Imagine taking a leap of faith, shifting careers from aviation to Psychological Operations (PSYOP) in the military, and then venturing into fitness entrepreneurship! That is precisely what our guest, military officer Meg Tucker did. In this riveting episode, Meg shares her journey, the lessons she learned, and how she leveraged her experiences to lead the Valkyrie Project, which is empowering women in physical challenges. Her story is an inspiring tale of resilience, leadership and pioneering change in a male-dominated field.
We also get a front row seat into Meg's innovative fitness training brand, the Valkyrie Project. It started as a lifestyle brand and has evolved into a personalized fitness training program specifically designed for women. The conversation sparks curiosity as we delve into the potential of AI in the fitness industry. We also touch on some of the challenges faced in providing fitness services, the importance of identifying weaknesses in training, and how best to overcome them.
As we round off this episode, Meg unveils the link between fitness and military advice for women. We learn about the significance of stressors that stimulate adaptation and the crucial role of rest in muscle and joint recovery. Meg's insights on the importance of varying movement formats provide a refreshing perspective on fitness. Listen in as Meg opens up about her plans post-military service and her aspirations for the Valkyrie Project. It's an episode that ends with a note of anticipation for Meg's future, and you will be left inspired and looking forward to her next updates.
https://www.valkyrieprojectus.com/
Contact Thad - VictoriousVeteranProject@Gmail.com
Thanks for listening!
Imagine taking a leap of faith, shifting careers from aviation to Psychological Operations (PSYOP) in the military, and then venturing into fitness entrepreneurship! That is precisely what our guest, military officer Meg Tucker did. In this riveting episode, Meg shares her journey, the lessons she learned, and how she leveraged her experiences to lead the Valkyrie Project, which is empowering women in physical challenges. Her story is an inspiring tale of resilience, leadership and pioneering change in a male-dominated field.
We also get a front row seat into Meg's innovative fitness training brand, the Valkyrie Project. It started as a lifestyle brand and has evolved into a personalized fitness training program specifically designed for women. The conversation sparks curiosity as we delve into the potential of AI in the fitness industry. We also touch on some of the challenges faced in providing fitness services, the importance of identifying weaknesses in training, and how best to overcome them.
As we round off this episode, Meg unveils the link between fitness and military advice for women. We learn about the significance of stressors that stimulate adaptation and the crucial role of rest in muscle and joint recovery. Meg's insights on the importance of varying movement formats provide a refreshing perspective on fitness. Listen in as Meg opens up about her plans post-military service and her aspirations for the Valkyrie Project. It's an episode that ends with a note of anticipation for Meg's future, and you will be left inspired and looking forward to her next updates.
https://www.valkyrieprojectus.com/
Contact Thad - VictoriousVeteranProject@Gmail.com
Thanks for listening!
during my entry into PSYOP, which is under the category of special operations in the army, I had to go out, like I said, for an assessment and selection force and for anyone that's been through one or heard anything about them, there's always a gut check, there's a cognitive aspect, there's a physical aspect. Often you're underfed, tired, just generally, coping with a smorgas board of brand new personalities, of people you've never met, just thrown into a stressful environment and trying to figure out how to be a team and get things done. And I went through that assessment and selection process. I got picked up, but I finished our culminating exercise in like dead last place.
Speaker 1:It was a physical event. It was a long, long rough march and I finished basically dead last. And when they asked us what would you do differently if you had to come back here, my answer was I don't want to lead from the middle or the back of the pack as an officer. I want to lead from the front and I have my work cut out for me because I was going from one male dominated position to another was really important to me as a woman to set an example about. Women can maintain the same standards as their male counterparts and physical challenges.
Speaker 2:Welcome to another episode of on your lead. A point man in the military leads from the front, making the path clear and safe. My goal is to provide a point person or guide for you to follow, to help you build confidence and locate the next steps you need to take to achieve the life you want. My hope is that you take those steps. Then join us on the show to share your success so we can all follow on your lead. Welcome to another episode. I'm here today with Meg Tucker from the Valkyrie project. How are you doing, Meg?
Speaker 1:I'm doing quite well, Fad. Thanks for asking. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm excellent. Thank you for taking your time for jumping on and sharing a little bit about what you've got going on. You got some exciting things happening.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, generally they feel less exciting when you're in the muck of the work, but, yes, when, when things come through fruition, that's always nice.
Speaker 2:From the outside, looking at it all seems very exciting, but I can definitely understand what you're saying and I know currently right now still in the Army. I know we're not going to go too far into it, but you're an officer in psychological operations, Is that correct?
Speaker 1:That's correct.
Speaker 2:Well, what got you into the Army? What made you want to join the military?
Speaker 1:Oh gosh. Well, it was kind of a convergence of haphazard circumstances that just aligned all at once. Essentially, I had been working on a bachelor's degree in Spanish with the intent to teach at the university level. I always really enjoyed academia and wanted to have elevated conversations about culture and literature and history and things like that related to Hispanic America. But I got to a particular point in my undergrad where it was important for me to have some kind of reliable income.
Speaker 1:So I initially joined the National Guard as a cadet with the intent to well, I jumped ahead of myself. It was initially going to be an officer candidate route where you essentially wear E5 rank for a couple months while you're in basic training and then you go on to officer training and then serve one weekend a month, two weeks a year for the Guard. And then I gave it some more thought and realized that I would be better suited for teaching full time if I had a master's degree in Spanish as well. So I ended up switching my packet over so that it could be an ROTC cadet for two years during grad school. So that's what I did, and then towards the end of that, I observed the mountain of student loan debts that I was sitting on and I was like, wow, I just need to go on active duty.
Speaker 1:And in addition to not doing sufficient enough research for me to understand the requirements to teach, and add to that having an academic advisor that wasn't the most communicative, I was like, man, I'm not in a good position to teach, I have two degrees and loads of student loan debt. I just need to go on active duty. So it was kind of a slippery slope for, like, I'm just going to do military a little too. Like we're going all in. And I initially was on a track for, or I wanted to do, military intelligence. But after lots of discussions with my brother who was in the Air Force at the time, aviation seemed kind of sexy and cool and an awesome opportunity. So I ended up competing for aviation and because I had grown up a little bit and gotten really good grades in grad school, I was competitive for my first choice of branch. So I started my career as an active duty aviator in the Kailah.
Speaker 2:Wow, and what took place there? That's a very interesting start track to be out on. I mean, well, how did that go?
Speaker 1:It went well. I struggled more in flight school than I had anticipated I would because I always felt like I had a strong academic sense. You know, decently talented at rope memorization and conceptual ideas in education circles like, okay, I'm good at school, I'll be fine in flight school. And it's a lot more way more rope memorization than I've ever done in my life. It's very technical, not only in terms of understanding systems but also the actual implementation of flying.
Speaker 1:You know, and moving a control essentially with each hand and each foot all simultaneously was a lot and I was not the best pilot in flight school, but I didn't get through. It was a lot of work and it was stressful and I found I always found it ironic that there is this big emphasis on pilots getting meeting their crew rest. Crew rest requirements essentially rules that are written that say if you're going to go operate an airframe you have to have X amount of sleep or else it's considered higher risk if you're not well rested. But I was exhausted the entire time, like the whole year and a half of flight school. I was like I can't believe I haven't wrecked one of these things yet because I'm so tired, and basically my entire experience in aviation was the same. I was always exhausted as a platoon leader, always exhausted as an exo of like it was just a lot of work.
Speaker 2:Okay, so those sleep requirements are a good thing. Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 1:They are, and especially when they're implemented properly. I think part of the situation that contributed to my exhaustion was that when I was waiting for my opportunity to get flight hours, I would be busy with things like things that you learn as a new lieutenant planning ranges and taking care of your guys and making sure that all the additional tasks you're given to plan and execute fall in neatly and don't interrupt the other obligations that you have as a platoon leader. And I just found juggling all of that pretty exhausting. And add on top of that trying to maintain my fitness, because at the time I was still fairly competitive cross fitter. Getting to the gym was a gargantuan effort much of the time, and it felt that way basically every day for a long time.
Speaker 2:Hmm, meg was tired. Meg was tired. Well, and it I mean being in. Did you go straight from that into psychological operations? Is that Essentially? So I mean it's interesting to be tired and then jump into what I mean it sounds like also a very badass and very tiring job. So I'm curious to know that transition.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the Kyra Warrior was the airframe that I flew and anyone that's never seen it. It's fun to Google because it essentially looks like a news helicopter, painted olive drab green, with a very large sight plopped on top. That essentially looks like a golf ball with two eyeballs on a stick or a golf tee.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's an odd looking airframe. That airframe has been in use, had been in use in the army essentially since Vietnam era, and the airframe itself remained fairly pretty much the same, minus like gradual improvements to avionics and electronics and weaponry and things like that over the years. So imagine, taking, you know, the same frame of a Honda Civic from 1993. And every couple of years she's got a new engine and knew this and knew that and it can do more things, but it's still the same frame and when you, when you are investing that amount of money in a piece of military equipment, the tendency is to want to maintain that investment right. So it's an airframe that was continually improved over the years, but to a point where the initial idea of this you know, th67 skin and bones was like this is outdated, we need a new airframe, kind of thing. And that conversation had swirled around for probably a decade if not more, and so I flew for a couple of years, never deployed in the airframe, but it flew for a couple of years. And then eventually they got to the point where the army decided the airframe needed to be divested, essentially gifted to our allied nations, because we needed to get something better, and so that essentially led to, I want to say, the cannibalization of all the Cairo units, but kind of because everyone had to be farmed out elsewhere.
Speaker 1:While some people were held to stand up new attack reconnaissance units with Apaches instead of OH58Ds, other folks were kind of shuffled out to different areas. So, for example, the warrant officers, which is different from regular officers. They were given they were, they were placed on an order of merit list and you know their timing service was considered and their skill set and and essentially their point in career progression was considered. So some people got some of these warrants, got sent off to fly Apaches, others were sent off to fly something else, others were offered an early retirement, you know if they were like 17 or 18 years. And that was kind of how human resources command dealt with the war on officer population, which is the preponderance of pilots and army aviation.
Speaker 1:For the rest of us regular officers, it was very much case by case basis whether you could count on flying something else or not. And at the time I was a first lieutenant, hadn't yet been to the captain's career course, which is in essence captain's school, where they teach you everything you need to know as a captain in aviation and HRC essentially said well, if you're a first lieutenant and you haven't yet been to this captain's school, we can only estimate 30% or less of you will get another airframe, but you won't know if you got another one or not until after you've attended this six month captain's school. So it was essentially an invitation to wait six months getting training that I might not end up needing to maybe get an aircraft. And then for me, a secondary layer of considerations was the potential to not be competitive for command, like if I were to go be a brand new Apache pilot. You know, I might be potentially thousands of flight hours behind other captains who had deployed to Iraq, afghanistan and that Apache, at which point I'd become junior and less competitive.
Speaker 1:So all of that to say the math didn't look good for me and it was honestly a little bit burned out just from the pace of things and from just a couple of bad experiences I had in the units that I spent time in. So I feverishly searched back through my inbox because I remembered getting this recruitment email from Special Operations and I was looking for this the CST email, the cultural support team email. But when I found it and emailed them saying, hey, just kidding, I want an opportunity. They said, well, we're not taking any more CSTs, but you can look into civil affairs or psychological operations, and so that was kind of the transition I dropped a packet and got an assessment date and off I went.
Speaker 2:And it sounds so much like the military in general, and I don't care what branch it is. It's like we'll put you here but we don't know what's going to happen there. But go do that and then you might have a chance of doing this, and I think most civilians think it's such a well-oiled machine and there's so many things like that that I hear about that. It doesn't matter if you're enlisted officers. We all deal with a lot of these things that can be frustrating, and so you ended up psychological operations and for however you can define it for the audience, what does that mean? What does that mean? And a friendly term, if we were to Google it, look it up. What does it mean?
Speaker 1:It's essentially the military's arm of influence that attempts to influence hearts and minds of populations that are not the United States and its citizens. If you can visualize in your minds I defensive or offensive operations that are in protection of the interests of the United States and countering negative influence from outside, that's what we do, but not essentially nothing that we ever do, outside of very few small exceptions when there are natural disasters or things like that. We don't work with the intent of influencing US populations. We look at the problem set outside specifically with lots of interest towards adversaries that try to spread misinformation or disinformation about operations that we're doing abroad or that generally try to sway global audiences towards what we know to be completely false information, and you can find tons of examples of this in discussing Russia or China problems, that's, the particular examples in Ukraine and instances around COVID, things like that. So we try to tell the truth when our adversaries are telling lies and we try not to allow otherwise innocent populations to be influenced negatively or taken advantage of by online actors.
Speaker 2:Obviously, way, way, way back in the day. It sounds like a very much more intense version of if you think back to World War II, when they would just drop flyers out of planes to drop and just kind of get information to people and obviously a much more advanced version of that. That's got to be pretty incredible. I imagine you've seen some pretty amazing things doing what you're currently doing within that, so thank you for that.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I think probably the most fun juxtaposition for me between aviation and psychological operations has been the ability to be creative and the ability to think in vectors that you wouldn't find in the cockpit of an airframe is really a fun intellectual challenge. For me, Everything in aviation was you're doing it by a checklist and there's always a prescriptive way of how you do the thing. And I've been much more intellectually stimulated and challenged with CyOp as opposed to just incessant rote memorization and just repeated attempts at trying to perfect a certain maneuver or whatever, which there's nothing wrong with that. But I've enjoyed that transition immensely and really enjoyed the emotional. The surprising emotional intelligence of the people and the caliber of people in PSYOP has been really refreshing and surprising.
Speaker 2:So it sounds like there's a lot more flexibility with the thinking process. That goes into a lot more creativity. Is that essentially what you're saying within it?
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely and certainly. I'm only speaking. I think it's pretty obvious that I'm speaking from my own experience. There are a lot of people that stay in an aviation career far longer than I did and then, based on that longer experience, have more opportunities to be creative and innovative and in approaches and probably get to a point where they've got more opportunity to influence how things are done within their own organization right, as opposed to being like handed a mission. But in my experience and with the limited amount of time I had in aviation, I've enjoyed the transition to PSYOP because it's allowed me to think creatively and really in some ways be the master of the end state that my mission creates, as opposed to just a deputy of someone else's idea, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it makes perfect sense, and it's surprising to me as a not a pilot and I know very little about aviation, but watching something like Maverick or Top Gun, it seems very cowboy-esque or that it's really the wild west, and what I'm hearing from you is that it's not the case in the world of aviation.
Speaker 1:Well, I also never got to deploy in my airframe and I would imagine if I had aviator buddies in here talking with us. They may push back on my previous comment because certainly there are absolutely reasons to and opportunities to think on the fly when you are in an active combat zone and having to make split decisions. When you're close to when, when, chester on, you're almost out of bullets, getting close to almost out of you know your limit, your minimum amount of fuel right and it becomes I stay in support of the ground commander, do I go back? And in those moments certainly there are judgment calls and creative thinking has had its place in aviation, for sure. But again, that wasn't my personal experience. So I do envy the folks that got to deploy and support a ground commander from the sky because they have fantastic stories, some scary stories.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I always love my cousin is married to. He's a colonel now in the Air Force. He's like one of the youngest colonels or ever, but he's got some amazing stories of flying over in Iraq, afghanistan. It's pretty incredible to sit back and listen to it. So I definitely don't want to paint a picture that is boring, but to anybody that's interested in getting into it, there's it sounds like there's a. It might be slightly different as you're training up to go into it. So so all of this you're currently in and now you are running or co running the Valkyrie project. Is that correct?
Speaker 1:Yes, I am the founder and chair of the Valkyrie project, which is okay. Now a nonprofit, formerly an LLC. That's okay.
Speaker 2:It's now. It is now a nonprofit.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Okay, and what? What's part? What is the Valkyrie project? Do what sparked it.
Speaker 1:I'll start with the inception story because I think that frames a lot of where we're going with the what we do part. But during my entry into PSIOP, which is under the category of special operations in the army, I had to go out, like I said, for an assessment and selection course, and for anyone that's been through one or heard anything about them, they're always a gut check. There's cognitive aspect, there's a physical aspect. Often you're underfed, tired, just generally coping with a smorgasbord of brand new, brand new personalities, of people you've never met, just thrown into a stressful environment and trying to figure out how to be a team and get things done. And I went through that assessment and selection process. I got picked up but I finished our culminating exercise in like dead last place. It was a physical event. It was a long, long, rough march and I finished basically dead last. And when they asked us what would you do differently if you had to come back here, my answer was I don't want to lead from the middle or the back of the pack as an officer. I want to lead from the front. And I have my work cut out for me because I was going from one male dominated position to another, and so it was really important to me as a woman to set an example that women can maintain the same standards as their male counterparts in physical challenges. So when I got into the SAAP course, I was looking around for training that could help me improve my rock marching, because I knew I would have to do another. Essentially a gate, you know there's you're in the course and then there's a barrier to entry for the next piece of the course, and that barrier for us was a 12 mile rock with 35 pounds dry and a five mile run and under, I think, 40 minutes. Has been a while since I've done one, but I was bound and determined to not only, you know, complete, to standard the rock march, but to crush it, and I was going to lead mostly men.
Speaker 1:Inevitably I wanted to be up there towards the front of the pack, and I struggled to find fitness programming that seemed intuitive for me or would be adaptive to my strengths as a female athlete, and at the time I didn't have much knowledge about how my physiology was different in terms of a performance frame, until, you know, I got to talking to my then coach, chris. Essentially, he's been working in the special operations community with human performance for years and years, and so I started working with this guy who's local to the area I was in, and I started digging more into the fitness nerd stuff articles to talk about how women have higher capacity to be successful at long endurance events and men tend to have more success in more explosive things. Reading about how certain aspects of our monthly cycle can positively or negatively influence our training, and so I really wanted to have some coaching and help that would take those things into consideration, and I couldn't find it anywhere. So I started working with Chris, and he shared some insights with me that were really helpful in terms of tactical athlete training that I hadn't known before, and so, based on his coaching, I ended up finishing that rock march in a great position. I was the first five people to finish out of like 200. And it was 95% dude, so it's like this guy knows what he's doing, he's on to something, and so I then, being a new kid in this special operations community, wanted to. I wanted to embrace the cool kid aspects and that's embarrassing to say now, but it happens like you know, the dudes they want to grow their hair a little bit longer and get away with it, or they want to grow their beard when they can go down range and everybody, you know, enjoys that.
Speaker 1:Oftentimes the mission parameters dictate that we get to wear civilian clothes instead of uniforms to maintain a low signature and it's very silly and a little childish. Now, I think, in retrospect, to like enjoy this kind of things. But you know, coming from a big army setting, it was like, oh, I get to go play in cool kid land now, this is great. So I was really proud and I wanted to like rock some special operations swag, for lack of a better word.
Speaker 1:Chris had a buddy who was a special operator former special operator who founded a company, was making these really cool t shirts and I bought one to support the, the Friends company. I ordered it online and when it showed up at my house along with the t shirt which I couldn't order in a women's size, by the way, they only offered men's cuts and men's sizes it was like, well, more the same, the shit always happens. It arrived in the mail with a condom and the package on the condom said something like it was a play on words, like always, always, employ your operator safely, or something. And it was a play on words between you know amorous connections and like a pistol or a gun, and I was like, okay, I could see how, like I was some chomping at the bit like red blooded young American man, I would find this hilarious. It was just like, wow, this brand is really not for me. Not only not like I dislike this brand, but I am absolutely not the target audience of this brand. This brand is made for male operators, male athletes, and that kind of got me thinking Well, where is everything for the women? We might not be the preponderance of service members and special operations, but we certainly do have a presence, so where is the brand that is catering to me?
Speaker 1:So early on, the idea for VP had a fairly heavy like lifestyle brand emphasis because I wanted to sell cool t shirts that I wanted to wear as, like, a person that was proud to be doing this job now.
Speaker 1:But over time it evolved into why isn't there any fitness training that accommodates my physiology and optimizes my physiology so I can perform my best? And so I essentially went to my coach at the time and was like no one's doing this, we should do this. And he was like, yeah, okay. So that was kind of the inception and eventually he. So he from the beginning was writing all the programming and I was doing the marketing and the interaction and all that, and due to an administrative hiccup, he ended up walking away, probably three or four months after we started. So I had to go get schooled up on how to write programming myself, because at that point I was a one woman show and had been doing podcasts and everything. So I was a one woman LLC for several years until finally, thank God, last year, I had the bandwidth to get some help and get VP growing in a bigger direction so that we can hopefully do a lot more than just provide workouts.
Speaker 2:Where do you see it going? Dream world, I mean, what's the goal three to five years from now? If there's no limitations, where do you see VP going?
Speaker 1:We've always been interested in supporting female military athletes that are searching to have access fair access to any job that they want. There's no reason that, with the right training, a female Navy SEAL shouldn't emerge soon. Same thing with Delta or maybe, who knows, they may already exist and we just don't know about it yet, but we want to provide training that facilitates that pursuit of whatever career goal a female tech athlete has. Finally, all of the programming is written by Coach Emily and myself a recent teammate that we've brought on but that's time intensive and it's also not as personalized as it could be. We do take pride in offering what I believe is the lowest price on the market for a female service member to use the app and just get workouts that make sense for her body and her cycles.
Speaker 1:The challenge that I'm seeing right now is that, even with low prices and with some more intuitive training, we're not as able as we would like to be yet to individualize programming even more, and AI by far and away, when supplemented with some kind of device like a loop or an aura ring, is the best thing on the market right now in terms of personalized fitness and so one of the big goals that we have for the next couple of years is partnering up with a company that is essentially using AI to enable individual fitness progression using metrics from like a loop or an aura ring, so that the end user has the best personal experience possible, so that, ideally, three years from now, if I'm Sarah Shooter and I want to go out for special forces assessment and selection, I can use my app that's tied to my aura ring data that says, okay, this is your readiness and so here's the best areas for you to train, but that all the workout pieces that Sarah Shooter would get are intuitive for the type of selection that she's going out for or intuitive for the type of training she's going out for.
Speaker 1:And so we're not there yet, but that's big on the horizon right now.
Speaker 2:Very cool? I have not, I think. Every day, I seem to be blown away with the different uses of AI, and it seems to be coming out more rapidly. Is that already a thing? Right now, ai is making workout plans and customizing it for people. Is that currently happening? Or, if not, is it no surprise that it's going to be happening soon? But is that currently?
Speaker 1:I believe it is on. So Wild AI is a company that is up and coming that we really love. That is essentially an app specifically designed for female athletes that does tie into their device whatever that device may be loop-or-ring and makes recommendations based on the individual. So it accounts for not only their statistics that are pulled from the device, but input from the user that says I'm experiencing these symptoms or those symptoms related to my cycle, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:I don't know the extent that the AI itself has talent, air quotes talent or skill, because, from what I understand in following the AI world, the AI has to be trained, it has to learn, just like any other intelligent thing, and so it takes time, from what I can gather, for that AI to develop a skill set and get better at doing a particular type of thing or get better at delivering a certain type of information. So, because it's such a new paradigm, I personally, as Meg, can't say the AI is super smart right now, or it's really. It's still in kindergarten. It needs to get to fifth grade. That is hard for me to say at the moment, but I think the technology is evolving so quickly that there's a lot of potential there.
Speaker 1:And honestly, any kind of personalization is better than absolutely no personalization. I would. I would make argument that a couple small degrees of personalization based on the athlete's current abilities is always going to be better than buying a six month blanket program PDF from an online company that has designed all their models around men that says here's your six months to SFAS packet, and you know, if you're a 28 year old woman who's menstruating or on a birth control, that might not be the best fit.
Speaker 2:No, definitely.
Speaker 2:I mean that's a huge thing and you mentioned earlier because I know I've had Laura on the show previously who I shared with you.
Speaker 2:Her episode and that was a big one of the many a-has that I had was just how big just being on your cycle. And it just hit me when you were talking about those. I think you said three correct me if I'm wrong on that, but the different those rucks that you did and you wanted to like the first one, not happy with your performance, next one, you're like, okay, I'm going to be in the top and that was the goal, but it small thing, but it just hit me and gave me awareness to the fact that, like I'm thinking to myself if I'm talking to my wife, like what happens like every time we go on a vacation, she's thinking about am I going to be on my cycle, am I not? Where's that going to be? And then that's something totally out two things outside of your control. That is almost feels like a lottery that hopefully those days line up where you can be at peak performance, when you need to be at peak performance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and something that I mean just to quickly address the peak performance thing. Women can still perform remarkable feats even in the most unfavorable windows of their cycle. But that typically happens, in my experience, when the individual is educated on how their own body works and they're in tune with their own cycle, and we call it a cycle for a reason. It's a lot of folks, I think, tend to fixate on the unsettling thing that happens for three to five days once a month for women, right, and that's just like the thing that imagine. That makes people imagine that we are the weaker sex because of the sing and really and I believe this was touched on in the previous podcast that you shared with me those hormonal fluctuations do ebb and flow and there are several different pieces of that information talking about estrogen, progesterone, luteinizing hormone, et cetera. All of those hormones fluctuate throughout the month, so it's not just about when is my period, when is it not. It's, I know, for this three day window. All of my hormones are generally low, so if I'm inexplicably in a negative mindset or just feeling a little flat, the good news is I don't necessarily have to internalize what's happening as a flaw in my personality or a flaw in my training or it's not negative feedback. So much for me. It's like I already know, from having paid attention to this, that two days from now I'm going to feel better, and so I don't have to distrust my program or assume that any tension I felt at work is actually the result of some kind of interpersonal conflict. It's just sometimes the hormonal fluctuations put you in a mindset and it gives you a lot more options, I guess I would say, than just assuming the best for the worst in a given time.
Speaker 1:And really, for the training window aspect, there's a growing body of research, even though we know women are less studied than men in the fitness realm. There's a growing body of research that indicates certain windows. Your potential for output is higher, just based on having more estrogen, and so why not train at your max range during those opportunities? If you're gonna do a one right max, why not do it then? If you're gonna do something really hard and intense, why not do it then? And when you're feeling less fantastic and a little bit more muted and a little bit more introverted, that's a fantastic time to reinforce zone two, aerobic training, with like a 45 minute session on a row or on a bench, and that's just kind of what we're getting at in terms of making things more intuitive in terms of the training.
Speaker 2:Okay, and is that what your programs and your subscription? Is that what it offers to anybody that wants to jump in? That you walk people through what that looks like specifically. You walk women through that. Is that what they could expect signing up?
Speaker 1:So essentially the way that our programming is written out is we do eight week blocks. So you might consider it in traditional strength and conditioning terms a micro cycle, because a lot of times cycles are referred to and 12 weeks are greater. But we take eight week cycles where there's a handful of movements that might be the primary emphasis. It might be I shouldn't say movements a handful of different fitness key indicators that we're looking to improve. So, like maybe this cycle, there's an emphasis on increasing bench dead, lift and squat and the next cycle will be emphasis on longer endurance and just maintaining the strength achieved in those three lifts.
Speaker 1:But we start the first two weeks of the cycle, the training cycle, with follicular based training.
Speaker 1:So when we are in, as women, a more favorable state to higher intensity, higher workload, more explosive movements, more dynamic movements.
Speaker 1:And then the second two weeks, week three and four, during the luteal window, which is more low, key, more slow, steady state aerobic work. It might be a bit more mundane. We might prescribe a rate of perceived exertion or RPE that is a little bit lower, because it's still productive work, right, not every workout has to crush your soul completely. Still doing that long, slow cardio for 60 minutes plus is still reinforcing the aerobic zones that you would use in some of these schools. And so you'll see two weeks of follicular work, two weeks of luteal for every eight week cycle and essentially those four weeks are then transposed into the next four weeks with a slight increase, typically in the volume or the repetitions, because we assume at that point you've had an adaptation. But it's essentially a mirror. So first four weeks, the second four weeks mirrors the first four, and so the assumption is that by the end of that eight week cycle, whatever the focus areas were, we would expect to see improvement in those focus areas.
Speaker 2:How significant, typically, is that improvement that you see with women that jump on this program? I mean, what does that look like on the backend?
Speaker 1:I've seen fairly consistent PRs or personal records with the athletes that continue to follow the program Full transparency. The challenge that we have in providing that services that lots of people sign up out of curiosity and either lose motivation or just decide that it's not for them and end up not using the service or just canceling the service. But from the athletes that we've had consistently over the years there's pretty steady and gradual improvement.
Speaker 2:I love to hear the improvements and my mind went to kind of that. That sounds like a very typical for any and I know you're not a physical brick and mortar gym, but for any gym they have. I mean they account for two thirds over sign up just because they know two thirds, it turns out working out, no matter who you are is tough. It's just hard work and you gotta be willing to put the work in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's also challenging for those that are obligated based on their command structure or the climate of their command or the personality of their command, what the expectation is for physical fitness.
Speaker 1:One of my primary complaints and concentrations as an early or young lieutenant was frequently having to be present for physical training in the morning and an NCO was running it, and irrespective of how much training or experience that NCO had in fitness or coaching, we would just do what they said, because that's what they said and that's what you're supposed to do.
Speaker 1:And there were a million instances of time where a young lieutenant, meg, would run the five mile airfield for the 10 millionth time knowing I was gonna go to CrossFit that evening and try and max out a one like a back squat and just be so frustrated that I didn't have the authority to train how I wanted to train. And so certainly that's an unfortunate aspect that we don't have any control over is I would like to enable junior enlisted female soldiers that have the right mindset and the right heart to pursue their fitness goals that give them the career that they want, but oftentimes they don't have the authority to decide that for themselves. They are just at the mercy of whatever their squad leader wants to do or platoon sergeant, and it's not necessarily always a bad thing, but I do think it supports a case for the military allocating resources towards training NCOs better in fitness and giving them the time to go get certifications and ideally certifications related to training women so that they're providing something that's useful to everyone.
Speaker 2:When I was gonna ask you what you felt like that solution was. If you were. Obviously you're an officer, not an NCO. But if you were that young NCO, what would you do differently, knowing that you have to train up this group of people and I know you said customize stuff for people that have the right mindset, which is what it takes but what would you do differently if you were that young NCO?
Speaker 1:in that situation, Do you mean if I were trying to make myself a candidate for a school? Or do you mean if I was responsible for training a group of people?
Speaker 2:Just responsible for training a group of people, because it's yeah just how you would approach it, knowing what you know. Now, what would you do different?
Speaker 1:I would take a route that probably would make everyone upset, but I'd start with testing and it probably wouldn't be like a full Army combat fitness test or a CFT, which is what we're doing now.
Speaker 1:I'd probably sprinkle some of those things out throughout the week to get a baseline for everyone.
Speaker 1:And if it was my squad or my platoon at that point you're limited on the ability to individualize everyone's training, just based on equipment and time and all these things. So take the handful of lowest common denominators like well, generally everyone's decent at the run, everyone can pass the run, but these people are struggling most with the trap bar deadlift and these people are struggling most with the sprint, drag, carry or whatever it is, and put the most emphasis on those movements. And certainly if I had any women in that formation, we'd be having conversations about or approach to birth control or lack thereof and her cycle and attempting a training program that accommodates that and maximizes windows of opportunity for adaptation and that takes a bit more of a low key approach during less favorable windows of the month. With all that said it also there's so much, there's so many variables to look at when you're talking to like about a group of people, because it's not just for women, it's not just a cycle or a lack thereof.
Speaker 1:There are lifestyle factors that apply to everyone, male or female doesn't matter You're intake of refined sugar every day, if you're hitting sufficient protein with the sources of that protein, or how much processed food you're eating, if you're getting enough fiber, you're getting enough sleep. The toxins in your environment even that can create unfavorable situations. There's so many aspects to look at that. If I were an NCO meg doing that, I would probably spend way too much time trying to write everyone an awesome individual workout program and then I would get in trouble for dereliction of duties for my actual job, because I would want everyone on their own path, because all different things to deal with.
Speaker 2:Out of curiosity, because it would be so customized. Doesn't matter who you are, I mean man, woman. The intake you mentioned the intakes and I'm thinking about just several people that just shugging about a liquor every night probably not the best thing to wake up to go PT the next morning. So all of these customized individual plans, how important do you put on the role of just those group PT sessions and having units actually work together?
Speaker 1:Again, I think the biggest emphasis when you're working in a group setting has to be on what everyone needs the most improvement on. But a fallacy that we see regularly is that folks have a tendency to train the test Like, if you need to be better at the three rep max, trap bar deadlift, you're gonna max out with trap bar deadlift three times a week, and most people can't do that and recover well, or if they are doing it, it's probably not a real max, because it's a true max does knock you out for a couple of days and so you might be dialing back. So at that point it becomes more a question of what movements reinforce the skillful execution that can still help us get the adaptation that we need. So the formula is to impose a stressor quote unquote stressor which is the exercise prescription, in order to create an adaptation, and at no point in there is extreme soreness or extreme fatigue or buckets of sweat or requirement to have success. If you want somebody to get better at that deadlift, they can be doing single leg kettlebell deadlifts for high repetition and moderate weight on Monday and then we revisit like a straight bar deadlift for lower reps and higher weight on Thursday and training a couple of times a week, with a varied format. This is something that I've seen as a best practice in terms of, one, keeping the programming interesting and, two, keeping people from being injured, which is a bit of a controversial topic in and of itself, because it's been hard for the fitness industry to prove what causes injuries, because as human beings, it happens it seems like there's no rhyme or reason.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of rhetoric around overuse, injury and these kinds of injuries and those kinds of injuries, but, especially even in my own programming, I've noticed that a variety of movements in the same village, if you will I've had good results with minimal, if not no, injuries. I can tell you, my shoulder started bothering me a lot when I was doing pushups five or six times a week during unit PT and a shoulder surgery later. Now my coach layers bench press and pushups and other pulling movements throughout the week, and so we're still working the same region of muscles and we're still working on strength and muscle endurance, but I'm minimizing the opportunity for overuse or, if not, overuse, inflammation in the same spot over and over right, my elbow hurts. I'm gonna keep doing pushups five days a week, even though that one spot gets worse and worse. Every time I push I'm not really giving that particular muscle group or joint a moment to rest or heal. So I hope I answered your question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no for sure, it's amazing. I'm blown away with your knowledge on just working out and just on this topic. It's a very interesting way. I appreciate you kind of taking down that path because the military is such a it's an interesting beast altogether.
Speaker 2:And just I've been had so much awareness brought towards me about the experience of just women in the military and women that wanna go into the military. I'm excited to share this. I mean, what advice. I'm thinking about a conversation I had a few weeks ago with someone. Her daughter is just hell bent on. I think she's 13 or 14 years old I don't know her specific age Just that her one thing is just join the military. That's all she wants, and I know this is typically a podcast for veterans and I'm curious to know what would your program help out at that age and what advice would you have to to specifically any girls that are looking to join the military, that want to? Where should they look? What resources should they look into?
Speaker 1:I do think that we would be a good resource because we do have I wouldn't say it's a principle, but it's a guiding idea towards not being prescriptive with percentages or weights.
Speaker 1:Rarely occasionally we'll do that, but for the most part, if we're having folks deadlift or bench or do kettle ball swings, things like that, we're not prescribing a weight in the way that you might expect to see at a CrossFit gym where they're doing RX. This is prescribed Like if you're in the top 5% of the gym, you can do these weights, but if you're everybody else, we'll subtract 25% and that's your weight. The benefit of not prescribing weights means that the individual user can adjust to whatever feels comfortable and doable for them and what we typically see with the more advanced athletes or the people that have a higher training age, that have just been involved in an athletic environment for more years. They tend to be able to push the envelope a little bit more, but their gains, their improvements, take a little longer just because they're hanging out more in the plateau zone, whereas a new athlete will see improvements shoot through the roof because a lot of times they're going through doing essentially nothing to all these new adaptations are taking place. So I do think our programming can be useful.
Speaker 1:What was the second part of your question?
Speaker 2:Just a little advice that you had for anybody that was going in and if your program would be helpful. And they're just sending any thoughts or advice, because I'm thinking about her mom, who was freaking out because her daughter is just so. This is what every day is what her daughter talks about and she's supporting her daughter, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Thank you for that. I do think it's a good sign that her daughter is so adamant and passionate about it. I told you my story earlier and I essentially slipped and fell and found myself in the army. It was entirely unplanned how I landed in the army, but having that amount of passion, I think, is a good sign and if I were the mother of that person I would probably be encouraged by that.
Speaker 1:I would say it's an opportunity for both of them to do research together into what each of the branches offer and what jobs are available in each of the branches Army, navy, air Force, marines, coast Guard, space Force. They all have some similar jobs, often very similar jobs, if not the same thing, but often they're singular opportunities in certain branches. You can't get a Psyop job unless you're army or, in some rare cases, a Marine. If you have a burning desire to fly fixed wing jets, you should probably try that in the Air Force of the Navy, because we do fly fixed wing in the army, but it's slow and there's only a couple options. So I think it's exciting that she's that motivated and the best advice I can give is do research to the nth degree. Don't commit to the first recruiter in the first branch that you go talk to. They are, unfortunately, often motivated by hitting quota numbers. So don't have the world pulled over your eyes, go talk and shop around your options.
Speaker 1:The other thing that Dockry Project is currently doing that we'd like to expand upon, because unfortunately, our forum is based in Facebook and I think, sadly, facebook is a dying social media app, or at least it's become a social media platform for those of us that are a little bit older.
Speaker 1:So I don't get the same type of chatter in our forum anymore that we used to get, so we're probably gonna move it to something else. But we do have a large network of female service members, past and present, from all the branches, and so anytime an individual comes to VP, even if they're not signing up for a membership, just because we appreciate sharing of networks and in connections, we're happy to put her in touch with anyone that she thinks she may wanna talk to. There's a particular job or branch. That's something else that we can offer, and really I'll make a jump and say that we probably have one of the bigger networks out there that are specific to women service members. Unless you're joining one that is designed for vets, there's a handful of in-service Facebook forums for specific schools, like women that wanna go to ranger school or women that wanna go for different trainings. Like those can be found. But I think that's a pretty incredible resource and we're always willing to drop everything and make a connection for people.
Speaker 2:That's great. What an awesome resource. I appreciate you sharing that. It just my mind went right to it and I thought about it because she's probably so motivated, I would imagine, because trailblazers like yourself, and for being that minority and male dominated unit, a schoolhouse going through and hearing little rippling stories about stuff that you're doing, stuff, that, and so I think it's pretty incredible.
Speaker 1:Happy to chat with her.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, thank you, and I have one more question for you. But before I do that and before I ask you, what are some ways? How can people get in touch with you if they wanna hear more? I know you've got a podcast. You have your website. How would you prefer people get in touch with you to learn more about what you're doing and what you can offer?
Speaker 1:So we are most active currently on Instagram. We do use that platform as our primary way to communicate, interface and really educate as much as we can. So that handle is gonna be Valkyrie Project US, so if you search for Valkyrie Project US, you'll find us. We are also on Facebook as the Valkyrie Project. Our website is ValkyrieProjectUScom. Dot. Or coming soon, not yet. We're fighting for the main. We're fighting for the main.
Speaker 1:And there are still around 20 episodes of our podcast available on iTunes and Spotify and every really confined podcast. There's been a bit of a lull in recording new podcasts, unfortunately, just because you know divorce and grad school and life change we still get in the way, but we are planning on standing that back up very soon.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, the podcast I can definitely. I know that that's a commitment in itself, on top of everything else that's going on. And I'd love to ask you, knowing that you're about to get out of the military, and then this is typically this is more focused towards veterans, but you're a high performer. You seem to always have a game plan, and so I'm curious I was curious ask what's Meg's plan for becoming a veteran, what are you gonna do? And I'm curious to hear your transition out and what it's gonna look like.
Speaker 1:I'm mostly laughing because for the first time in my life, I am very deliberately not having a plan.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I have ideas we absolutely like probably, you know, full transparency. My biggest regret with the Valkyrie Project thing is that I've just always had to put my Army career first because the implications are too big of not being good. And at my job and plugged into my job, I want to continue to expand Valkyrie Project and continue employing that to educate people and to fight for understanding. That hopefully can create some policy change for female service members to get them the resources that they deserve so they can compete for the jobs they want. But I'm absolutely going to take six months to do nothing when I get out.
Speaker 1:All right, I'm going to collect my disability check. Thank you, VA, for acknowledging my many ailments and I'm gonna eat, sleep, work out, get back in touch with my hobbies and get back in touch with my identity, who I am when I'm not in a uniform. It should be a pasty in and of itself. Well, I'm very excited for you.
Speaker 2:I know you've been in for 12 years and it's a tough 12 years, so you definitely earned this time off. I'm excited to talk to you further about just how you're training and your path goes. Thank you so much for jumping on. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, dad. Thanks for having me, thanks for having me.