique to pt at wainwright yes um in the winter months um we're fortunate we have a uh ski hill here on fort wainwright um it gets groomed uh uh constantly for both downhill and cross-country skiing so like my first time up here in 2014 it was a striker organization and you just you know if it was cold outside people would be running up and down the stairs in the in the barracks until like muscle failure and that was pt at minus 20 or below it was minus 30 this morning one of the battalions had a squad competition another battalion was out for a ruck we had guys on birch hill cross-country skiing um snowshoeing particularly for the arctic modality because kind of back to my comment about that 500 aft guide like maybe not doing well you use your hip flexors when you're in waist deep snow way more than you use them like on an aft ski and so if you're not used to that um they're not trained you might be a fast runner or whatever and um it's gonna get you um so yeah we take advantage of it we have to take advantage of it um because that's that's part of our our charge here um in the 11th airborne is be able to operate
Speaker 3in these environments so yeah every chance we get we're in the snow i i will say last time i was at wainwright la recommended birch hill as a running route so i was it was summer so at 9 p.m i'm out
Speaker 5running it's still sunny and yeah that's pretty good stuff place i think like this the science behind like we've had our team do like lit reviews like how to train in the arctic and a lot of it points to like getting used to what clothes you need to wear at x temperature right and you just can't do that unless you're actually outside at all these different temperatures and so that along with the movement patterns is super important especially when every for every different person it's different how many layers they need at negative 20 versus negative 10 um and for on the coach's side like it's the same progression philosophy it's just with snowshoes on or skis on um and so that's it's been cool to see the light bulbs from um in the howell academy of they're you know learning about progressions for rock progressions or something and then they're like oh what what do we do though for the snow and it's just like it's still all applies right uh it's it's actually not that complicated uh and so definitely it's it's great driving around during pt time in the winter here um in the morning when we're talking pt time when a lot of people are still out there and just seeing and also like like i said we didn't mention skijoring or there is skijoring beside behind the snow machines as well i don't really consider that pt skijorning i'm thinking of moving that's more that's more fun there's a skill there but but yeah
Speaker 1what word did you just say skijoring it's basically when you you tow skiers either behind dogs oh okay
Speaker 2i thought this was like a weird acronym of some sort that you guys had made up.
Speaker 5Like think water skiing, but on snow.
Speaker 1One thing that's really interesting about up here is I had to kind of relearn how to be an infantryman. I'll give you an example. Every infantry squad is pulling this sled, which has a tent in it, which is absolutely critical for survival. And that sled, the soldiers are tied to the sled like sled dogs. And it weighs hundreds of pounds, depending on how much fuel you have on it. So there's a lot of like sled drag going on in the PT to prepare people for that. And the other weird thing about being in the Arctic is there's this terrain called Muskeg, which is probably the worst possible swamp you can possibly imagine. And it's basically, if you just imagine like little tufts of grassy, squidgy material with water in between them. And moving through that is absolutely the worst movement you can imagine. You can, you can, you can possibly do as an infantryman because it's, you're going to get swallowed by it. It's like these micro twists of your ankle the whole time. And it, it just takes, it's just, it's terrible and takes, it takes training to be able to prepare your body for something.
Speaker 3All right. Going almost the exact opposite direction. You are stationed in an Arctic environment. You are part of U.S. Army Pacific. You participate in international exercises in places that are uniquely hot rather than uniquely cold. And you have to be prepared to deploy into that environment too. How do you prepare for or maintain readiness for like a hot environment type of operation when you live in a place where you're talking about ski-joring?
Speaker 1Can you tell them about the, the...
Speaker 5Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think before I actually go into that, when you already have flexible PT times built into how you operate. It makes moving PT to the warmer part of the day ahead of those easier. Granted, it doesn't get that much warmer here, even in the summer compared to like, you know, the Pacific, but there's that. We're really excited though. We haven't, we haven't done this quite yet. But I, I met some of the folks at the heat center down at Benning and Auburn's Warrior Research Center. And they published recently a heat optimization protocol that you can, you wearing your army uniform, different levels for a set amount of time in a gym. It's five, 90 minute sessions. And it's supposed to give you about 22 days of declamation. So we're actually going to be implementing that here pretty soon with some of our units. Pretty excited about that. Really awesome practical research that team has done. So, so thank you to them. I've already given them my many thanks, but I think that that's a really interesting approach and actually feasible because it's the year they already have. And we obviously have a gym. And then, yeah. Yeah. We're talking specifically about heat, but obviously jet lag mitigation, we, we give out pretty specific guides when they're heading different time zones, you know, day by day. Here's how you can plan that, adjusting your meals, front loading, you know, on switching to that time zone, because the exercises, a lot of our units are going on only a couple of weeks. So you have to acclimate just as fast to that time zone as you, as you do on the way back. So that's just another layer we look at.
Speaker 4I think also the, I've been stationed in a few. Different place. And I really haven't been stationed many places, but station in a few different places, all differ pretty drastically by, um, you know, their geography and terrain, also temperature, this being one of them. And then obviously been overseas, um, you know, the Afghanistan and Iraq and all that. This is this place in the winter is the toughest environment I've ever had to navigate through. Right. So part of the, uh, to get to, you know, to your question is like, well, we tell our soldiers, I truly believe this both physically on a leadership aspect on a planning aspect for staff. If you can do what we need to be, what needs to get done here in the dead of winter, um, you can do it anywhere. Now there's going to be an, you know, uh, an acclimation period, you know, wherever you need to go, but you're not going to actually encounter the likelihood of encountering things much more difficult than what we offer here on a daily basis. Um, I haven't seen it.
Speaker 6Hmm.
Speaker 2I have to ask because it was on the notes when we started this conversation and I'm, you know, a rank amateur when it comes to Arctic stuff, what's the Wolf plunge?
Speaker 1Uh, the Wolf is essentially we cut holes in a pond near the brigade headquarters, and then every soldier in the brigade, um, practices. Jumping into the water in, in, in the hole, and then ex you practice extracting yourself out of the hole. The reason that's important is because we have, there's a lot of frozen water bodies here. Um, one of my battalion commanders, actually his vehicle accidentally broke through the ice into the, into a, into a pond. He thought it was just a grassy area, but it was covered in a snow. You can't tell. So you have to, soldiers have to know how that they're, they have to be comfortable enough to know how to extract. Themselves from, um, icy water. And so that's something we do. It, there's a bunch of reasons we do it. One of them is to build confidence, uh, in, in their ability to extract themselves and stay calm, you know, not panic. Uh, and secondly, um, to build Arctic grit, cuz it takes, it does take some grit, uh, to deal with some of the stuff that we, you have to deal with up here. Minus 40 is no joke. Um, completely different. Then honestly, being an infantryman after this is gonna be so easy, uh, cuz it is so difficult to just, just putting your snowshoes on. It takes forever to, to put snowshoes on when your feet, when your hands are numb and you're, you've got these big fat mittens, it's the smallest things take so long.
Speaker 2Do you guys, I'm just picturing everybody showing up for work every day and just jumping into the water. Is this, uh, what's the frequency of this?
Speaker 1This thing you do it once a year. Um, so we, and we usually do it right before Christmas. So you just get in there right before Christmas. And then we're basically, we cut like a bunch of price, five or six holes.
Speaker 4Oh, that's just giving you a 10, 10 holes.
Speaker 1And they're roughly, uh, you know, four meters by three or something like that. And then there's a, there's a tent, uh, and basically you, you, you. Run from this tent down to the, to the hole. You jump in the hole and then you, after you've pulled yourself out using some ski poles, um, you then go for a little run, uh, and you go back to the tent, change clothes and then go about your business.
Speaker 5It is so fun. And it's like a 400 meter loop, what we're talking about. So you like stage with like 10 people you're jumping with. It's like, go and you go run out there. Like everybody else get in the hall. You get the whole, everyone's sprinting back. And you're just like, what just happened? It's so much fun. Most of our team does it too, which is awesome. Uh, I had a blast last year.
Speaker 1We had soldiers wanting to get baptized in this.
Speaker 2Hey, spirituality is part of HTF guys. So you nailed it. Well done. Um, okay. One quick closer for you all. And I want an answer from each of you and it's the classic mops and most finisher. Typically it's a desert. It's a desert island, but we'll do like an Arctic island, just so it feels a little closer to home. If you had one piece of exercise equipment, what would it be?
Speaker 4One piece of exercise equipment? Oh, uh, for me, I'd probably say kettlebell. Kettlebell.
Speaker 5So like I've listened to you guys and I agree.
Speaker 4Is that the answer?
Speaker 5That's like there.
Speaker 4I didn't know that was like the cop.
Speaker 2Well, to be fair, there's not an answer, right? That just has become the most common. I think the strangest one we've had was probably inclined bench until a couple of weeks ago. Then it was drums for existential reasons.
Speaker 5Now I think I want to hear what Ellie's going to say if it's not honestly, like I've, I've thought about this, obviously knowing that we were going to talk to you and I actually think I would still say kettlebell and I'm trying, like, I've tried to make arguments for other things.
Speaker 2I think the fear for y'all's environment would be dropping. That thing and putting a hole in the lake or something.
Speaker 5I guess. Yeah. No, there's not a lake there. You're good. I wanted to kind of cover you there, sir. That was an amphibious vehicle. So that's probably an important note to include in there. Everybody was fine. The it's meant as well. The cat V.
Speaker 3So that's the Beowulf, right? The new vehicle. Yep.
Speaker 5Yeah.
Speaker 3Well, just sick. Things are pretty cool. So, yeah, sorry.
Speaker 5I honestly would say three kettlebells.
Speaker 3That's fair enough. Fair enough. All right. Before we let you go, I want to offer a final opportunity. We've we've laid out a bunch of descriptions of what training up there is like, what P.T. up there is like, and I think a common thread is like life is kind of hard in Fairbanks. Life is kind of hard at Fort Wainwright. I do want to give you a chance to, like, sell being assigned to 111 as an experience personally, professionally, however, to people who are hearing this and thinking like, well, that's sounds awful like i want to give you a chance for like a more positive pitch of the experience up there other than just everything after this will be easy because it's brutal
Speaker 4so the first time i got orders to fort wainwright was in 2014 and i did everything i could to get out of the assignment i had my battalion csm brigade csm everybody calling hrc and i know he's going when i showed up in january of 2014 um i had never driven in the snow before i'm from southern california um one of like within the first three steps on fort wainwright i was on my back in a parking lot looking up going like i'm gonna die here right it's i ended up extending there for extending for an additional six months and every time uh fort wainwright has come back up as an option for me to go i i preference preference it at the top of my list the opportunities you have here not just for training like you you will not get this anywhere else the training opportunities right it just they don't exist um and then you're on your personal time off time um alaska is you know twice almost twice the size of texas so there's like and even if you're not an outdoorsy person again i grew up in southern california right i you know hadn't shot a lot of guns all that stuff but just kind of embrace it when you get here and go explore um this place will change your life it's it's literally on it's unreal um i would come back here again in a heartbeat and uh i really can't say enough about it the opportunities both professionally and personally um i haven't i haven't been anywhere really like it and i've you know been you know i did three
Speaker 1years in europe i'd uh i'd do this again i love fairbanks alaska more than i love any other place on the planet no joke and uh i i'm gonna retire here whenever the retirement comes five ten years i've bought a house here if you told me two years ago that you're gonna buy a house in fairbanks alaska um it's it's so this is the best assignment i've ever had if they i'm like hoping and praying you know it's gonna be some weird miracle that they asked me to stay for a third year because it is absolutely amazing tomorrow morning i'm gonna wake up at like five o'clock in the morning i'm gonna drive to denali i'm gonna you know i'm gonna put my snowshoes on and i'm gonna go look for wolves tell me a place where you can do that anywhere else um the place is like just absolutely magical uh ellie uh last weekend uh went she took her and her husband took uh their snow machines and went out with a bunch of cams and we're out for you know out in the middle of nowhere um exploring the the uh alaskan range uh absolutely amazing place um i i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna be crying when i leave
Speaker 5yeah i mean you got you both said it really well like i guess not being in the military right like the community like people here even outside the military or everyone just has a grit to them because everyone acknowledges it's hard to live here um but i think it's it's it's it's a it's a good thing um and everyone you know locals and and people who get stationed here in the military like that's really a pride point i think um and i truly like like the challenge of living in this land of extremes right like figuring out how you're gonna balance when it's super light out all summer which is awesome by the way uh but also makes it really hard to sleep versus super dark in the winter and and you really like learn to love the extremes because by the time summer ends because it's go go go you're like ready to go and you're like you're like you're like you're like ready to hibernate and kind of ready for the darkness obviously people struggle with it too no no doubt but um it's a fun challenge just for just living here uh but you will never run out of things to do the snow machines have been awesome camping's awesome here um you know it's and you can drive in any direction for so many hours and i don't think even a lifetime would be enough time here to get to see everything you want to see and then go back to everywhere you want to go back to even another time uh it's beautiful it'll make anywhere else
Speaker 1seem pretty lame to be honest yeah two things to close out is one is i think part of the part of the draw of alaska is everything you do is like slightly dangerous i think that's one of the things that draws a lot of people here is it you know it takes an adventurous soul to live here and the other part is winter visits everywhere else but winter lives
Speaker 2here that's such a good finishing quote thank you guys uh well first of all thank you for your candor um and thank you for hanging out with us in the middle of the day for you guys this has been a lot of fun great great appreciate you guys for sure team welcome to the after party i have to admit i was somewhat inspired by the sales pitch for fairbanks and then i opened the weather app on my phone and today the low was negative 26
Speaker 3there there is a cool factor to it i have been to fairbanks in both the summer and the winter um and it is true that things are harder there um there's a block here plug in at every parking spot on base because cars can't handle it if they're not plugged into a heater um but it is also super cool i went out to shemia hot springs last time i was up there and it was like i was like i'm gonna go to the hot springs and i'm gonna go to the hot springs and i'm gonna over 100 degrees in the water and like negative 20 degrees two feet above the water in the air uh it's a pretty neat place like they said there's things you can experience there you can't
Speaker 2experience anywhere else well here's the thing right there's things you can experience in pioneers north carolina that you can't experience anywhere else um and it's hard living right i mean we um we don't have a trader joe's for example and we only just recently got a target so i think i empathize now having said that i walked out my door this morning i think it was like 38 and i was kind of upset about it so i don't think they're gonna see 38 for at least 10 years um in fairbanks so summers are
Speaker 3genuinely beautiful there i will acknowledge however he talked about the terrain of like the swampy weird stuff um that is no joke ellie gave me the the running route that was much better like the cross-country skiing area but when i had tried to pick on my own i picked a trail that during the winter is amazing cross-country skiing that i assumed that it was going to be a lot better than what i assumed would be fantastic trail running i was mistaken it was a swamp in the summer and it was not good and i had to turn around a few times to find new trails you went
Speaker 2off-piste um all that being said and we we said this off air but like for the for the h2f folks out there like this is the shit that you should be paying attention to uh and no offense to other um people who feel that what they're doing is wrong but i think it's a good thing that we're doing this and i think it's a good thing that we're doing this and i think it's a good thing that we're doing this and i think it's a good thing that we're doing this and i think it's a good thing that we're doing this and i think it's a good thing that we're doing this and i think it's a good thing that we're doing this who feel that what they have to say is important we're all important but like it to me it sounds like and granted you know it's a podcast and they've they're they've they're putting their best foot forward and i understand that but it sounds generally like they have figured out a very unique way to legitimately change the culture of their organization such that the things that we pay lip service to in this embedded human performance space are actually paid for by the people who are doing it and so i think it's a good thing that we're doing this paying dividends um you know case in point we did the pandora's box episode and we've been talking quite a bit about like well what do you do if the data shows you all the things are you actually going to change the things well they change the things and the data continues to show that the return on investment is very positive now having said all that i fully anticipate when we release this episode people are just going to flip their shit and be like we could never do that um you know and it's one of those things where if you believe you can or believe you can't you're right
Speaker 3uh mine is in a little bit of a different direction uh while we mentioned the term howler a bunch of times i don't think we defined it i like to define terms i believe it stands for holistic wolf leader wait it stands for something i thought it was just what wolves do they how yeah yeah holistic wolf leader is an acronym it does stand for something um like 99 sure it also
Speaker 2matches the wolf theme of the brigade okay here's a question for you for an acronym to be an acronym do you have to like what's the acronym for it i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know what are the rules here do you take the first letter of each word or you just is it acceptable to just take random letters of random words it's not random letters it's capital h lowercase o
Speaker 3oh so they but they still take it capital w capital l holistic acronym wolf leader how how there's no e that brings me to what i wanted to talk about anyway though which is for for those of us who have read red rising howlers means something entirely different and i do want to know should i ask this on air maybe i can ask ellie later uh if they take any like pierce brown red rising inspired material for their howlers because the i'm not going to spoil anything from that book but highly recommend that series and like the howlers do have some like pretty cool branding and unit identity stuff going on so like maybe if they haven't borrowed from that they
Speaker 2should wasn't that from the 80s like the russians invade and all the kids fight back or something
Speaker 3no it's extremely cool it's extremely recent like the last book's still not out yet
Speaker 2but it's about like communists invading now it's called red rising it's not about communists invading you'll understand exactly what it's about if you go read it well i'm not gonna read it but oh it's not i'm like what i you saw what i read like you was reading wind in the willows um red rising oh it's not communist dystopian science fiction oh the other thing i'm thinking about here oh this is not at all what i was thinking this is
Speaker 3going back to early in the episode but it's something long-time listeners to this show know that drew and i communicate with each other through a document at the same time talking to them to keep track of what the next question is and stuff like that but there's a really good point made about like not calling things h2f initiatives or h2f projects or whatever i was thinking about can you i sat with that for a minute and processed it but like if you went to a training event that they described as like an s3 initiative like that would be the dumbest weirdest thing ever like you wouldn't you wouldn't call things nobody that's like this log pack is an s4 project like cool s4 go take care of that like no like those are just operations that units conduct yeah and like that's how a staff works like it it should be integrated so like now i'm thinking like if somebody calls something like an h2f initiative or an h2f project that starts to become a little bit of a red flag of why is h2f fenced off from the rest of the staff as this totally different thing and i know it's weird for units of that echelon to have civilians as part of the staff but like trying to get to a place where everything is just unit operations because you're integrated that closely seems like a really valid goal for what real integration looks like i mean we honestly should do a full
Speaker 2episode about that because it is this inner it's an interesting intersection of like hey we want to be part of the culture here but hey also like we we fight tooth and nail for like the brand recognition like how dare this other organization call themselves h2f so i mean and i've been guilty of that i get it like i think at one point actually i was playing around with the idea of just completely eliminating all h2f branding yeah but then you know i don't know i mean that's that's the thing i'm not sure about but i'm not sure about the whole idea of like yeah we should we should dive into that because it's interesting i think and again i think ellie has it's a unique um amalgamation of variables that they are dealing with up there the command staff is obviously excellent she talks to her brigade commander 10 plus times a day which is wild um and they're they're super bought in they also both come from the command team both come from backgrounds that are like unique to this space as well so there's a lot going in their favor but again i can't emphasize enough like they also are bought in and like want this to work which i think is a underappreciated thing i think a lot of folks out there just want to see the end result assuming it will have worked they don't actually want to like do the thing to make it work and these guys do so you know good for them freezing their asses off up there uh anything else i think that's it awesome well hey guys uh you know sign up for fairbanks go to fairbanks uh sounds cool and we'll see you next week
Speaker 3hey alex let's cover our ass real quick oh great idea drew all right guys the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent thanks for tuning into this week's episode before
Speaker 2you go please rate and subscribe to our channel and we'll see you next week review the pod on the listening platform of your choice you can also visit us on our website at www.mopsinmose.com that's mops the letter in mose.com you can check out the library of podcast episodes our latest blog entries any helpful resources and also sign up for our newsletter
Speaker 3drew nailed it just to underline a couple things the podcast entries have in-depth show notes on the website so if you missed anything or you want to read any of the research we talk about it's all there you can at the bottom of the website sign up with your email and receive future updates from us the blog posts go a little bit more in-depth and kind of written form on a couple topics we get questions about all the time but most importantly i just want to ask all you guys our best way the word gets out is absolutely word of mouth so tell your friends tell the people you work with anybody you think would find it useful thanks for spreading the word
Speaker 2if you have any questions or comments feel free to shoot us an email at either drew or alex at mops and mose.com or there's a contact form on the website thank you
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