Episode 42 – Building Elite Tactical Performance

Jon Becker: My guest today is Brittany Loney, the founder and CEO of Elite Cognition. Brittany has almost 20 years of experience training high performing operators from communities as diverse as elite warriors, professional Olympic athletes, high level coaches, and corporate executives. She also has over 14 years of experience training special operations forces and was the first cognitive performance coach embedded with the United States Special Operations Command, tactical human optimization, and a rapid rehabilitation and reconditioning program, also known as Thor 3.

Her work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, peer reviewed academic journals, textbooks, success magazines, SOCOM, softcast, and various other programs. In addition, Brady has been a panel member or guest speaker at Global Soft Week, Special Operations Medical Association, SOCOM's Wellness Week, Air Force Air Education and Training Command Learning Professionals Consortium, women in SOF symposium, and countless other professional conferences.

Brittney has a PhD in educational psychology and learning systems from the Florida State University, an MA in kinesiology with an emphasis on sports psychology from California State University, Fresno, and MS in exercise science from Florida State University and a BS in criminal justice from Texas State University, where she was also an NCAA Division one basketball player.

Brittney lives her profession, spending much of her time working out ultra running, hiking, paddling, boarding, and researching neuroscience, performance, and cognition. I was first introduced to Brittany by some of our nation's best tactical operators. Her work with US SOF units is unique in its approach to improving operator performance through physical, cognitive, and emotional training. I'm extremely excited to have her on the podcast because the broad scope and structure of her work will actually lay a foundation for several episodes to come on improving operator performance.

I hope you enjoy my chat with Brittany Loney!

My name is Jon Becker.

For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units. As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations.

The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.

Welcome to The Debrief!

Brittany, thanks so much for being with me today! I'm excited to talk to you!

Brittany Loney: I'm excited as well! Thank you for having me!

Jon Becker: So why don't we? I mean, I read your resume in the intro, but let's kind of start with Britney's origin story. Like, how do you get interested in cognition? And then how do you end up working with tactical operators?

Brittany Loney: So way back in college, I was playing basketball, and I got four major head injuries that gave me brain damage on scans. And the last one, I was told by the neurologist that I'll never play basketball again. And I had thought basketball was my present, my future. It was really all that was ever on my mind.

So I ended up seeing a counselor. At the time that my coach made me go see, I was very reluctant at first because I was always that athlete in the background who was thinking, the cognitive isn't for me. That's for people who can't physically hack it. You know, any excuse.

I mean, I was, you know, an arrogant 2021 year old. And then I get some sense knocked into me. I go see a counselor, and I really did need it. And he introduces me to performance psychology. And at first I was like, no, thank you. And I did tell him exactly my words of, that's for people who can't physically hack it. And he looked at me and he goes, guess what, you can't anymore. And I was like, well, touched. That was a good response.

So I will go and research whatever you want me to research now. So I go and I research performance psychology. And I actually fell in love with the field. And my coach at the time was awesome. She kept me involved with the team and she had me take the freshman and I could start practicing these new techniques I was learning about performance psychology, and I had them start with imagery and mental rehearsals and those type of things.

And I actually switched my complete trajectory of my career. I wanted to be a defense attorney ever since I was little. And I gave up that. I finished the degree, but I ended up going another route, and it was studying the brain and how it performs best. So I went to grad school in that direction, and I actually tried to join every service, and I was denied by every service because of my head injuries. I mean, it made sense, but I always had this draw to the military.

I was in JROTC when I was in high school. Like, it was just, it felt like who I was. And then when I was denied, I kind of gave up on that aspect as well. I was like, well, I guess I'll work with athletes. But I went to a conference and it was while I was in grad school, and they were looking for people to work with the army. And the army had just started up their army center for enhanced performance. It stemmed out of West Point. And I got hired on. I actually left grad school early and I told them, I'll finish my dissertation while I'm there. And they're like, no, you won't.

Ten years later, I did end up finishing. It was a lot more delayed than expected, but I went to Fort Bragg, now Fort Liberty, in 2010, and that's where it all started. And I really fell in love with the field in that community because I was working with people I really respected and I respected the service. And it instilled this character based performance because my site manager was very much on the character side. So that's where everything got launched, was from head injuries to changing a career field to a conference. And then I was at Fort Liberty.

Jon Becker: Well, I think one of the things that, so we share a common friend that introduced us, who's in one of the world's most elite units, put it that way. And one of the things that he said when he first said, og, you've got to talk to Britney is he said, this is not psychology to make you forget how your mom acted. This is psychology to make your brain work function better. It started me on this deep dive about performance psychology.

I’m familiar with it from athletics, I’m familiar with it from racing cars and that. But it's a really interesting field, and I don't think that the majority of people, even in the tactical community, are aware how much effort us SOCOM is putting into building better warriors.

Brittany Loney: Yeah, they're putting a lot. They're putting their money where the mouth is. They started, gosh, probably before I even got to third group. I was actually the first performance psychologist with third group, and during that time, it was thor three. And there was no Potif at that time. And everything was just kind of fizzling upward of, you know, where this thing could go.

And then when Potif came, it went across the branches and it went across also the different disciplines of strength and conditioning, performance, dietitians, physical therapy, and then became cognitive performance. And then it built from there to spiritual performance and behavioral science and, yeah, it really, really expanded. And they're putting a lot of investment into that program.

Jon Becker: For those that don't know, what is Potif?

Brittany Loney: Preservation of the force and families, it is the performance, human performance, and also behavioral aspects of how do we preserve and enhance the performance of the force and then also including their families in that.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So the idea being build the best warrior, we can support them as best we can and try to make them last and also hopefully allow them to leave service and resume a normal life unbroken from what they've done.

Brittany Loney: Exactly. Exactly.

Jon Becker: I think it's probably not a bad idea for us to give a big picture look at your work and kind of what the objectives that you drive towards when you're working with a team or unit, what are the big picture objectives in what you're trying to do with each unit you work with?

Brittany Loney: Yeah, so we're a brain centered human performance program. You can think of cognitive performance in that way, whereas typically and historically, human performance programs put the physical body at the center. And it made sense, but we kind of flipped that a little bit, and let's put it the brain at the center. So what we're looking to do is build performance capacity through skill development.

And then we're looking at the mission, and how can we help someone acquire those skills in a way that they can apply the skills in a mission relevant manner? So we're always looking, what is the end state that this person is trying to reach? And then how do we help that person sustain reaching that performance capacity for 5, 10, 15, 20 plus years versus reaching that performance capacity and having only a couple years in them because of the op tempo and the stress and everything else that comes with the cost of this type of career.

Jon Becker: So from a building the skills standpoint, building performance capacity, let's push on that a little bit. Why don't we start with cognitive skills? What do you mean by cognitive skills?

Brittany Loney: So I would look at what does the person have to do? And like a strength and conditioning coach, if they're working with a football player, they will look at a running back very different than alignment in terms of physical capacity. They have to build up. And we do the same with the cognitive aspects. Some cognitive skills include observation and situational awareness, memory skills, dynamic decision making, critical and creative thinking, judgment, all the things that we tend to want our brains to do better. We call these the hard skills of our program.

So we're looking, what does this mission require, and how do we train that person in a cognitive way to get better at that, just like a strength and conditioning coach would do with the body.

Jon Becker: So I know that until not that long ago, we used to think that your cognitive capacity was your cognitive capacity. Right? Until UCSF finds neuroplasticity as a concept where you can reshape the brain. We used to think, well, if Britney's a 72 IQ, that's what she is, and that's what she's going to be. So this is all really new emerging science.

Brittany Loney: Yes, it is. I mean, it's past 15 ish years where we've realized the brain can change itself, and it changes itself with neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. It literally will create new brain cells. And change the chemical connection between those brain cells, and that impacts how we function and behave as human beings. A habit in and of itself is a series of connections that are now like four lane highways, and you no longer have to think about doing them.

But if you want to change a habit, how do you get the weeds to grow in and start developing a new trail system that you can start traveling over and over? And you, literally, when you're doing that, you are rewiring how the brain is functioning, and then lifestyle is impacting our neuroplasticity. I always give the analogy of heating up the brain, exercise, nutrition, sleep, make our brains more plastic, so that the cognitive training that we provide will actually take and take to a level that will show functional results on the battlefield.

Jon Becker: So when we're talking about, like, I think we tend to think of our cognitive abilities as kind of fixed, right? You don't think, oh, I'm going to teach myself to be more observant. But you can.

Brittany Loney: Yes, yes. If we couldn't, we'd be in trouble because, you know, whatever we're born with as babies, like, I don't know, I didn't come out of the womb a observational Jedi. I don't think anyone did. I think over time, we develop these cognitive skills even from the smallest thing. When you mention observation, our observation skills developed from the time we were a baby.

And if you think about putting a baby on the center of the floor, you could think of a niece or nephew or your own kids, and you've got the sunlight shining through the blinds, and it's moving a little bit, and the baby finds it very engaging, and you'll just see the baby watch the sunlight coming through on the floor.

But then if a loved one walks through the door, what do we tend to do? We reorient the baby. And actually, at that point, we're teaching the child how to observe the environment. What is more important than another thing? And our observation skills have developed not just from training, but also over our lifetime, according to what our values were and are currently.

Jon Becker: So it's funny, as you're saying this, I'm thinking of John Boyd's Ooda loop.

Brittany Loney: Yes.

Jon Becker: Right. Which is widely accepted tactical. You know, pretty much any tactical community teaches you to loop. And the funny thing about it that has never struck me until right now with this conversation, is the only part of that that we really focus on. Training is the action. Most of the time when we are training tactical units, we're training them to act. We're not training them to observe, to orient, or to make the decisions.

Brittany Loney: I would say until now, we have the programs and the science that backs it up, and it made sense to train only the action when we didn't know that the brain could literally change itself. But I think we're progressing in the tactical space, at least where I've been, and the organizations that I know of are starting to consider.

Yes. How do we train this? We can train this. We've seen the differences between the groups, and now they're starting to invest the time in the three steps that come before that action, which are actually the most critical steps, because those are the steps that are determining the action.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And from a tactical law enforcement standpoint, it's usually, it's usually not the action that gets cops in trouble or gets them killed. It's the three steps prior. It's the ability to orient and the ability to observe what's going on and to make the right decision. But yet we do tend to, especially in tactical law enforcement, focus on just, we're going to make the team shoot better, we're going to make them move better, but we don't tend to spend a lot of time on, we're going to make them think better, we're going to improve their sensory systems. So it's an interesting observation. Like I said, it hadn't hit me until we started talking about it.

Brittany Loney: Yeah. My dissertation was actually on dynamic decision making and developed a model based on research that was available at the time. And a lot of it is similar to the Ooda loop. The first step of the dynamic decision making model, and there's four steps total, is attention allocation. So think that's like, observe in the Ooda loop. So what you pay attention to relevant and irrelevant information will determine how you anticipate that situation unfolding and how you will anticipate responding to that situation.

So we allocate our attention, and that is something that's very trainable. That's where we spend most of our time, because that's where 76% of errors in situational awareness actually tend to happen, because the person primed the wrong mental model anticipated what was happening incorrectly, because they didn't have the full breadth of information available or they were actually considering irrelevant information in their decision making.

So then after we anticipate, our brain pulls up a series of responses that we have access to at that time. And for experts, it's between one and three. If you get more than that, you tend to go into over analysis in that second, and then we execute that particular decision and all of that is actually housed within what we call long term working memory.

And think of that, just what is the information in my head, the training and experience that I currently have access to. Now you have a lot of training and experience in your head, but you don't always have access to it. And what limits the access to the information in any given moment is what your internal environment is doing.

So think of this as your psychophysiological state, your mindset, your state of stress. All of that can actually degrade what mental models pulled up and the quality of the access to it. And really that's where we see a lot of movement in helping people with dynamic decision making is not only in attention control, but also in teaching someone the self regulatory skills that and seconds, they can get themselves from redlining and back to an area where they can take in the environment in a broad way and take in everything that is relevant and discard what is not and then get back on track with the right decisions.

Jon Becker: So let me just walk through a scenario then, because I want to kind of illustrate that in a couple of different ways. So I always use the analogy of a rattlesnake. I use it to explain debriefs. The first guy that found a rattlesnake was bit by the rattlesnake. If he didn't tell anybody. The second guy that found a rattlesnake also got bit.

But the first time he's bit by the rattlesnake, he doesn't recognize it's a rattlesnake. So maybe he picks it up thinking it's, you know, it's a friendly animal and it bites him. So now he knows rattlesnake and he has a paradigm for rattlesnake. And so much of tactical decision making is paradigm recognition. It's pattern recognition.

It's, you know, this is, this thing is long and cylindrical and has a diamond shaped head and a rattle on its tail. It's a rattlesnake. But if he walks in and looks at the rock next to the snake because his attention is focused on the wrong thing, he still gets bit by the rattlesnake. So that attention, focus. This first step of that is we have to be looking at the right things, the things that actually matter. Is that correct so far?

Brittany Loney: Yes.

Jon Becker: So then we've got to take it, we have to look at the right thing. So we're going to look at instead of the rock next to the snake, we're going to look at the rattlesnake and then we have to apply the paradigms or the patterns or the previous knowledge to recognize the threat for what it is. And then we have to make a decision on how to deal with the threat before we can even take action. I mean, that is observe, Orient, decide. Right? It's the beginning of the Ooda loop.

But I – All of that has to happen in the case of a tactical situation in milliseconds for us to be able to effectively neutralize a legitimate threat or not act on one that isn't a legitimate threat. The toddler with a squirt gun versus the hardened gang member with a Glock. Are both people with guns. They're just very different situations.

Brittany Loney: Yes, that's 100% how you explained it. And that also lends the importance of outcome based. And scenario based training is without that, if you're just training actions in isolation, then you never get to go through the Ooda loop. And with scenario based training, that's where you're truly creating those paradigms that you talk to. And then all the other experience on the street will factor into that.

And if you have a poor experience, if you don't do something to help override it in a way, then that can become your primary response in the next situation because it's primed and ready. So there's also mechanisms for when the experience in the field, actually, or on the street doesn't go right in training or in reality. How are you then coping with that? So then it doesn't keep happening, and that same mistake doesn't occur over and over.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it strikes me there that there's a couple. Without even get to getting to your own internal regulatory environment, there's a couple of potential training scars there. Right? If you've had a negative experience where you didn't do the right thing, you've now primed your brain to do the wrong thing again.

But also, if you've created training scars in the way you train. I think back there was a shooting. California highway patrol, I think, had been training. I think it was highway patrol. It was a state patrol organization. They had a shooting, and the officer drew his gun, fired two rounds that were ineffective, and put his gun away. And they went back and they said, well, why would he have put his gun away without reassessing? Well, because the way they trained is they fired two rounds and put their guns away.

And so when he defaulted to what he had to, the training scar he had created under pressure, that was exactly what happened. So it strikes me that if we're not really paying attention to the way we're training. We might actually be training bad responses and increasing the likelihood of an error.

Brittany Loney: Yes. This is where, if you've read on combat, where Grossman talks quite a bit about what the military did, and then I think he also did some work with police officers to help mitigate some of those training scars because they were noticing the same type of thing. Is this the automatic response was the thing that they trained the most – And usually what you train is what you experience more than in reality.

So, yeah, you can create unnecessary training scars. And it's not that you. You don't want to avoid making mistakes in training. I mean, you don't want to, like, intentionally go try to make one. But you also. That lends to the importance of how do you correct that mistake in training right after it has happened so it doesn't become the primary blueprint for that person, because you want to be in that stretch zone where failure may happen, because that's the only way you are going to get to that adaptive capacity, is training in that stretch zone. But that stretch zone is also where failure can be highly likely. It's just how does that training then be delivered so that we can make that a correction in terms of what the brain will refer back to in the future.

Jon Becker: Which is interesting, right? Because, like you, you become a better skier by falling down. And it is very easy. I remember when I first started racing cars, I had this morning, the first two days of testing were terrible. And I had this morning where I didn't go off the track. I felt like I was a God. I mean, I was. No problems, didn't go off track, didn't spin the race car. I'm like, I got this. And I walked in, sat down with my coach. He's like, how'd the morning go? I said, man, I nailed it. Like, I never went off track. And he goes, yeah, because you're slow.

And I said, well, what does that mean? And he said, being fast is being on the edge. That's the point. If you never are on the edge, you don't get any better. So we do, in training, need to push the limits. But then the next step is when we spin the race car. We need to debrief, do an actor after action, and actually learn the lesson. And I think that's a place that we tend to make a lot of mistakes. We make the mistake, but we don't come back and go, hey, you know, what happened? Why did it happen? How do we correct it?

Brittany Loney: Yes. And the thing that we've added into those debriefs are a mental rehearsal. You might not be able to replay that whole scenario and go through it again, but you've had your effective debrief. It's not then leave. You've learned your lesson. It's take the moment before you leave that debrief and do a mental rehearsal of you getting it correct. And we actually encourage people to do that about three times. It doesn't technically override the memory. It just helps to imprint the correction just as much as what the error had happened.

So that's what I would say needs to be added to debriefs. Our time for really quick doesn't have to be long and drawn out. A quick mental rehearsal of where did the critical error occurred, and have them rehearse getting that right.

Jon Becker: So I roll in, and I shoot. Don't shoot scenario and accidentally shoot a hostage. Obviously, we need to have a conversation about why I shot a hostage, but then step back and visualize yourself making the correct decision at least three times. Just run the scenario again and teach your brain, hey, this is the way it's supposed to look.

Brittany Loney: Yes. And with the focus on the attentional component, because when you're running it back in that shoot, no shoot, and you shot the hostage, you're probably seeing the exact situation that you just had, which is now known. And when you went into it, it was an unknown. And usually the root of that particular error of shooting the hostage is probably a sensory error, an attention error.

So that's where I would really make sure it's not just about going in and having the correction of. I don't pull the trigger on that particular person in the environment, but my attention is at the level of where I can pick that information up correctly. To not shoot the individual. Cause you don't know where they're going to be next time.

Jon Becker: It's funny. Same racing coach is in a track, and I'm struggling with a really high speed turn. It's, like 155 miles an hour. Turn. And the car is really on the edge at that speed, and it's scary, and you feel like you're going to lose it. And I'm going through it about 145. And he's like, it's 155 miles an hour. Turn, turn. And I said, yeah, no, it's 145. He goes, no, it's 155. I'll go drive it in your car and show you it's 155.

And we finished for the day, and he's like, okay, before tomorrow, what I want you to do is, before you go to sleep tonight, I want you to lay in bed and I want you to picture yourself driving that turn and looking down, and there's no speedometer in a race car.

But he's like, I want you to pretend there's a speedometer and I want you to look at it. And it says 155. Every time it says 155, pitch yourself there. Look at it. I'm like, yeah, okay, this is bullshit. This is never going to work. But I did it, like, five or six times, got up the next morning, went through the turn at 154 miles an hour and felt no different. And it was the first time that I was like, oh, this is. This isn't voodoo science. Like, this. This actually works.

Brittany Loney: Yeah, and it works if you work it. Sometimes people just, I'll go check the block and put in my three mental rehearsals. But, like, really do it hastily so there's a quality component to it. And if you don't truly give it a shot and, like, go all in. Yeah, you might not see the benefits because you're just going through the motions. And one of you ever got anything out of going through the motions in any task.

So, yeah, having that quality mental rehearsal and then also trusting yourself in that next moment to be able to be in that stretch zone. And actually, the stretch zone is also known as the adaptability corridor, and it is where you build adaptive capacity for being able to respond effectively in very dynamic, ambiguous environments.

Jon Becker: So talk to me. That was our second point. So you beautifully segued. Talk to me about adaptive capacity. What does that mean?

Brittany Loney: So there's really three different aspects to adaptability, and you have intellectual adaptability, which would be, can I effectively reorient my thinking based on new information that I didn't have when I initially made up my mind about something? And then we have interpersonal. Can I flex my communication and my interpersonal style to the situation at hand to be effective, even if it's not the dominant way I like to be? And then self regulatory would be another component. Are you able to regulate yourself so that you can react effectively?

And then, I know we didn't really speak about this, but there are two different forms of adaptability. There's proactive and reactive. A lot of times when we think about adaptability, we think about the reactive kind. Can somebody respond effectively to the changing environment? But actually, a lot of the ability to respond effectively happened in planning, and not that the plan was executed exactly as it is, because usually it's nothing, but the active planning actually prepares the brain and gives a mental blueprint that helps the person respond off of.

So it's not that the plan was the thing that worked. It was the active planning created additional adaptability because the person actually thought through those different courses of action as they were planning things out so well.

Jon Becker: That’s really interesting because you tend to think of planning as like, oh, yeah, we're just going to figure out how we're going to go there. I had never really thought about the fact that you, I mean, I guess in a plan you are rehearsing the operation, right. As we're thinking through what we're going to do, we are not only rehearsing what we're going to do, but we're also considering the contingencies.

Brittany Loney: Exactly. You're, if venting it right then and you're creating, you're starting to create the mental pathways for these if thens, even if that's not what you initially thought was going to happen. And maybe that wasn't the primary plan, but even if it was, subconsciously, you're actually starting to create your pace plan and get your alternative and contingency and emergency actions ready to go. Whether you were thinking you were doing that or not.

Jon Becker: You slipped in a term there that I think some people won't know, which is pace.

Brittany Loney: Yes. So it's the primary alternative. Who's the c. I just contingency. Contingency and emergency. And it's usually used with communication where you have your pace plan. But I think when you plan well, you actually start to create pace plans for various actions because you started to create these threads of different avenues, you could actually travel as the environment unfolds. What tends to happen, though, when people think the planning is just about the plan, they become married to the plan. And that's actually when you start to see some rigidity.

So I'm not saying, you know, the answer is always in the plan. The answer is always in the act of planning. Hopefully that distinction makes sense.

Jon Becker: Yeah. No, so simply the act of planning, right? It's kind of like education, right? Like you go through an educational process, like, you know, doing. I am never again going to use trigonometry, but using my brain to do trigonometry changed my brain. Right? It made my brain operate differently. They say in law school, you're not going to learn how to practice law, you're going to learn to think like a lawyer.

And I think it is that the process of planning is forcing you to go through those contingencies. It's funny because I've had the privilege of going out on ops with a lot of the world's most elite units. And the one consistent thing in the really good units is the level of planning and discussion and contingency planning is staggering. I sat through with a national level asset for another country, a European country, through their warm up brief and then their actual op.

And the brief was, here is the photograph of the local trauma center. Here's where you drive in. Here's what the emergency room looks like. I thought, man, this is a really high level of planning. But the more debriefs I hear, the more I find people don't know. They get there, they're not sure. And it's just, you're just kind of laying foundation for your brain to turn to when you, when you know, when an emergency happens.

Brittany Loney: Yes. And then I think you mentioned the part of the photographs and I think a large part of it, especially in ambiguous environments, is, yes, there's a ton of unknown. We already know that. But sometimes people use that as the cop out, not to plan. Well, there's just so much that's unknown. I'm not going to plan.

But planning is also about what are the knowns. Get an image of the little things. They might seem very little, but as you're learning the knowns and it might just be the layout of something, you're starting to actually degrade the stress response that's associated with so much unknown because you have something to fall back on.

And as the situations unfolding, your brain starts to tack things onto the knowns that you had from planning as well. So you're actually in some way reducing ambiguity. Actually, that is what you're doing by just those little things that are the knowns will go a long, long way.

Jon Becker: So we're reducing the number of variables like in a chaotic environment, right?

Brittany Loney: And anytime, even if you can reduce one, you're going to free up more cognitive load to adapt.

Jon Becker: Because all of those things, every unknown, when something goes sideways, every unknown is where the chaos comes from. And your brain is, we're talking through this. I think of a flashbang. The real effect of a flashbang is that your body all of a sudden has 8000 things to listen to and takes that minute to go, hold on, what the h***'s going on? And just stop everything. What's going to happen in a chaotic environment, right? Your brain is going to go, hold on, hold on, hold on, and try to solve for all those variables. So everything you can solve for your brain doesn't need to consider when things go sideways.

Brittany Loney: Exactly.

Jon Becker: That makes a lot of sense. So continuing then on kind of building capacity, you touched on interpersonally. What does that mean?

Brittany Loney: Interpersonal adaptability would be how you are behaviorally communicating doesn't mean you're changing your personality, because a lot of times people go, I'm not going to change who I am and this and that. You're really just flexing your outward demonstration of how you're communicating, whether it be voice, tone, volume, use of gestures, those type of things. So you're communicating in a way that one is effective for the situation.

So how you communicate in an emergency situation is very different from non-emergency. And sometimes we'll try to apply emergency communication to non-emergency situations, and then that's where everybody, you know, just terms that person a hole of the team.

So there is a distinction there, but then also having the wherewithal of the social awareness. And you can even go into the Ooda loop on this. You're having to observe and orient to that environment in a social manner to figure out a what is my best approach in this situation? That may either deescalate what the response has to be or at least keeps it from escalating one step further. So it's really adjusting how you are in that environment in terms of really emotional intelligence.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Well, I think you see this. You can look at any of the great catastrophic events from law enforcement that have driven national policy change. And George Floyd being the one that immediately comes to mind. Chauvin was emotionally way overmodulated and was still addressing the threat as though it was going to kill him, even though at one point, George Floyd is unconscious. So it is that recognizing that every situation requires a different response and being able to tune that response emotionally to the situation you're confronted with.

Brittany Loney: Exactly. It's really hard to interpersonally adapt when you yourself on a stress level, are incapable of modulating that because you're at such a heightened state. And in the example that you just gave, it almost sounds like you got stuck in act and didn't go back through that Ooda loop to observe and orient to know how.

Now, how do I respond? It was an action. That was the initial reaction that became the perpetuated action.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And I think that emotional state drives so much of our physiological state, too. Right? Like, it's the ability to adapt to varying physiological loads. Like, it always strikes me you hear a pilot whose plane is on fire, and they have trained it so long that they're on fire and barely going to make the runway, and they sound like they're reading a grocery list as they're giving commands, because they have built that skillset to control themselves emotionally. And it's always fascinating to me that you see people that have that adaptive ability in their emotions.

Brittany Loney: Yeah. And just if you look also at the time and simulators and, I mean, the expansiveness of being able to practice that emotional regulation in situations that were very close to what they also faced, I think that's critical as well. But when it comes to emotions and physiology, you really can't separate them. They drive each other. There's a reciprocal relationship. Our physiological state will drive our emotional state, and our emotional state drives our physiological state.

We know that there's a hormonal signature to every emotion, and we are always experiencing an emotion, whether we're conscious of it or not. And that emotion, there is no way you can extract emotion from decision making. It is impossible. We are emotional beings, and many times when I hear, I didn't make that decision on emotion.

As humans, we actually need emotion to be able to make decisions without emotion. We're actually horrible problem solvers because we don't know what to prioritize. So rather than looking at as something that degrades decision making, it's how can you regulate your emotional response? So it's in the place it needs to be so that you can actually make better decisions.

Jon Becker: So it's kind of a self regulatory component. It's controlling physiology and emotions and creating an environment where you're going to perform optimally.

Brittany Loney: Yes. And that's actually what we term a top down and a bottom up approach. We will teach everyone who comes through our training. The bottom up is the breath control, which most people by this point are very familiar with. You have box breathing. You have even five inhale, five second exhales. There's a whole host of different types.

And we use biofeedback to help someone train to see, well, what technique is best for me, because my technique that works best for bottom up self regulation for me is probably very different than yours, Jon. There's going to be some overlap, but we'll use the biofeedback to help inform that.

Jon Becker: It's a really interesting concept to think that us special operators are sitting around looking at heart rate and other biofeedback factors and learning the mechanism that works best to control their physiology and emotion. Like, it's – I think that it would surprise the majority of people to hear that that is a skill set that we're practicing. I mean, people hear breathing, but I don't think the majority of people believe it, but it sounds like in your work, you guys have not only not only believe it, you're relying on it heavily.

Brittany Loney: Yes, and we're using a top down approach, too. So we'll rely on it heavily, but without exclusion to the way that you interpret the situation matters. And we all have habitual ways of which we interpret the world around us. We create narratives, and we tend to overlay the same narrative across many situations. And in some situations, it's effective. However, in other situations, it might be highly ineffective. So we actually teach all of our operators, we call them the five critical perceptions, and I'll go through them.

But the important thing to remember is how you perceive the world outside of work influences how you perceive the world when you're in work. You can't have horrible perceptions and a non regulated stress response out of work and then go into work and expect everything to just click on. But those five are here now.

So that's about being present and process focused. It's not that you have to always be in the present focus, but in performance situations, that's where you need to be. And then after here now, we have as is, which is stripping our own narrative from the observations. We are usually the hero or the victim.

We're at the center of all of our stories, and we tend to connect observational facts together with our narrative, even though those things might have not been connected or have nothing to do with us. We are in a situation, and we have these observations that are factually correct. They're just observations. And then we overlay our inferences and our narrative.

So we actually teach people how to separate and know which is your narrative and which are the actual observational facts, and then teach them to see, you know, sometimes there's another explanation rather than your narrative. And we'll practice that outside of, you know, high performance situations, so that when they're in that moment, they can intuitively see that there's alternative explanations to things.

So then after, as is, we have as granted, which is about not fighting reality. And yes, sometimes I. The world does suck, actually. Many times there's suffering, there is pain. But many times we also add suffering beyond what we have to experience from that situation. And we start to think we deserve our or are entitled to a different reality than what exists for us now.

And that can actually create very much a chronic stress response, as people are just fighting reality. Because usually when they're fighting it, they're focused on all the things they can't control and that are out of their influence. And that just increases the overall stress response. So they enter a situation already at a heightened level of chronic stress, which makes the acute stress response easier to get out of control.

And then after, as granted, we have release, which would be releasing our attachments. And sometimes that attachment might be to perfection, and how to move on after a mistake. And then other times it might be releasing the attachment of a loved one, or even a situation or a job. It's seeing that there's power in impermanence. And without impermanence, it is hard to have joy. Yes, it brings us grief and a lot of other negative emotions, but it's also the only way we can experience joy. So we go over releasing and be able to move on from things.

And then the last one is effortless, virtuous action, which is living every day intentionally from your values and your virtue, very, very deliberately. So that when the crucible moments happen, where your character is put to the test, it has been practiced so much that that is your automatic response. So, yes, we have the breath work, but then we also really hone in on these five critical perceptions as a way to start perceiving the world. So that when the hard situations happen, those have been trained as well.

Jon Becker: Very interesting. Yeah, I want to talk. I want to come back to that when we talk about resilience a little bit, because I feel like that kind of all ties together. So pulling back to building performance capacity. So we had cognitive, we have adaptive capacity, which is the self regulatory, the interpersonal, the intellectual. And then what about stress tolerance? Talk to me about stress tolerance.

Brittany Loney: Well, that kind of feeds into the self regulatory. It's where we're teaching the person how to actually have more reservoir to deal with stress. So we talk about stress tolerance in terms of how stressed the person currently is. We call that actually stress expenditure. So how much am I putting towards this situation? And then there's a stress reservoir, and the reservoir is how much gas is left in my tank to continue dealing with situations that may be hard.

And the stress reservoir was actually our newest concept. And it came out of realizing that stress expenditure, or your stress level, didn't tell us the whole story about who performed well over time. And we were seeing that there were many people who could perform exceptionally well under high physiological stress responses. And we don't mess with that. If the person's performing well, making good decisions, that might be their optimal zone they need to function at.

But then we also started to look at, well, how much do they have left in the tank? If something else were to happen on this shift, how much reservoir do they have left to actually be able to deal with it? And we saw that those weren't always compatible. Those who performed really well under high stress, hey, they're still performing well. Sometimes they had a low stress reservoir, and if one more thing happened, it would have pushed them over that edge.

So we help people train both of those. How do you perform well under stress? And then how do you make sure you have more left in the tank should something unexpected happen that requires you to still be at that optimal performance level?

Jon Becker: That's really interesting, and we'll probably come back to that with resilience, too, because it is, you know, it's stress. You tend to think of stress like, oh, he's really good under stress, but he's really good under stress when he has a happy, healthy home life and he sleeps well and he's physiologically fit and, you know, he's not sick and his kids are healthy, is a very different response than he's in the process of getting divorced and hasn't slept in three days and drinks too much. And, you know, it is that I don't. I think we tend to view that with a very fixed mindset also.

Brittany Loney: I think it's starting to be viewed as part of the culture, and that's what I signed up for.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Brittany Loney: And I don't think it has to be. I know it's hard. I'm not minimizing how hard it would be to try to maintain everything, but I don't think the answer is, well, that's how it has to be. I think there is a solution out there that can be worked to. Maybe it can be a lower percentage of people who have to function that way.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's funny because to some degree, it becomes almost a self fulfilling prophecy. Right. Like, if you don't take care of yourself, you are more likely to find yourself in a situation that will stress your stress capability, that will drain that reservoir.

And then, you know, and the more you put yourself into that loop and you don't recover from the stress, it's almost like somebody who gets injured and continues to push hard with that injury. Like, it. It's never going to get better. You've got to heal it and you've got to refill the reservoir. And I think we tend to forget that.

Brittany Loney: Yeah. And I think. I'm glad you mentioned the home life because I think sometimes they're – The stress reservoir is really low. Maybe there are a few high stress things that happen on the shift and they dealt with them effectively, but then they have degraded the stress reservoir.

So now they're going home with an emptied reservoir. And then something happens that it might be relatively minor in the scheme of things, but that's the thing that pushes the person over the edge. And then there's this outburst and they're just not handling it well.

So it's, what can we do to help shut down after each high stress event? Because then you're kind of refilling the reservoir little by little. Not fully, but little by little. So you have more at the end of the day.

And then the most work that I've actually done that people have found highly effective are transition home routines. And a lot of that is, let's pour a little bit more into that stress reservoir. So when you get home, you have more capacity and you're not just drained in a shell of a person at that point.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's funny, I started implementing, like, a transitional. You know, my drive is very short, it's a couple of miles, but I've started implementing, like, a transitional habit when I'm coming home. And when I interviewed, I interviewed one of the guys from BRI that was involved in Bataklan.

And one of the most profound things he said at the end of the interview was that when a military operator, I mean, basically Bataklan is a military operation. It's got the level of death and destruction that a military operation would.

But he said, the hard part is when you're deployed militarily, you come home, it takes you a few days to get home, and you're stopping here and you're doing this. And then you get home. He says, I came home from that event and my family was like, well, what happened? And he goes, it had been a ten minute drive. I just went to bed. I couldn't talk about it. It's too much.

And I think we, especially in law enforcement, tend to forget that the transition between those things doesn't really provide an opportunity in many cases, to refill that reservoir. And that reservoir cannot be filled with bourbon.

Brittany Loney: Yeah. And I think that is a big distinction between military and police, is they're also living in the environment where the things have happened. So there's the constant triggering of now there's this extra low lying stress that's there. Maybe it's not even low lying at times, especially if it's a recent event and you're on your day off and you go by that area and it's like, just triggers you.

And then there's that stress response continuing to kind of hit at that reservoir. So I actually think for police officers, because there's not the same amount of transition time as military members get. And there's, I mean, military gets change of environment, too, which I think is huge. Not to minimize their experience, but I think that makes it even more critical that police officers and other first responders are living who are having to transition so quickly have something that helps them fill that reservoir just a little bit more.

I know it won't get capped off, it won't get full at the end of that day, but what is that thing that you're doing to help you transition so that your family doesn't always get the worst of you, so you don't always feel so depleted completed by the end of a shift, what can help fill that cup? A little bit might not be optimal, but a little bit is better than nothing.

Jon Becker: Well, that kind of brings us to the fourth pillar of building performance capacity. Right? Which is this idea of high performance habits. Talk to me about that a little bit.

Brittany Loney: The high performance habits, I think are just this series of all the different things that we talk about, from mindset to stress tolerance to even intellectual adaptability. It's creating habit out of them. And how do you work these techniques, tools into systems that are done consistently over time? It's not, none of these things are a one time thing.

And then you've summited and you're done and you never have to do it again. All of them have to be habits. Now, there's going to be some that tools that you'll use in certain situations and not in others. But really high performance is a series of decisions that you consistently make over a long period of time that help sustain you. So it's changing the mindset from implementing a tool to creating systems and processes that become habits in your life.

Jon Becker: Okay, so we've kind of talked about building performance capacity. I tend to think of this in like, we're going to build the operator, we're going to make him shoot well, we're going to make him move well. You know, we're going to give him the ability to make decisions, but then there's also the ability to access those skills and capabilities, you know, when the flag goes up. So talk to me a little bit about that.

Brittany Loney: So that starts in skill acquisition as well. And I make that distinction because many times in our field we'll have people come to us and they want the tools for the mission, for the game, for the shift, whatever it is. And I really want to make certain that those habits are acquired away from the situation that really matters and then the ability to transfer those into the moment that really matters. That's where you actually start to see the magic happen. But you don't get to application without putting in the time to actually build up the performance capacity.

And in our field, many people think that they can do that. Like, let me just jump to, you know, using this when I need it the most. And what we actually teach people to do is progressively start applying those habits, the tools, techniques, procedures, everything they were learning and building the capacity, and will start to shift that to, how does that work in this specific mission, in this specific task, in this shift, whatever the situation might be?

So we actually start to get into more scenario like integration of the skills and then start to build into, okay, now it's the mission and you're ready to apply it. So it's very progressive, as any skill would be. When you learn how to shoot. You learn how to shoot where there's not many distractions and you have one task in front of you. Same here.

But then you don't get to the point where you can navigate a shoot house effectively without having done that. So that's really what the application comes down to. You've put in the reps to build the capacity, and you're shifting from what we call a training mindset, which is very analytical. You're really looking for those little things to fine tune all through the training. Almost a bit of a perfectionist mentality there.

But when it comes to application, it's a trusting mindset that will help someone kind of be in that zone that you hear a lot of people talk about. When everything was flowing, the decisions just seemed to be right. The environment slowed down. That's because the person was able to trust themselves and turn off analytical mode.

So when we get to actually living the performance capacity that they've built, a lot of our work is actually around trusting the performance capacity that they've been able to build and not interrupting it from happening at the level that they've built it, which is what most people do, is we have this very high potential, and we interrupt it with over analysis.

Jon Becker: Yeah, paralysis by analysis, as I like to refer to it. It's interesting because I interviewed the privilege to interview Earl Plumlee, who's the first special forces group recipient of the Medal of Honor. And Earl was involved in a just horrific situation that I still to this day, don't understand how he survived. And his performance was unbelievable. But when you hear him talk about the events Earl is an extremely humble guy. It was one of the funniest interviews I've ever done. I mean, he's describing grenades bouncing off of his chest. Something hit me, and I was like, that's not my grenade. It doesn't have a pin in it. You hear the way he describes it.

And his mind was so far past the actions he was taking. It was so far like he describes the recognition that he was too focused on shooting because he started to see the brass coming out of his gun. And his brain was like, okay, I need to back off because I'm too focused on my front sight. And it was just this. You got the impression that so much of that performance came from his ability to disassociate from all of the skills he had learned and focus solely on the application of the skills. And it ties very much to what you're talking about.

Brittany Loney: And it's this complete immersion in the moment, and nothing else is entering the mind or taking up any part of the brain's load at that time. This complete presence is essentially what you're training people to be able to do. And when you get into over analysis mode, during execution, that needs to be trusted. You are actually using parts of the brain that need to be offloaded to be able to perform in the environment that they're in. And then trust that you'll. You've intuitively trained yourself to respond effectively in those situations.

And that's where, when we go back to those five critical perceptions we talked about earlier, usually it's one of those five things going wrong that causes us to actually interrupt our performance. So here now is all about the presence in the process. Many times, people are overly focused on the consequence or the outcome, and they forget pieces of the process and the foundations and the fundamentals and just being in the moment to be able to respond to. They're on fast forward on what's going to happen because of this or what could happen in this situation.

So we have to go back to controlling the thought piece to keep us in the present moment and really immersed in that environment. And we do a lot of that actually through pre performance routines. Or in this case, it would be like a pre-shift routine where the person is getting themselves into that optimal psychophysiological state. It could be through music, it could be through breath control, through the thought component.

Everyone kind of has their unique way to get themselves where they need to be mentally and physiologically to be able to perform well. That's really where those moments start, application of them, because that's what allows you to start trusting.

And it's also if you find yourself too self focused in those moments of execution, either you're ruminating about your past mistake or you're just, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? Bring it outward, either on the situation or on someone else. Service to others, those who are around you. And it's really, really hard to interrupt your own performance when you're not focused on yourself.

So we actually call trusting mindset is very much an ego less state of mind in training. The ego can drive someone to be better, whereas when it comes to performance, the ego can drive someone to be worse a lot of times. So you have to transcend your ego to be fully immersed.

Jon Becker: And it's interesting because you talk about performance rituals and like, you see this in professional sports all the time, right? You see the Olympic diver or the Olympic track athlete that stands there with their eyes closed, you know, or, you know, or the gymnast that you can see them mentally rehearsing their routine or they're listening to music. Like, performance psychology is used widely in sports, but is not totally made the transition to this application.

And it is, you know, like you said, establishing their right mindset. Moving into an operation in the right frame of mind is where that hello state comes from. It's where that, you know, you know, LeBron James, you know, transcending the game or Michael Jordan or, you know, Tiger Woods or any of the people that we regard as just, you know, Tom Brady performing way above their, you know, what you expect them to do.

And it is that ability to just ignore the fact that there's 5 seconds left on the clock, ignore the fact that it's the fourth quarter, you're on the verge of losing the Super Bowl, and focus on the fact that you need to throw one pass really well.

Brittany Loney: Yes, that's a great analogy. And sometimes I hear in the tactical space of, well, I don't have time to do that. It's not about having to be long and drawn out, because I think sometimes we see these long rituals of athletes thinking it has to be the same. It doesn't. It's just about having momentary, we actually call them micro resets.

And that's actually what most of our operators use are these micro resets that keep their neurophysiology from getting out of control. It doesn't necessarily have to be pinpoint on this optimal state. That's all the time. It just has to be within your control and practiced over time. And then those micro resets, they work in one breath. It's not this ten minute, five minute, one minute routine. Sometimes it's one breath that recenters you.

Jon Becker: So give me some examples of the kinds of things that you're teaching for micro resets, like what are guys doing as they're stacking on a door to prep themselves. What is an example of micro resetting?

Brittany Loney: A lot of the micro reset will be around breath. And then usually one very brief statement they'll say to themselves that has a meaning in terms of helps them get outside themselves or helps them get in the present moment. And it's different for everybody what that statement will be. But usually it's around a one to three breath routine that then ends in one statement that helps them get in that right frame of mind.

Jon Becker: Very interesting!

Brittany Loney: And what we say with that three breath reset, the first breath, especially if, let's say you're still in your vehicle and you've got a like a brief moment you can take. The first breath is to get you back in the present. It's not necessarily to be controlled. Breath one is let me reorient. Where are my feet? Where are my hands? Where am I? Like just reorient, get present the second breath. You're actually now starting to get more in that self regulation. You're using the exhale to actually calm you down. That's really where our relaxation response gets a bit more activated, is on that exhale.

And then breath three is an orientation to what is my next action or intention? How will I enter this situation? And that is the base technique that most of our people will adapt off of to create the one that works for them in their situations.

Jon Becker: That's really interesting. And I guess there's also probably an underlying habit component here. Right? Like the things that you're doing that are preconditioning you to perform well.

Brittany Loney: Yes. And what should happen is you no longer have to really think about doing these things. These three breath resets and training should be practiced with training. It's not something you reserve for the performance moment. They start to become part of how you perform. And actually a lot of the research goes into when you learn self regulation skills with technical and tactical skills, they actually become encoded as one memory.

So when you do the technical or tactical thing, the self regulatory skills actually get primed with it and you do those all part of it. So what we want to end up getting to is a state where self regulation and cognitive control are habitual ways of operating that no longer take your thought away from the situation. Anything, when we're taking your thought away from the situation, even for a moment, we are taking your situational awareness.

And that's why for me, the building, the performance capacity is so important because I don't want you to go out and try all these techniques in the heat of the moment because you're going to lose situational awareness doing it. They should become part of the way that you operate.

Jon Becker: Yeah, but it's interesting, you raise a really interesting point there, which is that the ability to control your internal regulatory environment and the, the hard wiring of these, these habits and hard wiring of these techniques, you're freeing up cognitive capacity for situational awareness.

Brittany Loney: 100%. That's what you're doing, and you're actually increasing your capacity for it. Because when you're under super high suboptimal state of stress, I'm not talking the effective hypervigilance. I'm talking you are now out of control in terms of your responses. You actually shrink your cognitive load, what you can actually take in.

So in many ways, that self regulatory skill is not only reducing the cognitive load that's being used, but it's actually increasing the capacity you have available to use.

Jon Becker: Yeah. One of the example comes to mind, which is one of the shootings that we debriefed. When you watch the body worn camera, one of the officers who just kind of came upon the problem was not part of the team, but arrives on scene right after two officers have been shot and that suspect has been shot, just starts walking around a field. You watch the body worn camera and you just see them just walking around a field. They're doing nothing effective, just kind of walking around the area kind of in squares.

And, you know, in the process, the debrief is like, well, why? What are they doing? And everybody said, I don't know. And it strikes me that what they're doing is they're so overwhelmed by events that that's what they have. They have the ability to walk around in a square. And like, you've, you've moved down the cognitive Maslow triangle. Right? You've lost the ability to perceive anything beyond just, just walking around in a square.

Brittany Loney: Yeah. And you also reduce your responses that you have available to select from. And I don't know why the walking in squares came up. That would be interesting to actually explore why it wasn't that. But they couldn't get out of that loop because that was the only available response they could select from in that moment, because the level of stress shrink that accessible knowledge to where that was the only thing available.

Jon Becker: Which I guess is part of a big part of what we talked about in building capacity, is building that stress tolerance. It's building as we've moved away from stress academies for law enforcement and we've had, you know, kind of move to an environment where, you know, well, we don't want to yell at people, and we don't want to make them tired, and we don't want to harass them. We're doing ourselves a great disservice because we're setting people up to make them more likely to be overwhelmed, like, we need to be stressed in training.

Brittany Loney: Yeah. Stress inoculation has been proven over and over to be an effective way to teach somebody how to increase their stress tolerance has to be done effectively. Because one of the things that I don't think many people realize is, let's say yelling is the stressor in my training, but then in my operating environment, let's say, the propensity for yelling, it's probably low for whatever this task is, just for the sake of example. I know it's not always low, but the stressor, let's say, is time in my real operating environment.

But I was trained being yelled at, and then, oh, wait, why can't you transfer that stress inoculation? You could perform well being yelled at. Why aren't you transferring it to being able to do it in less time? Different stressors have different effects. We inoculate two stressors as they're presented. If I get better at performing with people yelling at me in the field, I'll be better when people are yelling at me. I won't necessarily be better when other stressors are presented.

So, yeah, stress inoculation is funny, is we have to really be specific about the stressors, what are most likely to be experienced out in the field or on the street. And then those are the stressors that should be progressively increased, not all at once, but it is progression. So the person stays in that stretch zone, that adaptability corridor, and builds adaptive capacity and stress tolerance tools in conjunction with each other.

Jon Becker: So, in a tactical environment, you know, your day job and my client's day job, yelling at you is maybe not the best stressor. Maybe it is time compression. It's distraction. It's like, give me some examples. If you were building a training curriculum for a SWAT team, what are the kinds of stressors you want to apply versus don't want to apply?

Brittany Loney: I would look and I would meet with the people who are on, let's say, the SWAT team and I would say what are the stressors that tend to be present most often? And then also what are the unexpected ones that tend to throw you off? I get kind of debrief them with that. Then I would backwards plan the training to progressively amp up the stressors that are almost always present and then also insert an unexpected manner.

The ones that tend to throw them off that don't always happen, but they are unexpected and can throw them off. That's how I would do it. I'm not saying that yelling is always wrong. If there's yelling in the performance environment, there should be yelling in the training environment. They should just be mirror each other as much as feasible and possible in that training environment. So yeah, I would just meet with the people who are out there doing the job and then work with them to backwards plans those similar stressors in a progressive manner.

Jon Becker: You know what's interesting about that though is, I mean, in my career I've attended over 1000 debriefs in the last 38 years. I've been through 1000 plus debriefs. And I've interviewed a lot of people and worked with a lot of teams that have had shootings.

And it's interesting as you're saying that what I'm thinking of are the things that people report back. What they describe as traumatic about these operating environments is often not somebody shooting at them. It's kids being present. It's fire alarms going off, it's sprinklers going off, it's bodies being present or the smell of blood. It's things that they aren't exposed to in a training environment that seem to imprint very deeply.

Brittany Loney: Yes, and that makes sense because the unexpected can be extremely stressful in and of itself. And then now you add the component of, there's such an emotional component about around children being present in any stressful environment. So then now, you know, in an officer's mind, in that situation, now there's children present. I haven't trained that. Let's say this is a novice level officer. That would be extremely traumatic because they, in their mental model, they think children shouldn't be here.

So in a way they actually start fighting reality a little bit in that moment. And this is where we go into that, you know, as granted, like this is how the environment's unfolding. You can't fight the fact that a child is now present here. You have to deal with that fact and accept it to be able to move on.

So, yeah, I think you're 100% right because the unexpected from a survival mechanism those imprint and are more stressful simply because they're unexpected. So the more we can insert them and we don't have to think of them all because there's no way we ever will. But there does have to be an element of that in training where it's not working out exactly as you anticipated it working out. There's an adaptive component that they have to almost problem solve around or emotionally cope with.

Jon Becker: And I think it's easy to overlook in training. Right? It's easy to overlook. Like, it's complicated to plan, you know, unexpected in training. Right? It's complicated to spray your guys with sprinklers. It's complicated to have loud music. It's complicated to, you know, have things happen that are unexpected.

It's, you know, I think in terms of medical response and the teams that I've seen that have performed at the highest levels of medical response are the teams that integrated it into their training all the time. Somebody got shot in every training exercise, practically, and you had to now put a tourniquet and move them.

And you look at the teams that do that and then when it happens, they're surgical, they're deliberate. They don't even emotionally modulate with it. It's just something that we trained. And I think it really speaks to training designed for teams to throw chaos and irregularity and unexpected things into training on a regular basis. So when it does show up, it doesn't over modulate everybody on the team instantly.

Brittany Loney: Yes, and it is hard to think of how, you know, to plan that in there, but maybe the goal ends up being one unexpected think thing every two or three scenarios or something like that, to where it's not overwhelming for the person who's planning the training, but it's also at least addressed to some level. And I think the mindset around training has to change to being in stretch zone moments. The point of training is not to be perfect on every reiteration.

And I think sometimes situations are designed for success, and I'm not saying designed to get a gotcha and design it for failure, but it has to design to get the person out of their stretch zone. A successful training isn't one where every single person walks away and did the right thing. That just wasn't a challenging training. In my viewpoint, everyone was in their comfort zone. Great!

But really, how are you going to build the adaptive capacity? You have to train in that stretch zone, but you do have to have moments where you go back to the comfort zone for some confidence. But that shouldn't be where you're living.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think that's an extremely important point. Right, is that it is. Training is, you know, it's not designed to make you fail, but training is designed to test the edge of your ability. And if it's not testing the edge of your ability, it's like going into the gym and doing bench press with ten pounds. You're not going to get stronger every time you lift. It's got to be right on the edge of man. This is almost too heavy.

Brittany Loney: Exactly. Maybe not every time you lift, because then you might go into over training, but you definitely have a systematic progression. And I think that's the same when you look at tactical training, there's a systematic progression. And I've been in training environments where they were living in their stretch zone for ten months straight. And, I mean, these are highly experienced people just living in their stretch. It's hard.

So I do think there has to be this element of, like, you're living in your stretch zone, but then you come back a little bit to top off that stress reservoir, and then you go back live in your stretch zone so that you can actually increase the capacity of that stress reservoir over time.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I mean, you're an ultra runner. I'm an iron med distance triathlete. Like, you know, people go, man, you're already, you did an iron man. You're fit for the rest of your life. No, you stop being fit. The day of iron actually arguably stopped being fit a couple of weeks before Ironman, but, like it is not. You know, you're driving towards a peak with those kinds of events, and that's not what we're looking for in a tactical environment. We're looking for an optimal level of performance, not a peak level of performance. So there's got to be this kind of train recover, train recover mindset.

Brittany Loney: 100%.

Jon Becker: Which also, I think, goes into our third point, which is resilience. It's longevity and resilience. And how do we not only build good operators, but build good operators that are going to last 20 years? I know you've done a lot of work in this area, and I like to just press on resilience a little bit. Like, what? What? Give me the buckets of resilience.

Brittany Loney :So we've got physical, which would be exactly what it sounds like. So your ability to recover from injury also avoid it because sometimes we do just over train, or we get ourselves in situations that we don't need to be in sometimes due to decision making, and then maintaining that physical capacity and how we train as we age has to change as well. You know, how we train at 25 is not going to be the same thing that keeps us uninjured at 45.

So there's the physical component, the cognitive component on do you retain the cognitive skills at the same level, at least if not even higher than when you entered the force? And when I'm talking about that, that's your observation skills, your memory, your decision making, creative and critical thinking, your ability to mitigate your own biases, those type of things. And then the emotional aspect, in terms of managing chronic stress, having emotional stamina, to where you can keep going in a way where you're coping effectively. I think people keep going in a way that's coping ineffectively.

And then at some point, they hit a thing where they just can't keep going. And then the last one we've got is that spiritual and philosophical aspect, which I think is usually underrepresented when talking about resilience. And this is what grounds you. A tower only rises as deep as its foundation. And sometimes that tower has grown and it almost gets lifted out of its foundation. We have to always reground ourselves in our why. What is our purpose beyond ourselves?

And that can be the tribe, the brotherhood, the sisterhood. It can be the purpose of serving whatever that may be. It is systematically grounding yourself, not just saying the words, but truly feeling that sense of purpose. And then I am a huge fan of stoicism in terms of how it teaches people to think about really hard situations. The Romans did go through a lot of hard times, and I think through that they've left a body of philosophy that tells us how to survive and thrive in those hard times.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting because you talk about spirituality, your spiritual and philosophical. For you, that could be your religion. It could be, yes, but it doesn't have to be. It can be grounded in what Simon Senec called the why. What your – why is – It could be grounded in just your philosophical approach, but there has to be kind of that, you know, philosophical component to your existence that allows you, again, to refill the well periodically.

Brittany Loney: Yep, it's checking up on that foundation. Are there cracks in it? And I really think the spiritual component, whether it's religion or not, and I personally am not a highly religious person. I'm highly spiritual and philosophical. And it's that grounding in the why, in the values and a purpose outside of myself.

And I do think there's a mindset to the spiritual component as well. But we have to stay connected to that I think once we become disconnected, we become disconnected to others as well. I think those two tend to go hand in hand.

Jon Becker: Yeah. One of the things I teach when I teach culture centric leadership is the organization. Any organization, to have a correct culture, has to have a why, and the why has to resonate, and it has to resonate with everybody in the organization. And the why, generally speaking, has to be about people like we – It's as much as we think, oh, I'm motivated by success. I'm motivated by money. You know, the people that find success in money and are empty inside afterwards. It's because there wasn't that connection to humanity.

And I think that that connection, you know, in the case of a tactical unit, may be the brotherhood, but it is finding that purpose and making sure that everybody is agreeing on that purpose and that they all have a why, even if it's not exactly the same. They all have a why that they come back to.

Brittany Loney: Yeah. And I even think revisiting it together is helpful. I know it sounds kind of soft or whatnot, but when you can get a group of people to talk about the purpose of what they do at a profound level, that runs deep. It's not just reflecting on it yourself. It's also, how can you bring others into that purpose, which is the role.

Jon Becker: You know, one of the primary roles of leadership. Right? Like that is my job as a CEO, is to create culture. It's to give everybody the why – Like, what does the organization exist for and why, you know, why are we here? And making sure that as an organization, we are remaining grounded in that why? Because I think that the loss of that allows us to kind of go adrift.

Brittany Loney: Yeah. And there's a term, I forget who termed it operator drift within the military community. And it's this slow drift that happens without even people noticing because it happens so subtly over time. And, you know, it might be where, you know, one drink a night becomes two drinks a night becomes three drinks a night becomes. And it just progresses very slow, where no one is noticing how far off a person is from their baseline of who they are and how they used to be. Because it's happening so slow, they keep forming a new normal.

So we never have this drastic comparison point. And then once it kind of drifts too far, it's a lot harder to bring them back in. But that's when they really need to be brought back in. But how do we notice that drift before it does get to that point? And that's where I think it's checking on your tribe. It's those little calls here and there when you're thinking about that person who may be going through a tough time.

And that, I think even a role for different things like biofeedback to see, okay, really, what is the state of my nervous system? That's essentially what it's telling us. And then that can be one marker of physiological and even some emotional aspects will play into that. How's the person sleep?

All of these over time, it paints a picture and tells a story, and I think we just need to listen to it before something catastrophic happens. And it's usually when something catastrophic happens that everybody is now attuned and listening, but it's because that drift happened so slowly, we didn't see it. But in hindsight, we see it very clearly.

Jon Becker: Well, it's tragic, right? It is amazing. I mean, both of us are dealing with soft units and tier one units, and it's amazing how many of our nation's best warriors, people that we have deified, lose their way towards the end of their careers and leave their units in disgrace because of drinking problems or because of extramarital affairs. It is terrible how many of them are ending their lives with suicide. You talk to any of the tier one units, and the majority of them have lost more people to suicide than they have to combat.

Brittany Loney: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And it's just that little bit of drift.

Brittany Loney: Yep. And it's so subtle. And we have to really pay attention to the small things, because if we wait for the big thing, it is going to be the big thing. So what are the small things that each organization, each leader, each officer, each military member can start to. Okay, here's the thing I'm going to look for in my buddy. Like, here's their baseline. Here's how they used to be when I met them. And really take the time to think, okay, how did that person. How were they when I met them?

Okay, you're seeing that drift a bit more, and then everyone's going to have their unique way. They want to be brought back in. But sometimes it's just being asked and seeing that people will rally around you, that helps that person come back into the purpose. It's a purpose in the tribe. They really matter.

Jon Becker: Well, I think from a, you know, from an individual standpoint, it's also surrounding yourself with people who will check on you. It's surrounding yourself with people and giving them permission. You know, for me, this is. I've been married for 34 years. That is a big function that my wife performs of saying, hey, like, dumbass, you're working too hard. Like, you need to slow down. You're not sleeping enough. You know, you start to act like a jerk, and then taking the moment to go, okay, hold on, don't get angry. Don't react to this. Really assess where I am here and allow. Allow the tribe to pull you back into the village before they have to throw you out of the village.

Brittany Loney: Yeah, yeah, that's powerful.

Jon Becker: So one more area. One last area I'd like to kind of touch on here is, and I've heard you describe it as building your armor, you know, building the mechanisms of resilience. Let's kind of just walk through, you know, I've heard you describe it as physical, you know, kind of self, which is, you know, kind of emotional, and then external. Why don't we start with physical? How do I build my physical? Well, actually, before we go there, talk to me about how resilience is built. Bottom down, bottom up, top down. Like, explain that to me.

Brittany Loney: It's built both ways, bottom up and top down. And that's where I talked about the breath control and these physiological methods. And some of this bottom up will be sleep, physical movement, nutrition. This is happening at a physiological level. So when I say bottom up, I'm speaking physiological to brain. And then when I say top down, it's thoughts downward that actually start to affect physiology.

So I think we build it both ways. And the way that we actually have this pictured is in a pyramid, and at the base is the physical self. We have three relationships, and those three relationships are physical self and others. And our physical self is at that base. And that's movement, not just exercise. But how are you just moving around on a daily basis, or are you sedentary most of the time?

There's a huge body of research right now on being sedentary and how that leads to various degradations in capacity, whether it be physical, cognitive, or emotional exercise, which is, you know, getting whatever it is that your required dose may be, and being more intentional about it. Sleep and nutrition. And I think when you look at the OP tempo of many tactical communities, they don't seem in alignment with being able to take care of the physical self.

So I think we see either it be from trauma or from the perceived lack of time. I think sleep is one of the first things that starts to go. And if I'm looking at any operator for drift, that I think is, it's a very early signal. It's not like something's going to happen because I think the majority of people aren't sleeping well, but I do think it's one of the things that can lead to other downstream effects. So I would prioritize.

Okay, how is that person optimizing their sleep if you can't get more, let's work on quality. If you can get more, let's figure out how and let's take care of the root problem. If you're not sleeping, you probably will stop exercising and you will probably throw nutrition out the window. They kind of come in pairs.

So we look at optimizing all of those and working within the person's schedule. Identify even short times. Maybe you don't have time for a 30 or 45 minutes workout, but maybe you have time for a ten minute bit here and then a ten minute here and then maybe another 10 minutes later. It's just figuring out within that person's OP tempo, how can we get in at least a half hour of total physical activity, whether that happens all in one dose or nothing, that's going to kind of be up to the op tempo in the context.

So really working within the reality of that person's environment versus like here's the optimal thing to do for sleep. You need 7 to 8 hours and right away they throw it out because it's like, well, I can't do that. So thanks. You're of no help. So we're looking, how do we meet them where they're at and optimize what we can and then with the self. Did you have something, Jon?

Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. Let me ask you a question. We tend to think of like, okay, I have a very physical job. You know, I work construction. Oh, that's my exercise. But I think you would probably argue that there's a whole emotional component to exercise that is not met. So, if you're an operator and you're training all day and you're doing movement and all that might be meeting your movement quotient, but it may not be meeting your exercise quotient.

Brittany Loney: Exactly. Yeah. We actually separate movement and exercise because, yes, if you have a physical job, you are getting your movement, but are you getting your exercise where your heart rate is at an elevated level for X amount of time and you're doing strategic things to build the foundations of physical movement from strength to endurance, whatever it might be, that would be best for your job. But to say you're in shape because you're moving through the day, that is not accurate because they affect the body in very different ways, and both are needed.

Jon Becker: And from a, you know, I probably five or six years ago, started to really take sleep seriously. You know, cold bed, cold room, dark windows, you know, no caffeine, deep sleep. And it was unbelievable how it affected everything else. Like, you know, your blood work, your weight, your, you know, how you think, how much energy you have during the day, like, yeah, I think it's very easy to undervalue sleep as kind of the anchor. And Matthew Walker's book that says, basically that's when the repair work takes place. And if you're not sleeping, you're not repairing, you're just gradually degrading.

Brittany Loney: Yeah. And that same for the brain. Many times we think it's for the body, but sleep is actually even more important for the brain. Obviously, it's important for everything, but it is literally the only time the brain is able to regenerate the damage that it's done. And through every single day, we have micro traumas in our brain, and we usually don't think about that, but just in the same way as we use a muscle, and over time, we'll actually start to get microtrauma in the muscle, then it repairs itself, and then it gets bigger. I mean, that's how, essentially, muscle is built. The same is true of our brain.

And the only time it can do that, rebuilding and that regeneration is during sleep self and each stage of sleep. I could nerd out forever on this, but each stage of sleep actually has an important function. I think a lot of times we're chasing deep sleep, and it's at the expense of some other stages. And many times, especially with those who are chronically sleep deprived, they're going into REM earlier than they normally would because there's an REM rebound that happens with chronic sleep deprivation.

So, no, you're not getting the level of deep sleep because you're an REM, because your brain's actually really smart and it's trying to make up for the REM that you've been missing. So I think it is important to realize, yes, deep sleep is important, but so are all the other stages.

And when we start to use these wearables and rely on them to tell us our quality of sleep, many of them, especially using the optical sensors, are not going to be highly accurate. The sleep quantity, time is likely accurate for most of them, but the sleep quality, it's not. And I see people actually start making significant adjustments to things that were actually working because they think they're not getting deep sleep, because the watch is telling them that.

And I'm like, well, how do you feel? Well, I feel fine. Like, you need to go with how you feel more on that piece when it comes to the sleep quality, because they can, I have seen it lead people astray and even get overly anxious about not getting quality sleep because their watch is telling them that they're not, but really they are.

Jon Becker: Yeah, that's one of the – There's an upside to gamifying things, which is it focuses your attention and makes you, you know, change habits. But the downside to gamifying things is that you could actually become, you know, too obsessed with it. You see people with diet where they become orthorexic, where, like, it's. It has to be, you know, oh, man, I didn't get a purpose. I had five too many calories today. And, like, the same is true with sleep. Like, it's – You have to enjoy it. Like, it can't be, but it.

But it's also, I think that people under undervalue that, you know, Ambien does not produce normal sleep. You know, a pint of bourbon does not produce normal sleep. You know, eating right before you go to bed does not produce normal sleep. Like, there's all these things related to sleep hygiene that we tend to forget and then not understand why the next day we're foggy or we're not moving as well, or we don't think as well.

Brittany Loney: And I'm glad you mentioned that there are positive things. I'm not completely anti wearables and whatnot, but it's being smart about how you're using it. If it's changing behaviors in an effective way, go ahead. If you're starting to change things that are working because you think it's not working, because your wearable is telling you, that's where you might want to get a second opinion on that aspect.

But, yeah, the value of sleep, it really can't be overstated. And I think people are tired of hearing about it. But I also think that it is the anchor, like you called it. I love that word for it because I think it anchors every other behavior.

Jon Becker: Well. And in this community, sleep is up. And let's just call it what it is. Like, I don't know any operator that gets enough sleep or takes enough, you know, takes it seriously enough. It's just, it is the nature of the work, the nature of the assignments, you know, the coming home amped up from an operation and trying to fall asleep and, like, there is a lot to it.

Let's talk a minute, we kind of – We kind of went through, you know, the five perceptions. But from a self standpoint, how do we, how do we build our armor for self develop?

Brittany Loney: The first is the perception, and we did go through the five. Just a reminder here now, as is, as granted release and effortless, virtuous action and then purpose. So this is going back to that spiritual and philosophical aspect, is how are you connecting with yourself's purpose in a very meaningful way and continuous development and learning? Actually, as human beings, we have this innate drive to want to be better and to evolve.

So it's how are we systematically setting that up in our environment to where we feel like we're evolving and gaining mastery over our environment and tasks and so we can have self mastery. So those would be the three with our relationship to ourself. Did you have any questions around any of those?

Jon Becker: No, I think that's, you know, I think. I think you nailed that. Yeah. It is really kind of finding that self, though, and not. We tend to focus too much on the physical and lose, and lose self pretty easily.

Brittany Loney: Yeah. And if you think about the pyramid, I was saying, like, physical is the foundation relationship with self. Is that one level up? So if our physical aspect is all gone haywire, that middle layer is a lot harder as well. It's far harder to have effective perceptions of reality. When you're not sleeping, you're not working out, you're getting crappy nutrition.

But then it's also another control mechanism that if we don't feel like we have control over the physical, okay, then can we take some control over the self that actually might help us get more control over the physical. So I think we can work them both ways. I think they affect each other as well.

Jon Becker: The final one is external. Talk to me about that.

Brittany Loney: This is all about your connection with others, your tribe, who you've chosen to surround yourself with. And are they influencing you in a positive or meaningful way, or are they potentially bringing you to your bad habits? And maybe it's your comfort zone and you've got that buddy who will always go have the drink with you, but are they serving you in a meaningful way in your life that helps you keep going in a safe, sustainable manner? And within that, we build our tribe, but then there's also tribes we have to leave.

And we discussed that state of liminality and this actually came. I heard this first from Doctor Preston Klein with the mission critical Teens Institute. He had come for a visit and he explained liminality and I thought it was very powerful. It's this state of being in between tribes. And this could happen if you're transitioning units, you're transitioning stations, you're retiring.

Any transition where you are leaving your old tribe and you're not yet accepted into your new tribe is a state of liminality. And it's very hard for human beings because we are tribal in nature. We are very social beings. Our brains are actually built to be social. And when we aren't part of a tribe, we feel a bit lost and it's highly stressful.

So when we're in that state, we actually have to double down on, okay, who still supports me? Who do I still have by my side? And it doesn't have to be a ton of people. They just have to be meaningful people. It's actually better to have meaningful connections than a lot of connections. So it's regrounding yourself. There are still people there. Who are they? And then you slowly start to build that tribe around you again.

Jon Becker: But I think it's a very valid point. And it is – We are hardwired. Our survival depends. Human beings only get to be what we are now because of our ability to cooperate, because of our connection, because of our communication skills, and especially transitions in leadership, transitions in tribes, and especially when guys are retiring or they're leaving units. You see guys go adrift.

And it seems now, 40 years into this, the ones that don't go adrift, the guys that don't drink too much and go out and find hookers and cocaine and whatever, are always the ones that have good friends outside of the job. They have a family that they're connected to and kids that they love and participate with. It is. It is maintaining more than one tribe and being connected to those tribes consistently.

Brittany Loney: Yes. Yeah, I think he hit the nail on the head whenever someone is transitioning out of the military because that's where I've worked the most. We recommend they read the second mountain because that's talking about a purpose beyond the achievement.

The first mountain is all about individual achievement. And I'm going to get this rank, I'm going to get this position, I'm going to get this. And it's like all of these external, like, things we're going to achieve and kind of put on our resume.

The second mountain actually becomes more about your eulogy virtues and how are you going to serve the world through living your purpose and your values versus the resume virtues. And that transition, I think, is big when people are looking at, okay, what is my life outside of the tactical space. And I think reading that book can help someone see it doesn't have to be just taking another job in the tactical space. It can be, but it doesn't have to be, and it doesn't also mean you have to leave it completely.

I think the second mountain opens up options for people to think about what's next in a different manner than I think. What is the tendency to think, well, what's the next achievement? And then I would also look at their tribe if they don't have a strong one outside of work currently, I would try to get them connected with a new tribe before they fully leave their old tribe and have someone actively helping them find that new tribe.

And that's where I think, you know, veterans groups, first responder groups, all those type of things. I think those are huge when people are transitioning, because it's at least a group that feels like the old one and people who can relate to me. And I think that's where people can start building up that new tribe.

Jon Becker: I love that! Yeah. So I think probably the one thing I'd ask now, Brittany, is like, how can people follow your work? Where can people find you? Find what you're writing about, find what you're talking about.

Brittany Loney: My website's probably the best because I have a page where it's a content and various appearances. It's a elite-cognition.com. Don't forget the dash in between elite and cognition.com. And then you can also follow me on LinkedIn. Brittany Loney.

Jon Becker: Beautiful! Brittany, thank you so much for spending this time with me! You've definitely made me smarter in the process, and I appreciate everything you're doing for the community.

Brittany Loney: Thank you so much! It was such an honor to be able to speak with your audience!