Downtime

Unbeatable Mind by Mark Devine

A few years back I found myself at a challenging point in my life, I have lost my drive, focus, and direction. The reason doesn’t really matter but what did was that I wasn’t getting things done that needed to be done, relationships, my professional goals, personal goals, fitness, and overall health. I was in a funk and it seemed like the more I tried to do things the less they got done. I was tired all the time and had trouble making decisions. I felt like I was treading water but was losing the energy to keep afloat.

I don’t recall how I stumbled across Mark Devine’s SEALFIT website but I did. Mark Devine is a retired Navy SEAL Commander, CPA, and fitness trainer. As I read some of the blog posts and looked at the videos about his Kokoro Camp I felt like I had stumbled upon something. I liked what I was seeing and reading but still was missing the internal tools to get myself back on track when I decided to order his book Unbeatable Mind.

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I read the book like a hungry man having his first meal in a long time and started implementing the techniques into my daily life. These techniques include but are limited to meditation, mindfulness, understanding how to control my stress and anxiety, breath and thought control. I learned how to take control of my thoughts, emotions, decisions, responses, to set and accomplish goals, and regain the control I needed in my life. Hand in hand with the mental aspects of the book is the emphasis on the physical side of health, one side compliments the other physical health is equally as important as mental health. It took a while and I tailored some of the techniques to fit my lifestyle and abilities. I was able to accomplish goals and resolve issues with the help of the things I learned in the book. My dog-eared copy is never far away (I also have a Kindle copy on my iPhone and tablet so that it’s always handy) and I go back to it often whenever I find myself slipping. I have recommended it to many friends who find themselves struggling at some point in life and have given away many copies to friends. If you find yourself in a place where you can’t seem to get things done or focus I highly recommend picking up a copy.

Art Dorst is the owner of A. Dorst Consulting & Training Services and is a Senior Consultant for LaSorsa & Associates. He served in the U.S. Navy and Army National Guard, and is a retired municipal Police Officer, NRA Instructor, and is currently a security provider/trainer.

Battle Grounds Coffee Company – Grinding It

Reviewing coffee seemed like an interesting concept. Its something I’ve never done before but I sure do enjoy drinking coffee. Who doesn’t start their day with heart racing levels of caffeine? I know I can’t. Battle Grounds Coffee Company was kind enough to send me three different blends in bean form. I never tried grinding my own beans but was curious to see the difference. To capitalize on that I also used a French Press over a Mr. Coffee after hearing good things. Battle Grounds Coffee sent me Day Breacher. White Knuckle, and Hold Fast. For reference, I like my coffee like I like my Ops, Black. No sugar or creamer, or other poppycock horseshit was added, except for whiskey on late nights.

Hold Fast

I love dark coffee. I like being punched in the mouth with every sip and Hold Fast was my favorite of the three. Hold Fast has a rich flavor that’s somewhat chocolate like, like a bar of bitter chocolate. Chocolate mixed with tobacco maybe is the best way to describe it. This has been my morning go to and I use it to wake up and get moving. This Battle Grounds Coffee mixes the best with the aforementioned whiskey. Its what’s in my cup as we speak, or type, or whatever.

White Knuckle

White knuckle is an espresso blend which knew to me. Making an espresso correctly apparently, I needed some new tools. I borrowed an Aeropress Espresso maker and learned the ins and out of espresso and White Knuckle is certainly a caffeinated beast. This one tastes a lot like chocolate and it very smooth. I found out if you make it correctly it won’t be bitter, and that was a plus. My niche for this coffee was my project coffee. Need to finish something quickly with good focus? A double shot of White Knuckle. Got to get a story done? Need to finish an 80 lower build? Have to workout? Hit that White Knuckle and ride the Battle Grounds rollercoaster.

Day Breacher

Battle Grounds Coffee Day Breacher is appropriately named. I find it to be my midday cup of coffee. Day Breacher is not a kick in the mouth or a shot of espresso. This is just a deliciously smooth coffee. It’s sweet enough that even the “it needs a creamer” people in my life enjoyed it, before promptly turning it into a caramel/french vanilla abomination. Day Breacher naturally somewhat sweet and enjoyable just for a midday crash coffee. It’s a light brew with just a little kick to it. Day Breacher is great if you are a medium to light brew drinker, while I like my coffee darker the Day Breacher was still tasty and enjoyable.

Who Is Battle Grounds Coffee?

Battle Grounds Coffee is a Navy SEAL owned business that not only makes coffee to ship but owns a coffee shop. The owners, Salvatore and Dana DeFranco started the company in 2016 and have paired with numerous charities for both veteran and the homeless.

They are a premium coffee roaster and their brand shows it. The bags they package their coffee in are quite robust and airtight. I’ve had the coffee for over a month and have detected zero difference in flavor or aroma. This is perfect for people who like to stash coffee and experiment with different flavors and roasts.

You can give them a look here.

Photo of the day: Recon Marines prepare for extreme hike in South Korea

I remember going through the South Korean ROK Marine Mountain Warfare training center. Those ROK Marines were damn machines during the entire training course. I remember going up into the mountains one day, probably covering a few thousand feet in elevation, and they smoked us. Obviously, this is their backyard and they better be good at it, but damn. We were all in pretty good physical condition and these guys didn’t break a sweat.

Moving on to the ropes course was another interesting training evolution. This consisted of knot tying with regards to combat and survival and then traversing many different types of rope bridges. We all had safety carabiners snapped into the overhead line when going across these bridges. One of the two rope bridges actually crosses a major highway with a steady flow of vehicles and trucks. One of our guys got hung up and lost his footing. Unable to regain his footing to continue across the bridge, one of the Korean ROK Marines quickly went out across the bridge with no safety line snapped in and helped our guy back onto the bridge. They seem to have an increased level of crazy in them. All in all, it was a great training deployment with the ROK Marines.

MOUNTAIN WARFARE TRAINING CAMP, SOUTH KOREA

Petty Officer 3rd Class Cody Goddard covers the rear of the group as Republic of Korea Marines try to use communication equipment before a simulated pre-dawn raid Jan. 22 during Korean Marine Exchange Program 14-3 near the Mountain Warfare Training Camp in Pyeongchang, South Korea. To prepare for the cold weather training, the U.S. Marines went through climatization training which included jumping in a pool of ice water, learning to ski, and surviving with no warming layers. Goddard is a corpsman with 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force. The ROK Marines are with the 1st ROK Special Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st ROK Division.

Photo courtesy of DVIDS

Photo of the day: Small unit insertion in the Diyala province of Iraq

Small unit insertion in the Diyala province of Iraq sometime in ’06-’07. This was my first unit. Named Task Force 300 because the Squadron had roughly 300 shooters and a gigantic Greek commander. Of those 300: 22 would die, 1 in 3 would earn a purple heart, and all would collectively earn a Presidential Unit Citation for the campaign.

We operated much like island hopping in WWII. Moving from village to village setting up a patrol base and stabilizing the area before moving on to the next village. We didn’t really know it then, but we were fighting the infancy of ISIS. It wasn’t an easy deployment but paratroopers aren’t exactly ones to want it easy. I don’t know if I’ll ever be more proud of being a part of anything else in my life.

Author – Seth joined the Army in 2006 and went to Iraq a couple times doing LRRP work for the 82nd Airborne. After that, he played the Private Military Contractor game for a while until he decided to pursue a degree in economics. He now works as a data analyst and firearms instructor.

“When Heroes Fly” Opens Tonight on Netflix, Actors Interview

Tonight, January 10, Netflix is releasing a new series that looks to be a guaranteed hit with American audiences. The new show called “When Heroes Fly” centers around an Israeli Special Operations unit that was fighting in Lebanon in 2006. They then reunite to rescue a woman they believed to be dead, held in Colombia.

The unit is getting ready to leave Lebanon and have an exfiltration route planned to get them back in Israel where their families and lives are ready to get back to normal. But all hell breaks loose. Moving along their exfiltration route, they come across a disabled Israeli tank that is believed to be empty and the IDF air force is preparing to blow up to keep it from falling into the hands of Hamas. But when the unit finds the tank, there are two young scared crewmen still inside.

The Special Operations team gets into a fierce firefight with Hezbollah fighters that greatly outnumber them while trying to rescue some crewmen from the disabled Israeli tank. During the fighting, their commander is killed and several men wounded. The team is torn apart over it and bitter recriminations go back and forth over their decisions on that fateful night and it gets worse after they must conduct an after-action review for the Army upon returning home.

The men go their separate ways for 11 years and each is shown dealing with the stress of their war and loss in their own way until the sister of one of the team members, who was also the lover of the officer who took charge when the commander went down is seen in Colombia by one of the men while looking at a photo in a newspaper. The catch is that she supposedly died in a car crash there nine years before. And they find out that she’s being held against her will. So the commandos reunite for a final, personal rescue mission.

The team, still bitterly resentful to one another, reunite for final mission together that takes them deep into the heart of the Colombian jungle, where they soon realize that if they are to succeed in their search to find Yaeli, the missing woman each of them must first confront the trauma of their battle in Lebanon that tore them apart so many years before.

The trailer for the series can be seen below:

SpecialOperations.com was fortunate enough to sit down for a telephonic interview with the two main stars of the series, Tomer Kapon who plays Aviv Danino, the second-in-command of the Special Ops unit and who still suffers from terrible PTSD 11-years after his horrific experiences in Lebanon. And Israeli pop singer and actress Ninette Tayeb who plays Yael ‘Yaeli’ Ashkenazi, the love interest of Aviv who everyone believed killed in Colombia in a car accident nearly a decade ago. She is the pivotal character in the series that everything centers around.

While both Kapon and Tayeb are already big stars in the Israeli entertainment industry, they are both going to be well-known to American audiences as well. Besides “When Heroes Fly”, Kapon will be seen in the soon upcoming American miniseries, “The Boys” starring Karl Urban (Lord of the Rings), Jack Quaid and Karen Fukuhara (Suicide Squad). Tayeb has moved to Los Angeles and in addition to her acting career, she is kicking off her music career in the U.S. as well. She has released her first video, which was directed by her husband.

So, when we were contacted by the film company and asked if we were interested in getting a sneak peek at the series, we jumped at the chance. The Israelis are producing some excellent quality miniseries for television. “Fauda’ which centers around another Israeli Special Operations unit that goes undercover inside Gaza also starred Kapon.

The company sent us a trailer and a teaser with the entire first three episodes. While we have no idea how the show will play out, the first few hours of the series is plenty enough to hook you right in. It was the most popular new show in Israel and won the Canneseries Award at the Cannes Film Festival last April for the Best Series.

So we asked first to the both of them why they thought it was initially so successful in Israel last year. Both believed because it was so well done had a lot to do with it and the fact that it tells such a personal story for all of the actors. And the plight of the soldiers with PTSD is something that not only touches Americans but also resonates deeply with the Israelis.

With the PTSD, I asked Kapon about the scene where his character, Aviv has returned home three years later and is in the bar he owns with his girl (Tayeb). Everything is good until he sees one of the tankers they rescued, a young soldier who was shot in the head. He has a crushing flashback that sends him into a terrible depression and his life spiraling out of control. It was among the most powerful scenes in the first three episodes.

Kapon, who was an Israeli paratrooper and fought in Lebanon, knows how that would play to fellow soldiers. “Thanks, bro, it was a great scene because we were showing how everyone can be affected by PTSD.”

Tayeb’s character, Yaeli who has to try to somehow to hold Aviv and their relationship together is ripped apart by her inability to reach and ultimately help the man she loves. “I’m glad you picked up on that,” she said. “It was very intense and you are dealing with a very hurt individual. So many soldiers and their families have to deal with this. And it shows that the wounds of war are not always visible. Many times they are hidden, and that is why the character of Yaeli was so important. Because she was the woman who can bring him and all of them back.”

She said that she told the director that her role scared the shit out of her, but she wanted to not only take it on but jump in with both feet.

Tayeb who is a very accomplished singer but suffers from panic attacks allowed her husband to bring that out of her in her newest music video. We asked if she used that to pull some of her character’s felling out of the show. “Oh, you saw that? Thanks, it was similar, but obviously a very different emotional state there, I use a different emotion I think in my music,” she added.

About the series, this will relate to everyone, she says because everyone has a heart, a soul, it is so emotional she said because war is everywhere and we all know someone that has been affected like this.

I asked them about filming in Colombia and how they enjoyed their time there. “The place was magical bro,” Kapon said. “It was beautiful, so different from Israel. I loved it there.”

Tayeb agreed that it was magical. “We shot our first scenes in the jungle and I loved it,” she said. “When we arrived there, I immediately loved the place. I picked up my guitar and took off into the jungle all by myself for a while and just played and got in tune with the entire place which is unlike anything I’ve ever been.”

We asked Kapon about his latest experience filming his upcoming American feature, “it was a blast” he said. “We were filming up in Vancouver and had a great time and I think that show is going to be a good one.”

So, we asked him, can we expect some of the same edge of your seat reaction that we saw in Fauda? He said, “This is a bit of an emotional roller coaster, while Fauda dealt a lot with the action in the unit, this deals more with the characters and how they struggle to overcome their issues and how they pull together in their search for Yaeli”

We don’t want to give too much away here, because we want everyone to just enjoy the show as it unfolds. These Israeli Special Operators all get a second chance to find the peace that has eluded them since their days in a war together over 10 years before. But to find that peace may require perhaps even more loss.

The series was created by writer and director Omri Givron, co-creator of the Israeli show “Hostages,” and based on a book by late Israeli author Amir Gutfreund.

Other cast members include: Nadav Netz is Yaeli’s brother, Dov ‘Dubi’ Ashkenazi, Michael Aloni is the very successful business Dotan ‘Himmler’ Friedman. Himmler blames Aviv for their commander’s death and the two have become bitter towards one another. And Moshe Ashkenazi is Yakir ‘Benda’ Ben-David, the one member of the team everyone loves regardless of how they feel about the others. Benda is a character every unit in every army in the world has. While he has had own problems, the sight of him always brings a smile to the face of his former teammates. And they all greet him the same way….”Fucking Benda!”

The Hebrew-language series with English subtitles is guaranteed to appeal to the fans of the action genre as well as those who prefer the thriller type cliffhangers. Having watched the first three episodes, we can’t wait for the rest of the series to make its debut starting tonight. And the series was picked up for a second season which is good news to see the story continue on.

Tune in tonight on Netflix, you’ll be glad you did.

Photos/video: Courtesy of Spiro Films

Originally published on Special Operations.com

Photo of the day: Ranger earns Thai Jump Wings

It’s been so long I can’t remember the exact date. Let’s say 1995 based on my rank and sometime around monsoon season in Thailand. Alpha Company 2nd Ranger Battalion in support of Operation Cobra Gold, deployed to Thailand to work with and train the Thai Commandos. In this picture, I’m standing with my non-smiling Ranger counterpart. We had just performed several airborne operations from a Thai Air Force C-130. US Army Rangers and Thai Rangers sharing the skies over their beautiful country. Unlike other countries we’ve worked with, these guys were a real pleasure. They were smart, motivated to learn and always in good spirits. Despite their eagerness to see how we operate as a unit, these Thai Rangers proudly shared their intimate knowledge of the jungle and fieldcraft with us.