Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Best Ranger Competition 2021, Vince Paikowski talks to Scott Johnston
3.9k Plays3 years ago
By using the Uphill Athlete training philosophy of building a big aerobic base Vince broke with tradition and with his partner, Alastair Keys, won the US Army's Best Ranger competition in 2021 -- a multi-day ordeal that challenges the endurance, strength, and tactical abilities of the top athletes in the Army Rangers. Scott and Vince discuss how endurance base training was crucial for his success.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Resources
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to the Uphill Athlete Podcast. These programs are just one of several free services we provide to disseminate information about training for mountain sports. If you like what you hear and want more, please check out our website, uphillathlete.com, where you'll find many articles and our extensive video library on all aspects of training for and accomplishing a variety of mountain goals. You'll also find our forum, where you can ask questions of our experts and the community at large.
00:00:30
Speaker
Our email is coach at uphillathlete.com and we'd love to hear from you. We've been very pleased and of course gratified that our podcasts are being received so enthusiastically. We've had requests to enable a way for listeners to have a conversation about episodes.
00:00:49
Speaker
We certainly welcome this idea and want to encourage those of you who do want to do that to do so on our forum so that the whole uphill athlete community can join in and benefit from this exchange. To do so, please start a new thread on the forum using the title of the podcast under the most appropriate category. Thanks for being part of this community.
Meet Vince Pykowski
00:01:16
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of the Uphill Athlete podcast. I'm your host, Scott Johnston, co-founder of Uphill Athlete. And today I have the distinct pleasure of having a different type of a guest on our program than we normally have.
00:01:33
Speaker
Today I have Army Captain Vince Pykowski. Vince is currently serving as a captain in the 4th Infantry Division. He's also a Ranger certified and was an intelligence officer in the 75th Ranger Regiment. And most pertinent to the discussion that he and I are going to be having today is the fact that he won the best Ranger competition in 2021.
00:02:01
Speaker
And I won't do this complete justice, and we'll probably get into much more detail about it in a few minutes. But for those of you that aren't familiar with this competition, it is an event that lasts over 60 hours and involves tests of fitness and a lot of
00:02:25
Speaker
high skill requirements used in marksmanship and so it kind of mimics some of the demands of the or does mimic excuse me very closely it's a lot of the demands that that are the normal uphill athlete
00:02:41
Speaker
cohort would be interested in so I think that Vince has some really interesting insights to share with us especially since one of the things he did was a study on the results of This competition that I think will be really enlightening for folks to hear about so welcome Vince Thanks for taking the time to meet with me Yeah, thank you so much for having me Scott pretty excited
Vince's Journey into the Army
00:03:06
Speaker
cool. Well, I hope I haven't bungled any of that introduction too badly and people that I've kind of gotten the point across a little bit. But why don't we start off with, you know, this is obviously this best ranger competition is highly endurance oriented. So what
00:03:28
Speaker
was your background, before we talk about that competition itself, why don't you give the listeners some idea of what your own personal athletic background has been like? Absolutely. So I grew up in a mid-sized town in Wisconsin to two parents who were pretty active all the time. My earliest memories are of my dad dropping us off at a park.
00:03:53
Speaker
with other kids while him and his running group would just be doing laps around the park and coming to check in on us every two to three miles making sure we were still okay at the park and he got pretty big into ultra marathons he got pretty big into marathoning my mother was into marathoning got big into cycling so I just grew up around an incredibly active family that would spend you know Saturdays
00:04:16
Speaker
Going out and biking to an ice cream shop 30 miles away just to do it. Grabbing ice cream and biking home.
00:04:24
Speaker
And then as I progressed into high school, I got more and more interested into running. And my dad's constant advice was, hey, slow makes strong, strong makes smooth, smooth makes fast. And it was just drilled into my head from a young age, hey, you don't need to do anything sexy in this off season. You just need to put consistency together and start building a framework from which you can work in the future.
00:04:51
Speaker
saw some success in high school and ended up running at the Division I level for cross-country and track and field at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. And so that kind of brought me into college and
00:05:05
Speaker
When I was looking at colleges and selecting schools, I had an interest in serving my country. There's always growing up around teams and growing up around athletics. It was the idea that you can step into an organization that
00:05:21
Speaker
requires everyone working together well and synchronized and you have an accountability system there with you all the time and you get to serve your country. So it just really intrigued me. So I applied for ROTC scholarships in college and then was fortunate enough to receive one and commissioned as an officer coming out of the university. So
00:05:44
Speaker
While my background was pretty athletically focused the whole time, it translated pretty well into the profession that I ended up choosing as well.
Ranger Training Insights
00:05:56
Speaker
Sounds like your dad had some sage words for you back then. Does he need a job as a coach for a co-athlete? We're always looking for people like him. Sounds like he really gets the basic concepts that we work from. That's great. He got you started on the right foot.
00:06:13
Speaker
I remember him having three, four hour long phone conversations with his running buddies where they're just rehashing, are we doing this right? How's the periodization looking? Do you think we're set up well for this 50 miler? How are you feeling? How can we adjust? They made it more of a science than they even knew. These are guys that started running in their 30s as a hobby. My dad ran 250 in the marathon.
00:06:42
Speaker
Just under eight hours for 50 miles. So You know, he did pretty well for the fact that he started later on in life compared to to a lot of people so Certainly did. So how did you transition? I mean, did you have the Rangers as a Focus the goal right off the bat or did that occur more gradually? I
00:07:06
Speaker
Absolutely. So in the military, you have these little nests. You have the large conventional force, which does all of the meat and potatoes work that's necessary in the military. And then I went to my introductory courses for the military and heard about the 75th Ranger Regiment.
00:07:29
Speaker
And it's a place that is highly revered within our military. And it's a place that once you go, you understand that the people around you don't only demand excellence, but they live excellence every day. From your leadership to the brand new guys stepping into the unit, everyone's hungry to accomplish something big and to be as good at their job, whatever it is. If you're the infantry men on the line, then you become very proficient at shooting.
00:07:59
Speaker
But if you're the guy that's supposed to be very good at computers, you become very, very good at computers, right? And you go down your specialization because you understand that all those specializations create a well-oiled machine that can operate at a high level. So when I heard about this organization and I heard they were conducting tryouts to come assess for their organization, to me, it was a no-brainer to try and go and see what was possible.
00:08:29
Speaker
So a goal, hanging out there in kind of the carrot dangled out there for you, like most people who are high achievers, and that's a big stimulus to wanting to achieve excellence. And knowing that when you obviously do make this selection, you're part of a really elite group. I think that's kind of motivation that drives a lot of us to do the things we do.
00:08:53
Speaker
So once you how long did it take you to prepare for and what did you do to prepare for the selection. I understand, you know, I know from a little bit of work that I've done with special operations type folks that it's incredibly grueling selection process and you obviously knew this going in. How did you prepare
00:09:15
Speaker
Yeah, so there were really two barriers to entry joining the Range Regiment, right? The first one is Ranger School. And that's, if you've ever watched the Surviving the Cut documentaries that came out on Discovery Channel a long time ago, that's kind of what they showed, right? The 62 days of sleep deprivation, food deprivation, long days of just moving through the woods and conducting operations, right?
00:09:40
Speaker
Really, the only way you can prepare for that is through the training I had already been doing. That's a high volume of running, a high volume of hiking, walking, rucking, to just prepare your body for the deprivation it was about to go through and to make sure everything was strong enough to endure it over time.
00:10:04
Speaker
So nothing really had to change there, but there's still the unknown of when you go to school and all of a sudden you find yourself, you know, you've gone through a week where you have six cumulative hours of sleep and you're only eating two meals a day and your body's feeling super weak and your mind's starting to drift. You look all over and it doesn't matter how fit or how competent
00:10:28
Speaker
you know, the person was on day one. By day 58, every Ranger student looks the same. They're all tired, they're all grumpy, you know, no one really wants to work together anymore. Everyone's, you know, kind of sick of what they've been doing. People are forgetting the little things now. And so it was seeing that degradation over time that kind of cued me into the idea of, you know, how does this, you know, degrading ability over time relate to how we, you know, started this?
00:10:58
Speaker
And then the second gate to entry is the Ranger assessment and selection program, which for officers and our senior NCOs is a three week selection process that's super team driven and team oriented. So not to give away, you know, the
00:11:17
Speaker
the nuts and bolts of the selection for people that are going through it, but it's highly team focused. It's a lot of physical events that test you in a variety of ways. Not only long foot movements, but explosive drills, rope climbing, movements with kits, but just about everything you're doing, you're doing as a team and you're being assessed in your ability to not only contribute to the team, but to be a good team player, to lead when you're asked to lead and to follow, you know, when it's your turn to follow.
00:11:49
Speaker
And I would assume that even there must be a fairly high attrition rate for people going through even the Ranger School. Is that the case? Yeah, so Ranger School right now, from the individuals that come on day one to the individuals that graduate, I believe it's around 50% will make it through the full 62 days. And then this three-week assessment, what is there must be also some attrition that goes on during that?
00:12:17
Speaker
Yeah, so there is attrition. It's probably an 80% pass rate. It's a much higher pass rate because there's a vetting process that goes on just to show up to the selection itself. So you've already applied with a packet saying, this is who I am. You've written statements about why you want to join the range regiment. You have letters of recommendation and your evaluations from the past. So there's a pre-vetting program that goes on to try and establish that once you come,
00:12:47
Speaker
it becomes more of a validation of who you are on paper rather than them trying to figure out if you're the right fit. They're just trying to see, okay, this person that applied on paper is the same person that we see once we apply some stress and put them in a team-oriented environment.
00:13:06
Speaker
We've already gone through something that sounds incredibly stressful, the 62 days with no sleep, very little sleep that I think the wreck most of us. But a lot of our ultra runners, I'm sure can relate to the multi-day events with no sleep. So then before we, I want you to tell us more about this Best Ranger event, but what
00:13:29
Speaker
Drove, first of all, I'll obviously hear a high achiever so that can see what drove you to want to take part in this Best Ranger.
Entering the Best Ranger Competition
00:13:35
Speaker
How did that all come to light for you and find out about it and how long did it take you to prepare for it and that sort of thing?
00:13:44
Speaker
Yeah, so actually while I was at Ranger School was the first time I kind of found out about the Best Ranger Competition. So if you're in school and you have to recycle a phase because you didn't do something well enough and you have to retry one of the three phases of the school, there's this looming thing over everybody's head that you don't want to get stuck there for the Best Ranger Competition. Because if you get stuck there for the Best Ranger Competition, you basically become labor for the army for six weeks.
00:14:13
Speaker
dig the post holes that need to be dug, you prepare the obstacle courses, you paint all the stuff that needs to be painted, mark all the courses. And so you don't want that job, right? And I was in the class that had I recycled, I would have been, you know, sitting for Best Rangers. So coming out of school, the Best Ranger competition happened around that same weekend. And so I went and watched it for the first time.
00:14:40
Speaker
And immediately, the competitive side in me was turned on. It was watching guys apply all the different fundamentals of being a soldier. And no one task in the Best Ranger competition is extremely difficult to learn.
00:14:58
Speaker
But it's the culmination of all those little tasks and becoming an expert in your craft and all these little things that really excited me. Because at the end of the day, regardless of your job in the Army, I believe we're all soldiers first. And we should all have these core competencies and abilities to perform certain tasks as well as we can, because ultimately, it might mean the difference between mission success and mission failure at some point.
00:15:27
Speaker
So when was that that you watched your spectator? It was 2018. So I went and spectated in 2018. And then actually in 2019, I got my first opportunity to compete. And my partner and I, we trained diligently. He came from an Olympic lifting background. So we had some work to do to kind of convert him into an endurance athlete.
00:15:52
Speaker
Uh, but we did a pretty good job of, of converiam into an endurance athlete and he was super strong, fast. He, he was durable. Um, unfortunately on day one of the competition, it was a super humid day in Georgia and he ended up, uh, becoming a heat casualty with a core temp of one oh seven point eight. Um, and we couldn't, couldn't continue the competition. Sounds really dangerous. Oh my gosh. Wow. Yeah. So.
00:16:20
Speaker
One of the things you just commented on, the fact that you can take a strength and power speed athlete and turn them into an endurance athlete is something that I've seen over and over. It's a lot easier than going the other way. You pretty much can't go the other way. You couldn't take someone who's more of an endurance athlete, you're not going to turn them into an Olympic lifter with much success at all.
00:16:44
Speaker
And what I found too is when you take those individuals with a strength background and you start introducing them to the world of endurance, they have all the supplemental strength that they need to stay healthy through the training. They don't break down, they don't degrade, they don't run into the little niggles that other people are running into quite as often because they have this requisite of strength that is just holding their body together in a much more robust way.
00:17:13
Speaker
That certainly jives with my findings too. I think that one of the, I think I've said this in one of the books, that the endurance athlete uses strength as just one of the tools in the toolbox and it's primarily there to, we just want them to be able to perform better and stay healthy.
00:17:33
Speaker
rather than getting strong for strength's sake. And I think that's the difference between the approach that an endurance athlete takes with their strength training, excuse me, and the approach that, let's say, a strength athlete will take is, for them, they just wanna get stronger and stronger and stronger because that's the object of the game. Whereas for an endurance athlete, there's a certain level of strength beyond which it's not effective anymore, doesn't really enhance either
00:18:01
Speaker
your durability or your performance. But you're right, these guys that come in with a good strength background or men and women, I've seen it from all areas coming into working with uphill athlete, they tend to be very robust, be able to handle a pretty high workload.
00:18:21
Speaker
Absolutely. So then you let's talk a little bit about I mean, so you had this failure then on was that 2018 you said or 1919 and then did you try again before this success in 2021?
Overcoming Injuries and Challenges
00:18:39
Speaker
No, so then actually a year about removed from that competition, I was running on some trails, bombing down a downhill section of trail and I shattered my ankle. I hit a root just right. I heard a gunshot go off and I instantly was incapacitated.
00:19:01
Speaker
I was about two and a half miles down the trail, though, so I had no choice. It was starting to get dark. I tried to hobble back to my car. And by the time I got to the hospital, it was pretty clear I was going to need reconstructive surgery on my ankle to piece it back together. So they put a rod, nine screws, and a wire to kind of hold it all together again.
00:19:25
Speaker
And then I went into rehabilitation and watched the guys train up in 2020 and kind of tried to be in the gym when they were in the gym just for the motivation of watching those guys train. But it turned out to be COVID, everything shut down and they didn't host a competition in 2020.
00:19:49
Speaker
That must have been motivating too. I mean, I know that sometimes people, a setback can be a great motivator and sounds like that's a pretty significant setback that you suffered. So tell us more about the event itself and what it entails. You don't have to go into, I'm sure there are some things you can't even talk about, but maybe give us a general idea.
Inside the Best Ranger Competition
00:20:11
Speaker
Yeah, so the competition kind of as you alluded to earlier is a three day long competition and it runs semi-continuous. It is split up into about 30 separate events. So it doesn't matter if you cross the final finish line first, it's parceled into all of these smaller events in between. For example, the first day starts with an eight mile run and then goes into about a three and a half minute long obstacle course.
00:20:41
Speaker
And then just continues from there, events as far as swimming, marksmanship, your ability with demolitions or indirect fire systems, your ability to shoot a sniper rifle or long gun, weighted long movements. The first night is a 22 mile road march and the second night is an eight hour long land navigation or orienteering style event with your rucksack on.
00:21:09
Speaker
So the competition continually modulates between high intensity short duration spurts and longer more endurance based
00:21:21
Speaker
Events and it's really testing three sides of the soldier athlete model, right? It's testing your physical competence your tactical competence So your your ability to shoot move and communicate and then you're also your technical competence So there's some mountaineering events such as prusa climbing and rock climbing in there
00:21:40
Speaker
or your ability to call for indirect fire under stress, testing your technical competence, and assessing those three continuously. So you don't know what event is next, you don't know what the actual event is until you come up on the event, they brief you, here's what you got to do, and you begin to execute the event.
00:22:05
Speaker
And then with that, and the other thing that makes the event I think most challenging is that you're in a nutritionally restricted environment. So at the start of the competition, they gave us seven or eight oral rehydration packets of our choosing. So whatever brand you wanted to choose from, you could choose, but you only got eight of them.
00:22:28
Speaker
And you were only given seven MREs, meals ready to eat, the meals that come in a bag to be heated up, right? So you're restricted on your calories that you can have and you're restricted on your rehydration supplements. The only thing you're not restricted on is water. You can fill up on water whenever you see fit. But that makes it even more difficult. You know, I was trying to think of analogies before we talked, but imagine you're running a 50 mile mountain race.
00:22:59
Speaker
from start to finish. But within that 50 mile mountain race, there's two 400 meter segments, a vertical kilometer segment, and maybe a mile long trail segment that are all worth as much to determine the winner as the whole 50 mile race.
00:23:17
Speaker
Well, you've just completely changed the dynamic of that 50-mile race, right? No longer is it going to be who can sustain 50 miles the greatest, but now perhaps the person that's going to win the race is the person that can win those two 400-meter segments, the VK and the mile, and they don't have to win the 50-mile segment to win the race overall. Obviously, that concept doesn't really exist in the trail running world as a perfect parody, but
00:23:46
Speaker
you can see how it would change the dynamic of how you have to prepare, but also execute the event itself over time.
00:23:56
Speaker
That has a couple of similarities. I'm sure you're aware of the grand tours on bicycle racing where they'll have the first person across this line gets so many extra bonus seconds or minutes. They do the same thing.
00:24:18
Speaker
cross-country ski racing where when it's a pack style start where they'll have the line in the snow and the first person to get to that line, even though the group is skiing generally as a pack, there'll be a massive sprint to get to this line first because then you get bonus seconds for that. So I think that those are the two that I can think of offhand where there's this mix of the endurance and then the speed and power that comes with those things.
00:24:47
Speaker
Yeah. And so we're talking over those three days for the best render competition, you know, averaging about 70 to 80 miles. Obviously it changes, you know, from year to year. Um,
00:24:59
Speaker
But kind of like you alluded to in the Tour de France, the guy that wins the green jersey never wins the GC hunt. It's just impossible. So the same thing happens in the Best Ranger competition. Where are you going to hemorrhage your loss in order to try and gain the most benefit? And the Best Ranger competition offers a pretty unique opportunity in that it weights all of the individual events differently.
00:25:27
Speaker
So for example, the eight mile run might be worth a weight of one. So a 52 team start and it's only worth one. If you win it, you get the 52 points times one. But a three gun event might be worth six. So you would get 52 times six, 312 points, you know, for that win.
00:25:50
Speaker
So you're constantly trying to pick your spots and pick, where should I push? Where should I kind of rest? Where is it worthwhile to go to the well in this event? And then can I replicate that? When's the next big event that I would have to push that hard on? So it becomes a tactician's game within the competition.
00:26:14
Speaker
And do you have to make those decisions on the fly because you don't even know what these events are until you show up for that event, correct? Or do you have some ideas beforehand that, oh, we're really great marksmen and so we should try to win this event to get those points?
00:26:34
Speaker
You have some idea. So the week leading up to the competition, they do brief you generally what the events are. But let's say it's a marksmanship event. For instance, one of the three gun ranges last year, they didn't show us the range until the day of. So they just explained, you know, you'll shoot pistol first, shotgun, rifle, and then finish with pistol again.
00:26:55
Speaker
But until you got there, you didn't know where the targetry sat. You didn't know how far the shots were going to be. You knew the round counts that they had given you for each weapon, but you don't know the specifics. Or the night road march on day one was an unknown distance road march. So they said, hey, we're going to end day one with a night road march. Unknown distance. And it turned into a 22-mile slog in the middle of the night.
00:27:25
Speaker
Sounds fun. I'm sure a lot of people can relate to that. So now let's jump into your experience with this competition. Obviously you had a really good partner, sounds like. You might want to give a little shout out to him. But then take us through your experience in that.
00:27:45
Speaker
Yeah, so in 2019, when I competed, an individual I knew from college, Alistair Keys, competed as well for the 173rd Airborne Division, or brigade. And he had taken second place in the competition that year, and I was ecstatic for him. He comes from a collegiate wrestling background.
00:28:07
Speaker
And it's really the type of guy that can just grind every day. I mean, I come from an endurance background and I was kind of templating a lot of our training and our buildup. And I was absolutely tired, absolutely fatigued from the volume of work we were putting in. Every day we'd come to work and I'd ask him, how are you feeling? And he'd say, I feel like a hundred bucks.
00:28:32
Speaker
Even if he didn't, he would just overtly lie to me and fake his way through it. And he was durable and he was willing to constantly put in the work.
00:28:43
Speaker
Then the other thing about Al is that he has an incredible grip strength from years of wrestling. And the competition really lends itself to a lot of heavy carries, a lot of obstacle proficiency. Pistol shooting relies on your grip a lot, so he was pretty well rounded.
00:29:03
Speaker
in what we needed to be successful. His proficiency over obstacles anytime we had it was second to none. And he had an ability to kind of rest when other people had to work harder. If we were climbing a rope, his heart rate would come down 10 beats a minute.
00:29:20
Speaker
where my heart rate would spike on the rope. And that ability kept us at a pretty even parity as we were working together. Because when I was working, he was resting. And when I was resting, he was working. So it became a good relationship. But we were over actually in Afghanistan.
00:29:41
Speaker
And there wasn't a whole lot going on at the time. Things had started drawing down. We had become more restricted in what we were able to do over there. And we knew the Best Ranger competition was coming up. And I was contacted by some of my leadership to, hey, do you want to try this again? And I said, I absolutely do want to try it again, but I'm only going to go to the competition if I can have Al as my partner.
00:30:07
Speaker
And a few phone calls later, we were on planes back to Fort Benning, Georgia to begin the train up. So that was a super special time in our lives. We were actually just texting last night about, as the army does, it's now split us up and we miss having that training partner that was so durable and willing to put in consistent volume.
00:30:36
Speaker
That partnership is a special thing to have endured that together and to spend all those hours training together and then competing together like that. It's a wonderful thing that bonds a lot of us with lifelong friends. So then, when does this competition take place?
00:30:56
Speaker
So the competition takes place in April, and most units that are serious about doing well really begin training up November, December. You'll start physically preparing, but then in January, you go all in. Because of the amount of time you need at the range with the technical competency things, the volume of things you need to learn and be proficient at to do well at the competition, it just takes time.
00:31:26
Speaker
And then with the physical requirement of the competition, it becomes an all day job, you know, preparing for the competition. So you kind of get put on special duty orders, we call them, and you get told like, hey, your job for the next three or four months is prepare for this competition.
00:31:44
Speaker
And luckily being at the 75th Range Regiment and having a history of doing pretty well in the competition, we had an organization built around us that supported that train up. We had awesome strength coaches that taught me a lot about, hey, a gym session doesn't need to be two hours like your run is. You can see huge returns in 40 minutes of super concentrated focused work.
00:32:13
Speaker
you know, the workouts that they had given us to kind of test the different systems of, you know, modularity between running to an oak horse, throwing on the rock and seeing how your body starts to feel as it's switching through these different modes of performance. And we had the backside support that went and set up the ranges for us to make sure we were able to shoot, you know, and have the ammunition necessary to
00:32:42
Speaker
to practice diligently. So it very much kind of gets modeled like a professional athlete's life for for three or four months. Yeah, it sounds exactly like professional athletes I've worked with. So that's a great opportunity. So then the day arrives and walk us through a little bit of you know, where there are some up there obviously must have been some ups and downs and probably the downs were the most memorable I would imagine.
Strategies for Endurance and Performance
00:33:11
Speaker
Yeah, so I think we had done a pretty good job of preparing in 2021. Al and I went in with the idea and the concept that's now prevailing in the way I train guys for the competition, or just in general, is that everybody can come to day one, being a stud.
00:33:34
Speaker
You can be the CrossFit athlete's stud, you can be the running stud, you can be whatever kind of stud you want, but everyone's going to show up to the competition, it shows up to the competition because one, you have to be in the Army, two, you have to be Ranger qualified. So now we're talking about 1% of the Army. And then from that 1% of the Army, they only select 52 teams.
00:33:56
Speaker
Right, so you apply, you get selected. All right, you're in. You're one of 52 teams to represent the Army that year and your units. Everyone's going to come to the competition having trained in some capacity, and they're going to come in pretty good shape. But the crux of the competition is to, like any endurance competition, is to degrade the least over time.
00:34:18
Speaker
There might be people that could beat us on an obstacle course day one on a three minute high interval session.
00:34:28
Speaker
But can they beat us on day two when they've already got 50 miles on their legs? So in order to prepare for that, we just started stacking volume. In our biggest week, we hit 100 miles in five days within, I think, 15 additional miles on the weekend. So 115 over seven days in a peak week. And that was between running and rucking. So although, you know,
00:34:54
Speaker
by mileage, a lot of runners are doing that week in and week out. Some of those sessions were two or three hour long ruck marches only accumulating eight to 12 miles at a time. So the time on feet became much greater and we were putting in about 20 hours a week of just physical volume. So when we got to the competition, we felt confident in our ability to not degrade as much as anybody else.
00:35:24
Speaker
And we relied on that. So day one, the first run, we came in fourth place and kind of allowed three teams ahead of us to run away from us. And we were fine with that because we realized, all right, they're expending extra energy.
00:35:43
Speaker
for these additional points that aren't worth as much. But we know event two, this obstacle course, we've got a better chance of doing well and it's weighted higher. So let's relax the run, let's hit the obstacle course. And we just came up with a plan for every event on how we would execute, in what order, if it was marksmanship, who would shoot what, in what order. So you come up to a bunch of steel targetry,
00:36:08
Speaker
Al would take the first shot down the center, and when that center target would fall, I knew I had everything left of the target, and he had everything right of the target. And it becomes very much a rehearsed drill, event to event. And we stuck to our game plan. We had a rough night, night one, when we went into some of the nighttime shooting events, where we didn't really shoot well.
00:36:33
Speaker
And then on night two for night land navigation, we had covered about 24 miles with our packs and weapons on the land navigation course and in some pretty undulating terrain. And I remember both Al and I looked at each other and I think almost everybody can relate to this at some point in a long race, but we looked at each other and we're like, never again.
00:36:57
Speaker
Like this, this is absolutely terrible. Let's just end it here. Let's like finish this competition as strong as we can. Let's go for the win, but like, man, never again. And then of course, you know, the end of the competition comes and things start really going our way. And we start stacking up event wins back to back and yeah.
00:37:20
Speaker
we're fortunate enough to walk away with the victory. And then, of course, you wake up the next day and right away, Al's calling me, he's like, dude, we got to try this again. We have to. It's the midnight terrors in an ultra endurance event that I think played the hardest on the mind. And we definitely felt that.
00:37:44
Speaker
The thing that you initially contacted me about, I think I'd like to jump into that conversation next if we can. Now that I think people have a pretty darn good understanding of what this all entailed and how you managed to train for it and whatnot, but I'm intrigued by the fact that you then took a look at the results from this competition
00:38:08
Speaker
to try to figure out who, what kind of background the athletes had in order, who degraded the least over time, because that's, as you said, and it's, I'm thinking intuitively obvious, everyone's going to degrade during this, this thing. And the degradation in the high skill, high intensity components of it is going to show up dramatically because one of the first things that goes away with fatigue is fine motor control.
00:38:38
Speaker
And then of course, and obviously that's really important in any kind of high skill activity like shooting, but also let's say technical climbing or decision making processes and things like that begin to deteriorate pretty rapidly. So you did this study that I want you to explain to people where you looked at this degradation over the course of the event. So why don't you explain how you, first of all,
00:39:06
Speaker
What caused you to want to do that study? And then secondly, what were you looking at in terms of analyzing that data?
00:39:23
Speaker
What kind of got me dialed in on the idea of physical capacity and then specifically aerobic capacity and degradation of fine motor skills was on the final day of the Best Ranger competition, there was a three gun range that moved from grenade launcher to a 50 caliber machine gun to an anti-tank grenade missile launcher, right?
00:39:51
Speaker
And we did not do well for our standards, right? We got done and I was like, that took us a long time to go through. And we walk up to the scores table and we had gone last through that range. And I was like, what does that put us? And he's like, you're second at this range.
00:40:11
Speaker
And I was like, how can that be? We just took such a long time executing these tasks. Why is it that we're in second place? And I was basing it off of performances I knew we had had fresh in training when we replicated some of the things we thought we were going to encounter in the competition. So I kind of used that as baseline. But I was like, how can it be that we are still in a position to take second at this, even though we had what in my mind at the time was an atrocious,
00:40:40
Speaker
run. So after the competition, kind of sat with it for a while and it kept mulling at me. And so I got hands on our finisher data for all the events and contacted some of the other guys I knew that have competed in the past. And I was like, hey, can I have your guys' finisher data from years past? And
00:41:03
Speaker
What I did was I come from an accounting and finance background, so I've always joked around saying Excel is my best friend. All I did is take the data from those events and look at specific events. The first run is pretty indicative of aerobic
00:41:24
Speaker
Although no one's really trying to win it, people fall into place of where they believe they are compared to the field. So your top runners are going to go win that first run or be well up in contention. And your guys who know, hey, we're not a running team, they're going to save themselves as much as they can on those events.
00:41:47
Speaker
We based it first on that and then the night road march and took those two groups as how are people performing in these two groups kind of took an average of those two to identify where they stand in their aerobic ability.
00:42:03
Speaker
Then what I did is looked at their ability to shoot from one day to day three or the first day to day two and looked at how did you guys place after 10 miles of movement versus how did you place when we were at 40 or 50 miles of movement? And what we found is that those that are in a higher aerobic
00:42:31
Speaker
ability to grade less over time in their ability to shoot, in their ability to conduct a basic marksmanship qualification or to run a three gun range. And of course, there are some external variables that you can't control. It's by no means a perfect study, but it was pretty clear that although the best aerobic team might not start out as the best shooters,
00:42:58
Speaker
they will consistently shoot at the level that you brought them in. Where teams with a lower aerobic capacity may have been the best shooters on day one. But by the time we got to day two, they were making so many mistakes at the range, or they were missing so many targets at the range that they were no longer in the top 5% of that event. But now they were in the bottom half of the event.
00:43:26
Speaker
And so then that got me thinking, you know, the competition is always put out to be, hey, it's a third physical, it's a third technical, it's a third tactical. Well, that changes the dynamic of how you train for it, right? Because if you acknowledge the fact that you will degrade over time if you're not as aerobically proficient,
00:43:48
Speaker
Then the competition is no longer a third physical, a third technical and a third tactical. It becomes 50% physical, 25% technical and 25% tactical.
00:43:58
Speaker
Because if you can train to not degrade over time, you will overcome teams that come in as better shooters, as better tacticians who can tie knots and do demolition calculation faster, fresh, but they no longer have the capacity to do so once they fatigue so dramatically because their aerobic base isn't there to sustain their efforts long-term.
00:44:27
Speaker
One of the things that really intrigues me about this study, first of all, is that you did it, and you have this data set that you, sort of a captive audience, that you could actually collect real world empirical data from. Because this is a theory that, this is an idea that, I know Steve and I, when we wrote our first book, we knew this work, we knew that people's, you know,
00:44:51
Speaker
Higher skilled higher cognitive function higher intensity activities were all better performed by people who were less fatigued and I think I even
00:45:04
Speaker
I even wrote, and there's a little ditty in the first book, I grabbed this quote, which I think is credited to Vince Lombardi, which is, fatigue makes cowards of us all. And I think it's so true that because we become intimidated by challenges that might otherwise, or we become poor at adapting to the challenges or meeting the challenges that would arise
00:45:27
Speaker
that we would otherwise be able to have handled when we were not fatigued. And it's something that Steve and I addressed in a, we were part of a, we were asked to speak at a conference on winter warfare with special operations folks and actually where you're based now in Colorado Springs.
Military Relevance of the Competition
00:45:48
Speaker
about four years ago, dealing with the NATO special operations groups that were represented there. And it was one of the things that jumped out at me was
00:45:59
Speaker
the Norwegians, they knew this in the back of their hand. They understood this part really well. They come from a country that's famous for training endurance athletes, and they had taken those same concepts and applied them to their special operations groups, whereas some of the other special operations groups that we talked to, or some of the trainers and leaders from those groups,
00:46:22
Speaker
They didn't understand that concept nearly as well because they hadn't lived it like you have and these other Norwegian guys, especially. They were like, of course, they all had skiing backgrounds, so it was easy for me to relate to them. So the question that arises then for me from this, this satisfies me because it confirms this idea that I've held for a long time.
00:46:48
Speaker
How much does your job look like this competition? Is this competition a good test of arranger's ability in the real world?
00:47:04
Speaker
So, I mean, that's an excellent question. I think, you know, in some ways it is an excellent test of, you know, the real world stress that can apply. Of course, you can never replicate the stress of a combat scenario. But the military tries to get as close as it can through food, sleep deprivation and physical exertion to kind of replicate what the body and mind go through in those.
00:47:29
Speaker
in those circumstances. So as far as that, I think it's as close as you can get in a three day competition style format. And I think it does test the important functions of what being a soldier is. You have to move
00:47:45
Speaker
you have to move distance, you have to execute a task, you have to continue to move, and you have to continue to execute a task. And so in that way, I think it does replicate. But I think, you know, and what you might be leading to is that we've had a shift in our, you know, special operations and our military completely over the last, you know, 60, 70 years. That's pretty drastic. And that we've got to enjoy because we've had a
00:48:12
Speaker
significant advantage over the adversaries we faced. I was just looking last night, the average body weight of a soldier during World War II was about 145 pounds.
00:48:25
Speaker
The average body weight of a soldier today is about 185 pounds of a male soldier. We've seen 40 additional pounds added to our soldiers. And if you talk to non-commissioned officers that have been in the Army for a long time, I think they'll echo the fact they've watched the Army evolve into a more strength-oriented force. And we've enjoyed that because right now,
00:48:54
Speaker
For example, two years ago in Afghanistan, you could pick up a ranger unit, you could fly them by helicopter to the target. You could drop them off relatively close to the target because we have such technological advantage over the adversary that we're not worried about that helicopter being shot down or degraded.
00:49:18
Speaker
And you can basically drop them at the front steps of the enemy, where the soldiers only job now is to kick in that door, go into that house, execute a mission, retrieve what they need to retrieve, and then return to the helicopter, exfil, and fly back.
00:49:36
Speaker
Because we've enjoyed that level of advantage, we've allowed ourselves to kind of go away as a force from the ability to move. And we've started to focus a lot on strength and power and building up your squat and deadlift. And while it's super important to be strong as a soldier, it's also important to be well-rounded. And that's what I think the best Ranger competition really gets right.
00:50:04
Speaker
is that while you're asked to move 22 miles under a 50-pound pack one night, which is very much an endurance event, the next event might be a heavy carry of some sort, a 200, 300-pound object that you and your partner are trying to move together for a certain amount of distance that requires strength and the ability to be well-rounded. And then come out of that with the
00:50:32
Speaker
the grip fatigue and the fatigue in your traps from carrying a pack and be able to put a pistol in your hand and deliver effective rounds. I think what it gets at is what the soldier was meant to be, especially the infantry army soldier, and that is an individual who is able to move, shoot, and communicate for long periods at a time, over distance, and consistently give the same results over and over.
00:51:02
Speaker
And now after your success at this, I'm sure it garnered some accolades and attention. And I think you told me earlier that you were coaching some guys. Are these people that you have been assigned to coach? Are they guys that came to you because of your success? How has that worked out for you? Yeah, so it's about half and half right now. So here with the 4th Infantry Division, I've been assigned to coach some individuals.
00:51:31
Speaker
And we're having a lot of fun coaching some guys that have never really put their foot.
00:51:38
Speaker
in the endurance world before. And then I also have a few athletes that reached out and wanted advice. And how would you structure a plan to attack the competition? And my advice is pretty consistently the same thing for soldiers. It doesn't have to be anything sexy. You just have to start getting on your feet more and more often and include the peripheral strength that you need in order to stay healthy and endure the
00:52:05
Speaker
the competition, but there is a max level of strength necessary to perform. If you're above that max level of strength, you just have additional strength that is not necessary for the competition. But you can't go to the competition with a max amount of aerobic base. There's no such thing as too much aerobic capacity. There is not. There's no stealing to which you'll get that you'll be like, oh, it'll be a walk in the park.
00:52:35
Speaker
you'll be okay. You can't see that. So with the guys, what we've been doing is just long, slow movements, time on feet. We're trying to build from six hours a week of moving on the feet to 17 or 18 or 19 hours on the feet moving in a week. But a lot of that is done in very slow, controlled fashions. And I constantly try and beat into the guys,
00:53:03
Speaker
that I don't care how fast you're moving. You could run 12-minute pace today. It would not make a difference to me as long as what you're feeling is easy and recovery. But that's a total mind shift for an individual in the military. You join the military, especially if you want to compete in the competition. It's because you're a go-getter. You want to do the hard thing.
00:53:30
Speaker
You want to move fast, you want to be powerful, you want to perform to a high level every day. So it's kind of reframing the idea of, although the Ranger standard is five miles, eight minute mile pace for every Ranger, regardless of their job.
00:53:50
Speaker
I don't need you running eight minute mile pace every day. In fact, if you can only run 3730 right now for five miles, I don't want you to be anywhere close to eight minute miles today because then you're in a sub-tempo effort. And if you do that day over day, you're gonna degrade, you're not going to improve. So it's trying to shift the mentality of soldiers that, hey, sometimes less and easier is more productive than hard and difficult day after day.
00:54:21
Speaker
I understand that being a difficult mindset to overcome. What sort of pushback or resistance have you encountered? Obviously, these guys that are coming to you for advice, they think you have a good idea or two. Are they giving some pushback or where do you see pushback on this?
00:54:45
Speaker
So I mean, it's from a variety of lenses, right? Some of the guys come from, for instance, a CrossFit background, and I have no qualms or quarrels with, you know, if that's what you love to do, and it's going to keep you, you know, healthy and fit and active, then by all means, go do it.
00:55:02
Speaker
You know, for the competition and I've heard you allude to this on your podcast and in your book, right? There's a correlation between VO2 and performance that's not very predictive of success, right? But if we look at someone's, you know, lactic threshold or their aerobic capacity,
00:55:24
Speaker
There is more of a correlation there between those high-level athlete and success there. It's trying to get them to buy off on this idea that, hey, if we do this VO2 work every day, it doesn't mean you're going to be successful over hours of the competition.
00:55:44
Speaker
But if we do hours of slow monotonous work every day and we just try and keep it consistent, you're going to see improvement. I think a big pushback that comes when you're not familiar with endurance athletics is the feeling you feel as you enter peak weeks, right before you take your little cutback week to kind of reset.
00:56:05
Speaker
You feel sluggish and slow and you can't quite perform the way you used to perform and you're really waiting to get that second wind as you enter your next cycle. That's super frustrating for some guys who are used to, wow, at the start of this train up, I could back squat 450 pounds.
00:56:26
Speaker
I can't back squat 450 pounds right now. It's getting them to understand that right now in the training, you don't need to back squat 450 pounds. But once we start tapering off this volumous effort, I think what you're going to find pretty quickly is when you go to squat, it'll still be there. The neuromuscular familiarity that you've created
00:56:48
Speaker
for that system isn't just going to leave you overnight and you'll still be able to perform at a high level when you're required to and when you're fresh and tapered and actually asked to perform. That gets to a fundamental concept of training that I think isn't, I think it's well understood by people who use it, but it's not universally understood or used is that idea of capacity training versus utilization training.
00:57:17
Speaker
where when you're training to build a capacity, your short-term performance will degrade during that while you're building capacity. Whereas when you're using utilization type training, you're utilizing the capacity that you currently have on that day for that type of training. And so we can think of capacity training is
00:57:45
Speaker
to help you perform better at some time out in the future with expected lesser results between now and then. So it's like in your build-up to running a marathon or running some long-distance race, you probably shouldn't expect PRs and whatnot during that build-up period, that capacity building.
00:58:09
Speaker
And so capacity training is this looking into the future, whereas utilization training is like, let's maximize those capacities you have today. And it will enhance your short term performance utilization training, but often at the the result will be
00:58:28
Speaker
a decrease in capacity. So we have to balance the utilization and capacity training and that's a trick. I think that's one of the the arts of coaching is being able to balance that. But it sounds like you guys balanced it well and I'm sure you're balancing it pretty darn well with the guys you're coaching now. Has your success caused, excuse me, but don't go ahead and interject what you had.
00:58:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think one of the big things I've tried doing with the guys that I think we're seeing some success with is repeatable workouts. Regardless of what we're doing during the week to build volume and such, we're going to have a couple touch points each week that are familiar to the guys.
00:59:14
Speaker
And they might not be every week, we're repeating the same thing, but we're kind of repeating everything in a three-week cycle. So for instance, we have a five-mile run, five-mile ruck, five-mile run event that we're doing just about every three weeks. And the guys, you know, the first time they did it, they went out super hard, their first five-mile run, and they paid for it on the five-mile ruck and the second five-mile run.
00:59:39
Speaker
So the second time, it's now, hey, go out and run that first five miles as fast as you did that second five miles and see how the relationship with the workout changes now that you're running negative splits throughout the workout instead of dying to a certain capacity.
01:00:02
Speaker
And the guys are really Linking up with with that idea and then we have a short little obstacle course that we've run once a week It takes the guys about four or five minutes to to get through so it's a short little hit It's about a total of a quarter mile of running with you know, a dozen obstacles in it But that way the guys can see
01:00:26
Speaker
The first time they did it, they were like at eight, nine minutes. Now they're at, I've got results right in front of me, the three and a half to four minute mark. And some of that is just familiarity with the obstacles and the sequences and how your body feels. But part of that too is, the first time I didn't give them any instruction, I just said,
01:00:46
Speaker
I want you to hit the obstacle course as hard as you can. And what did you see? Guy took off right away, jacked up his heart rate, hit the first set of walls, and now he can't recover. And just the second time was, hey, I want you to run this, but run it as if you're at a 90% effort.
01:01:04
Speaker
And right away, we saw a two-minute drop in performance. Just from saving some effort for the obstacles, or just mentally being in a different space of, I'm not working that hard right now. I'm in my float tempo phase right now.
01:01:20
Speaker
And we've seen success with that. So it's teaching the mindset of how to be competitive while still have that tactician side of you for each individual event so that you can maximize your performance in that little thing. And guys have been seeing the success there. So I think they're excited about the trajectory we're headed.
01:01:40
Speaker
That's always really rewarding as a coach and as an athlete to see these performance gains, especially when you can see performance gains during a capacity building period. That's always really exciting because you know when you start to taper a little bit or when you start doing a little more utilization training, the results are going to
01:02:00
Speaker
increased dramatically. You're going to see the big jump in performance. So that's cool. Where are you going to take this next? I mean, it sounds like you should be promoted to be the sort of the professional trainer for the best ranger guys. Is that part of your future or does Army have other plans for you?
01:02:24
Speaker
I'll continue to coach guys for the best range of competition as long as guys want to talk about it. I'm very much of the belief that this is counterintuitive to the rest of the coaching industry, but my job as a coach right now is to give guys the tools
01:02:43
Speaker
to go out and be successful on their own or to go out back to their units and make their units fitter and better. And to really bring to the forefront this idea that, yes, endurance training is slow. Yes, it's monotonous. But if you build consistency, you can build something really special. People always joke around in the army that,
01:03:09
Speaker
our senior leaders, you know, value runners more than, you know, they do deadlifters or, you know, you run a fast two mile and, and, you know, leaderships had turned to, wow, that guy, you know, just went under 10 minutes. What does he do? But I think that happens because people recognize the level of consistency and monotony necessary to, you know, conduct endurance athletics at, at, you know, a higher level. Um,
01:03:37
Speaker
And so I'm open to, you know, if whoever wants to talk about it, I'm an open book about it. I don't believe in, you know, there's a lot of secrecy around the competitions and guys want to hold their, their training plans, you know, close hold and they want to, you know, kind of obscure it from the rest of the world, but
01:03:56
Speaker
In my mind, that's doing no good for the force as a whole. And the more we can share it and can get out this idea that the slow monotonous train is not only going to benefit you aerobically, but it's going to benefit your technical and tactical skills and your ability to maintain those skills long term in a degraded environment. I think that's the key to building a successful force.
01:04:19
Speaker
Well, your philosophy aligns exactly with that of a bill athlete, which is to try to disseminate this information as openly and as freely as possible. And I've said often, I didn't invent any of this stuff that's in our books or on our website. I've kind of tried to collate it into a usable body of knowledge that we can apply to these different unconventional type sports that most of the folks are interested in. But nothing is new.
01:04:49
Speaker
Here and you know I learned what I learned through the openness of other coaches and their willingness to share what they'd found success with and what hadn't worked well for them and then
01:05:02
Speaker
Of course, through my many, many years of trial and error and failing and trying to figure things out, why didn't that work? And I think it's a wonderful thing that you're doing in terms of being willing to share. And I'm not going to give out your email or anything, because I'm sure you would be inundated with requests at this point.
01:05:24
Speaker
But it's it's cool that you you got this that sort of ethic that you want to share this I think that's a wonderful thing to have and it's I it's
01:05:35
Speaker
It's more rewarding, I think, than holding your cards close to your chest and trying to build up some sort of mystique about, you know, oh, I've got the secret. And I mean, anybody who knows anything about endurance training knows it ain't rocket science. I mean, it's much more difficult to train somebody for speed and power
01:05:55
Speaker
than it is to train somebody for endurance. It's a much harder challenge as a coach. So I don't think we as endurance coaches can put ourselves on any kind of pedestal. Well, Vince, I want to be respectful of your time. I've kept you on for a little longer than an hour now. And what's any parting words of wisdom or anything we haven't covered yet that you'd like to touch on?
01:06:25
Speaker
I wouldn't say I have any profound words of wisdom to impart to anybody, but for sure, especially if you're a young military athlete and you're motivated to go seek some of these hard selections, I would recommend 100% to do it. And even if you don't think you're going to get selected or you're going to get picked up, it's better to try and know than to not try and not know.
01:06:53
Speaker
Um, so, uh, you know, the, the basis are, are all over and kind of like you alluded to, we invented nothing of this, you know, uh, when my partner and I were training up for the competition, I was reading and rereading uphill athlete. Um, you know, the, the pages in there, so some other training books I had and just trying to be a sponge for, you know, the knowledge that already exists out there, um, and, and get as much of it as you can. And, and.
01:07:17
Speaker
and test it out and be consistent and be willing to endure two or three training blocks of one type of training before you make a decision one way or another because it's not built overnight, but it will come with consistency.
01:07:34
Speaker
I think there's certainly no better teacher than experience and being curious and being that sponge and being a student of the sport. You need to understand why you're doing what you're doing otherwise it's just especially because in endurance training as we've
01:07:55
Speaker
pointed out in this conversation, a lot of it's counterintuitive. Like you would think you need to train at your endurance limit every day. Well, we both know and many people know very well that that's a quick recipe for disaster. So I think that, you know, understanding the principles is a really key component. And clearly you do have that. And I can tell you must be a great coach. So those guys that are working with you, if they listen to this, I think you're pretty lucky to have a guy like Vince helping you out.
01:08:27
Speaker
Well, thanks again, and maybe we can do this again some other time. Oh, before I leave you though, are you planning to go back to another Best Ranger? Maybe in the future.
01:08:42
Speaker
They've imposed a rule that you can only do it three times in your career. So I've done two attempts with one my partner being a heat casualty and one winning the competition. And the competition also just requires so much time and devotion to do it well.
01:09:00
Speaker
that I wanted to give my wife a little time off from the nights of me tying knots at the dinner table or dry firing my pistol in the living room while we're watching Netflix so she can relax a little bit and not have to stress out about my stress.
01:09:20
Speaker
That's a pretty smart move. Domestic tranquility is a really important component. Having familial support when you're training for some big objective like this is so critical that, yeah, it takes a team to do this. And you really need support from those that are close to you to pull it off.
01:09:39
Speaker
Absolutely. And I'll never forget during the competition, because I had verbally rehearsed everything so much, she was coming over to me during the competition and like whispering me my verbal cues for certain events. And it was like, thank you so much, because my mind is not working right now in those little keys, but we're gonna have some time off so she can recover to it. And maybe we'll go back again in a few years and give it another run.
01:10:02
Speaker
Yeah, she definitely probably needs that time off too. Well, again, it's been wonderful chatting with you. I really appreciate your taking the time and sharing this knowledge with us. I think there's a ton of gems in what we've just talked about and the information you've conveyed that are applicable, obviously, directly to the tactical world, but also to the more traditional
01:10:26
Speaker
uphill athlete type folks that we that we have coming to us and are interested in what we do so thanks for sharing that Vince. Thank you so much it's been an honor Scott. You're really welcome thank you bye. Thanks for joining us today for more information about what we do please go to our website uphillathlete.com