Lessons from a Navy Seals Officer

My job as a performance coach and NYC personal trainer is to prepare my clients for their goals. This not only means the physical aspect but also the mental preparation for overcoming certain negative behaviors – i.e. learning to stop eating fast food, push for that extra rep, and so on.  What better way to learn about overcoming obstacles than learning from one of the toughest people in the world, a Navy Seals Officer.

*If you want to skip to the good stuff scroll down to “Big 4”.

Meet Officer X

A few years ago I got to catch up with my buddy “Officer X”, I’m not going to reveal his name for obvious reasons, on his experience training to become a Navy Seals Officer. We all know how tough these guys are but it’s absolutely unbelievable what they go through to become the elite of the elite. I’ve watched documentaries about their training but the stories he told me made those videos seem like Disney movies!

Never Give Up

Officer X graduated as a candidate of the Naval Academy and it was his dream to become a Navy Seals. The Navy Seal candidate must meet specific qualifications:

• Specific eyesight requirements: 20/40 best eye, 20/70 worst eye; correctable to 20/25 with no color blindness.
• Meet minimum Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery.
• 28years of age or younger
• Pass physical examination:

Unfortunately Officer X just missed the run times. Because he’s an Officer (graduate of the Naval Academy) he had ONE last chance to apply, if he failed he would never have another chance to become a Navy Seal Officer. Instead of calling it quits, he relentlessly trained for a year to be as physically and mentally fit as he could. And it clearly was a success.

BUD/S

BUD/S is an acronym for Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training. This basically makes or breaks you. It start with 5 weeks of Indoctrination and Pre-Training as part of the Navy SEAL Class, then they go through the 3 phases of BUD/S:

Phase 1 – Physical Conditioning (8 weeks)

• Running in the sand
• Swimming – up to 2 miles w/fins in the ocean
• Calisthenics
• Timed Obstacle Course
• Four-mile timed runs in boots
• Small boat seamanship
• Hydrographic surveys and creating charts
• Hell Week – Week 4 of Phase 1
• 5 ½ days of continuous training
• Four hours sleep, total
• Swimming
• Running
• Enduring cold, wet, and exhaustion
• Rock Portage in Rubber Raiding Craft
• Doing 10 times what you thought possible
• TEAMWORK!

Phase 2 – Diving (8 weeks)

• Step up intensity of the physical training
• Focus on Combat Diving
• Open-Circuit (compressed air) SCUBA
• Closed-Circuit (100% oxygen) SCUBA
• Long-distance underwater dives
• Mission-focused combat swimming and diving techniques

Phase 3 – Land Warfare (9 weeks)

• Increasingly strenuous physical training
• Weapons training
• Demolitions (military explosives)
• Small unit tactics
• Patrolling techniques
• Rappelling and fast rope operations
• Marksmanship

*Phase information from NavySeals.com

The Struggle

Just to give you a little perspective, they started with 257 guys that have ALL been physically and mentally screened, after Indoctrination (7 weeks) which is all running, swimming push ups, pull ups, obstacles course etc… they finished with 190 applicants.  Once “Hell Week” came, at the mid-point of Phase 1,  they were down to 91 applicants. That’s about 50% of the pre-selected applicants gone!

Another little glimpse about Hell Week- The process starts on Sunday at 6pm and I believe Wednesday and Thursday they are given 90minute afternoon “naps”. But just to make it a little fun, before they are finallt given a well deserved 90 minute nap the applicants are required to jump in the freezing cold ocean and THEN are allowed to take a nap on an empty cot- no tent, blanket, pillow etc… Basically they are cold, wet, physically and mentally tested for 5.5 days. There is absolutely NO leniency, they have a new batch of instructors come in every few hours to make sure they are pushing you as hard as they can.

These tests are meant to see how you overcome adversity and how mentally tough you are. For instance, if someone quits your team gets weaker, they won’t add another person to your squad. This can be especially grueling for the 14 mile boat run where the squad has to keep the boat overhead throughout the 14 miles. Then by night time your legs are shot, so the have you paddle around for 8 hours. At this point Officer X’s squad started to hallucinate and he had to make sure that not only everyone was safe but they they kept their composure. One team member thought he was in an airplane and was trying to put the paddle into an overhead storage compartment. Even Officer X stated to hallucinate and saw a brick wall in front of the boat!  But he knew it wasn’t real so he had the team keep pushing through!

In the end the group finished with 22 Navy Seals out of 257 applicants. There are plenty more stories about extreme physical tests but according to Officers X each one of these incredible mental and physical tests of strength were overcome thanks to the “Big 4”.

Big 4

The Big 4 was developed by Master Chief Will Guild to help the SEALs prepare for anything.

Goal Setting Through Segmenting:

Goal setting through segmenting is breaking up your end goal into pieces. It’s like little wins thigh your journey, thus it’ll keep your spirits up high and not allow you to get overwhelmed by the complexity of the end goal. For instance Office X never looked at BUD/s as a 7 month journey (of hell), he segmented each evolution into pieces and focused only on the little things to get to his end goal. To prove that this is effective, his quote says it all:

“Finishing BUD/s didn’t feel all that long”

That’s absolutely amazing! Force me to watch ballett and it feels like eternity…

Applied to Fitness

Interesting enough we use segmenting for our dieting and program goals for our personal training and performance training clients too. It’s pretty common for most athletes and fitness clients to want their goals NOW and then become overwhelmed by the reality of the path. To counter this we typically will focus on just a specific phase, diet habit, and so on that will eventually lead them to their goals.

Positive Self Talk

Positivity is a key attribute to success. It may sound all Disney but it’s 100% true. For instance when a team member of Officer X’s crew wasn’t pulling his weight, instead of yelling, cursing, and letting out his frustrations at the individual he reminded the member that he needs to pull his weight and had the rest of the team cheer him on. Because of this in the first week of BUD/s his crew finished either 1st or 2nd on all the test. It wasn’t because of their physical abilities but because of their team culture on the boat, it was encouraging and not negative- positive self talk.

Just to give you another crazy quote. When Officer X was laying in the surf zone = the water was freezing cold:

“I’d think ‘Well it’s not as bad as it was when the water temp was 48 degrees’ and then I would literally feel warmer!

Applied to Fitness

Being in New York City, while I love it, we definitely don’t have the kindest people in the world. So it can be at times tough to think positive, that’s why it’s so important to surround yourself around people that will be a strong moral support and help you stay on track toward your goal. Whether if this is from hiring a personal trainer or from surrounding yourself around like minded people, building a team/network that has a supporting culture will be very helpful to your fitness success.

Visualization

This is where you’re imagining the activity through your head to better prepare yourself. It’s commonly used across all sports- including Olympic weightlifting, golf, basketball etc… so it makes sense to utilize this technique for such a grueling test as BUD/s.

Officer X used this during his pool competency test, where they put you under water with no air and then basically beat the crap out of you. To succeed he simulated, in his head, not being able to breathe and what may happen under water. This better prepared him for what is to come so that it wasn’t a shock to your system. He stated that visualization kept his nerves under control and allowed him to thrive in such volatile conditions.

Applied to Fitness

Every successful athlete I’ve come coached has applied this same concept to their goal. Nick Goings (former Carolina Panthers running back) was very big in visualization both literally (look at his goals) and also mentally (visualizing a touchdown and how he got there). It’s a very powerful tool that can be used for weight-loss, strength training, and other sports.

Arousal Control

Controlling your nerves are very key to keeping certain levels of stress hormones down and allow you to perform at a higher level. It’s amazing what some of these soldiers can do with their bodies, to the point that the History channel did a special called the “Brain” tested human stress response.

This control also became very useful during “drown proofing”, where his hands was handcuffed and he was being attacked for about 15 minutes under water. Officer X said that the CO2 makes you want to react to go up for air but you have to remain calm otherwise you’ll just make it worse for yourself. He had to trust that his commanding officers would not allow him to die and in the system that they taught him. A very big trust when the person he’s supposed to trust is also beating the crap out of him and preventing him oxygen!

Applied to Fitness

It’s pretty clear that this directly relates to athletes preparing for their competitions. As for weight-loss and general fitness, I believe in a sense it’s trusting the process of your training and diet. With most weight-loss training clients, they want to see the scale go down on a weekly basis, unfortunately that’s not how the process works and it’s a big change in mind set. This is where trusting in the process and keeping a cool head (arousal control) is very important. I strongly believe that many weight-loss, strength athletes, and so on, give up too soon on a program because they believe what these fitness marketers are pushing. But if they would stick with a solid game plan CONSISTENTLY they would’ve reached their goals.

Conclusion

Officer X said-

“When they first told us this, we were like ‘yea yea yea’ but once I look back on it there’s no way that I would’ve been able to become a Seal without this.”

Very powerful words from one of the toughest (mentally and physically) person I know. I don’t think there’s much more to say other than use “The BIG 4”.

Stay strong,

Team Fusion Trained