This special issue of the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport s dedicated to the topic of optimizing physical performance and educing musculoskeletal injury. Effective military training should ncrease physical performance capabilities without incurring high ates of injury. Training injuries are not a badge of honor but rather ndicate less than optimal training programs. Better understanding f all aspects contributing to the training ecosystem, including facors such as, musculoskeletal physiology, responses to a training timulus and the influences of rest, nutrition, and personal health abits, provide a scientific basis for the design of training programs hat will result in soldiers with greater job-specific capabilities.1–3 etter understanding of injury risk factors contributes to the design f programs that should reduce training injuries even as they mprove in effectiveness.1–3 Over the years, military training epiemiology has identified aspects of how injury risk is heightened, uch as running in formation with the shortest individuals overtriding in the rear, performing training runs in boots, immediately tarting new training with high workloads, etc.1,2 As injury risks ave been reduced, additional risk factors have been exposed and otentially can also be reduced. The articles in this issue identify ome of the latest findings pertinent to military physical training. hese findings are relevant well beyond the military, with applicaions in many other occupationally related physical performance rograms and to athletic training. This special issue on Military Human Performance Optimizaion/Injury Prevention contains 18 manuscripts from 5 different rganizations dedicated toward studying biomedical research soluions to benefit military physical performance and readiness: the euromuscular Research Laboratory/Warrior Human Performance esearch Center (NMRL/WHPRC) at the University of Pittsburgh, he Military Performance Division at the U.S. Army Research Instiute of Environmental Medicine (USARIEM), the Injury Prevention ivision at the U.S. Army Public Health Center (APHC), the Division f Applied Physiology, Army Personnel Research Capability (APRC), ritish Ministry of Defence, and the Land Division, Australian efence Science and Technology (DST) Group. These manuscripts over a range of topics, including: development of military physical mployment standard assessments, military injury epidemiology nd associated risk factors, and physiological, neuromuscular, and ormonal adaptations to physical training and load carriage. The cientific findings of these manuscripts add to the knowledge base ith regard how best to leverage and translate human performance