Knowledge

By Emmett Shaul, MTI Coach Background Since incorporating T/J/T to Box into our Backcountry and Dryland Ski plans, we’ve progressed it with intervals. We’ve adjusted and tweaked those over the years, but intervals have a hard limit: there’s no assessment setting the work. The biggest issue was that the work per work interval wasn’t dictated or individualized for each athlete. […]

By Emmett Shaul, MTI Coach We’d just finished MTI’s 5-week King of the Upper Body Lifts Density strength training cycle—three bench press sessions per week. I opened that cycle with a 300 pound 1RM and closed it by matching my all time best at 315. That set a clear marker for where my upper body pressing strength was at that […]

Military / National Security How a Top Secret SEAL Team 6 Mission Into North Korea Fell Apart, NY TimesArmy axes promotion boards that weighed opinions of peers, subordinates for commanders, Task & PurposeUkrainian bombing campaign turns Russia’s sheer size into a weakness, Atlantic CouncilTrump to sign order renaming Department of Defense to ‘Department of War’, […]

By Emmett Shaul The fitness demands of Mountain/Wilderness SAR professionals and volunteers include relative strength (strength per bodyweight), chassis integrity (functional core strength), work capacity, and mountain endurance (uphill movement under load) SAR professionals and volunteers must move quickly and efficiently in the mountains under load, while also possessing the strength to handle and evacuate […]

Military / National Security The End of Mutually Assured Destruction? What AI Will Mean for Nuclear Deterrence, Foreign Affairs The Dawn of Automated Warfare. Ai Will Be the Key to Victory in Ukraine and Elsewhere, Foreign Affairs Navy Reserve, Naval Special Warfare Leaders Removed from Command, USNI Israel and the New Air Superiority. The Real […]

  Above: US SKi Team Downhiller, Tommy Beissemeyer completing a 20:40 round of Touch/Jump/Touch to Box intervals. By Rob & Emmett Shaul Development of Touch Jump Touch to Box Intervals followed classic MTI design method: Identify fitness demands of the sport or event, identify exercises that train to that demand, and then interate and simplify.  […]

Military / National Security IDF begins invasion of Gaza City as hostage deal talks continue, JPost.com Poland says Russian drone crash is a ‘provocation’, UK Defense Journal Navy: 12-hour Fire Aboard USS New Orleans Extinguished, 2 Sailors with Minor Injuries, USNI Congo massacre of Christians spotlights rising ISIS influence in central Africa – analysis, JPost.com […]

By Rob Shaul, Founder Mental Fitness is often described as innate—some have it, and some don’t. This hasn’t been our experience at MTI. Both on the gym floor, in life, at work, in the mountains and on rivers and the sea, we’ve seen Mental Fitness built, and lost. We’ve found it to be mode-specific—just because […]

By Emmett Shaul, MTI Coach We started at 5 a.m. with headlamps, and the parking lot at Lupine Meadows was already packed, busier than I’ve ever seen it in past years. The first stretch up to the boulder field went quickly and smoothly. I used trekking poles during this section, and they worked extremely well […]

By Rob Shaul, Founder By Rob Shaul, Founder MTI began as Mountain Athlete in 2007. That July, I sold my first company, and after a few weeks of intense twitchiness, I committed to a new career in strength and conditioning. I’d always been a gym rat and had already been coaching strength and conditioning sessions […]