New podcast: Leadership lessons from the Australian SAS Regiment

Chris Brennan served for 15 years in the Australian Army, 11 of which were as an operator within the Special Air Service Regiment (SASR).

He fulfilled multiple team specialist roles, including as a JTAC and Tandem Bundle Master within a Freefall Assault Team, before progressing into leadership roles as a team 2IC and culminating his career as an SASR Team Leader.

Chris deployed on multiple occasions and spent two years as a specialist trainer and assessor in the SASR's selection and training squadron.

He assisted in the design and implementation of high-risk training for new members undergoing the SASR reinforcement cycle, as well as assisting in the delivery of team-leading packages to those undergoing progression into tactical leadership functions.

Upon transitioning from the Australian Defence Force, Chris completed his Master of Business degree through the University of New South Wales, which provided academic backing to his lived experiences within the SASR.

As a result, Chris founded OMADA Performance Concepts, a high–performance team consultancy. Through OMADA, he now delivers specialised Team Development solutions, Team Leadership packages, and Instructor Development programs for critical response teams operating in high-risk environments.

More about Chris:

• Website: www.omadapc.com.au
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/omada.performance.concepts/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-brennan-991215353/

Listen on your favorite podcast host or on our website.

Everyone has a rat to feed

Everyone has a rat to feed.

There's a reason selection breaks so many people. It isn't just the cold, the miles, or the endless beatdowns. It's the internal battle you fight alone, when there's nothing left to hide behind.

Mo Anthoine, a British mountaineer, called this "feeding the rat." The "rat" is that gnawing part of you that needs challenge, risk, and uncertainty.

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 are going. That's why I like feeding the rat."

SOF selection feeds the rat. It strips away your comfort and ego and makes you suffer for your mistakes.

It's a way of answering the question: how closely does your idea of who you are match reality?

Anthoine again: "It's a sort of annual check-up on myself. The rat is you, really. It's the other you, and it's being fed by the you that you think you are. And they are often very different people. But when they come close to each other, it's smashing, that is. Then the rat's had a good meal and you come away feeling terrific. It's a fairly rare thing, but you have to keep feeding the brute, just for your own peace of mind. And even if you did blow it, at least there wouldn't be that great unknown."

This is where you see the quiet confidence of those who have just completed SOF selection, even while they're still physically depleted and limping. They've just fed the rat. They answered the question.

You don't get to choose whether you have a rat. You only choose how you feed it. Waiting for life to hand you a test is a losing strategy. Seek it yourself.

Then, even if you falter, you won't have to live with a great unanswered question. As Anthoine said, "To snuff it without knowing who you are and what you are capable of, I can't think of anything sadder than that."

Pay the price now or the cost will be failure later

Trying harder rarely works without trying better.

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome, 'trying harder' is the wanna-be SOF operator's equivalent mental trap.

Resilient people have a range of options to solve any problem; they don't just use the same handful of strategies with increasing intensity.

Of course, you must 'try hard' or 'be tough' to succeed in a SOF selection. But that's painfully obvious. It's like telling someone who wants to compete in the 100m final at the Olympics that they'll need to run fast.

Simple phrases that describe outcomes are not insights; they're the calling cards of ineffective approaches.

Successful SOF candidates are screened for their adaptability, not just toughness. They must possess a variety of skills and capacities:

+ They must be metabolically flexible to endure long periods without food or operating in an underfed state.

+ They must possess the mental skills to deal with various stressors: pain and fatigue, social pressure and isolation, emotional ups and downs, decision-making, self-talk management, etc.

+ They must be strong, have a huge endurance base in multiple modalities, and move reasonably well.

All of that sounds simple enough, but underlying each capacity is a variety of skills and abilities developed over years, not weeks and months. It's why we wrote a 500+ page book on the topic, and it still doesn't cover everything.

If you find yourself not performing the way you want and think the solution is to do the same thing but harder, you're probably not on the right track. Most of the time, you must learn to do the thing *better* or *differently* to improve. This requires a nuanced approach, not just sheer effort.

You're almost guaranteeing failure if you think you can buy success with a $40 magic PDF or find it on a podcast or Reddit thread.

If you want to be a SOF operator, act like a professional does in literally every other career field: hire a competent coach & seek out the relevant education and experience. It may take years of sweat equity and thousands of dollars. It's up to you: pay the price now, or gamble with failure later.

Choice is a privilege

You don't have to. You get to.

It's a privilege to have the opportunity to choose the path you pursue, no matter how difficult it may be.

Framing challenges as things you get to do, not things you have to do, changes your perspective from passivity to growth. This has a knock-on effect of changing how you perceive the same challenges - reducing your stress, improving your ability to learn and adapt, and making for a much more enjoyable (even if it is painful) experience.

Every outcome, no matter how rewarding and exciting it looks from the outside, includes a never-ending stream of annoyances. Life is tedious, people are fickle, and nothing stays the same. In other words, no one escapes the vicissitudes of life.

The only thing that separates those who enjoy the process from those that don't is their approach. And, if you find yourself in a position where you get to choose the type of challenges you face - even within a constrained set of options - you're in a position of immense privilege. Most people throughout history have had most of their lives foisted upon them with very little ability to change their circumstances. Their only true choice was to decide how they would approach hardships bestowed upon them.

Of course, this knowledge alone won't help you change your perspective. It's your choice: you can fixate on the things in your life that are outside your control and allow them to make you miserable, or you can decide to make the most out of the paths available to you.

No one escapes life's difficulties, so we may as well face them with a sense of agency, humor, and appreciation. By doing so, we amplify our capacity for success and extract joy and meaning in the process, regardless of the outcome.

Metabolic Flexibility

Metabolic flexibility is your body's ability to switch between burning fat and carbohydrates, depending on the situation's demands. For most people, this is just about health and body composition. For SOF candidates, it's about performance and survival.

Special operations don't happen in controlled environments. You won't always have perfect meals, predictable rest, or easy access to meals and exercise candy. You can't pause to refuel when you hit a wall. You have to keep moving, whether you're well-fed, sleep-deprived, or running on empty.

Your body's two main fuel sources, fat and carbohydrate, are used differently. Fat powers relatively low-intensity, long-duration work and helps spare limited glycogen stores for when you truly need to go hard. Carbohydrates deliver rapid energy and are essential for high-output bursts. The more adaptable you are, the more efficiently you can tap into both fuel systems, and the more capable you become under stress.

We build metabolic resilience by training the rate (how quickly you can access and use energy) and the range (how far you can shift from fat to carbohydrate burning and anywhere in between). You need the ability to go long, go hard, and keep going when fuel is scarce.

Solid fundamentals matter most: consistent habits, real food, and basic skills like shopping, cooking, and meal prep. It's not about supplements, magic macro ratios, or eating raw beef liver with a bloodstream full of cattle hormones. The basics, done well, support you when everything else falls apart.

You also have to train your mind. Selection guarantees unpredictable stress and scarcity. You need to know, from experience, that you can perform while hungry, depleted, or deep in the unknown. By deliberately exposing yourself to training in less-than-perfect conditions, such as occasional fasted rucks, you can develop both metabolic and mental adaptability.

SOF selection and operational life differ more from traditional sports than most assume. They require getting the job done under compromised conditions as a rule, not an exception.

Metabolic flexibility helps you handle that chaos. It's a foundational piece of physiological resilience.