This article is part of a continuing series of tactical strength and conditioning (TSAC) research reviews. It is designed to bring awareness to new research findings of relevance to tactical strength and conditioning communities.

This article provides personal insight and practical ways that mindfulness training can be incorporated into a physical training (PT) plan.

The purpose of this article is to present evidence for implementing wellness coaching practices for enhanced dissemination of knowledge and improved efficacy of lasting behavior change, positively affecting the service member’s fitness performance levels and decreasing risk of lifestyle disease development.

This article aims to bring awareness to the importance of sleep and recovery for first responders, as well as providing strategies to optimize sleep specific to their occupational demands.

Firefighting is a profession that has the potential to be extremely demanding, both physically and mentally. More specifically, these tactical personnel must be physically fit to perform their occupational requirements, all while they are exposed to daily stressors. This is likely to include everything from physical strain and shift work to interrupted sleep and witnessing potentially traumatizing events. Failure to prepare and mitigate these occupational demands can have long-lasting implications to overall performance as well as health and wellness. Unfortunately, many of these elements often go unaddressed. As such, considerations for collaborative and overarching cross-disciplinary allied health teams should be made. Human performance optimization (HPO) is a model that has been successfully adopted by the U.S. military to enhance the overarching health, wellness, and performance of soldiers. This article proposes the utilization of a similar HPO model by providing a rationale for how it can be used to reduce premature morbidity and mortality, as well as increasing overall readiness and resilience within the firefighting profession.

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) 63rd Annual Meeting was held in Boston, MA, May 31 – June 4, 2016. The number of TSAC presentations continued to increase, compared to the last few years, when the Federal Government sequester severely affected attendance.

This article recommends how to split the responsibilities of planning and executing the platoon physical training formation from the company commander’s echelon to the individual soldier level.

The purpose of this article is to guide tactical leaders in their development of a unit combatives program (UCP).