Ep. 222- Does Big Army Hate SF? Elite Performance Under Pressure, Public speaking Tips & More

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Hello, I am Kevin Smith, and you have found the Terminator Training Show, your one-stop shop for no BS training, nutrition, and health information. For more, please go to Terminatortraining.com. Thank you for tuning in and enjoy the show. What's happening, people? Welcome to another episode of the Terminator Training Show. I'm Kevin Smith. Today is a very happy day for me because I am officially a dad. So we have a new baby boy who is at the time of this recording two and a half days old, and his name is Jackson, and he is incredible. I am, like a lot of dads, a believer now in the fact that having a kid changes you. I never really saw it. Of course, you know, how could you see it or feel it if you've never actually had one? But yeah, it's super real. So it's amazing. My wife is amazing. She was an absolute champ. She's continuing to be a champ. She is running on fumes. And to be honest, I'm running on fumes as well. I have probably gotten 16 hours of sleep since Tuesday, and it is currently Saturday. And last night was rough. Last night was our first night home, and he was awake a lot and having his first meltdown night. So hopefully that does not continue the first couple nights. He was decent. I mean, we were in the hospital, so nurses were coming in all the time, and that wasn't great. But either way, we got some help, which is amazing. My mother-in-law's in town, and my sister-in-law actually just got in town last night, so they'll be around for the next few days, and then we've got some other family coming in for the next mm six weeks or so. So that'll be really nice. But anyway, super awesome, and I appreciate all the congratulations and well wishes and prayers and hopes. It went not perfectly awesome and smoothly, but he's a healthy boy, and my wife is healthy, and that is really all that matters to me. So, anyway, today's gonna be a QA, and because I've got my baby boy downstairs, and my wife and my mother-in-law are taking care of him, but I am not gonna try and make this a super long episode, but I'll try and get to some good questions, and you never know, maybe it will end up being a long episode, but we'll see what happens. If you want your question answered on a future show, give me a follow on Terminator underscore training on Instagram and look out for my usually weekly Q ⁇ A's. And if it's a good question, I will answer it on Instagram, and then maybe a little bit more in depth on the show. And last thing before we got get into the questions, the personal development guide is a big hit thus far. Honestly, has blown my expectations out of the water. I did not think it would be as popular as some of our program launches, but it has been. People are eating it up. So I'm super pumped to hear that or see that people are so interested in becoming more effective humans outside of fitness. I mean, fitness is one aspect of it, like your training is definitely very, very important if you want to be a all-around, well-rounded, effective human. But there's a bunch, I mean, there's very little info on fitness in there. You can find that on all of my other podcasts, in my content, on my programs, etc. This is all about just being a better, more effective individual and operating at a super high level and trying to be as far from normal as humanly possible. That being said, it is still on sale. If you are listening to this episode the day or the day after it comes out, it's still going to be on sale and it is automatic. You don't have to type in any codes. You can find information on that down in the description, whether you're listening or watching. So, anyway, let's start with a banger of a question. First question today: how do they mitigate risks of tick-borne illnesses at SFAS, Alpha Gal, Lyme, etc.? Alright, dude. Unfortunately, I feel your pain. Like I know for sure I would not be happy if I got bit by a tick and could never eat meat again, red meat, because I eat red meat like it's going out of style. But that being said, this is special forces assessment selection. There are a lot more to worry about. If this is your biggest worry going into SFAS, to be honest, like I'm not just trying to be a dick, but you're probably not the person for the job. You are going to be exposed to things that are way, way, way more risky than getting bit by a tick and getting Lyme disease or alpha gal or whatever have you, whatever other tick diseases there are out there. There are also plenty of other things that are, I mean, in my opinion, more worrisome or more, not worrisome, but can harm you more, and probably, in my opinion, a lot more scary, such as water moccasins. Those are all over the place. It depends on what time of the year you go, whether you see one or not, but there are also copperheads, and you'll get bit by a bunch of random things like spiders and ants and tons of bugs and gnats and mosquitoes, chamical in the summer months especially, is just not ideal for skin health, I would say. You just have a lot of rashes, poison ivy too, poison oak, rashes, bites, itchiness, bloodiness, etc. That's just kind of how it is. Honestly, I don't know anyone in particular that has gone to SFAS and got bit by a tick and suffered from it, but that doesn't mean it's never happened. I'm sure it has. And that all being said, man, it's just not the top of the worry list out there. Guys also go down as heat injuries all the time, too, because it's so hot, especially in the May class as well as the early fall classes. So yeah, dude, it's not Boy Scouts. It is Special Forces Assessment Selection. And by the way, depending on what group you go to, you're gonna be exposed to a lot more scary stuff. If you go to first group or seventh group, you're gonna be in the jungle quite often when you travel to South America or Asia, respectively. Well, first group is Asia, seventh group is South America. If you go to third group, you're gonna be in the desert. There's a lot of things in the desert that are gonna try and kill you. And of course, you know you gotta do your missions, and that can be dangerous as well. So, yeah, as far as I know, they are not doing anything whatsoever at all, period, about tick-borne illnesses. But my best advice to you is to probably worry about things that matter a lot more and keep yourself clean while you're out there, maybe do some tick checks, but I wouldn't really give it any more thought than that. That's my best advice on it. Alright, next question book recommendations for pre and post-selection, character development, and all-around good reads. Okay, so what I did was I copied and pasted my top 10 books that I have in my personal development guide. I have 50-ish of my top recommended personal development books, as well as 25-ish of my top business books recommended in there. So there's a personal development section, that's the main meat and potatoes of the guide. There's a little bit of SFAS specific stuff towards the bottom, just like the one that's attached to the SFAS program. And then there's also a guide on, like at the very end of it, there's a section on tips for entrepreneurs that are launching their own thing or have launched their own thing and are trying to succeed as a business owner. And so I have two separate book recommendations. One is business and entrepreneur specific books, one is personal development. There's a ton of overlap. I mean, honestly, entrepreneurialism is the ultimate personal development exercise there is. But anyway, top ten are How to Win Friends and Influence People by Carnegie, a classic, Man's Search for Meaning, another classic, No More Mr. Nice Guy, a very, very underrated sleeper book that really anyone, even women, should read. The Bible, especially Proverbs. If you are familiar with Proverbs, it's honestly one of the top personal development resources in existence, in my opinion. And it's of course a little bit harder to read. It's not really super tactical, but it will definitely open your eyes if you read it. I mean, for me, I don't really comprehend the Bible. Like, I can't read it one time and be like, got it. I have to like reread and reread and reread. And I kind of just got into really reading into Proverbs, but that's a really good one. Relentless, Tim Grover, The Way of Excellence, Brad Stolberg, Atomic Habits, gotta read that if you want to just set yourself up for success. The Slight Edge, a fantastic one. The Obstacle is the way and The Ego is the enemy. Two separate books, both by the same author, Ryan Holliday. I have some books in there that are the same. Basically, I have some authors that have written multiple books that I recommend, and those two are excellent books from Ryan Holliday. And the last is The War of Art and Turning Pro by Stephen Pressfield. Again, those are two books. So that was 12 books, but it was the top 10 and the double up. So there are a lot more, and you can check out that guide. I also have an old article on my website that has 67 recommended reading list books for a little bit more geared towards soft prep, but there's definitely a lot of personal development in there as well. It's definitely outdated. I made it in probably 2022. But if you guys know me, I'm a big fan of reading. But I will leave you guys at this, and it is emphasized heavily in the guide, and I've emphasized it before in my content as well as my podcast. If you're going to read something and consume something, make sure you actually implement what you are reading and consuming. I would much rather someone, you're going to see way better results, I should say, if you read and master and implement maybe even just one thing, but ideally, maybe from some books more than one thing, 50 books, then you will reading 500 books just to check the block and go read about or go brag about how much you read, how well read you are. There are a lot, a lot, a lot of avid readers of personal development books that have nothing to show for it. But I will say everyone I respect that is a big time high performer is an avid reader. The difference between the two is implementation. The high performers implement what they read. The non-performers or low performers or people that just love to gather, gather, gather and never take action, or they're always waiting for the right time to take action on things that they learn, which by the way never happens. Those people don't really fare very well, despite being avid readers. So just remember that. And yeah, again, that's on sale if you want to check it out. But let's hop into the next question, which is how do you deal with prevent lower back pain from golf? I want to keep golfing and training without issues. Good question. So I've talked about this a little bit recently as far as back pain is concerned. It's very, very complex and multifactorial, and even experts on back pain don't have it all figured out. So take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt. I'm not a back pain expert. I'm not a golf personal trainer or anything like that, but I do have a high level of interest in playing golf on a regular basis, as pain-free as possible, as well as lifting and staying strong and jacked and fit. So what I do is I make sure that my lifting, my exercise selection, especially, as well as just my overall volume, my intensity is always going to be high, but because I train really, really hard, I compensate by dropping the volume a little bit, the sets per week, per muscle group per week. But also exercise selection is massive, and so is execution. To be honest, a lot of people choose terrible exercises in general, especially if they're making their own program. But honestly, a lot of programs that are sold out there, or even coaches, don't really take exercise selection as seriously as they could. I am a massive nerd about exercise selection. I think it's way more important than most people think it is, especially at higher levels if you're more advanced. And also in this case, when you want to not be in pain for golf. So those things are massive, and I mean, honestly, like it takes a lot of knowledge and wherewithal, or it takes a really good coach, or it takes a really good program to kind of get you there. As far as my programs, I mean, I have a lot of hybrid programs. I don't really have any like super specific golf programs. I will say though, the next hypertrophy program that's coming out soon will be very golf friendly. It won't have a lot of performance-driven conditioning. My dog is barking. I think my sister-in-law is arriving. So hopefully this is not too annoying. But anyway, that program will be great for it. It's probably gonna be out, I would say, mid-September, late September. But anyway, what you really want to do is make sure that your lifting is not really interfering with your golf very much by managing your training load and your programming as well as what you do outside the gym. So your recovery is massive. Another huge one that I literally not learned, but got reminded of last summer when I was getting really back into golf from a YouTube short of Tiger Woods giving a clinic in like 2000. He said he almost never swings more than 80% effort. And if you can remember that and save your 90 plus percent effort swings for when you really, really need them, which for most people that are not competitive golfers is pretty much never. That is a huge one. Like when I'm at the range, I'm swinging like 75 to 80% at the very most. Probably three to five driver swings every couple of range sessions. I'll go 90%, maybe a little higher than 90%, but almost never. And what happens when you do that? A, you feel better, you don't bang yourself up as much, and you can take more swings on like as far as swing volume and repetitions without it just fatiguing the hell out of you. But also you hit it more accurately and more consistently, and probably just as far, just because typically when amateur golfers swing super hard, even though their club head speed and their ball speed might be high, they're putting so much spin on it because they're just not hitting it perfectly. Like a pro would hit it right off the sweet spot most of the time, not all the time. But like an amateur is just not as likely to do that. So they're putting so much spin on it, it's just not gonna go as you're swinging harder, but it's really not gonna go any further. It's probably just gonna go further offline. So keep that in mind. But for me, the way I do it, this may not apply to you, but I generally don't have a ton of issues. I do have some on and off upper back pain once in a while inside my right scap, I'm left-handed, so that's my lead shoulder, and it'll bother me once in a while when I golf or when I sit at the computer for a long time. I think it's a combination of those things, as well as maybe training. But what I do is I lift every other day. So I will do an upper lower split, and it's non-synchronous to the week. So I let's say Monday is lower day, Wednesday is upper day, Friday lower day, and so on and so forth. And then on the days in between that are usually the days I play golf. Not every single non-lifting day, but usually twice a week, probably not as much now that I have a kid. I'd like to play three times a month if I possibly can, maybe four, once a week. That'd be cool. At least after the first few weeks, we'll see what happens. But I also, after I train, I try to, if I can, if it fits my schedule, I try to get to the range. So I'm basically warmed up from lifting, and I've got a lot of blood flow to the muscles that I just worked, and then I go to the range and take my swings. And for me, and I've heard other like higher level golfers say this, but for me, I notice that when I do that, I swing right after I lift. It doesn't really affect my pain or my swing as much. It doesn't throw my swing off as much. So I noticed this back in high school too with basketball. If I got like an upper body lift in and I didn't shoot around after, just get a few shots in, the next day, my shot was all jacked up just because I was sore, a little bit fatigued in the upper body and whatnot. But if I lifted and got a little bit of protein and carbs in me, and then went and to be honest, back then I didn't really do that, but now I do this before I go and hit the hit the driving range. But if I did that and I went and shot right after I lifted, I kind of like shot the lit the weights out of it. It's it's probably a mostly mental thing, a psychological thing. There could be some physiological components to it, but that's what I how I feel. So I like to kind of pair my gym sessions up with my golf practice sessions and then do my golf outings on my non-lifting days, mainly for schedule, but also it just helps me feel good and it throws my swing off less. And but the main thing is really just making sure your programming is good and your execution is really good. It's another thing. Most people just don't have very good execution of their movements. And when you throw too much volume on top of bad execution, on top of bad exercise selection, it's a recipe for having a sore back all the time. Honestly, your back should be a little fatigued sometimes when you do like a hinge day or something like that, or maybe an upper back day, a lat day, your upper back, your lats might be a little sore, but it should not be like this pain type thing. If you're doing if it's painful, like it's legit painful, you've got something going on that you need to address, whether it's something in your program or something in your lifestyle, or a combination of both, or maybe your golf swing is all jacked up, you might need to see like some sort of professional that can help you with fixing your swing a little. Could be any number of different things, but that's the multi-pronged approach that I would take as far as trying to think about what could be the issue here. Next question: Should the army get rid of morning PT? In my opinion, yes. And not because I think it's like a bad thing to get people awake and moving and getting their PT in, although physiologically speaking, you're not as primed to perform first thing in the morning as you would be later in the day. However, honestly, most people who don't train first in the thing in the morning that have general consistency issues that aren't like super gung ho about training, they'll get it in no matter what. Typically, they're a lot less consistent. So for a lot of people, getting training in in the morning is usually a good thing. And a lot of people think the army, like everyone in the army is like super into their fitness and really, really fit. That is not the case whatsoever, especially the regular army. But even in higher levels, sometimes SF guys are not as fit as you think they would be. And I don't stand for that. I don't think it's a good thing, but I'm just kind of stating a real fact. But should they get rid of Morning PT, I think so, because here's the deal. In a perfect world, we would get every private Joe Snuffy and his buddies to stop playing video games and stop slamming cola and eating Godfather's pizza from the shopette at 8 p.m. and go to bed at 8 30, and therefore get enough sleep to wake up and be well rested, well recovered enough to get their PT in early morning hours. That being said, it is not a perfect world, and therefore, Private Joe Snuffy and his buddies are not gonna do that ever. They're just not it's not gonna happen. So, in my opinion, the next best thing would be to A, accept the fact that in the regular army, almost never is there not enough time to actually do for the most part, if you're in the field or doing some sort of other specific training event, that's one thing, but like just general garrison, there's almost never a case where there's not enough time to get a workout in, a PT session in during the day as a unit. Now, I won't even get into how terrible unit PT is as like as far as programming is concerned and the fact that it's leading people astray, but just like this is the general concept of whether it should happen in the morning or throughout the day. In general, you're gonna have time at some point to get PT in, whether it's right before lunch. I think the best time to do it would be right before lunch. That way people can get their workout in, they can go get lunch, they can kind of recover, maybe take a shower if they're in the barracks or whatever, they come back for the afternoon and all is good. But a lot of units will just kind of like show up, hurry up and wait and just do random stuff all day to kill time until 1700 and then they'll leave. That's a major reason that a lot of people want to go SF because they don't do that in SF. You leave when the work is done. Not that the work's always done before 1700, but when it is, you leave. Sometimes the work's not done for several days with barely any sleep on end. But that is just SF life and it's cool, but also it can be rough on one end when you're just going and running and gunning, but it can be nice on another end where you're having a chill week and you're home at 11 a.m. every day. And a lot of the better team sergeants, in my opinion, and if I ever became a team sergeant before getting out, I mean I got out, but I likely would have been a team sergeant a couple years after I actually got out, I would have had the team do a team workout. Not necessarily all do the same thing. I think that's not a good idea, but go to the gym at the same time and do their own workouts and keep people accountable, make sure they were doing the right things in training. That way guys can get their late night pleasure bullshit that they do, staying up super late and cutting into sleep because they have to wake up early. But if they didn't have to wake up early, that wouldn't cut into sleep, they'd be able to sleep later, which I don't really agree with. I think that's not a great way to live life, but that's just kind of how it is. They can get that in and they can get their training in and they can get enough sleep to recover and sustain it, even if it's not the perfect type of training. They're at least going to get something out of it more out of it than sleep depriving themselves, then going and doing terrible training and wondering why everyone is in horrendous shape and fat and can't pass a PT test. Yes, I think that is a hundred percent on the soldiers, the soldier's responsibility to be able to maintain his own physique and his basic fitness tasks, but in reality that's just not how it is. They need some sort of accountability, like a lot of people just need accountability, and it's there, but it's not there at the right time of day. So this will probably happen at some point once the army catches on to how bad it is that like people just aren't sleeping enough. The army's usually 10 to 20 years behind the data. So there are definitely some units, as far as I know, catching on and doing PT later in the day, which is great. I don't know when it's going to become an army wide thing, but I think it should be. So, for what it's worth, that's my answer, even though it won't really affect anything. What's up, guys? A real quick break in the action before we get back to the show. There's this really, really trite quote fail to prepare, prepare to fail, and Guess what? Quotes don't become trite accidentally. They become trite because they are actually true. Almost everyone experiences it, and so it becomes a quote. And this quote is applicable to nutrition more so than almost any other aspect of life. Those who prepare their meals ahead of time will see more success, regardless of what their goals. Honestly, any successful nutrition intervention I've ever been a part of, whether it's coaching, my own, or people I know, have had some sort of planning or preparation involved. And although you can absolutely do your own meal prep, let's be honest, most people either do it for short periods of time and then they fall off for several months and it's on and off like this roller coaster, and therefore they fail half the time. That's not a very good percentage. Or most people just don't have the time or the bandwidth or the gumption to do their own meal prep every week. And that is where a meal prep delivery service comes in. And I have tried dozens of them, and absolutely nothing touches Mega Fit. It is hands down the best I've ever tried as far as macros are concerned, and as far as taste is concerned. Me, I prefer to get some of the meals custom made. You can actually go in and choose the meat, the produce, the starch, and the macros that you want. They also have pre-made meals that are also delicious, and the macros are fantastic for performance, body composition, and just overall vigor and well-being. I usually eat five, six, seven of these per week, and they make my life very, very simple and low stress. I typically like to cook them on the stovetop with a little bit of bone broth, let them simmer for a little while, but they also work great in their microwave. And I've got a discount code for you if you want to try it. You can either go to the description and click the link for MegaFit, you'll get 10% off, or you can go to their website, megafit.com, type in the code TTM at checkout for that 10% off. Alright, guys, back to the show. Next question any benefits unique to trail running versus just road running? Yeah, absolutely. Trail running, I mean, it depends on what you're training for. If you're training for a road race or a time trial that's going to occur on a road, you should probably do a good amount of road running, but you can definitely still do some trail running. And vice versa, if you're training for an ultramarathon or something that's going to be mostly on a trail, you can still do some of your speed work or your threshold work or even some of your long running. A lot of ultra marathons are kind of a combo between like off-the-beaten path, dirt roads, regular roads, etc. So getting some of your running in on roads is a good idea. But if you're just running for general fitness or enjoyment or health, whatever have you, or just general running performance, then I like mixing it up a little. I would usually lean towards doing longer, easier stuff on trails and faster, more speed-specific stuff on either tracks or a treadmill or outdoors on relatively flat ground, depending on what you're training for again. But that's not to say that you can't ever do some maybe some hill repeats on a trail that's not going to like beat you up or potentially roll your ankle or something like that. But the main unique benefits to a trail, I would say one is mental. It's just you there's more to look at, it's more stimulating, it requires a little more presence, especially if you're on a more technical trail that has roots and rocks and things that you have to pay attention to if you don't want to roll your ankle or break your foot or fall over and break rule number one, always look cool. So there's that. But also it has a different dynamic as far as the physical effects. You are uh you have to be a little bit more agile on a trail. You're using different muscles, you're doing a little bit more lateral movement, your feet, every time you take a step when you're running, your foot's not landing the exact same way as it would on just an even flat surface like a road. So there's that. So I mean, most people I would say find more mental stimulus and mental enjoyment and more of a mental reset from doing stuff on a trail, from running on a trail or even hiking on a trail, whatever have you, brucking than doing on a road. That's not everyone. A lot of people do like road running, and that's totally fine. Another potential benefit would be a little bit less impact. So usually trails are not hard-packed, they're a little bit more forgiving to bad run form, or just if you run a lot of volume, even if you have good form, it's still a good idea to kind of give yourself a break from impact once in a while. So I would say those are some of the top benefits. And in general, I would recommend pretty much regardless of anyone's goal, if you want to run and enjoy it and do it for a long period of time, doing a little bit of trail running at least would be probably a good idea, even if you're doing mostly road running, or if you just want to do trail running only, that's totally fine too. Next question tips on compartmentalization. I'm in the Q course, and my personal life is in the garbage disposal. Yeah, that's super tough. And also you're not alone. A lot of people have crazy personal lives, whether they're in the Q course or they're at basic training or they're in group, maybe deployed, et cetera, et cetera. And the best special operators are able to compartmentalize. Is it super healthy for you? Very arguable. But is it required in order to do your job at a very high level? 100%. If you are distracted by your home life when the lives, when your life and the lives of the guys around you are at stake because you're doing something serious that needs 100% of your focus and attention, that is a massive problem. So you need to be able to compartmentalize and put that stuff completely out of your mind. And there's a few different things you can do as far as practicing it and making it into more of like an automatic thing that you do. And honestly, it does start with practice. It starts with being aware of it and also aware of the fact that you can't do anything about what's going on in your home life in that moment when you have to perform. So you're in the queue, it's not as high stakes as going out on a real live mission, like a combat mission or anything, but it's still pretty high stakes because you got to go perform. And if you're always thinking about all these things that are going on at home when you have to perform your task to standard in the queue course in order to move on and eventually hopefully graduate, get your green beret, that can be a problem because you're not going to perform as well. And also it's rough on the mental health. If you're just always thinking about all these things that you can't control at that moment, maybe you can control them in general, and I'll get to that in a second, but you can't control them at that moment. And if you always ask yourself, hey, I'm about to go do this thing that I need to focus on, can I control anything else that's going on at home or with my relationships or whatever have you, my finances? No, I can't. So, yes, easier said than done, but guess what? I don't have to think about that. Right now I'll focus on what I'm about to do for the next five minutes. And that goes right into segmentation. So segmenting things. Anytime you're doing something really hard that you hate, like Hell Week at BUDS, or a really hard iteration at SVS, or you're just miserable out at S U T in the Q course, or whatever, you segment things. Like I just need to make it to if it's nine o'clock, I have to make it to 9:30. Or if I just woke up, I have to make it to breakfast. Just made it past breakfast, sweet. Next target is lunch and then dinner and then bedtime. Or you can break things down even further. I need to make it to the next five minutes. I'm gonna focus on just what's going on in the next five minutes and nothing else. And this is difficult to do like the first time. It's not gonna work the first time. But right now, you and a lot of people have this habit. Your habit, your mental psychological habit is to focus on things that are stressing you out that aren't in the moment things. You're not very present. And like any habit, you can basically build the opposite habit. And it really starts with being mindful and of course acknowledging when the thoughts of other things come in, but then just getting right back to the task at hand. Can I control this right now? No. Okay, I'm gonna focus on what I need to do for the next five minutes to execute the way that I need to. So it really comes down to practice segmenting as well as you can practice being more mindful. So doing things like journaling, anytime you have a bunch of things piling up in your amygdala, which is part of your brain that's responsible for reacting to stressful scenarios, and when it's a little bit overloaded, you start feeling anxiety. And when you have a lot of anxiety, it can release catecholamines like norepinephrine, adrenaline, and it can impede your performance pretty significantly. But simply taking these things that are piling up in there and writing them down on paper, even if they're super dumb things, no one has to see this stuff, by the way. You don't even have to look back on it. But taking them out of your brain and writing them down is really simple sounding, but it works really well. So you can have some sort of journaling practice like that. You can do things like meditation, you can do body scans. This is more of acute benefits, like, hey, I'm about to go do this really important thing, but I have all this clutter and I'm thinking about all these things that are going on in my life. Right now, I'm gonna go do a 15-minute yoga ninja session. You can go on YouTube, Ali Boothroid has a really good yoga ninja channel, and you can go do that. You can do things like guided meditation. The thing is about these things though, is they're practices, and like any practice, don't wait until you feel overwhelmed. To get good at them and therefore experience as best results as you possibly can get from them. You have to practice them and do them on a regular basis, even when you're not feeling stressed. So, like for me, when I do Yoga Nidra on a regular basis, even if I'm not feeling super overwhelmed, I feel less overwhelmed. And also, when I do feel overwhelmed, it just works a lot better. When I haven't been consistent with it, it just doesn't do the trick as much. So getting into a practice like that would be a really good idea, and really using it strategically because you're really good at it, because you practice it a lot, right before you need to go perform and focus on one thing is awesome. Also, you want to practice being more present. A lot of people these days are just not present ever. They're always distracted, they can't be bored, they can't have any sort of silence or any sort of stillness or any sort of solitude. As soon as there's any semblance of boredom, they lose their minds if they don't pull their phone out and start scrolling or do something to distract themselves. Being able to just sit and be present is going to allow you to not always need to distract yourself, not always be thinking about other things. Just allow yourself to be present in the moment. Hey, I'm sitting down on a chair outside in my yard. How does the grass feel on my feet? What do the trees look like? What are the birds? How many different birds are making different sounds? Just being very present in moments like that and not always like when you're standing in line, you'll look around at any grocery store or any place that has lines. If you look around, every single person is going to be on their phone and scrolling or texting or doing something to distract themselves because they can't just stand still and be bored. And being bored, honestly, I made a post about this recently, but it has a lot of different benefits, but this would be one of them. It just allows you to be more present in the moment. And when you have something that you really need to focus on, a really high-stakes thing that's coming up, but oh by the way, you have a lot going on out elsewhere, being able to be present and focus on that and not all the other stuff, guess what? Being present and practicing it and forcing yourself to do it on a regular basis will make you better at being able to focus on what's right in front of you. So jumped around there a little. But good question and really, really important, and something a lot of people struggle with. But those are some pretty good tactical, as well as a little bit of just like mindset things to consider as far as being better at focusing on the task at hand and not worrying about all these things that are going on that you can't currently control. Next question: which of your plans can I use in a cut? Honestly, what plan you choose, I would base it on your fitness goals. Not so much whether you think a certain plan is going to work better for fat loss or not. The main thing that's gonna drive fat loss is the fact that you're in a calorie deficit, which is purely nutrition. It's not your training. Now, there are certain types of training that work better in a cut and worse in a cut, but a lot of people think that usually it's because they've been marketed to by scammy people, but a lot of people think that there's certain training programs or training philosophies or methods or techniques that are gonna enhance fat loss further than another technique or program, and that's not really where your mind should be going. Some people like to tout their programs as like this is gonna be awesome for fat loss, or this is more of a muscle building program, this is more of a burn and tone program, whatever. That is either one, disingenuous, the person knows better, but they're still just trying to be scammy marketers, or two, it's a clear sign that they don't know what they're talking about. So depending on what your fitness goals are, that is how I would choose your program. If you want hybrid gains, then or at least to do your best as far as maintaining muscle and strength, you're gonna be in a cut, so you might not gain a ton of muscle and strength, but you can definitely gain some endurance. If you have more of those goals, I would choose one of the Jack Gazelles. If you have selection prep goals, you definitely waited too long to do your cut, you should have done that sooner. But either the selection prep programs would be good, ruck run lift or SFS. If you have just muscle gain goals, hypertrophy, or if you're a little bit more of a beginner, or you want like a three-day full body plan, it would be something like Kickstart, which is my garage gym-friendly program. You could also do, if you prefer an app-based hybrid plan, I would do something like T850. That would be a solid one to join. But the main thing is that you are A, in a reasonable calorie deficit. If you have performance goals, you want to be in a very reasonable deficit, 300-ish below maintenance on average per day. If you have mainly fat loss goals, your main focus in training should be to lift weights and give your body a stimulus to grow muscle. Even if you don't grow muscle, that's your best bet at maintaining it. You can do a little bit of cardio, but again, I would not try and like burn extra fat by doing cardio. A lot of people think like I'm gonna go in a deficit. I need to crank up training to burn more fat. That is the exact opposite of what you should be doing. When you're in a deficit, you're also in a recovery deficit. So doing more volume of training when you have less resources to actually recover from that volume, aka calories coming in, and your body's already more in a stressed-out state, being in a deficit is a stress around the body, that is not a good idea. Even though a lot of people do that, it still doesn't make it right. So just regardless of your body composition goals, I would ensure that you're doing your part nutritionally and making that happen, whether it's muscle gain or fat loss, and then choose your program based on your performance goals or your muscle gain goals, your endurance goals, or whatever have you. Next question, we will do a couple more. Any advice on public speaking, dealing with nerves or just tips for becoming better at it? Yeah. So you guys who have been listening for a while are probably gonna know what I'm about to say, but this comes from confidence, which comes from competence, and competence comes from getting reps. The more often you do something, the better you get at it. The first time I ever did a brief was back in my very early days as a Green Beret. I was a brand new guy. I was the only Delta on the team. I think I was in E5 still, I hadn't even made E6, which means I hadn't even been in group for six or seven months. I think I made E6 like seven months in. But anyway, I had to brief just the med plan. And it was, I want to say, like, a one-star or a two-star general. We were over in Europe doing this, it wasn't even a real mission. This was a training mission. And of course, I told myself, like, oh, I'm good. I don't have to rehearse that much. I think we did one team rehearsal. I did alright, because it was just my team. But then I got in front of the real people, and shit hit the fan. I was absolutely horrendous. I was saying all these filler words, I was stumbling over my words, I had no idea what the hell I was talking about. Like, I knew what I was talking about, but I just couldn't express it. And mainly because I was super nervous, my voice was quivering, etc. And I never wanted that to happen again. My team was giving me shit. I mean, a lot of people kind of flop their first brief. Some people are just kind of naturally good at it, but I was not, but then I realized that I didn't want to do that again. It was really embarrassing. And even though I wasn't big in personal development back then, I kind of common sense-wise grasped the fact that if you suck at something, you can just practice it more and rehearse it more and prepare for it more, and you're probably going to do better at it. So for future briefs, I not that I was like really, really good right off the bat, like my second brief, but I got better and better. The more times you do something, the better you get. But also, even if you don't have the opportunity, which I'll give you some potential options as far as giving yourself reps here in a second, but even if you don't have the opportunity to do a bunch of reps of actual public speaking, you can still do reps beforehand as far as rehearsals. You can go over it several, several times and get it down. Now, I would not recommend trying to memorize it word for word, but ideally it's something you're competent in, you know what you're talking about, and you can basically rehearse the concepts and the flow of it. Even if you say something slightly different on every single time you rehearse, but you still get the same message out, then that's perfect. If you memorize it, it can kind of throw you off because if you like forget one word, it can really, really throw your flow off and can be hard to bounce back from. So I wouldn't recommend memorizing it. But that would be honestly a great start, rehearsing and getting reps. Now, if you don't have the ability to get a bunch of reps before you have like a big speech, which honestly for most people that's that's not the case, they don't have a bunch of other speeches lined up before they get to the big show. What I would do is join Toastmasters. Toastmasters is literally a public speaking teaching course that you can join and you can go. And I think the first time you don't have to speak, you just kind of listen and observe and see how it's run. The second time they kind of break you in. It's kind of a crawl walk run. You do like a more brief speech, then a little bit more intense and a little more intense, and you can it's on you, like you can go as often as you want or as lit non-often as you want. And someone will rate your content, like what you actually briefed about. Did you get your point across? How was the structure? Did you teach well? Do we understand what you were talking about? Did you tell any good stories? Like how was the storytelling? Things like that. And another person will be the filler word counter. So they'll count how often you say like, which I know I say like quite often. It's kind of hard when you're just going off the cuff in podcasts. I try to work on it, but I still say like somewhat often. They'll count how many times you say um or you know, or etc. And no one's perfect in this regard. Well, there are people who are incredible public speakers that have just done it so many times and they've rehearsed it so many times, they've probably got coaching. You could get coaching on this if you have the funds for it and you want to really invest and you want to really take it to the next level. But Toastmaster is pretty solid. But a lot of people are gonna say some filler words, and it's not the end of the world at all. But when you do it over and over again and you have someone actually giving you feedback, constructive feedback, not like, oh, you just did great, good job, you're the man, but like actual constructive feedback, like this is what you fucked up, this is what you need to do better next time, this is how many times you said this word, so on and so forth, then you actually get to iterate and get better with each and every rep. So, for example, this is not public speaking. I am talking to the screen and I'm doing it off the cuff, which is you know not the easiest thing. If you go back to some of my first episodes, you will hear the difference between episode one through ten. Episode one is extremely cringe worthy. Honestly, probably my first 50 episodes, if I listen back to them, I cringe. But honestly, that's a good thing. It means you've gotten better compared to now. If you listen to the first 10 episodes or so, and then you listen to the last 10 that I've done, you will see the night and day difference. And it's because I've spent 250 plus hours podcasting, and you get better at these things over time. And I talk about things that I'm interested in as well as things that I'm um expert in or very well versed in. So, like anything, public speaking is a skill, and dealing with the nerves, I mean, no matter what, if it's a really high-stakes thing, you're probably gonna have some nerves, in which case you can do some, like I was going talking about earlier with the compartmentalize, you can just do some body scans, you can do some breathing exercises, box breathing, you can talk to people. A great thing to do before you go to do a more public speech or a brief is to just chat with people. It gets you into the talking mood, it kind of takes your mind off all the potential things that you can do to fuck up, and you can go from there. Also, I would check out some books. Talk like Ted is by far the best public speaking book there is. And then the Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs is another really good one. I believe they're the same author, but again, the book is gonna give you a lot of information on how to do it well, but you are not gonna get really good at public speaking by just reading a book. You're gonna get good at public speaking by doing it and doing it and doing it and rehearsing and making sure you're showing up prepared. So that is my best advice. Best of luck. Just get the reps in. It's okay to suck early on. Everyone does. Eventually, if you keep working at it, you'll get better. Guys, a little break in the action to tell you about Pride Foods, Rice and Grinds, and Stacks. If you have Listening to the show for a while, you guys know my stance on carbs and the fact that most people with extreme performance goals or body composition goals eat nowhere near the amount of carbs they should be eating. And one of the easiest, most simple, most delicious ways I have found to get more carbs in is rice and grinds as well as Stacks, which are the two main products that Pride Foods creates. Rice and grinds is a fantastic oatmeal alternative. It's a cream of rice, but it tastes exponentially better and digests way easier than the cream of rice you're gonna see at any grocery store. The Stax pancakes are fantastic as well. They are yam-based, and the only macro in these products is carbohydrates. So I eat these things for breakfast. I eat them around training. Oftentimes in the evening after dinner, when I've already had all of my other macros, and all I have left is carbs. I can't have any more protein or fat. I'll throw a bowl of rice and grinds on top of some frozen berries, mix it up, it thaws out the berries, and the berries cool it off so you can eat it instantly, and it is fantastic. So if you need to up your carb game, check out the link in the description. You can get 10% off. Try any flavor you like. My top flavors are chocolate brownie and brown sugar cinnamon, but all the flavors are honestly pretty damn delicious. Or you can go to pridefoods.org and type in the code TTM for 10% off. Alright, guys, back to the show. Next question to get ready for rasp, is JG3 then ruck run lift a good move? Yes, that would be fantastic. If you've got about, I want to say ruck run lift is 17 weeks, JG3 is about 15, 16. So if you have about six, seven months, that would be a perfect, perfect split to follow. If you're a little weaker in running, you might consider something like two and five mile and then ruck run lift. Or if you have a longer time horizon, you could do something like two and five mile, then jack is L3, then ruck run lift, or you could do two and five mile, then run advanced if you're really weak at running. Or if you want to just really get super good at running and then ruck run lift, but yeah, that's a fantastic option. Next question Do you count miles from a hike on weekly mileage? I don't really track my weekly mileage these days because I don't do a whole lot of running. But if I were running and tracking my weekly mileage, no, I would not count a hike as running mileage. I mean, I would count it as as far as like steps, daily steps are concerned, because my watch would count it for me. And that's not to say that getting miles on your feet non-running, like going for a hike, is a bad thing by any means. But if you're trying to track your running mileage and you're chasing some sort of run goal, then I would just count running mileage as your weekly mileage. And then, you know, if you have like a step count goal on the side, usually when I'm running a lot, I definitely count my steps running as well as walking. Basically, the steps that my watch counts all day. That is what I go with for my daily step count tracking. And I try to hit 15,000, 16,000. Now that I have a kid, it'll probably be a little less. My main goal right now is 12k, which I definitely think I can do and will do. But yeah, I wouldn't count hikes as running necessarily, but also it doesn't really matter. Just go hike and enjoy yourself. And if you have run goals, do your running. No harm, no foul. Next question, we'll make this the last one. Does normal army hate SF? As far as I know, no, not in general. I've never heard of the army as a whole hating SF. Now, that doesn't mean certain people in the army don't hate SF. There are definitely individuals, not an army-wide thing, but on an individual level, that have bad taste in their mouth because typically they either went to selection or maybe part of the Q course and did not pass and refuse to take responsibility for their own inability to pass. Usually it's someone else's fault or something else's fault or the regiment's fault or anyone's fault but theirs. These are the low agency type, not the type of person you want to be. They typically have victim mindsets. Nothing's ever their responsibility, nothing's ever their fault. So it's always someone else's fault. Someone like that might not be a big fan of SF. Or maybe it is another person that claims to be this like top dog, high performer, someone who chases big goals, etc., high achiever, but their actions don't show it. For example, maybe your squad mate goes and attends selection and makes it and wants to better himself. And he says it, but also actually does it. He follows through and goes and crushes and puts what he says into action. And maybe you are the guy who talks a big game and is like, yeah, I'm gonna go do this, I'm gonna accomplish this, I'm going SF, I'm gonna be this badass dude. But then you never go. You just don't have it in you. You know you could. You look at yourself in the mirror, you're like, I know I could do that, but I'm not. So I'm just gonna take it out on my buddy who goes and does that, or I'm just gonna take it out on the entire regiment itself. Like SF, yeah, fuck that place. So those are the type of people that might have a little bit of distaste towards SF, but the army as a whole, as far as I know, does not hate SF. Honestly, I would say the overwhelming majority of the regular army has a high degree of respect for SF. I could be wrong on that. I've never been in the regular army, and it's probably different unit to unit, but I would say that is my general perspective on it. Pretty pro SF. So that is it, guys. I hear my boy crying a little bit, so I'm gonna go check out what's going on down there with that. So thank you for tuning in. I'll be back soon with another episode. Don't forget to check out the guide in the next day or two. It is gonna be on sale until I believe midnight on Tuesday night. So check it out. Alright, guys, Terminator Out. Thank you for listening. If you like this show and want to start crushing your goals, please subscribe so you don't miss an episode. And for more fitness content, follow me on Instagram at Terminator underscore training, or check out my website, terminator training.com. All right, guys, Terminator Out.