Teens often hear many stories about the type of people who join the military and special operations programs. While you do need toughness, the ability to work with others, and an above-average level of fitness, all kinds of people make it through these difficult training programs. From athletes to nonathletes, band members, skateboarders/surfers, farmers and others, these people who are successful simply want it enough to endure the pain, failure and discomfort. Here is a question from a young man who has heard a few common myths about the type of people who join these units:
Stew, I did not do many sports in high school, but I still worked out. How much of an athlete do you need to be to join the Navy SEAL program? I have heard you need to be world-class at running and swimming. Then I hear normal guys make it and high-level athletes don’t. Can you help with this debate? Thanks, Jeremy.
Jeremy, well, you do not need to be a world-class athlete to join any special operations program. In fact, the only things you need are desire and ability. If you need to be world-class in anything, it is recovery. The ability to recover from high-intensity activity and high-stress events quickly is what you need to master. Learn about recovery (nutrition, sleep, breathing, proper training).
If you look at world-class athletes in both running and swimming, they are beyond great at these events but not so good at others. In fact, to be a good special ops student, you should be able to run a 6-minute-mile pace for short runs and maintain a 7-minute mile for longer runs. This will put you in good standing with others in your class, as these are a good average of those who graduate. For instance, the 1.5-mile timed run on the Navy Physical Screening Test (PST) requires a time of 9:30 to be competitive. While some score well above and below that, this is nowhere near “world-class”. Most competitive runners can run 1.5 miles in the time it takes most of us to run 1 mile. The world record for the marathon (26.2 miles) was recently broken by a runner who averages under 4:30 per mile!
Read More: Ask Stew: Teen Wants to Be an Army Ranger
For swimming, to be in good standing with your classmates, all you have to do is swim roughly a yard per second for the entrance exam swim (usually 500 yards) and any follow-on swimming with fins in open water. This pace places you in the top 30%-40% of the class with an 8:20 (500 yards in 500 seconds). Most top swimmers can swim 800 meters in this amount of time. For the weekly 2-mile ocean swims with fins, this same pace puts you in the top 25% of the class with times in 4,000 yds (2 nautical miles) with 64-65 minutes. The slowest you can be to pass the swim is 85 minutes. World-class swimmers and triathletes do this distance in under 40 minutes, without fins.
The last thing you really want to be is world-class in any one thing, as it will typically have an equal and opposite weakness. Most swimmers cannot run, and many runners cannot swim or perform heavy load-bearing activities. Most powerlifting football players are too big and need to learn how to run and swim. So, instead of worrying about being world-class great in a sport, get jack-of-all-trades good in all of the components of fitness needed in your fitness testing and future training. This will include strength, power, speed, agility, endurance (run, swim, ruck), muscle stamina, flexibility, mobility and grip. You may be great at any one or two of these as a world-class athlete, but you will be horrible in many of the others. Getting good at all of these will put you in the right place in terms of physical ability.
The other area is how badly you want to do this: your desire to endure the long days that turn into nights, the cold water/air, being wet and sandy all the time, and receiving negative feedback from instructors throughout the day. Being able to recover your physicality and mental processing quickly when taxed and under stress is what needs to be world-class. Become a “master of recovery,” and you will see that any special ops training program, and life in general, is easier than originally thought.
Check out the many articles in the Military.com Fitness Section for workouts and training ideas to help you prepare for all the challenges of military and special operations training.
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