Dr. Krista Scott-Dixon is a trained counselor specializing in the psychology of behavior change, with certifications including motivational interviewing, solution-focused therapy, DBT, CBT, and trauma counseling.

She’s the author of numerous books and accredited nutrition, sleep, stress, and recovery courses.

She’s our go-to performance psych for special operations candidates and active operators, and works one-on-one with many of our clients to help them excel in selection and stay mentally and emotionally resilient throughout their careers.

This is part of an ongoing series with KSD, where we’ll be talking with her about the specific tools and concepts that come up regularly in her work with special operators, and how you can apply them in your own life.

Work with KSD: https://www.buildingtheelite.com/performance-psych-coaching/

Timestamps:

00:23 Introduction to Krista Scott Dixon

01:07 Helping Candidates Assess the "Am I Good Enough" Question

08:03 The Mistake of Only Looking at PT Test Scores

13:34 The Struggle of Getting Stuck in Your Head

21:28 The Way People Quit

29:36 Being Good at Working Through Any Conditions

34:27 Preparing for Anything and Everything in Skills Assessment

42:02 "I'll Figure it Out" and Fuzzy Trace Theory

47:23 Tolerating Suffering in Crappy Jobs

52:03 Military Barracks Full of Broken Washing Machines

58:17 How to Access the Variables that Matter

1:05:35 Outro

Steve House serves as the managing director, coach, and official mascot of Uphill Athlete, which he co-founded in 2016. He lives in a remote and mountainous corner of Austria with his wife and two sons.

Steve’s biggest coaching challenge was coaching himself. Which was successful enough for him to be called “The greatest climber of his generation” by none other than Reinhold Messner. He was inspired to write down what he learned and originally recruited two other coaches to help him write Training for the New Alpinism while recovering from a near-life-ending fall in 2010.

He then co-authored Training for the Uphill Athlete (2018) to fulfill his personal mission to “Teach conventional endurance training theory and practice to mountain athletes.” He retired from professional climbing at the end of 2020 to dedicate himself to family and work full-time on Uphill Athlete.

Steve’s most famous ascent is the 4,500-meter-high Rupal Face, the world's biggest mountain wall, which culminates at the summit of the world's deadliest and 9th-highest mountain: Nanga Parbat.

In this episode, we talk with Steve about his career, Uphill Athlete’s approach to coaching, and the overlap between mountain athletes and special operators.

More about Steve and Uphill Athlete:

You can learn more about Uphill Athlete at their website, uphillathlete.com.

And you can follow them on social media here:

Uphill Athlete Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uphill_athlete/

Steve’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevehouse10/

Timestamps:
00:00:22 Introduction to Steve House

00:01:47 What is Significant about Nanga Parbat, "The Naked Mountain"

00:06:51 Grading the Technical Difficulty of Climbing

00:11:18 The "American Certified International Federation of Mountain Guides Associations" Guide

00:15:23 Overlap Between Climbing and Special Operations Communities

00:18:00 Similarities and Differences Between the Communities

00:30:32 Uphill Athlete Training Mistake

00:40:37 Base Building Meaning and Development

00:42:44 Aerobic Threshold to Regulate Training

00:51:00 Building Aerobic Volume

00:58:59 What to Prioritize During Training

01:02:09 Misunderstanding V02 Max in Training

01:09:13 Ventilatory Threshold Breakpoint

01:15:10 Ten Athletes, Ten Results

01:18:03 What's Next for Uphill Athlete?

01:21:23 Best and Worst Advice Ever Received

01:23:44 Book Recommendations

01:24:59 Outro

Dr. David “Wally” Walton is a retired Army Special Forces officer with 25 years of experience in the SF community. His career spans service with the 7th Special Forces Group, Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), and the Special Warfare Center and School.

Dr. Walton’s extensive operational experience includes deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and across Latin America. Since retiring in 2013, he has transitioned into academia, teaching National Security Studies and Executive Leadership. His research portfolio covers Security Strategy, Organizational Culture and Dynamics, and Human Performance. He has a deep understanding of security studies, encompassing everything from tactical operations to strategic policy discussions.

Currently an instructor at JSOC, Dr. Walton is a Subject Matter Expert in Special Forces Assessment and Selection. He specializes in Land Navigation, runs a prep program designed for SFAS candidates, and is the author of multiple books about preparing for SFAS.

More about Dr. Walton:

Website: https://tfvoodoo.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tf_voo_doo/

Timestamps:

00:00:23 Introduction to Dr. David Walton
00:01:42 Changes within SFSS and Coaching
00:20:22 Being Trained in Land Navigation
00:30:43 Better Prepared Candidates
00:53:34 The Sandman Event
00:59:29 Selection Rates and Working Through the Stages
01:05:23 No Dependencies in the SFSS Course
01:09:47 The "Awaiting Training" Phase
01:11:33 What has Dr. David Walton Changed in Coaching?
01:17:08 How Many Books has Dr. Walton Written?
01:21:52 Books Everyone Should Read
01:26:32 Outro

Brad Stulberg is a bestselling author of the new book The Way of Excellence, a performance coach, faculty member at the University of Michigan, and a husband and father.

The Way of Excellence comes out tomorrow, and you can pick up a copy at any major bookseller like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Audible.com, or Bookshop.org.

You can learn more about Brad and follow his work at his website, (https://www.bradstulberg.com/) and on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradstulberg/

Nick has over 12 years of military experience, including 4 years as an Australian Commando and 6 years as an SAS operator. His operational service included deployments throughout the Middle East and Southeast Asia, including Iraq and East Timor.

Since leaving the Army, Nick has established two companies as a founding Director, The Mill Gym and Omni GeoX; as well as a new fitness competition, the Tier 1 Games.

Nick has provided risk management, leadership, and elite-level performance consulting in austere environments worldwide, including with professional sports teams, multinational corporations, government, and non-governmental organisations.

Nick's charter is to build real-world resilience within individuals and foster a no-compromise culture of excellence. He’s driven by a deep passion for building elite-level soldiers and athletes through an uncompromising culture, mindset, and mental toughness. His philosophy is simple: hard work beats talent, and resilience is the decisive advantage in high-pressure environments.

By drawing from years of operational experience and an 18-year coaching career, Nick develops training systems that forge discipline, sharpen decision-making under stress, and cultivate the mental edge required to excel when it matters most.

Learn more about Nick and The Mill Gym:

Email: nick@themillgym.com

Instagram: @themillgym

LinkedIn: @nickcaldwell

Website: themillgym.com

Timestamps:

0:00:22 Introduction to Nick Caldwell
0:01:45 Career in the Aussie Special Air Service
0:05:32 Training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
0:07:10 Gaining the Confidence to Enlist
0:14:49 Nick's Goals that Pushed His Career Forward
0:17:50 Recovering from Burnout
0:21:23 Helping Someone Understand Their Recovery and Readiness
0:26:48 Training with HRP and Other Monitoring Devices
0:38:28 What Camps Does Nick Caldwell Run?
0:44:43 Not a 36 Hour Exercise Competition
0:49:55 Standard Pre-Screening
0:57:50 Woman in Courses of Self-Defense
1:02:11 "Keeping Yourself Safe in a Parking Garage" Scenario
1:10:04 Books that Nick Believes Everyone Should Read
1:18:37 Outro

Dr. Krista Scott-Dixon is a trained counselor specializing in the psychology of behavior change, with certifications in motivational interviewing, solution-focused therapy, DBT, CBT, and trauma counseling.

She’s the author of numerous books and accredited nutrition, sleep, stress, and recovery courses. She is our go-to performance psych, working one-on-one with many of our clients to sharpen the mental and emotional skills needed to handle some of the toughest training courses in the world.

In this episode, we’re talking to KSD about the coaching work she does with active and aspiring operators, focusing on the central themes and patterns she often uses to help people excel in their careers and become more capable and resilient.

Learn more about working with KSD: https://www.buildingtheelite.com/performance-psych-coaching/

Follow KSD on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stumptuous

Timestamps:
00:23 Introduction to Dr. Krista Scott-Dixon
01:12 Common Themes in Special Operations Selection
03:42 Getting Distracted by Misconceptions
08:11 Paradox of High Standards While Facing Setbacks
13:36 The Vulnerability of Overthinking
18:53 The Concept of Self-Compassion
25:11 The Value of Coaching Yourself Positively
30:25 The Concept of Fun - Do it Seriously, Don't Take it Seriously
38:09 Weaving Fun into Intense Training
43:07 Appreciation of Nature and Disasters
47:03 Training That's Too Strict Can Steal Joy from Life
49:58 The Concept of Competition
54:43 What Does Neurodivergence Mean?
1:00:46 Distinguishing Between Self-Deficits or Neurological Differences
1:06:22 Behavioral Red Flags within Military Tactical Populations
1:12:36 Strategies for Those that Fall into a Neurodivergent Category
1:16:16 What is Stimming and What Does It Do?
1:18:53 The Impact of Time Spent Alone Doing Something Meaningless
1:24:44 Dr. Krista Scott-Dixon's Book Recommendations
1:26:23 Outro

SOF selection is a proving ground, where your physical, mental, and emotional raw material will be laid bare, with nothing to hide behind. It's a place where you voluntarily walk into a brutal challenge to find out if who you think you are matches who you are.

It's a way of answering a question that few people are willing to ask.

Mo Anthoine, a British mountaineer, referred to this as "feeding the rat."

Think of the "rat" as that gnawing part of you that needs challenge, risk, and uncertainty. You feel better when it's been fed.

As Anthoine put it, "I think it's because there is always a question mark about how you would perform. You have an idea of yourself and it can be quite a shock when you don't come up to your own expectations. If you just tootle along you can think you're a pretty slick bloke until things go wrong and you find you're nothing like you imagined yourself to be. But if you deliberately put yourself in difficult situations, then you get a pretty good idea of how you're going. That's why I like feeding the rat."

Everyone has a rat to feed.

You only choose how you feed it.

Dr. Daniel Cooper is a human performance and behaviour specialist who focuses on improving individual and team performance in high-pressure, high-consequence environments.

He provides a unique perspective that sits at the intersection of real-world experience, academic research, and high-performance development.

His experience encompasses over 18 years of service within the Australian Special Operations community, as well as academic studies in physiology, PhD research on performing under pressure, and current studies in neuroscience.

In addition to high-performance coaching in professional sports and personal pursuits in extreme ultra-endurance events, Daniel has also worked within law enforcement as a frontline skills trainer, assisting in the development and delivery of strategic command programs.

Follow Dr. Cooper:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-cooper-phd-3725194a/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dancooper_phd/

Timestamps:

00:21 Introduction to Dr. Daniel Cooper

01:35 Where in Antarctica is Dr. Daniel Cooper Going?

02:54 What Distance Record is Dr. Cooper Going for?

03:42 What are the Logistics for a Trip to Antarctica?

04:58 What Does the Food Look Like?

07:09 Starting Weight for a Sled

08:22 Getting Out of the Special Air Service

08:49 Dr. Cooper's Area of Research

09:39 Under Pressure You Fall to the Level of Your Instructor

12:24 What Operators Do Wrong When They Become Instructors

14:32 What's Dr. Cooper's Take on the Post-Engagement Scan?

18:47 The "Rule of Pretending" in Training Exercises

23:17 "Procedure Monkey" Meaning

24:06 Letting Situations Go Wrong in Training

27:35 Balancing Adaptability, Productivity and Challenges

31:44 The Impact of Shame in Training Practices

34:58 Mental Toughness is Misunderstood

40:58 How a Unit Should View Their Team and the World Around Them

46:05 Difference Between Character and Capability

49:38 More Effective Evaluating in the Special Air Service

53:40 Psychological Characteristics of Developing Excellence, PCDE's

01:03:03 Linear vs Non-Linear Motor Skill Development

01:12:54 Desirable Difficulties to Train Recall Skills

01:13:53 Dr. Coopers Book Recommendation

01:14:53 Best and Worst Advice Ever Received

01:16:26 Outro