Pete Hegseth works out with soldiers in the snow as military reasserts pride in strength

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spent Friday morning working out in the snow with US forces in Poland — as new military ads reflect a renewed pride in power and strength.

Hegseth, who arrived in Warsaw Thursday for his first official overseas trip, shared photos of himself jogging and doing pre-dawn pushups with members of the US Army V Corps and Polish forces who work with them there.

“Tough, disciplined, ready to fight,” he posted on X.

“Readiness starts with physical and mental toughness. No excuses,” he wrote alongside a video clip of him jogging with the troops.

Hegseth’s personal show of strength mirrors that seen in the military’s latest recruitment ads — which are a stark contrast to the focus on woke talking points of many released during the Biden administration.

One of the latest online videos from the US Army — viewed nearly 7 million times on X by Friday — shows a tattooed Special Forces soldier aggressively training in a dark gym.

After deadlifting an impressive 500 pounds, the musclebound man turns to the camera and says: “Stronger people are harder to kill.”

The tough stance drew comparisons to a controversial Army recruitment video released in 2021 under the Biden administration that was blasted at the time for being “woke.”

That animated advertisement tells the story of Army officer Emma Malonelord, who was raised by a lesbian couple in San Francisco and was inspired to serve a country that defends gay rights.

In the ad, she brags about how, while her childhood was typical she “also marched for equality… I like to think I have been defending freedom from an early age.”

The Army ad was part of a series dubbed “The Calling,” which tells the “emotional” true stories of soldiers in order to “shatter” military stereotypes, Maj. Gen. Alex Fink, head of Army Enterprise Marketing, told Newsweek at the time.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz took particular issue with the ad for portraying a “woke, emasculated” US military — and even said it made American soldiers look like “pansies.”

Cruz compared it unfavorably to a Russian military ad featuring muscle-bound men shooting rifles.

After Trump’s election victory in November, the US Army announced it shattered previous recruiting records when the service said it enlisted nearly 350 soldiers per day in December 2024, the most productive December in 15 years.

The surge in recruitment comes after two consecutive years of missing recruitment targets