S6 Ep21 From Helmand Province to Human Performance

Dr. Jonpaul Nevin is Associate Professor in Human Performance and Health at Buckinghamshire New University and Programme Director of the Tactical Athlete Performance Centre. He joined the Royal Engineers as a sixteen-year-old apprentice, retrained as a physical training instructor, and served nearly fifteen years in the British Army. His last tour, Operation Herrick 10 in Helmand Province in 2009, led to Headley Court, where he went from watching casualties come home to rehabilitating them. He has asked ever since whether the army did everything it could to prepare its soldiers.

Jonpaul and Harry talk how a staff sergeant’s paper on whether the British Army was fit to fight in Afghanistan became an undergraduate degree for physical training instructors, then the MSc in Human Performance Optimisation, and now a PhD pathway.

They also cover why robustness comes before resilience, what cognitive load does to decisions, and why the fied needs doctrine without dogma. Jonpaul argues the people who have lived the work should lead it and provides advice about curiosity and the fundamentals.

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