Above: Jessica Baker climbing the West Buttress of Denali.
By Rob Shaul
Mountain and tactical athletes are human. They get bored. They get curious. They want variety. They see a new exercise, piece of gear or supplement and want to try it. They think they are unique. Over time, every athlete wants something different — a new exercise, a new focus, a break from what feels repetitive.
Early in my career, as a less confident coach, I’d sometimes accommodated athlete whims. It always diluted the training. The mission didn’t change, but the programming drifted.
Programming to athlete preferences is easy, and popular. It’s giving athletes what they want.
Programming to mission demands is hard. It’s giving athletes what they need.
This doesn’t mean individual differences are ignored. Loads, pace, and volume are scaled based on assessment and individual athlete capacity. But the structure, priorities, exercise selection, and intent of the program do not change because an athlete is bored, arrives unfit, has an injury history, wants variety, or saw something cool-looking on YouTube.
MTI is deliberate and intentional with its language. We have “coaches” not “trainers”, “athletes,” not “clients.” We engineer “training sessions,” not “workouts.” These distinctions matter. A personal trainer needs smiles and small talk. His needs his clients to like him. A coach needs standards, and the conviction to disappoint athletes when that time comes.
It’s nice if athletes like the coach, but not required.
Good programming isn’t exciting. Often, MTI progressions mean doing the same thing week after week—only harder. That isn’t a failure of creativity. It’s progression. The programming isn’t designed to entertain. It’s designed to prepare.
Most athletes who succeed with MTI programming arrive here after cycling through other approaches. They’ve developed a reliable bullshit meter by doing a lot of ineffective training. When they arrive, they understand that assessments and progression are features, not bugs.
What about incoming fitness, injury history, or age?
Those factors matter—but they come second to the mission’s fitness demands and the time available to prepare. The demands of tactical mission sets, mountain adventures, fitness tests, selections, and courses are fixed. There are no “slow criminals” set aside for unfit or older police officers. There are no “easy fires” for out-of-shape firefighters. There is no “easy summit” for unfit mountaineers. There is no special version of Special Forces Assessment and Selection for 45-year-old soldiers.
Mountain and tactical fitness demands are fixed. It is the athlete’s responsibility to meet them.
If an unfit soldier has eight weeks before SFAS, I don’t modify the SFAS plan for him. I tell him the truth: the first few weeks are going to be miserable, he may not be able to complete them, and if that’s the case, he should reconsider selection. The plan is written to prepare for SFAS. Those demands determine the exercises, volume, intensity, and schedule—not the athlete’s starting point.
If he has more time, we can build capacity first. If he doesn’t, we cannot invent it.
The same applies to older athletes. If you’re in your 40s, 50s, or 60s and still in a tactical front-line operational role, you are responsible for meeting the same standards as athletes in their 20s and 30s. There is no clever workaround. Experience does not compensate for insufficient fitness. If chronic pain or injury prevents you from meeting the standard, the responsible choice is to change roles — not remain operational and put others at risk.
Same for injuries. If an athlete aspires to a DIY backcountry bowhunting trip, but suffers chronic low back and hip pain, packing out 200 pounds of meat over uneven terrain is not realistic. The responsible thing to do is hire a guide, or change the objective.
If you’re a mountain or tactical athlete who programs for yourself, this still applies. Your preferences are not neutral. They pull you toward strengths and away from what you most need to train.
Threshold ruck run intervals under a 45-pound pack are not fun. They burn legs, lungs and are high impact. Ruck running is a mission-direct demand for soldiers — but almost no one programs it voluntarily.
Mountain athletes love easy trail runs, but to train uphill movement under load, loaded step ups, or hill repeats with a pack are needed. Few program these unless forced.
Tactical or mountain fitness is not self-expression. It is risk management. The mission sets the standard. The athlete’s job is to train to it.