MTI’s Top Selling Training Plans for October 2020

1. Athlete’s Subscription 

2. Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) Training Plan

3. Bodyweight Foundation Training Plan

4. Running Improvement Training Plan

5. FBI Special Agent Training Plan

6. Military On-Ramp Training Plan

7. FBI Academy Training Plan

8. ACFT Limited Equipment Training Plan

9. 5-Mile Run Improvement Training Plan

10. Backcountry Ski Pre-Season Training Plan

11. 2-Mile Run Improvement Training Plan

12. Dryland Skiing Training Plan

13. Ruck Based Selection Training Plan (SFAS)

14. Core Strength Bodyweight Only

15. Fat-Loss Training Plan

16. Mountaineering & Hiking Prep

17. 30 Minutes per Day Dryland Ski Training Plan

18. Big 3 + 2-Mile Run Training Plan

19. Big 24 Strength Training Plan

20. APFT Training Plan

Learn more about our Plans and Subscription HERE

Military / National Security / Foreign Policy

The Headwinds Looming for the U.S. Army, War on the Rocks
US approves arms sales to Taiwan worth 1 billion dollars, War is Boring
Lockheed F-35 Full-Production Decision Delayed as Key Test Slips, RealClearDefense
Are troops really leaving Germany? It’s not totally clear. Military Times
Military to Play Logistics-Only Role in COVID-19 Vaccine Effort, Defense.gov
Electromagnetic spectrum management moves to Headquarters Air Force, Defense News
Army-Navy Game to be held at West Point for first time since World War II, Navy Times
What Role Should Allies and Partners Play in U.S. Military Strategy and Operations? RAND Research
Senators ask for pause on Army’s new fitness test, call it ‘premature’, Army Times

Wildland Fire / Law Enforcement

Senators call for creation of wildland firefighter job series and an increase in firefighters’ pay, Wildfire Today
‘In an instant’ decision-making: Ensure your snap decisions are sound, FireRescue1 Daily News
INDIANA UNION: MORE FIREFIGHTERS NEEDED DESPITE STAFFING IMPROVEMENTS, Firefighter Close Calls
On-Demand Webinar: Evidence-based, early warning and intervention solutions for public safety, Police 1 Daily News
IACP 2020: The Lost Police Products Exhibition, POLICE Magazine
Cops need to engage in tactical napping, Police1 Daily News

Mountain

The Climbers Speaking Up About Eating Disorders, Outside Magazine
James Pearson Climbs Tribe, Potentially the Hardest Trad Route in The World, Gear Institute
Las Vegas is an Underground Outdoor Mecca, The Outbound Collective
Realistic Self-Rescue: Three Must-Have Multi-Pitch Skills Using Things You Actually Carry, Climbing Magazine
Building Stoke for a Winter Unlike Any Other, Outside Magazine
Olympic Dreams: Benjamin Alexander Trains for Speed in the Backcountry, Backcountry Magazine
The Hike that Humbled Me, The Outbound Collective

Fitness / Health / Nutrition

Heavy Suitcase Deadlifts Build Anti-Rotational Control and Strength, Breaking Muscle
Biking to Work: 8 Pieces of Gear You Need for a Successful Trip, Osprey Packs
Why Don’t Runners’ Knees Fail More Often? Outside Magazine
The Benefits of Barefoot Lifting: How and Why, Mark’s Daily Apple
What About the Trans Fat in Animal Fat? NutritionFacts
Short-Term Plyometric Jump Training Improves Repeated-Sprint Ability in Prepuberal Male Soccer Players, Journal of Strength ad Conditioning Research
Hard physical work may significantly increase the risk of dementia, Science Daily

Interesting

This Addiction Treatment Works. Why Is It So Underused? NYT
Fauci: Masks, Social Distancing Likely Until 2022, WebMD
Opinion: Why isn’t routine Covid-19 testing happening in prisons and immigrant detention centers? STAT

By Mintra Mattison

Big Black Hole

Someone recently told me that they think I walk on the sunny side of life.

I was surprised by this (positive) comment, and even though it was not that deep, it made me reflect on my life. The first thing that came to mind was remembering how miserable I was after going through separation and then finally divorce. I was hopeless, disappointed and I felt sorry and embarrassed for myself. I was lost and instead of dealing with it, I jumped into an unhealthy relationship.

It took me a very long time to realize things won’t go away or disappear if I would just ignore them. Finally, after almost 2 years of denial, I decided to face my fears and dealt with my situation.

There’s something scary about facing the rights and wrongs about yourself and your actions, something that (at least to me) felt like the ultimate showdown, a big black hole that swallows you and it’s not clear if and how you come out on the other side. However, one thing is for certain: you won’t be the same afterward. Truth is, good things come from these hard or uncomfortable situations and big black holes help you grow up. Looking back, I can’t remember a single decision or situation where uncomfortable or hard wasn’t good for me or didn’t help me grow.

No More Passion

The second thing that came to mind was a conversation I had with my new head coach who was also my supervisor at that time. I was working as a strength coach for a pro team and was the only female on staff. It was clear that he wasn’t too fond of my methods. Not only was he not interested in fitness training, but he would also cut down all training sessions wherever he could and would replace them with (at that point in the season) senseless spinning sessions. But instead of questioning his actions, I started to doubt myself and my programming and could not understand what the issue was. It was also a time in my coaching career where I lost passion for my trade, I felt degraded. See a pattern here? I knew I had to address this situation but I dreaded the conversation all season. Finally, I couldn’t ignore the fact that I needed to change something and spoke up.

It was this conversation, that by the way escalated quickly into an argument, that made me realize that it was not me or my programming, but him. He himself simply had no understanding of strength and conditioning training and methodologies and was intimidated that a female coach would know more about this type of training than him.

Surprisingly there was something very liberating about speaking up and addressing this issue. It helped me stay true to myself.

I am a Goalie

While staying true to myself and speaking up helped me grow, it did not prevent me from feeling insecure. Fast forward a couple of years: I am pregnant and happy in my personal life. However, due to the fact that I am pretty far along in the pregnancy, I am only coaching a few professional athletes and I’ve adjusted my training accordingly. I remember having lots of mixed feelings about this situation. Thoughts about missing out on coaching opportunities, my career in general as well as being worried about getting out of shape…you get the idea. Comparing myself to other coaches and females who obviously were not pregnant didn’t exactly help. I just couldn’t get out of this wheel of thoughts that made me feel like I am standing on the sidelines watching everybody else play the game. This went on for quite some time until someone told me: „You got it all wrong, you’re still in the game! You’re just playing a different position.“ This stuck with me and was literally a game-changer for me. Of course, how could I not see this? I am over here being the Goalie. And the Goalkeeper has (arguably) the most important role in the game. I can help my team win! This view significantly helped me turn my thoughts around and made me accept and appreciate my state of being.

How Did I Get Here?

A couple of years later I found myself in a corporate setting. I am surrounded by men who have accomplished great things in their line of work and it’s an understatement to say that I am intimidated by them. Not in a way where I can’t voice my opinion (I learned from my mistakes), but more like – how did I get here? My answer: I probably just got lucky.

In my defense, I am not the only one. If you google ‘intimidated by success’ you get 19 million results. That’s comforting.

But back to my ‘excuse’ pattern. I would always find some sort of explanation to depreciate whenever I did good or accomplished something. And while this might be an early childhood issue, I realized I needed to get out of this loop. I wanted to allow myself to be great and I wanted to be able to teach my daughter so she would know exactly how she got there when it’s her turn.

What helped me was comparing my situation to houses. Stay with me. In my world, bigger houses meant success and power, so of course, I had a tiny house. But while I was focusing on appearances I failed to take a look inside the houses. I found that at their core the houses were not that different, in fact, they had plenty in common. In different sizes, shapes, and forms, they all had tables, carpets, chairs, beds, and lots of other stuff. And although my house was small it is the place I call home.

This changed my perception of successful and or important people. They are not as intimidating to me as they used to be. I now know we have the same stuff in our houses. I know now that my work ethic and skill set is what got me here.

You Might Also Rob’s Take On Stuff I’ve Learned

By Justin Green

Making and keeping friends has gotten harder as I’ve gotten older. It was easy when I was young. Sports, clubs, and school all created an endless cycle of like-aged dudes to hang around with. But I’ve grown apart from most of my childhood friends, and the combined urgency and importance of work and family life have pushed building new friendships to the bottom of the priority list. The end result is that I have a ton of acquaintances – colleagues who I might have a drink with or casual friends who I might watch a game with, but a diminishing number of close buddies. And that’s a shame because the few close buddies I have had over the course of my adult life have played a central role in shaping who I am. I gave them fake names below, but they’ve all enriched my life in very real ways.

Ethan challenges me and gives me an example to emulate — Ethan was my first close friend in the military. As Second Lieutenants, we spent most of our time together commiserating in pure terrified confusion about what we were supposed to be doing day-to-day. He left the military after four years but we talk monthly and make it a point to see each other at least once a year. Our long phone calls range in subject from stupid movie quotes to books we’ve read recently to confessions of personal issues; he’s the only male buddy I’ve ever talked with about relationship issues. I look up to Ethan the most of any of my friends. He’s always made success in his professional and family life look easy; he taught me that it’s possible to be great at both. I’ve also never seen someone achieve so many things with such grace and humility. There’s not an ounce of arrogance, hollow self-deprecation, or virtue signaling in him, just honest hard work for its own sake.

Dan reminds me that friendship is a two-way street — I got really into road and mountain biking when I moved to my first duty station. It got me out of the house and forced me to do something unrelated to the military. I met Dan in the parking lot after a morning mountain bike race. What started as a short conversation about bikes turned into weekly rides usually followed by pizza and beer. Unknown to me at the time, I met Dan at a critical time in his life. Dan had a rough childhood, was into heavy drugs, and hung around a rough crowd. He was about to graduate college at the time and was struggling to find his footing to avoid falling back into the same destructive routine. Dan is five years younger and asked a ton of questions during our rides and post-ride hangouts: when I went to the gym, what work-outs I did, what I read, how I did my personal budget, etc. I learned a year into our friendship that this was more than just shallow small-talk.

He called me one morning to apologize for getting high the night before (he had been sober for a couple months). I laughed at the time because it felt weird he was apologizing to me. I said I wasn’t his mom and didn’t care. He responded by saying that I should care because I was the first friend of his who wasn’t “an absolute dumpster fire”. It finally struck me that all the questions he had been asking was an exploration into a new way to be – a push to get out of the destructive cycle he’d been stuck in. I had been so selfishly entrenched in my own life and my own problems that I didn’t even recognize when I might be of some service to someone else. My friendship with Dan helped me grow up and realize my constant pursuit of improvement means nothing if it only benefits myself. My relationship with Dan changed after that morning phone call. He didn’t become some charity case in need of my help, but I became more giving as a friend and more present during our conversations. Dan never fell back into his destructive routine; he got his Master’s and now works at a pharmaceutical start-up. I deserve no credit for this; he had done all the hard work the day he decided to search for another way to be.

The worst experiences of Simon’s life are the bonding point of our friendship — Simon is a close friend from a bygone CrossFit phase of my life. He owned a gym where I worked as a coach for a short time. We also shared a common bond in the military. It was 2008, and he had just gotten out of the Marine Corps after eight years as a Scout Sniper; I was in the process of preparing to attend my second phase of OCS. His vast combat experience compared to my aspirations for combat made him close to a god in my eyes. The flippant tone with which he spoke about combat seemed to me like cool guy nonchalance. In reality, he was just trying to change the subject.

Simon had been an infantry Marine in both battles of Fallujah – the fierce door-to-door clearance operations the Marines conducted to “pacify” the city after Blackwater contractors had been dismembered and hung from the bridge. It was the bloodiest fighting the Marines had engaged in since Vietnam. He relayed his personal experience during the battles one night at his house. He described to me in tears how he watched almost half his squad get killed or wounded over the course of a week. At first I just sat there listening, stunned. I had no idea how to relate or even contextualize what he was describing; I was in my third year at a little private college in Connecticut at the time. When the shock wore off, I hugged him and cried too. I’m not sure if mine were tears of sympathy for what he had gone through and what he carried as a result of it, or tears of shame and embarrassment for the number of times I had brought the subject up and how “cool” I had thought his experience was. Either way, I matured a decade that night. I started going over to his house regularly after work just to listen. He said talking to me about his experiences was cathartic. I think he felt more value teaching the “new guy” something rather than just off-loading his problems to some shrink on a couch. I hadn’t experienced anything he had, but hearing his stories gave me a new respect for what I was trying to join. Those experiences, and the friend that gave them to me, are both vital to who I am today.

Dean holds me accountable and keeps me grounded — Dean was my first team chief after joining SOF. I still remember how I met him. He was the Staff NCO of the final phase of our initial training pipeline. He showed up at every single one of my leadership evaluations during the final exercise, a clear indication to me that I was about to be dropped from the course. Being watched by the phase Staff NCOIC during the final exercise is rarely a good thing. He walked up to me at the end of the exercise – I assumed to notify me of my fate – and extended his hand to introduce himself as my team chief. We had been slated for the same team and he had been shadowing me to feel me out (somehow that was even more stressful).

Dean has the calmest demeanor of anyone I’ve ever met, almost docile. But he’s an absolute savage in combat. “Don’t bring work home,” he says. Dean taught me the definition of servant leadership. I came into the team room one afternoon early in the work-up to find him sweeping the floors. He had taken the brooms of our junior guys and sent them all home after some early morning training. Here was a guy with 20 years’ of experience and 9 combat deployments picking up the menial tasks so the younger guys could see their families and rest. I had the arrogance to believe that was below him (and me). I watched over the coming months as this culture of selflessness spread throughout the team.

Our friendship grew over many late nights at work and long trips away from home. Hardship forms the closest bonds. But more than hardship, our friendship was founded on accountability. We called each other on bullshit and had more disagreements than I can count. It was a refreshing kind of honesty, devoid of posturing or ego-covering. We felt more responsibility to our team and the guys in it than we did toward each other’s ego and feelings. This honesty created a very close and durable friendship. Dean’s been an incredible friend and mentor ever since.