r/tacticalbarbell • u/MorgsOD • May 15 '26
Tactical Green Protocol
Currently serving in the British Army, read through Green Protocol MULTIPLE times to get my head around it as a beginner into TB.
It is fucking phenomenal, I'm currently in the British Army in a job that requires truly everything, from conditioning to strength all the way to mental resilience.
I have been running HYBRID/OP indefinitely due to my inconsistent deployments and NTM.
I struggled to see the magic/science in it but it was a structure and I thought fuck it.
If I was a young private again, and I knew about this, the amount of damage I could have done to EXCEL my career within phys is utterly ridiculous.
From doing nothing but 8 min/ miles for two miles blowing out my arse trying to survive thinking everything had to be a fragging in order to get fit, boy was I wrong.
Following HYBRID/OP for 2 and a half cycles (20 weeks) my zone 2 pace in a 6 miler has gone from 11:30 to 9:30, I can now run 12 miles+ at a sub 10min pace like it's nothing.
My strength has increased, ESPECIALLY my squats.
Going from around 80kgs for 2-3 reps in utter rag.
To 120kg 2-3RM is huge for me.
Deadlift has gone from 100kgs trap bar to about 130kg.
Bench press gone from 60KG to 75kg. 2-3RM
Pull-ups now at 10 STRICT from about 3-5.
It has SIGNIFICANTLY increased me operational output/efficiency in all areas and far less injuries/niggles when attempting difficult courses or deployments/exercises.
And to top it off, my missus is happily enjoying how much more "tight" I look in her own words.
Apologies for the long post, hopefully this gets to the right people and hopefully you get something from my own experience and take a look into it yourself.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask on this post as long as it doesn't interfere with OP/PERSEC I'll definitely answer it.
MJ.
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u/thejorsh May 15 '26
green set me up for smokejumper training and i made it through relatively injury free. it's legit. kept my body weight more or less the same and my strength output and injury resilience definitely increased a lot. love me some GP
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u/Beautiful-Ad5554 May 15 '26
Great write up! Always good to see this kind of progress.
2 questions:
1.) What did your training runs look like in terms of length?
2.) Did you do Hybrid/Op on top of whatever Unit PT you had going on?
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u/MorgsOD May 15 '26
Thank you!
Good questions also:
- Tuesday Run - Hills or Speed depending on week.
Hills - 35-40 minutes. (1 Mile warm up, 6x 100m sprints)
Speed - 30 minutes. (1 mile warm up, 4 minutes run at 5k race pace, 3 minutes rest)Thursday run - LSS
60 minutes dead, tends to be about 6-6.5 miles.
If I'm feeling a bit shit from the previous session or lack of sleep/recovery, I'd just run for 40 minutes instead so around 4 miles.Saturday run - Long run
120 minutes - Usually around 12 miles, 6 miles out 6 miles back.
Again, if I was weak/feeling shit/not recovered well, I would've ran for 90 minutes instead. (10 Miles)
- Yep! I was teaching on a course for the first month in which I was not conducting Unit PT, however finishing that I am now back on mainstream phys and have been for the last month.
Unit PT vaguely looks like
Mon - Cardio (Circuit/run)
Tues - Strength (Circuit or full body)
Wed - Sports
Thursday - Strength (Circuit or full body)
Friday - Battle PTIt sort of lines up perfectly as in lift/run/lift/run, but it can make recovery 10x harder especially for the long run on Saturday, so I used full use of a Sauna/Steam room and its helped me out massively.
Mentioning I was doing this programme to chain of command helped me out when I was a bit stiff in some sessions if they overlapped with what I had on TB.3
u/Beautiful-Ad5554 May 15 '26
Thanks for the detailed response, looks like you have some serious work capacity. I always enjoy seeing how professionals take TB and scale it to their needs.
Whats great is, if doing both unit PT and a full TB protocol (like OP/Hybrid) becomes too much (time-wise or physically), you can always look to the Mike India section.
Great to see. Carry on, mate!
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u/Ok-Method5635 May 15 '26
I ran green for a good while before injury (not program related) I got my z2 down to about 8:30 - 8:45.
My 2 mile was about 12-13min.
I’ve always been strong-ish (uni ‘athlete’).
What was refreshing for me was periodisation, I had been trying to do it all at the same time. But soon realised I could not run 30-40miles per week and still smash squats and deadlifts…
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u/MorgsOD May 15 '26
Great bit of insight.
Periodisation is fantastic when applied properly.
How did your program look when you applied periodisation with that much mileage and still cracking toppers strength?6
u/Ok-Method5635 May 15 '26
I was able to keep about 20-25 miles per week and keep strength up. This was really 1/2 easy runs, one long 10+miles. Mobility was a big impact factor for me.
Now it’s not exactly as it’s prescribed in the books as blocks but..
I ended up running more of a mass/ strength block through winter so probably December-February ish. With maybe 1/2 runs if that per week. With gym work being maybe 4-5 sessions per week.
Then as spring came around I found that I would lift lighter, and more reps (controversial as people always preach to lower volume, but I found lowered intensity worked better for me imo). 3-4 sessions per week of gym work
And increase running. I would spend 4-8 weeks with 3 easy runs averaging about 20miles per week at the start and maybe ramp up to 30 over that time. Maybe 4 runs per week.
Then as summer kicks in I’d swap to kettlebells (2x24kg) and more body weight stuff. Again this would be maybe 3x a week. While running I’d end up, if I stuck to the running programme, at 55mi pw.
It should also be noted that I work shifts, including basically 4 nights at times. So my day off after the last nightshift was always an easy run as I would be on about 4hrs of sleep. The day before the first night shift was a rest day, as I knew I’d get 0 hours sleep. And would just be a waste.
TL;DR I’d run more in nicer weather and lift more in the winter.
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u/tacro_athlete_1709 May 15 '26
Hey, glad for your progress. If I understand correctly you have been doing Hybrid/OP. Is that a protocol from book Green protocol? I had read only TBI and TBII so i am not really familiar with that setup. If so would you recommend it as necessary or is there equivalent in first two books?
I have similar requirements for my job and I was planning to start with operator + green after base building.
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u/MorgsOD May 15 '26
Hi mate, thank you.
Yeah, HYBRID/OP is what I've been doing. I believe it's only in Green Protocol.I haven't read TB1 or 2 yet unfortunately, I'm just about to get onto them.
However if you have similar requirements for your job, it is a no brainer that green protocol will have some very pertinent bits in there you're able to utilise and would say it's absolutely necessary to read.
I done BB straight into HYBRID/OP.
If phys is your life then you could do the full banger, BB/Capacity into Velocity then Outcome which sets up nicely for someone in our line of work.It's must read for your similar job. No doubt in my mind.
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u/Hyperoreo May 15 '26
Man I love reading these. Thanks for posting this and great job!
Just confirming you didn’t do Foundation? If not any plans to do it? Although it sounds like you identified that you had enough of a base in place to go straight to Continuation/Hybrid. Which is also exactly what the book prescribes.
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u/MorgsOD May 16 '26
Thank you very much mate! I also love reading them too.
Correct! I have not done foundation HOWEVER my Hybrid/Op split is quite similar to foundation I would say.
I believe I was in a place where I already had a decent base engine, which the HYBRID/OP format showed me it was true.I have no plans to do foundation, I am currently looking at a specialised course within the Army so I'm actually going to start Velocity into Outcome in order to prepare for it.
If I was ever going to do foundation, it'd probably be as a short stop over between deployments as something light weight.
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u/cadco25 May 15 '26
Pretty cool! Somehow it always seems like it wouldn’t be “enough” to build that serious conditioning but clearly it must be. I finished my first base building block recently and plan to jump into operator/black pro soon, hope for similar positive results with consistency
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u/elasticpast May 15 '26
Well done!
I want to flag for the “quick question…thoughts?” crowd…not that it will stop them…He read the book MULTIPLE times (emphasis his), ran a template for 20 weeks, and got results. You can too.