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Challenging the 'Tactical Athlete' Paradigm: Rethinking Human Performance for the Military

1/27/2025

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PictureJulianne Edwards Ph.D.,
Senior Scientist
Nine months after I became an embedded Cognitive Performance Specialist (CPS) within a Special Operations Forces (SOF) unit, two SOF Operators were tragically killed in action (KIA). Prior to their deployment, these two men accepted me with healthy skepticism in their individual and collective deployment preparation. The news of their deaths shocked me to my core and revolutionized my professional perspective as a human performance (HP) practitioner.

I immediately began questioning everything I knew as a professional. I poured myself back into the texts and literature in search of answers. What, if anything, had been grounded or tested with scientific rigor on a SOF population within sport and performance psychology or human performance broadly? I was frustrated with the difficulty of this search and frankly the scarcity of published information. When seeking counsel from other HP practitioners, the term 'tactical athlete' continually sat at the center of philosophies and practices. But here's the catch: while the concept is popular, the scientific support behind it is surprisingly thin. Unlike sports science, which is backed by decades of research, there's a big gap when it comes to how these training models work specifically for tactical populations.

Why is the term ’tactical athlete' so widely accepted? One of the most significant issues with the tactical athlete concept is its heavy reliance on athletic models of performance. While it's true that there are athletic components to being a SOF Operator, is this conceptualization a gross oversimplification? Are we outweighing the potential similarities and downplaying the stark differences? For starters, athletic organizations emphasize the importance of the training environment in painstaking detail. Optimal nutrition, hydration, and supplementation are readily available for elite athletes. Great care is put into ensuring sleep is not only a top priority but is actually attainable on a consistent basis. Athletic organizations are often at the forefront of recovery technology for both acute and chronic care. This is largely a result of robust scientific evidence of sport performance optimization, that frankly doesn't account for the complexity of military training and combat. Anybody who’s spent time with a SOF organization knows the inherent obstacles that make these environments drastically different. Not to mention our fundamental lack of knowledge of combat as it relates to human performance.

Please understand this is not an attack on the field of human performance. On the contrary, it’s more a call to action to a field of professionals whom I know are dedicated, genuine, and conscientious. I'm simply wondering: What if we are mistaken by our assumptions when labeling SOF operators as tactical athletes? More importantly, what's possible if we were to admit that we don't know enough and lean into figuring it out together? Perhaps we need a new paradigm model that encompasses context-specific research and training and reflects the unique complexities of SOF populations and combat in general. Perhaps creating an entire degree program dedicated to human performance within the military is the solution. Ultimately, I feel we owe it to those who selflessly serve to do better- to innovate, to question, and to advance our understanding.
Picture
The path forward demands humility, curiosity, and a willingness to admit how much we don't yet understand about human performance in combat. By embracing uncertainty and committing to rigorous, context-specific research and intentional cross-collaboration, we can begin to develop truly meaningful insights that honor the complexity of SOF operators' experiences.
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