HOW WE GOT HERE
By: Scott Johnston
You might be asking yourself who we are and how we came to be internationally recognized authorities on the subject of training military athletes. To be honest, it resulted from a chance email exchange eight years ago. A year after our first book, Training for the New Alpinism, was published, we received an email from a US Navy SEAL. He told me that he and his SEAL cousin were both alpine climbers and had thought that they were really fit. But then they trained for a year using my methods and could not believe how much faster they were in the mountains carrying heavy loads. He told me that he’d been deployed to Afghanistan and thought this type of training would really help the combat troops deployed there. My attention was piqued, and what ensued were a lot of email and phone conversations that developed into a long-distance friendship. A year later, this SEAL asked me for help preparing for the DevGru selection. This sounded like a challenge but not completely out of my wheelhouse. Having had a great deal of success coaching a number of world-class and Olympic endurance athletes, I knew how to prepare someone for a long competitive season and figured those methods could be applied in this special case.
The results of our 6-month collaboration were excellent, and he made it through the selection process and the ensuing 6-month training. As a result, I was invited to visit DevGru to work with their instructors. Slowly, word began to get out, and other individuals headed to other tough selections, asking for coaching. Every week we get emails like the following. Name and unit redacted.
I am a member of one of the US military Special Operations units. A friend of mine told me about your books two years ago. After reading them I decided to revamp my training. It has totally changed my performance. Prior to reading your books my training was typical of most guys in the SOF community, all short duration, high intensity. I had some decent performances but I topped out quickly.
The other week, I ran a 12-mile ruck for the first time since changing things, and I was able to finish in 1:34. A PR of about 12 minutes, and I also recovered much quicker than in the past. This was with just a 3-day taper in the middle of my base period! I’m still quite a few minutes off Cpt. Paikowsiki’s time, but I’m excited about what I could do with a proper train-up.
I want to thank you for putting out so much free content. It makes a huge difference! Just from reading the books, listening to your podcasts, and watching the book clubs I feel I’ve been able to develop a decent understanding of the concepts and was able to build out my own training plan with the help of the new alpinism training log.
I was fortunate to be one of the first people in on the “secret” of what you were preaching in those days when my friend was really the only guy on the compound who knew about it, and it has been very cool to watch it spread throughout the ranks. You and the rest of the people at Evoke have certainly helped to increase our lethality!
Around this same time, I was contacted by the lead trainer for the US Air Force Pararescue squadron based in Tucson, Arizona, for help designing programs for his PJs. A months-long collaboration resulted in my training methods to come up with novel solutions to PJ-specific job requirements. Those PJs demonstrated significant improvements in in-the-field performance.
In 2021, I received another email that really got my attention. It was from Vince Paikowski, half of the team that won that year’s Best Ranger Competition. He told me he’d read my second book, Training for the Uphill Athlete, and used those principles to train him and his partner for this success. After a number of emails and phone calls, another long-distance friendship developed. I asked Vince to come on as a coach. In 2022, seven of the top ten teams at the Best Ranger Competition were either directly coached by Vince or used his training plan. Again, in 2023, Vince pulled off a repeat performance. This time, with nine of the top ten teams.
Our military coaching team now consists of Vince Paikowski, Maury Birdwell, Scott Johnston, John Frieh, Jack Kuenzle, and Seth Keena.
As our team has grown, so has our experience. Not only have these coaches successfully coached many aspirants for Tier One selections as well as Ranger School, Marine OIC, BUDs, and SFAS, but they have also conducted workshops and training seminars for company-level SOF teams. They have also played a major part in developing our military training plans as well as much of the information in the military section of the site.
We are excited and honored to be able to help our men and women in the military become more effective warriors. Nothing here is meant to imply that we have received endorsement or sanction from the US DOD.
