The Official Navy SEAL and SWCC Podcast

*/ ?>

Latest Episodes:

15 Dive Motivation: Recruit Mindset Nov 08, 2018

Show notes

Navy SEAL and SWCC candidates get a taste of NSW training at boot camp. The Dive Motivators begin the process of familiarization -- and selection -- of candidates for the long training pipeline ahead of them. Reality sets in quickly. Listen as we talk with a SEAL Master Chief. Find out more at www.sealswcc.comSound ups:“you have to pay attention to detail and you have to give it your maximum effort”“Division, attention!…” DF: Welcome to, “The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday,” the official Navy SEALs podcast. DF: Navy boot camp is the first place Special Warfare recruits will receive unique training. It starts early, with what they call “Dive Motivation.” This is where special warfare candidates perform their morning workout. I’m Daniel Fletcher, today I speak with Dive Motivator, SEAL Master Chief Steve Drum to get some personal advice about recruit fitness. From mental performance and focus to the physical standards test.00:43DF: Well, first of all, thank you for taking the time to sit down with us. I know you have a busy schedule. Your words of wisdom will be really appreciated and I think really nice insight for people that are going through this process. 00:53SD: Sure, my pleasure.00:54DF: Tell us a little bit about what you do here on a regular basis. Your main priorities and responsibilities briefly, that would be a great start.01:00SD: Within our commodity, we have all of the Warrior Challenge programs, so SEAL, SWCC, Diver, EOD and Air Rescue. And so what we do here is we facilitate a progressive workout schedule to consist of roughly 26 workouts. About half of them are going to be progressive swim workouts, and the other half are going to be progressive run workouts. After you show up here at boot camp, and you pass the PST. Then you are going to be put into a schedule where you’re going to start off with a three-mile run some basic, fundamental swimming drills to get stroke development down and things like that, and it’s all just to get you further comfortable in the water. It’s all to get you some more mileage and time on your feet okay, but it’s important to note that we’re here to facilitate these workouts, but dive motivator training here is subordinate to the overall training that you receive at boot camp. You’re here to be a basically trained sailor. That’s front and foremost here. Official Naval Special Warfare and NSO programs officially start when you graduate boot camp. That said, we’re here to make sure that you’re as prepared as you can for the next phase in the pipeline. So, we’re here to give you not just the workouts but give you mentoring, turn the heat up on you a little bit to ensure that you’re able to collaborate with your shipmates to the left and right of you to be able to buy into something greater than self. That you’re able to get along, and you’re able to buy into the mission that we have here.02:31DF: You’re kind of a bridge in terms of the fitness piece between people taking their initial PST and then arriving at BUD/S if they make it that far? Is that fair, or is that not accurate?02:40SD: We’re going to make sure that when you show up, it’s a different animal than when you were probably taking the PST back with your mentors and your coordinators. This is why we always advise that you have a good cushion when you show up here at RTC.2:53DF: When you say cushion, you mean a baseline fitness level, or what do you mean by that?2:56SD: If you are leaving at your 15-day PST, and you’re just doing the bare minimums, it’s going to be hard here for the following reasons. A: you’re going from, unless you worked a really difficult job right before you shipped, you’re going to go from a minimal amount of stress, plenty of sleep, good nutrition, and maybe some of these guys, two workouts a day, and you’re going to come over here, and you’re not going to get the sleep, you’re not going to get the high quality food, you’re going to be stressed, we try to give you a minimum of three workouts a week, but sometimes the training schedule, again, the other mandatory testable events, your firefighting, your live fire training, all you other drill, that going to take front and center. Your last week at training here at boot camp, you may get one or sometimes zero workouts, but we’ll do everything in our power to make sure that we’re bridging that gap as you asked, bridging that gap between showing up on the street and making sure you are getting time on your feet, that you’re going to be training outside on the track when the weather supports it, and you’re going to be getting into the large pool and getting longer swims. You’re going to get introduced with fins if you haven’t done that already. You will be in a good place when you show up to go across the street. It’s very critical that they understand boot camp is not just a speed bump. You are here to be a basically trained sailor, and that’s very important because as you learn how to take information from your recruit division commanders. You process that information, and you execute it to 100% adherence to the instruction. If you can’t do that, then we can’t really use you in the SEAL Teams or any of the other programs.4:37DF: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. First and foremost, you need to join the Navy, and to do that, there’s a lot of fundamentals. Your piece is more getting your feet wet so to speak, in terms of physical intensity, and kind of trying to maintain fitness level, but primarily people need to be aware that they’re here to become a sailor. They’re not here to come and just work out, right?4:54SD: Right, when you get here you’re going to learn how to march, you’re going to learn how to fold your clothes and make your bed, and we’re not just doing that. You’re not folding your clothes and making your bed just to do it. You’re doing it because even in the SEAL Teams, when we start talking about free-fall jumping on oxygen and building rigs to throw out of the plane and all these type of things are very sequence oriented, and they’re very detailed, and they have to be done 100% correct all the time. And so, you wouldn’t want to skip the boot camp training if you could. You want to go through it because it’s only going to help you be better at making it through to your ultimate job, your ultimate goal.5:31DF: Right, I think that we made that clear with some of the other people that we’ve spoken with and that’s been hit home a lot. It seems like that’s a common thing for people to think they’re just going to breeze through this process and try to get to BUD/S and that this really isn’t that important, and I think it’s important to reiterate that even coming from your side in the fitness area that’s a top priority of yours to make clear. (SD: yes) So, we’ve heard from people to aim for a competitive PST score. Does that line up with your thinking?5:57SD: We are strict here with the PST standards. We’re not trying to fail people, but when I say that you need to do 50 perfect pushups, that means 50 perfect pushups. Go and research what exactly the standard is. It’s breaking 90 all the way up, locking the elbows out all the way down, breaking 90, and so that’s what you’re going to be held accountable for and if not, you’re going to get stood up, and you’re going to fail the PST for that day, and you’ll be given a couple more opportunities, but, again, your life is going to be a lot easier if you just pass the first time out the gates. I’m not interested in seeing 100 of your crappy pushups. I need to see 50 perfect ones.6:39DF: So, I’ll read between the lines here, and you can correct me or tell me if I’m wrong, but would it be a good idea if you’re a recruit, you’re at a boat team or with a mentor, to even maybe ask, “Be strict on me with these standards because I want them to be right, I want them to be perfect.” Because who knows who’ll be judging them when they’re at home before they get here, is that do you think that’s a good idea?6:55SD: Correct. Absolutely, 100%. Again for whatever reason, people think, “I’m going to try to get as many as I can” at the cost of perfect form, and that’s not going to work out for you well. That’s not what we’re looking for here, so, again, when I say perfect pull-ups, that’s dead arm hang, chin all the way over the bar, not up at the bar looking up at the sky. It’s chin over the bar. Your sit-ups, arms crossed thumbs on your clavicles, all the way up to elbows right below the bottom of the knees and then all the way down, upper back touching the deck. So, we’re strict about it.7:29DF: Yeah, and as you should be, right. (SD: Right.) I think that kind of makes sense that people might be struggling a little bit more when they get here than they might anticipate, because they had previously had X score, and now maybe they’re struggling like you said, they’re not doing this at 5 in the morning in their hometown. They might not be doing this on, you know, lack of protein shakes and lack of pre-workout supplements, fill in the blanks, so I think it’s important if you recognize that things are going to be more intense.7:56SD: You better drop the No Explode. If you think you’re going to have that kind of stuff to help you here. You’re sadly mistaken.8:00DF: Yeah, yeah, I think that’s important that people realize that it’s going to be a different environment that they’re in. The numbers aren’t just going to be passed on. What should a potential SEAL or SWCC or fill in the blank NSW candidate know about the dive motivator process and the stuff that you do here that they might not be aware of?8:14SD: So, first off, you’re going into an NSW program, either SEAL or SWCC. You are going to be segregated into that division whereas we’ll typically pair up the NSO programs. Now, they’ll be some, maybe some overlap between the two, but the best we can, we try to keep NSW with NSW and NSO with NSO. NSO being Air Rescue, EOD and Diver.8:38DF: And then SWCC/SEAL. Their training will be the same here?8:40SD: You’re going to get whatever specifics you need once you get to your respective preparation course or A school you’re going to get dialed in. When you leave here to go to prep for SEAL and SWCC training, they’re going to start teaching the knot tying, the lifesaving, things like that that are going to help you, but right now, we’re all about the general purpose fitness and water comfortability, stroke development and time on your feet.9:04DF: So the NSW candidates you see coming in here, are there any low points in their skills or techniques that you see as a consistent issue that you could maybe point out?9:12SD: One of the things that kind of is a pet peeve of mine that we see here is, we’ll still see people who will show up routinely who have never swam without a mask or goggles. And so, you’ll see them, and they’ll get in here to do this PST in the pool, and they can’t even stick their faces in the water, and to me I’m baffled because so much of first phase in BUD/S is without your mask, is with you trying to see underwater without a mask, so you’d better be doing, I’m not saying to swim all the time without a mask, but do both. Learn how to swim with a mask on, without a mask. Another thing that I want to highlight, if we don’t get to it later, I’ll talk about it now is, don’t cram for the test when you get here, okay. By the time you get to BUD/S or SWCC training or any of the other programs, I want you to be fresh, injury free. So, start your training far out enough in advance. If you’re going through the SEAL/SWCC website, then you’ll know. Find out who you can rely on in that forum to give you the sound advice. If not, you can reach out to the actual professionals on there, and they’ll tell you. Ultimately, all you have to do, is do well on the PST. If you want anything above that, that’s a bonus, but I wouldn’t get too carried away. Definitely don’t be working on breath holds, don’t be doing all this crazy stuff trying to tread with, with scuba tanks on. I just, be very comfortable in the water, maybe you can work on some treading with and without fins, but don’t show up hurt. Don’t be trying to, (DF: I see, over-train.) don’t be slacking and then figure you’re going to start ramping up all this running and swimming, and then you’re going to be prone to overuse injuries. You’re going to show up, and you’re going to be hurt, and you could lose your contract, get dropped from the program.10:52DF: So don’t over-train.10:53SD: Don’t over-train or under-recover. Make sure that you’re ramping up, you’re hitting it hard, and then as you get closer and closer, you’re fine-tuning it, you’re at a good place where, yeah, you’re still getting the reps in, you’re still getting some volume in, but you’re training intelligently, and there’s really in today’s day and age no excuse whatsoever to not have the information you need to train smartly. Don’t get carried away with a lot of these programs that tell you that you need to go and do a mini Hell Week or go to these really expensive rigorous courses, where what you really need to do is make sure that you’re doing this program for the right reasons. Understand that you really want it because you’re going to be tested, and when, even in boot camp, you may have your doubts, where you’re like, “Ah, I don’t know if this is really what I want to do,” but remember, it was a good idea when you thought about it. It’s not any less of a good idea now that you’re eight weeks in, six months in, okay. It’s still a good idea, and you’ll still be glad that you’ve completed the program successfully.11:55DF: Are you guys doing your workouts on kind of a consistent time of the day? You guys always here in the morning? You guys kind of surprising people? How does that work?12:02SD: Good question, good question. Yes, you’re going to do everything that a basic recruit does here at boot camp. The exact same things, only you get to start your day a couple hours earlier. You’re going to REV typically about 4:30, and then you’re going to show up over here at the dive motivator at the combat training pool, and we’re going to start kicking the workouts off at about 5:15 and you’re going to be wrapping and on the road to breakfast, at about no later than 7:15. Your initial PST’s going to look like this. You’re going to show up, and you’re going to do your third-class swim test, which is pretty easy for those who’ve been training well to get here to do these programs. You’re going to jump off a tower, you’re going to work on float, basic swim stroke, flotation with your coveralls, things like that. At some point, you’ll practice an abandoned ship rescue at sea type thing with an inflatable raft, but as soon as you’re done you’re going to roll right into your PST. We’re going to hit you with the swim, followed by your push, sit, pull, and then we’re going to take you out to the track outside during the warmer months. When it’s cold, we’ll take a bus, and you’ll go across a street to an indoor track, and you’ll do your run there.13:12DF: What is the flexibility like for people that might not be hitting the right number for PST and need to retake? How many chances do they get, or if they’re really close, or if you feel like there’s maybe some sort of excusable reason why maybe they didn’t hit the right number of laps, they miscounted, or maybe they have a slight injury or something like that. Where you know that the candidate should be capable of hitting a better number? 13:31SD: You definitely want to pass the first time, your life will be a lot easier. However, we’re definitely going to take into consideration things like injury, things like, “Hey, I had to get some teeth pulled.” If you fail your initial PST, full transparency here, you will have ‘til your fifth week of training to pass your PST. And if you don’t pass it by then, then you’ll be reclassified.13:53DF: So, there’s plenty of opportunity for the right people to hit the right numbers?13:58SD: Correct. (DF: Okay, that’s…

Full show notes at the publisher

14 Recruitment Health Sep 20, 2018

Show notes

Physical and mental health is important to the recruiting process for SPECWAR candidates. We spoke with an expert at the Navy's Recruit Training Command to find out how Navy SEAL and SWCC candidates can stay on top of their game. For more info check out www.sealswcc.com.Sound ups:“You have to pay attention to detail and you have to give it your maximum effort”“Division, attention!…”Daniel Fletcher: Welcome to “The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday,” the official Navy SEAL podcast. 00:15DF: Mental and physical health is essential to a successful trip through Navy Boot Camp, even more so for NSW candidates. I’m Daniel Fletcher. As we continue our boot camp series from Great Lakes, Illinois, we sit down with medical liaison for crew training command, Chief Hospital Corpsman Jeff Ramirez. We answer some common questions about recruit medical history, mental health, medications, and preventative care. Listen up.…music continues00:44DF: Thanks for sitting down with us for one, and if you could just briefly talk about what you do here that would be a great start.00:49JR: I deal with all medical related issues, in terms of recruit appointments, any injuries that we have here going to network hospitals, to the federal healthcare center, outsourced down to Chicago. Any questionable areas that the doctors have that they need to liaison with the RDCs here in terms of missed appointments or recruits not eating enough, or even if they feel like they’re getting too much exercise, because there’s instances where we start breaking some recruits down that are couch potatoes, and then they get over here, and they learn right away that it’s a little different here.01:21DF: What types of tests or any type of screening do you administer, or is that not part of your position?1:28JR: So, that’s not part of my position here. So, I deal with the docs, and it’s going to range from mental health to your physical therapy, your preventative meds and then general, sick hall, but it’s every illness or injury or anything medical related between RTC and the providers.01:46DF: Okay. Are there any ailments or injuries that you see specifically for the 800 guys that are coming through the pipeline here?01:51JR: 800 guys... I would say the biggest injuries that I see would be shin splints, stress fractures and not getting enough nutrients. Rhabdo, Rhabdomyolysis. We’ll see that. They didn’t train for the pipeline before they got here. So, when they’re doing the DIVEMO PT, their body is breaking it down. (DF: Pretty severe.) Their muscles are breaking it down pretty severe, yes.02:13DF: I guess that is kind of a form of a failed test so to speak, if someone’s put in a position physically where their body is not holding up. Are there any other specific medical tests that are given periodically or on a routine basis that you see NSW candidates having issues with?02:30JR: Special physicals. They’ll go to special physicals. They’ll answer the questionnaires there, go through their overall history to see if there’s anything that raises any red flags. In terms of anything periodic, that doesn’t happen unless they, they choose to go to sick hall. You know, if they’re having some issues that RDCs say they see, any 800, any recruit really walking around with limps or looking distressed or sick, we’re going to send them to sick hall regardless. You’ll get your labs drawn over there, or if you’ve got to go to bone density scan or X-rays. A lot of 800s, you know, they really want to be here most of them, so it’s kind of hard to get them to go to medical sometimes. So it’s, you know, its our responsibility, and I get a lot of phone calls about that, “Hey, I have a recruit that’s kind of been limping around. He says he’s okay, but, however, my spidey senses are telling me he probably needs to get seen.” Then we’ll go ahead and send him in there and usually find out something else.03:22DF: If there’s somebody who gets to this point in the process and then a medical screening turns up not good enough or a fail, whatever you want to call it. Are there chances for a candidate to kind of retake a test? Can you tell me a little bit about that landscape of that kind of situation?03:36JR: So, if we’re going to use vision as an example. So if you came in. the MEPS doctor says your vision’s a certain score, and you come here, and it’s not, or you’re colorblind, they’re going to reissue the actual test again. So, you’re going to do one at MEPS, you’re going to do one here. If you fail that, you’re going to do it again. And if all the scores end up as the same here, then they’re going either request a waiver, if you’re eligible. The special phys docs, they’re going to determine whose waiverable per the BUMED instruction. So they’ll go in there and make sure it is a waiverable condition, whether it’s vision, hearing. If it is waiverable, we’ll keep them in the pipeline here, and then the waivers usually come back by the time they get out of here. If it’s not since they’re most of them are contracted, then they can opt to either pick a different rate or pretty much get separated in their contract. So, your basic recruits, they’re coming in they’re not contracted like the 800s. If they don’t meet specific requirements for a certain job, then they’ll get put in another job. But for the 800s, if they don’t want to fulfill their contract because they can’t, due to something medically related, then they can either opt to go or stay with another rate.04:43DF: Our primary audience is, I guess I could say the laymen or the layperson or civilian. So I’ll do a little bit of interpreting for them. So, someone who comes into the Special Warfare pipeline is kind of quasi hired by the Navy, and they can then choose to choose a different direction to take their career. Is that, is that accurate?05:01JR: Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying and if they got their heart set on being a SEAL, and you don’t meet the medical qualifications to fulfill that contract, then yes, you can drop on request and get separated from the Navy all together.05:13DF: Or decide to to make a different decision. How often do you see that misalignment of MEPS decision versus something onsite here?05:21JR: There is those that do fall through the cracks. There’s always human error. It’s not as much as we think. Most of our, our drops are usually “drop on request” really, after. In terms of medical, it’s not as much as we, we actually think.05:36DF: Okay, well, that’s good to hear. What types of tests can a recruit fail to have them say, “You’re not going to be able to be in the Navy at all”?05:45JR: Hearing’s on a bigger scale right now than vision is.05:48DF: Why is that?05:49JR: Any kind of permanent hearing loss, the deeper decibels. It’s an automatic disqualifier, and some of them aren’t even waiverable.05:55DF: So, you’re saying that it’s starting to become a bigger issue than it used to be? Or it’s more noticeable or...06:00JR: Probably more, more noticeable. I would say that the ear buds and the working out. I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t say, “I do it myself.” I would imagine that has something to do with it. So if you listen something loud, right away you’ll have that, that that minimum hearing loss, the temporary, lower frequencies, but the higher frequencies, that would be you consistently listened to your earphones really loud when you’re in the gym 24/7, or in your cars nowadays.06:27DF: No good. I’m guessing that there’s sometimes injuries that happen during basic training that can kind of put someone in that same situation. Is that something that people should be concerned with, or is that pretty rare in terms of shin splints that are so severe, or whatever it may be that they’re not able to continue? Do they have a chance to maybe, have a few weeks to kind of heal up?06:47JR: So, we have the recruit convalescence unit that’s actually here in Ship 4. The reason for that is if you get shin splints or stress fractures, you actually get a rehab time. So, when you go to the hospital, you see one of our docs, and they say, “Hey, you got shin splints. You’re going to be Light Limited duty for 21 days.” So, that’s 21 days of rehab. So during that 21 days they’re going to go to Ship 4 and their job is to get better. They’ll be put in a hold status until they are fit for full duty. Once they’re fit for full duty, they’ll incorporate with another 800 division to keep the training going.07:15DF: Does that happen often enough that you think that’s a successful way to deal with that?07:19JR: I don’t think it happens as much for the 800s. For the regular recruit divisions yes, for the 800s, no.07:25DF: And that’s the same process for both of them in terms of the time that they’re given and stuff like that?07:28JR: Yes. If you look at the recruit convalescence unit, you’ll have for every 30, 40 recruits, you might have one 800 in there. Usually when the 800s get injured, it’s because that individual didn’t prep. So, he came over here and did a little bit more running than he or she was doing at the time.07:45DF: Right, right, right. From your perspective, what type of advice would you give to someone coming into the pipeline to avoid types of medical issues that we’re speaking of?07:52JR: The biggest thing is prep. So, don’t do the bare minimum before you actually get here. Going over to DIVEMO PT, they’re going to give you a workout you know. So if you weren’t prepped before you got over here, it’s going to show, and it’s going to show quick. DIVEMO’s really where they start falling out, its not regular PT. It’s not the PT that all the other recruits get here because you’re contracted. You’re going to do something more strenuous. So, definitely prep is huge.08:18DF: Is there part of the process that you think people should be maybe more aware?08:21JR: You have to prep. Prep’s the biggest thing. If you’re taking a lot of protein powders and all this stuff you can get from GNC or bodybuilding.com, whatever you’re taking, just remember you’re not going to have it here you know, the stuff that gets you over a good workout, because sometimes you’re pushing your body so much that you need that extra protein, or you need a little bit extra, (DF: or whether it’s Pre-workout or whatever) pre-workout, you’re not going to have it here. That’s going to cut straight out of your your whole diet. Now you need to know how to eat correctly, and we do our classes here to teach you how to eat. However, it’s a lot better if you have the history of doing it and you know your greens, you know your fruits, you know what you’re doing. Because you can’t just take that simple protein powder and call it a day. It’s not going to happen here.08:57DF: Right. If there’s anything that you see on a common basis that you think that people should be more aware of, it would be great for you to kind of cover some of that as well.09:04JR: One big thing is the psych issue. And when I say that, it would be more geared towards the mental health part of it. Mental health is a big part here, and it’s a great, great tool for crew training command. Some of the 800 guys that we have, we’ll get them, and they’re watching videos and everything since they were young, they’re real motivated, can’t wait to do it. Which is outstanding. However, they come to boot camp, and they figure out, “Maybe this is not what I wanted to do.” So, it’s a general hype that they get themselves going through for however long that they get themselves hyped up for, but they get here, and they kind of shut down a little bit, and once they shut down, it’s kind of hard to pick them back up. So then they end up going to mental health and talking to them. Sometimes they can say things that may disqualify them. Does it happen? Yes. And it’s not, you know, on a huge scale; however, it does happen. Almost like they pretty much psych themselves out. The first couple DIVEMO days, they kind of psych themselves out, and they go, “Okay, maybe this is not what I want to do,” cause it’s strenuous. It hurts. At the end of the day, this is what you wanted, and you’re getting trained by the best people we have over there, but sometimes they can... psych themselves out and they put themselves in a bad position.10:08DF: I think you brought up a good point. So much of the focus on the prep and even further along in the BUD/S process, and then throughout, there’s a huge emphasis on physical preparedness, physical capabilities, but the mental aspects seem to be coming to the forefront a lot more than it used to be in the past, and even awareness of mental health issues. Speak to that a little bit, are there underlying issues that people should be aware of if they want to come through basic training, or maybe in the past, they had issues with depression or anxiety. What’s the Navy’s kind of opinion on that in NSW and the Big Navy, and how does that kind of fit into your job?10:44JR: I work with mental health really, really closely here, and the reason being is because it is a different kind of day and age. We do have kids getting prescribed meds from an early age. However, that’s not all disqualifying factors. Yes, there are certain diagnosis where it’s going to be a disqualifying factor, and that’s just kind of what it is. If you are bipolar type II or something like that, it’s going to be a disqualifying factor. However, if you struggle a little bit through school or even your first year of college, and you’ve shown progression, and you have those notes by a doc saying that you’re good to go, you’ve been on meds for a little bit, or something bad happened in the family, these are all things that they are waiverable. You’ve just got to show the actual documentation. So, in terms of someone prepping to come here, it’s good to know that if you’re going to get your civilian medical records, and it’s going to say that you’re put on a certain medication, don’t just stop. Don’t just stop and say, “Okay, well, I’m going to stop taking this because I plan to go to boot camp in a year.” So, if you stop when your doctor tells you to stop, and then you show the progression for the one or two years, preferably two, you know, the doc can sign off on that and say, “Hey, this person fell into a kind of a slump, did what he had to do, she had to do, and recovered fully. We’re good.” Where we have the issue is when someone goes to a hard part in their life, gets prescribed some medications and then decides this is what they want to do. They want to go to boot camp and then just stops it. So, when you get someone’s civilian medical records, it shows that you were getting treated, and then there’s a blank. So there’s really nothing to go off of, and now you got to get reevaluated here (DF: It’s a liability issue) its huge. So, there’s nothing wrong with mental health. It’s a part of all of us whether we like it or not; however, it’s the way we go about it.12:22DF: Well, I think that’s a good thing to point out. I think a lot of people might say, “You know, whatever existing condition whether it’s physical, mental or whatever disqualifies me,” and I think reading between the lines is talk to your doctor, and you guys want to see as long of a spread between, whether it’s a prescription or a diagnosis and having some evidence to say, like, “Hey, this is where I am now.” I think that would be helpful for a lot of people to hear because a lot of people just might say, “Well, I can’t do that now.”12:46JR: Absolutely. And I mean overall in mental health, there’s a lot of different areas, a lot of different diagnoses, and it doesn’t speak for every single one of them, but there’s a big chunk out there that you can still be in the Navy, nothing wrong with it. They just need to see the full treatment plan. They can’t just cut it off in the middle cause you never went through treatment.13:05DF: There seems to be maybe some confusion in the aspect of medical records and how that’s integrated into the Navy from civilian integ…

Full show notes at the publisher

#13 Navy Recruit Training: NSW Track Sep 19, 2018

Show notes

To be a Navy SEAL or SWCC, you must first be in the NAVY. The first stop in the training pipeline is Recruit Training Command, known informally as "boot camp." In this episode we visit RTC and learn more about boot camp for NSW candidates.DANIEL FLETCHER: To become a Navy SEAL or SWCC you must first learn to be a sailor. This essential process starts at Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes, Illinois. First utilized in 1911 and home to the United States Navy Boot Camp. This, is where it all starts.Sound Ups:“you have to pay attention to detail and you have to give it your maximum effort”“Division, attention!…” …music continuesDF: Welcome to The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday, the official Navy SEAL podcast. Every aspect of a Navy recruit’s life is scheduled, categorized, and inspected. There are rules and standards for how the toilet paper, toothbrushes, and T-shirts are stored to how they eat, dress, walk, and speak. I'm Daniel Fletcher. Over the next few episodes you’ll hear from a select group of people responsible for on-boarding NSW candidates into the Navy. Today I speak with Chief Petty Officer William Roberts, one of the Recruit Division Commanders conducting this eight-week orientation. 01:00DF: This podcast is meant specifically for people in the SEAL/SWCC pipeline. For a minute, if you could talk a little bit about how those candidates are treated or the process. Maybe, is it different than people that are off the street joining the “Big Navy?”01:15WR: As an RDC, which is a short term for Recruit Division Commander, we’re just responsible for how ever many recruits come in. It doesn’t matter if it’s 105 recruits, 60-something recruits. We’re just responsible for their day-to-day care and their day-to-day wellbeing from the time they arrive to the date of departure. We take care of when they eat, when they sleep, what training they need, where they have to go, when they have to be there, how they fold their clothes. We train all of that from beginning to end, from day of arrival to date of departure.01:44WR: For anyone that’s in what we call 800 Divisions, which are your SEALs and SWCC recruits or candidates, boot camp is not any different for them than it is for anybody else. There’s a few other requirements in regards to what we call Dive Motivation PT that they have to participate in on a daily basis Monday through Friday. Outside of that, the only difference here is that there is an expectation that they are going to be better than those that are coming in for “Big Navy” just “Regular Navy” as we call it. There’s an expectation that they’re going to perform a whole lot better than those recruits, so there’s, for lack of better terms, a bull’s eye on their back. Everybody’s gunning for them; all the other RDCs are gunning for them. Staff, not necessarily gunning for them, but every simple mistake they make, it’s highlighted because they’re what’s called an 800 Recruit.02:36DF: So the 800 Recruits coming in here, they have a higher expectation of themselves as well and that they’re going to be held to a higher standard later on through their employment with the Navy.02:47WR: Definitely. The idea is that they come here, they know why they’re here as far as being in the Navy. The Regular “Nav” is more, “I didn’t have a choice. There was nothing else left for me to do. I don’t know what I want to do, so this is just the option for me to try right now.” Whereas in SEALs and SWCCs, they kind of know they’re signing up to put their lives on the line. They...know... that’s what they’re going to do barring that they make it through the training pipeline.03:13DF: Right. Right. Yeah, I think a lot of people think that if you want to become a SEAL, you go to Coronado, you go to BUD/S, and you become a SEAL, and they kind of skip over the process of basic training or Navy recruitment process. Probably do a lot of reading about Navy SEALs and the BUD/S training and all the stuff that they’re going to have to do and Hell Week and the whole 9 yards. When they’re joining the Navy, there’s a lot of rules and regulations and discipline that needs to come first before holding logs over your head. I think that’s an important distinction.03:46WR: Definitely. Recruits that come in for that program need to know that they’re in the Navy first. The way that I tell my recruits that I’ve had so far is that not every sailor is EOD or SWCC or SEAL, but every SEAL or SWCC driver is a Sailor. So, they have to know that that’s what they’re in here to do. They’re here to be Sailors. Being a SEAL or SWCC is just the job that they have while they’re in the Navy; no different from myself as an Aviation Electronics Technician or anybody else that has a particular job in the Navy. We train them to the best of our abilities to be Sailors. 04:23DF: What do you think a new recruit needs to know before they get here or maybe any expectations you think that aren’t obvious?04:30WR: They need to know that they’re going to be held to a standard right away; that the standard for their PT sessions and Dive Motivation PT is different from what the standard is to be in the compartment. They need to know that coming here, being a SEAL by nature of what they chose to do, they are a leader. A lot of recruits that we get in nowadays want to come in and be what’s called Gray Men. They just want to get through boot camp and keep their heads down.04:56DF: You said Gray Man?04:57WR: Gray Man.04:58DF: Explain that a little bit more for me. 04:59WR: They just...They want to be nobody in the division. So, in the division, we have Divisional Staff, and a lot of times, they’ll talk to people that have been through boot camp before, and those people are letting them know if, like, your RDCs don’t know your name, you’re doing a good job, and that’s not necessarily the case. For me personally, as an RDC, I make it a point to know every last one of my recruits, whether they’re doing good or whether they’re doing bad, or if they’re just that person that’s kind of in the middle; I get to know all of my recruits. So, every division needs leadership. It can’t come from the RDCs all the time, and we miss out on a lot of good leaders because they’ve been told to just be a gray man and kind of put their heads down, and I guess, blend in to everybody else. Don’t stand out.05:37DF: Because they think it’ll be easier?05:39WR: I believe so. I mean it doesn’t make it easier for them. It might make it easier for them as an individual, but it makes it harder for the division because they might be the one leader that the division needs, and if they don’t step up and take that position, then it just makes it harder for the division, which in turn makes it harder for them because if the division is suffering, everybody is suffering.05:57DF: That’s something that I’ve found through a lot of the people I’ve interviewed that leadership is important, and teamwork is important, even almost the most important, (WR: Definitely.) and encouraging people coming into the recruitment process to take leadership positions and really embrace that mentality, not try to kind of just slide through under the radar and get it done, but step up and be a leader because they need to stand above other people, and they need to take those leadership roles. So, I think that’s a good nugget to take away, is to not try to just skim by but step up, you know what I mean? Make an impression and help the people around you because that’s another thing I think is a little bit of a misunderstanding with a lot of the SOF guys, is that they’re stars; they’re all stars, but more than that, they’re teammates, and I think that’s an important distinction. (WR: Yes.)06:42DF: We took a little tour of the facility here, The Ship you call it, which is actually almost like a barracks. We walked through... some of the people that just got here...they’re kind of learning really fundamentals and then up to where you’re working with people that have been here for a few more weeks. It’s almost shocking to come in off the street from a hotel into this environment where it’s different than being out on the street. Maybe if you could walk us through your typical day, what your schedule is like on an average day or maybe what you did even today just to paint a picture for the people listening what daily life is like when they’re here.07:11WR: On a day-to-day basis, you’re looking at 04:30 wake up time, getting the house on spot and being ready to go by 04:45, being down on what we call the Grinder, formed up in mass formation by 04:50, and then we’re going to march to our Dive Motivation PT, which is a good mile, maybe a quarter mile away. And then you’re going to form up there, get dressed, get changed out for what you need to do, and you’re going to do whatever the Dive Motivators have in store for you as far as PT is concerned that day. After they release you, RDCs will pick you up, you mass back up, you march back, you eat breakfast. You are required to have at least one hygiene period a day. So you might hygiene early in the morning right after PT, but if you get in trouble, and you need to be disciplined, you might do something that causes you to sweat, but you’re not required to...be allowed to take another shower. That’s up to the discretion of the RDCs. I could tell you that there’s been times where I put my recruits to sleep sweaty to teach them a lesson. It just depends on the RDC, of course. You eat chow three times a day, and then after that, based on what the training is, you will go into evening routine. Evening routine is just the time to kind of decompress the day and relax and get prepared for the next day.08:25DF: What time is that starting usually?08:27WR: 20:30 is evening routine, and then at 21:30, you have Taps, which is lights out, and everybody goes to sleep. Most recruits are up at like three in the morning because they want to make it to Dive Motivation PT on time. They have to make sure house is on spot, and it normally takes them a good hour to make sure the house is on spot, so they’re getting up early and getting everything ready to go. I train my recruits. “When I turn these lights on, you will be ready to go.” All I have to do is inspect so we can leave. And if it’s not done, then you’ll be late to Dive Motivation PT, and if you’re late to Dive Motivation PT, they will handle you accordingly over there.9:02DF: So, not a lot of free time.09:04WR: The only free time is maybe evening routine, and there is free time on Sundays, but that starts at a certain time. You have what’s called Holiday Routine, which is 07:00 to 13:00 on Sundays, and then you can go to the chapel if you’re a religious person or spiritual person, you go to the chapel; you can write your letters home to your families, shine your boots; get your uniforms ready to go for the week. Everything you do is about preparing for the next day. I always train my recruits, and, again, I want to be very clear that every RDC is different. Every RDC has their own way of doing business within a framework of our regulations. But I always train my recruits, “Make sure you do something today to make tomorrow easier for you.” So we’re always going to prepare for the next day the day prior.09:51DF: Obviously the people that are coming in, these potential NSW recruits, are already in great shape. They’ve been working out with boat crews probably for quite a while. And they’re continuing to exercise while they’re here. Do you find that there’s any drop in fitness level, or are they getting in better shape while they’re here, or what’s your impression on that?10:07WR: I think it just depends on how things go. I’ve never had a problem with a recruit during PT. One of my divisions was all SO, all SEAL Operator candidates, and every last one of them passed their PST on the very first time, minus one; he miscounted the laps, but other than that, they passed their PFA, which is something that has to be done in order to get out of boot camp. The PST is something for the SEAL Operator side or the SWCC side. We have to do a PFA.10:35DF: Can you talk a little about what the PFA is and what it’s for and what it entails?10:39 WR: So, the PFA is what’s called our Physical Fitness Assessment. That’s the Big Navy physical fitness test. Everyone in the Navy, no matter what you do, is required to take this test.10:49DF: Is that done after you’ve been here or right when you get here? When is that done?10:52WR: There’s an initial PFA, which is done maybe three or four days after you arrive, and then you have what’s called an RDC Assessment. A RDC Assessment PFA is in the middle of boot camp, and that’s kind of to assess how the RDCs are doing to catch up the recruits that might have struggled during the baseline PFA. That’s normally not a problem with SO and SWCC candidates. And then you have the Official PFA. Now, the Official PFA has to be passed in order for you to graduate boot camp. So, you have to pass that in order to graduate boot camp, minus some other things that you must have, but in regards to physical activity, you have to pass that in order to graduate boot camp.11:30DF: And what are the details of that test?11:33WR: The PFA just requires you to do, based on your age, a certain amount of push-ups, a certain amount of sit-ups, and a mile and a half run in a certain amount of time.11:40DF: So, that’s something, for the guys who’ve been training for NSW, should not be an issue.11:44WR: Not a problem at all.11:45DF: So, is that something that’s ranked, or is a pass/fail thing?11:47WR: It’s a pass/fail, pass/fail.11:50DF: I know there is some concern that the fitness levels of these guys may drop while they’re here because they’ve been working it hard to try to really maximize their physical strength and their endurance. Are there facilities here for them to squeeze in an extra workout? 12:02WR: There are no other facilities here that they can use while they’re in what’s called a Recruit Status, or here at boot camp. However, our 800 Recruits do have pull-up bars and leg lift systems so to speak within the compartments. So, when we’re not doing Active Training, when it’s Evening Routine, and it’s kind of their time, that’s when they can do their extra pull-ups if they want. That’s when they can do their extra leg lifts if they want. They can do their push-ups; they can do sit-ups; they can do whatever they choose to do physically during their Evening Routine time or any time that the RDCs are not actively training them. So if they struggle with push-ups, or they want to get more push-ups in, they definitely have the time to do that. I’m not an advocate of recruits being out of their racks after Taps. However, I do know that recruits don’t just go to sleep when we turn those lights out. So if they want to do some push-ups and different things like that as well, they can do that. That’s not necessarily the right thing to do, but they do have that time to do that.12:58DF: We talk a lot about the physical requirements, and that’s something that’s pretty well known in the public even, but what other specific expectations do you think that recruits should have in mind?13:07WR: So the one thing that recruits should expect to get here is to be told how to do everything, and that everything has a purpose. You’re going to be held accountable for everything, from the way you fold your underwear, which we call skivvies, the way you fold your T-shirts, the way you fold your uniforms, where you put things, where you stow things, how your mattress or your blanket is folded, the way your sheets are made, the way your bunk is made. All of those things are checked every single day, and to be prepared, number one, to be taught how to do that, but to have the attention to detail. I think a lot of times with SEAL and SWCC, they come in so focused on getting to the next phase of the pipeline that they don’t have the attention to detail necessary that they need…

Full show notes at the publisher

#12 Combat Sidestroke Sep 04, 2018

Show notes

The open water can be deadly, and Navy SEALs and SWCC must master this unpredictable element to make it their ally. This episode explains NSW's secret technique: the Combat Sidestroke. More info can be found at www.SEALSWCC.com.Music Intro 00:20The open water can be both deadly and unforgiving. Before sailors become SEALs or SWCC, they must demonstrate mastery of this punishing and unpredictable element; making it their most valuable ally. I’m Daniel Fletcher, today we speak with aquatics expert Dan Kish at the Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School. We discuss the best practices, tools and techniques used exclusively by Navy SEAL or SWCC candidates and operators, particularly the Combat Sidestroke. Let’s DIVE in.00:53DF: For starters, thank you for taking the time. Your expertise is super important to be able to share with as many people as possible that are trying to get successfully through this program. For starters, if you can just go ahead and spend a little bit of time talking about your role here in Naval Special Warfare, and then we can take it from there.01:06DK: Sounds good. My name’s Dan. I am one of the physical training leaders here at Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School, and my main point of focus is the aquatic side. So, it’s much more than just swimming. We spend a lot of time on treading, water rescue, pool comp skills. My job is to help make the candidates as comfortable and confident in the water over the eight weeks here and plan and execute all the workouts safely to the highest standard that we expect of them.01:38DF: The water aspect of, of kind of the initial exposure to the standards of the, the physical standards test is usually where a lot of people I think are at their weakest. At least most people have not been exposed to the level of swimming that is needed, required to be able to make it in the program or even kind of start training. So, I think that your information will be really valuable for a lot of people listening. Maybe if you could just start off with talking just a little bit about your background in aquatics. I’m guessing that you were a swimmer, or you were involved in some sort of water sports before you came into the program.02:11DK: So, correct. I always loved being in the water. I was that kid you couldn’t get me out of the pool, the lake growing up. I got pretty good at swimming, so I swam, you know, the aquatic kid, high school, club, college, a little bit of postgraduate swimming, so all the staff members are Division 1 swimmers, collegiate swimmers. Did some postgraduate swimming, was good, got into coaching, became successful at that, and I’ve been here since class 297, so just over five years now, and I love it. We get all walks of life from kids that have barely seen a pool, barely passed the PST to get in, to Olympic Gold Medalists and everything in between there, so all walks of life come through, and kids just want to learn, get better in the water, but water is majority of time their weakest, you know, environment to be in. We’re humans. We don’t belong in the water at all, and a lot of kids come to prep not prepped for what we’re about to do here.03:11DF: The focus of this episode is the Combat Sidestroke, and we’ll get to that in just a second. You mentioned a couple other areas that your focus is on, whether it’s treading water and stuff like that. Are there areas that maybe other than the Combat Sidestroke that people should maybe investigate in addition to that stroke specifically to at least kind of get themself familiar with?03:32DK: Absolutely. Besides just swimming the Combat Sidestroke, we swim slick, so without fins on and then with fins on. We also train freestyle almost every day, and we also swim breaststroke here, so they all are great assets to know and learn. The better you are at all the strokes, the better you’ll be at any one. We’ll even throw some butterfly just for fun in there as well, great, you know, cardio building tool, great fuel for the water, but they all serve a purpose. We swim a lot of freestyle when we start doing rescues to get to your victim, great way, you know, to increase your lung capacity there. Breaststroke, we want to learn the pull for guiding and siding purposes, the kick to help you with the tread and to learn underwater breaststroke pull outs or the most efficient way to swim underwater there.04:19DF: So, basically, I mean you covered almost all aspects of aquatic sports, you know, in terms of swimming styles and stuff like that. I would be hesitant to say maybe it’s worth someone’s time to really become very, very, very proficient in all of those. Obviously they’re going to be using those strokes to train at more of a fitness context and more of just kind of a development context, not necessarily they’re going to be specifically quizzed or tested in those areas. But obviously it’s helpful to know that, that’s not the only thing you’re going to be doing in the water obviously.04:46DK: Correct, the exit test, so in order to leave Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School, you have to do the 1,000 meter swim Combat Sidestroke under 20 minutes, which our average time is right around 17 minutes. However, we still want you to become great at all the strokes, all the skills. It’s just more tools you can add to your toolbox to help you out further down the pipeline.05:11DF: So, obviously we’re going to try to unpack a little bit about some of the unique I guess challenges or difficulties that people have or maybe not so unique, common difficulties people have with this specific stroke. So, if you want to kind of start in really a broad sense, maybe take 1,000-foot up view of areas that you think are common that people have a misconception or maybe a very, very, very common mistake and maybe the quick fixes for those things just as kind of a real quick touch on that area.05:38DK: So, Combat Sidestroke, I swam competitively for over a decade, and I didn’t even know what Combat Sidestroke was until I got into the military, and then I started realizing what the stroke was, why it was created and then how to critique and correct it to be as efficient as possible, trying to be the fastest as possible and still create that low profile while swimming Combat Sidestroke. So, a lot of the times, the first couple weeks here, and what I really need to stress is technically correct swimming, so work on perfect, pretty Combat Sidestroke. Speed will eventually come, but focus on just perfect technique starting off, trying to be as long and efficient in the water as you can. We see a lot of students or candidates that come through that have, you know, a little bit bigger and bulkier muscles. Those are not always the best for in the water, decreasing your range of motion. You always want to be as long as possible. Get your stroke count down, help you prepare for those longer, open water swims that’ll be taking place.06:40DF: So, is it fair to say that you, that you see a lot of people that are maybe just learning for the first time, kind of trying to “over muscle” to kind of push and pull, to put too much into it and not focus on, on taking their time and lengthening their stroke and being efficient? Is that, do you think accurate?06:54DK: Yes. I witnessed that today during a PST. Just because you’re taking more and more strokes, you know, you’re swimming more violent and higher turnover rates, sometimes you feel like you’re going faster, but the clock doesn’t lie. There’s a kid swimming next to him taking half as many strokes and going faster, so I see that man attitude where you want to race and compete, and you’re taking a ton more strokes, but you’re just working harder to go, you know, the same time or sometimes even slower.07:24DF: It doesn’t mean you’re getting anywhere faster.DK: Correct.07:27DF: Are there any big areas, or maybe what are some of your cues that you say to get people to kind of slow down? I would obviously think just like a running race, people try to, they go out hot, you know. Their adrenaline is pumping, they’re breathing faster, everything, you know what I mean.07:39DK: Absolutely, and we see that here. Over the eight weeks, we do many different workouts from short, fast, you know, high intensity sprints to longer distance, and the last couple weeks here, we focus a lot on pacing, we always have the clock facing you. You will always watch, you know, the clock when you leave, what your splits are, are you hitting your goal times, are you making the sets, but running and swimming, you’re always against the clock. You know, in the weight room, it’s weights. In the pool, you have to watch the clock to see, you know, how fast you are going.08:13DF: Other than kind of I would say, an excuse me for not using maybe the correct terminology, maybe strokes per minute or whatever the term is, what else do you see in terms of kind of like “sloppy” form that’s a really common theme that you’re constantly having to cue people with, you know, not to do?08:31DK: So, other things we see in the water, in the pool, a lot of candidates will we be swimming uphill, which is quite natural with the body position in the water. Same thing as running uphill, running uphill is a lot more energy.08:43DF: Now, when you say swimming uphill, can you give me a kind of what that means to you?08:48DK: Coaches are yelling at you like your feet are dragging on the bottom of the pool, your hips are sagging down, you are creating more drag for yourself, so running uphill is very difficult. Swimming uphill would be the same metaphor for that. To correct that, we want to try and get your legs going a little bit more, so your feet should be, you know, near or at the surface. Your hips should be at the surface as well as, you know, your whole bodyline, your head. Normally, it’s, when people are not using their legs as much or thicker candidates in the water, but this will have a direct correlation, and once we start doing buddy tows, you’re going to have that same bad body position. Now, you have to tow someone. You’re creating a significant, you know, higher amount of drag for yourself, which is, you know, stay away from swimming uphill.09:36DF: And is that typically a head position issue that kind of leads and the body follows it, or what is, what’s usually the culprit there?09:44DK: So, correct head position does play a major role for that. The top of your head will always be pointing in the direction of travel. Majority of candidates, we’ll see, you can swim really good, showing me the top of your head pointing forward, but then they go and take a breath, and they will lift their head to breathe, which will shoot that body position, you know, back uphill, which is incorrect, creating more drag. A lot of our candidates are good until they do take a breath. So, A, don’t breathe, or B, learn how to control that breath.10:17DF: Or get back into position.10:19DK: Absolutely, so snap that quick breath in. You’ll have one eye in the water, one eye out of the water, and when your mouth is above the surface, you are inhaling only. We should not be hearing you exhale and inhale when your mouth is above the surface, you know, so dump that air out right before your breath. You know, if you’re very negative in the water, keep the air in, but right before your breath, dump that air out. When your mouth is above the surface, inhale only, eyes right back down, and that’s for freestyle and for Combat Sidestroke, same body position.10:48DF: So, would you say that that’s probably the largest deficiency in people’s stroke whenever they arrive or really the thing you see most common is body position in terms of kind of swimming uphill like you’re speaking about and not being able to breathe very efficiently and get back into the right position? Is that the most common problem that you see?11:08DK: Body position plays a major role. Conditioning and speed, you know, will come along, but if you’re swimming uphill, you’re just burning wasteful energy. Another major issue we see is a timing issue, which we see candidates stop, pause or sink at some point in their stroke. We always want to move, you know, forward in the water, whether it’s Combat Sidestroke, breaststroke or freestyle. A lot of times we’ll see them move forward in their stroke and then take a breath and stop, pause, sink and then start moving forward again, stop, pause, sink. We want to always move forward in the water even during your breath, so never shut down your legs, maintain that, you know, body moving forward. Don’t, just because you’re taking a breath does mean you stop, pause or sink.11:56DF: So, what do you think the culprit is there? My first kind of instinct is to think that the rhythm there is not quite at least, they’re not comfortable quite in the rhythm of the stroke yet, an experience thing, or is there, are there other culprits?12:08DK: It’s actually difficult to do, so they will have a, you know, pull, breathe, kick, glide, pretty common pattern for Combat Sidestroke and for breaststroke. So, you obviously start with your arms, then get your breath, execute your kick and hopefully have a long glide. Now, during the breath part of that, don’t stop dead in the water, do not sink and create more drag, and, you know, you should always be moving forward. So, once again, back to the breathing, normally our candidates are good until they do take a breath and then stop in the water there. Keep your legs going, so especially with freestyle, never disengage your legs. Always keep your legs going behind you. And in Combat Sidestroke, you know, during your recovery, try and have as, the least amount of underwater recovery as possible. So, when your arms are underneath the water, try and have the least amount of resistance that you can, active streamlining.13:03DF: So, active streamlining, and you said something about recovery. Now you’re talking about basically getting your hands back out in front of you for the stroke again. Can you maybe go into a little bit more detail about that? You’re talking about the efficiency or the least amount of resistance, is that what you’re saying?13:16DK: Correct. So, for Combat Sidestroke, it was designed to be very low profile, so no white water or splashing taking place. It’s a very efficient stroke. However, just like breaststroke arms, the underwater recovery part of the stroke is underwater, which is not very efficient because you’re pushing yourself backwards when you do that. We want to over-exaggerate the underwater recovery and minimize the amount of resistance when you move your hands back out into the streamlined position.13:49DF: So, you’re not fighting yourself essentially.13:51DK: Don’t push yourself backwards at all during your strokes.13:54DF: Okay, okay. So, is this stroke used primarily as a test and fitness mechanism if you will, or is this stroke used operationally during mission?14:09DK: So, both are correct. The stroke is great to increase your overall fitness levels without banging up your body, right. Swimming is a great way, whether, whatever stroke you’re doing, increase your overall fitness with very low to no impact, right. You should be able to swim, you know, for hours, still feel good. It’s not like you’re banging up your body, high stress, high impact environment. So, when you do swim, make sure you are over-exaggerating full range of motion. You should be feeling good, feel loose in the water, so that plays a cardio, you know, fitness role in it, but operationally speaking, it was designed to be efficient, so you could be able to swim your long distances, you know, infiltrate and extract a couple miles and still carry out the mission. The low profile aspect, so when you’re swimming up to shore, you don’t have a bunch of white water splashing behind you, a bunch of noise coming in, and it is quite simple to learn and execute. We do a lot of the fine-tuning, getting dialed in here, but if you look thro…

Full show notes at the publisher

#11 Navy SEAL Nutrition Jul 20, 2018

Show notes

Hydration and blood sugar are crucial during intense physical training. Our staff nutrition expert explains how a solid eating plan may be the key to avoid training failure. For more go to www.SEALSWCC.com.00:00:03The only easy day was yesterday. (Intro)00:00:22DF Intro:What we put in our bodies affects everything. Today we sit down to talk with a Navy SEAL and SWCC nutritionist. You’ll hear from my colleague, Angie Giovannini as she speaks with Justin Robinson about the importance of nutrition during and after training.00:00:38AG: Thank you for taking the time to talk to us a little bit about a really important pillar of training, which is nutrition. If we could just start out with you giving us a little bit of your background and how that fits into your work here at Naval Special Warfare. That would be really helpful.00:00:52JR: Great, well I’m happy to be here, too. I’ve been working at this Center, AKA the schoolhouse, for the last two and a half years. So, I started in June of 2015. Before that, was teaching college for a year, was in a similar position to this with an Army unit for a couple weeks before the government that had some cuts that came down, so it’s nice to be back into that system. Prior to that, I worked in professional baseball. I did a dual undergraduate in kinesiology and nutrition, and then my master’s degree is in kinesiology as well. I am a registered dietician and board certified specialist in sports dietetics, which I know is a mouthful, but…it’s the sports nutrition credential for dieticians.00:01:38AG: And so what drew you to Naval Special Warfare? How does that all fit in here?00:01:41JR: Really just working with people who are highly motivated. I’ve done the general training. I’ve done the personal training, I’ve done the general nutrition counseling, worked in the hospitals, and that’s great. You can make an impact, but I feel I’m at my best when I’m working with people who are highly motivated, people who will push me to do more research, to read more articles so I can come back to them and provide them with resources and information that will improve their careers, try to add some longevity to their careers. So, that’s probably the most, is highly, highly motivated population.00:02:17AG: And so, just to start out, let’s talk about how important nutrition is. Why is this something we’re even talking about today?00:02:23JR: Great question. Everybody’s got to eat. I look at it this way, that nutrition won’t be necessarily the difference maker. Having a solid nutrition program will not make you make it through this training pipeline. However, poor nutrition can be the reason that you don’t make it. So, we definitely see early on, in the early parts of phase and early parts of training when the intensity level is very high, we see low blood sugar or hypoglycemia. We see dehydration, we see heat injuries, and so, the individuals coming through the pipeline, the students who aren’t hydrating, who aren’t fueling high enough are going to get that low blood sugar, and it doesn’t matter how motivated you are, how fit you are, how strong you are, if you have low blood sugar, you can’t perform. And so, I like to say that it won’t be the reason you make it through, but it absolutely can be the reason that you don’t, so I want to eliminate that.00:03:19 AG: Okay, on the flipside, there’s certain diets and certain eating choices that you make that can make you perform at your best… (JR: Absolutely) So, what are some things that you would recommend?00:03:31JR: So, it’s funny because especially now with so many different diet plans being very popular, it’s almost like a dichotomy. You have the vegans over here saying that plant-based is the only way to eat, and it makes you healthy, etc., etc. And on the other side, you have more of the carnivores, whole 30, Paleo and even the ketogenic crowd, who’s saying, “No, no, no, this is the only way to eat.” And so, as part bystander looking, trying to sort through the research, my goal is to try to find those common denominators. Why can a plant-based, meat-free vegan diet work for somebody, and likewise, why can an incredibly high fat, low carbohydrate diet also work? So, what are those common denominators? So, to answer your question better, I believe those common denominators are eating real food. You can call it clean eating, which has a very loose definition, but my definition of clean eating is real foods – so foods that don’t come in packages, food that’s not processed. If you do have food that comes in a package, the product over here that has five ingredients is probably better than the one over here that has 20. If you don’t like to cook – and here’s my first piece of advice – if you don’t like to cook, learn, learn how to do something other than cereal, macaroni and cheese and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, learn how to do things like overnight oats. Learn how to cook some meats or some eggs because I feel that calorie for calorie, when you create something in your kitchen, it’s going to be healthier than it would be from a restaurant or a fast food restaurant, so clean eating. Try to eliminate added sugars, try to eliminate as much processed food as you can; would be those common denominators.00:05:10AG: And how do you see nutrition fitting in to the bigger picture of the fitness plan? I know there’s some pillars that you guys look at as a whole, as a big picture.00:05:19 JR: I would say for longevity. In some respects, it’s similar to baseball. When you work with baseball players, and they play 162 games, and in my opinion, my role there wasn’t necessarily to make somebody better for one game, but it was to make that person just as good on game 162 or just as strong, just as fit as they were on game one or in spring training. So, looking at this training pipeline here. If you just look at an hour of what the students do, a lot of really fit people, a lot of strong athletes say, “I could do that.” Say, “All right, yeah, you maybe could do a log PT sessions, but could you do log PT after a 4-mile run in the sand, knowing that you have a 2-mile swim coming up, knowing that you’re going to get four hours of sleep, wake up and you do the whole thing again tomorrow, wet and sandy?” So, it’s about that longevity, sustainability and just trying to have those good foods more for that endurance and more for the long haul, the 21 weeks all the way up to a year and a half of training, depending on which pipeline you’re going through. So that’s what it is. It’s about the endurance factor.00:06:27AG: So, say I’m just considering for the first time going, you know, into the SEALs or the SWCC team. What would be the first steps you would suggest I take in reconsidering my diet?00:06:40JR: I think the most important factor is the right diet plan for the right part of the training program. So that’s what I really like to hone in on for my education piece is that what you’re doing early on in training will differ from when you get to qualification training, and that’ll differ from when you get to the teams as an operator. So, finding the right overall diet plan, I feel, is that first step. So, if you’re looking at some of the trendy diets as I mentioned – I’m not getting paid by anybody to say anything – so I don’t feel that a ketogenic or Paleo diet might be appropriate for an incoming student, whereas it may have application for operators or for qualification training students. So, getting enough calories I think is going to be the number one point. Getting enough carbohydrates, getting enough hydration, getting enough healthy fats, because it is very intense. So, I’d say that making sure that you’re feeding your body enough total energy. The second component to that would be to get your total weight and your body composition in check before getting here, because once you get to Prep, or once you get to Coronado, that’s not the place to try to gain that last ten pounds that you know you need to gain, or try to lose that last ten or fifteen pounds. So get your body composition where it needs to be.00:07:58AG: Is there like a metric or...?00:08:00 JR: We don’t give hard numbers. So I can say that where we see the fewest amount of injuries is in that 10 to 15 percent body fat range. Typically, if incoming students are too low, so 7, 8 percent really fit athletes, then they have trouble keeping weight on, or maybe their endurance suffers. On the other end of that spectrum, if somebody’s coming in at 18, 19, 20 percent body fat, then they’re probably carrying around too much weight on their frame. So, 10 to 15 would be that range. But I would say we, the metrics we look at would be more of an obstacle course type of output. So how are you doing with body weight push ups? How’s your 4-mile run? How are your pull-ups? And if your run is suffering, but you’re really, really strong in the gym, well, then maybe you need to lose a little bit of weight. Likewise, if you’re a very, very fast, strong runner, but you can’t do that many pull-ups, then maybe you actually need to increase upper body strength. So it’s, I apologize, I can’t give you all that hard answer. I know, everybody loves numbers, and I’m sure there’s a lot of number geeks out there like me, but I’d say that 10 to 15 percent range.00:09:07AG: Okay, so let’s, let’s take it down to the most basic, you know, I wake up in the morning, I decide I want to go into Special Warfare. I go downstairs, I look at my kitchen. What do, you get to be there next to me, pointing out different things that I need to change? What do you think some of the most common changes would be?00:09:26JR: So, I’d say one of the first things would be to get rid of the breakfast cereal and the Pop Tarts. So sorry, no Cinnamon Toast Crunch. But looking again at whole foods, and if you really can’t think of anything else, think carb, fat, protein, fruit, vegetable. Just get in the kitchen, try to find something that looks like a carbohydrate, a protein and a fat. Put that on your plate. Try to get a fruit or a vegetable, try to get some color. So, eggs are fine. I know for about 30 years, we had the low-fat guidelines and low cholesterol, and we’re finding out now that that’s not as true as you once thought. So scramble some eggs would be fine; throw some spinach in there. If you want some breakfast meat, I would suggest ones that say ‘nitrate-free’ or ‘no nitrates added’ or uncured. So some uncured bacon, some eggs, some spinach, and then your carbohydrate, which could come from oatmeal or fruit. So, nothing too complex, carb, fat, protein, color, fruit or vegetable, and do your best to eliminate things that come in packages.00:10:28AG: What do you think of those categories? What do you think people get the most confused about? I mean, you know, you say carbohydrate – that could mean a lot of things.00:10:35JR: Is ‘all of them’ an answer? I think, I think we get confused, and I’ll try to hit on each of these very briefly, but I think we get confused on protein. So, with protein, we know that athletes or incoming students have high caloric needs, high protein needs, but that doesn’t mean that they need to fill their plates with protein. So, I like to say think of your plate for an entire day, your breakfast, your lunch, your dinner, your snacks, and about a third of that should be protein. If you get too much more than that, it’s not going to shut down your kidneys, but then you’re probably not getting enough of the other quality nutrients like carbs and fat. With fat, the biggest thing there is – again, we thought for so long that fat kind of makes you fat, but now we understand that it’s a great fuel – that the healthy fats, the Omega 3 fats that are in fish and chia seed and flaxseed and walnuts, have a strong anti-inflammatory effect on the body. So that would probably be the most controversial, is fat. And then carbohydrate – almost as controversial, but you, again, I think with a very, very high-energy output, a high caloric output, you need carbohydrates to fuel that. Again, once you get to a certain part of the training pipeline, or if your goal is to reduce weight, then we can modify carbs a little bit and tweak them down, but if you’re going into this pipeline on a low carb diet, you’re probably not going to have the energy to make it through.00:11:58AG: So, sugar is something that comes up a lot now. It seems like that’s under attack the most, and it appears that there’s science behind that, but would you agree?00:12:06JR: I would, and I would say we need to specify, though, between naturally occurring sugars and added sugars and then further specify between athletes and non-athletes. So, if you’re a non-athlete, then absolutely limit total sugar and especially added sugar. If you’re an athlete, I wouldn’t worry so much about naturally occurring sugars in fruits, for example. They’re a healthy carbohydrate. I would do your best to limit added sugars, which would be, some of them are very plain to see, like Skittles are all sugar, Fruit Loops are all sugar, but then there’s added sugars in products like yogurt and granola bars, and then there’s some of the, I guess you could call it a ‘hidden sugar’ in a product like sports drinks. So, if you are going to consume those added sugars, make sure that it’s within that 30-minute window around an exercise session because that’s when your body can use them up. So, 30 minutes before, during or 30 minutes after, but a sports drink is not the beverage of choice on a Saturday afternoon on a recovery day when you’re just sitting around the house.00:13:11AG: So, recover. (JR: YES!) That’s a topic that I definitely want to talk about. How, how do we recover best, most efficiently? Is it supplements? Is it food? What is the magic formula?00:13:24JR: Top priority I would say is sleep. I realize it’s not necessarily a nutritional issue, but most 18 to 22 year olds likely don’t sleep enough, and, you know, it’s funny; a quick story. When I was in college, my roommate on my way to gym would always say, “Oh, you’re going to go do some bodybuilding,” and actually I’d say, “No, I’m going to do some body breaking down. I’ll do my bodybuilding later on tonight when I sleep.” And so, that approach of that you recover when you sleep, it just kind of switches the mindset a little bit. So even before I focus on nutrition, if I see somebody who’s, who has poor sleep or is only sleeping four or five hours a night, I will focus on that. And then maybe we’ll have a team approach to see what we could tweak on that, but drinking the right recovery shake or eating the right foods is, has a lesser impact than something like sleep or potentially just taking off a day here and there. So listening to your body, knowing that there might be some days when you might need to skip a session just so you could foam roll and stretch and do some of those topics that I’m sure you’ve talked about on some of the other podcasts. But to hit the nutrition standpoint, sleep number one, proper mobility exercises, two, three, I’d say hydration. So, we’re getting into the nutrition aspects, hydration, because when you are breaking down muscle tissue, when you’re working out muscle glycogen, you’re also burning through water. And so, when we replace that muscle glycogen or the storage form of energy in the body, we need water to go along with it, so I’d say hydration one. And then, the rules aren’t really that different, the carbs, the fats, the proteins. I try to make things simple, so the old-school theory was I need carbs before a workout and protein after a workout, and there’s some truth to that. I try to make it a little bit easier and say get a combination of carbs and protein before and get a combination of carbs and protein after. And then, in your later meals, maybe in between your workouts, that’s where you maybe have a slight emphasis on the healthy fats, cause fats do digest rather slowly. So, a high…

Full show notes at the publisher

#10 SWCC Career Jul 11, 2018

Show notes

SWCC are special boat operators who conduct covert missions from the water, at night or under fire. Learn more about these unique warriors in this episode. For additional info check out www.SEALSWCC.com00:00:02:05The only easy day was yesterday. (Intro)A crucial part of any Naval Special Warfare mission is the covert insertion and extraction of operators, especially at night or under fire. The team responsible for this, SWCC, or Special Warfare Combatant-craft crewmen, are trained extensively in how to pilot and maintain special boats and their weapons. They are physically fit, highly motivated, combat-focused, and responsive in high-stress situations. They frequently work with the Navy SEALs.Today we speak with Bill, the SWCC Instructor of the Year who is also responsible for the first block of SWCC training, called Basic Crewman Selection. Let’s get started.00:00:58AG: Well, first, I’d like to thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. I know you’re a pretty busy guy.00:01:03B: Oh, you’re welcome.00:01:05AG: If you could start by introducing yourself and letting the audience know, you know, what you, who you are and a little about what you do.00:01:11B: Yes, I’m Petty Officer First Class Bill. I’m an instructor here at the SWCC Schoolhouse, specifically our selection phase, which we call BCS, stands for Basic Crewmen Selection.00:01:22AG: So, what does it mean to be an instructor here?00:01:24B: An instructor, what that means here is that we are the primary role of, of conducting evolutions for the students and anything and everything that’s required for the students to get through our, our schoolhouse.00:01:42AG: Very nice. And I think you, you left out something in your introduction. You’re not just any instructor. You’re the Instructor of the Year?00:01:50B: Yes, I was fortunate enough to be, to be awarded the Instructor of the Year. I got a lot of help from a lot of guys previous to get that award.00:01:58AG: What does that mean?00:02:00B: Well, what those qualities would mean to me personally is that you are the example for what you would want a candidate to become. So, anything ranging from character and competence, what we always hit for, our students, that’s what we’re looking for, so we’re demonstrating that ourselves with our personal leadership, team ability, with how we are physically, on evolutions, our personal fitness, our knowledge, everything that we want out of the students that we are demonstrating that ourselves.00:02:34AG: Okay. How did you decide to go SWCC? Where did that come from, the motivation?00:02:40B: I decided to go SWCC about ten years ago when it was actually through a YouTube video, showing the capabilities and everything going on with the Riverine aspect of SWCC. I saw that video, I was interested in the military before, kind of just cruising through, looking at different Special Operations positions, and that’s what I was into, and I saw that one, and I was immediately hooked.00:03:04AG: Awesome. I think we should pause for a second to let anyone listening know where we’re sitting cause they’re probably going to be hearing some sounds around here. Can you tell us what we’re looking at over here?00:03:13B: Yeah, so right now, we’re sitting at what we call here Pier Four in the Slab. It’s a, it’s a main spot that we conduct a lot of our training here at the Basic Crewman Selection phase of the SWCC Schoolhouse, where they do many different physical activities, they start their underways here, and they perform countless swims down here, so if, if anyone chooses to go the SWCC route, they would be spending many hours where we’re currently sitting.00:03:42AG: Nice. Well, before we start talking about what actually happens when you go SWCC, I want to just start by asking you if someone’s interested in going that direction, what do you think the best first step is?00:03:53B: The best first step to become a, if you’re interested in becoming a SWCC, is first looking up all the open source information out there on what a SWCC means, what does it mean to become a SWCC, because the first step is making sure that that’s what you really want to do. It’s a great job, and there’s, there, and there’s a lot of good things about it, but you first need to know what it is and why you want to do it, and then you start getting into the details of precise things you need to do to prepare.00:04:27AG: So, to get to that stage, what, what is the course like that people have to go through?00:04:34B: The first course would be the physical preparation. So, actually on the SEAL/SWCC website, there’s an extensive amount of information on what physical standards someone should be at to be properly prepared, and that’s where you would first want to look to see the running times you should have, swimming, push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, general body calisthenics that someone should be at so that they have a good shot at making it through.00:05:05AG: Okay, and can you describe that it’s a 7-week course?00:05:07B: BCS is a 7-week course.00:05:10AG: Okay, so could you walk us through that course?00:05:12B: So, when someone comes to training, when they start BCS, the first week is a large amount of different physical evolutions that we test their personal grit, their team ability, and it has a small amount of classroom instruction revolving around coastal navigation. So, there’s a lot of different physical evolutions based off things such as running, push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, there’s a lot of swimming, there is a lot of team building exercises with, with small boats that they all have to maneuver together, hold together, do different relay races that force a lot of teamwork.00:05:58AG: Is that, before we move on to the next phase, personal grit, that’s an interesting phrase. 00:06:03B: Grit would be a huge factor for our selection course, not the only one, but it is a primary factor, and the entire course is both developing and testing grit. So, it’s a combination of we’re selecting those with enough grit, and we are developing grit at the same time. So, that is throughout, and it changes on how we do it, and week one is mainly through those physical evolutions with a small amount of classroom instruction.00:06:35AG: Okay, and then the next?00:06:38B: Then the next two weeks, week two and three, are similar; however, it changes into less on the physical. We start introducing more classroom time because there is a large amount of academic learning they need to know before we get underway on the, on the boats, so we have to start from square one on everything to do with navigation, the fundamentals of the craft that they’re going to be on and basic seamanship. So, we get into that on weeks two and three, while at the same time still having the, the physical grit side, but now they have the academic side as well, and…00:07:19AG: And you bring up a point, which is that they haven’t even touched a boat yet at this point.00:07:22B: Not yet, not yet.00:07:24AG: Even though the boats are the main objective, but you got to get through this before you can, (B: Correct) okay.00:07:29B: Correct, so they have quite a bit of, they have a steep learning curve to even get to that point, so we don’t just jump immediately onto it. Then when we get to week four, is our underway week. we also have physical test gates, so it’s less about grit building on this week, and it’s more about performance. So, we’re going to be executing everything we’ve learned, and you’re also going to have to execute your, your physical performance on this week, so both. We start getting underway, start doing all the basic underways, mainly revolving around navigation, but we also do anchoring, towing, hull inspections, some other fundamental seamanship skills. At the end of that week, then week five is our, is our crucible week. We have the Tour…(AG: Crucible week?) Yes, so…00:08:21AG: Why’s it called that?00:08:22B: It’s not called the crucible week, so it is called the Tour. Week five has the Tour, and what I meant by that is that, that is what Basic Crewman Selection is leading up to. So, the first four weeks is all leading up to the week of the Tour, where they put together everything that they’ve been learning, and we call it a day in the life of a boat guy. So, it’s three days of minimal sleep, testing them on everything they’ve been learning and a huge amount of physical activity. So, they’re going to be wet, cold, tired and tested for three days straight.00:09:00AG: Talk about grit, geez.00:09:03B: So, once they get through that week, there’s a phase line within BCS, so that’s when the students get their brown shirts. They transition from white shirts to brown shirts, and then that’s a symbolic transition that they have been selected for, for further training. So, they’ve made it through our Tour, and those students have demonstrated the capability and grit to transition into the next phase of training. It is still…00:09:33AG: So, if anyone happens to be walking around Coronado and sees a bunch of guys go by in brown shirts, that means they have?00:09:37B: They know that they made it through the Tour. Then we transition to week six, and week six is when we start getting into more advanced skills, still fundamental, and we get into basic driving. Up to this point, the students haven’t been driving at all. All they’ve been doing is the navigational side, learning the fundamentals of what an engine is and everything else. So, we start off the week with teaching about maintenance on crafts, official maintenance and how to drive the craft. We start off with the smallest craft we have in our inventory. It’s a small rubber craft where it is called a CRRC, Combat Rubber Raiding Craft, and it uses a small 55-horsepower outboard motor, so we put that on the back of the small craft, and they practice basic maneuvering, driving straight, doing different turns, mooring up onto the side of other boats or piers, and the fundamentals there with driving. That’s how this week goes. It’s different underways, a lot more classroom now. The PTs go into more of on the minimal side. They’re always going to PT for their entire SWCC career. 00:10:55B: Then we’re transitioning into week seven, and that’s the last week of Basic Crewman Selection, and during this week, we, we cumulate everything they’ve learned, and we do what’s called an FTX, and that’s a Final Training Exercise. So, they get taught some basic mission planning, they know how to drive these small CRRCs, and we give them a mission, and they go ahead and execute this mission under instructor surveillance, and we grade them, and that is the culmination of everything that they’ve done in BCS. So, they get to see and execute what all their hard work has led to.00:11:39AG: Wow. And of all these stages, would you say there are one or two where you lose the most amount of people? 00:11:47B: Absolutely. So, we lose the most people during week one and week five. So, week one being the first week of BCS, it’s a shock to a lot of candidates that come through, and it’s a, it’s a steep curve for many people, and then we also leave, lose a significant amount during the Tour, where they go three days straight, and they’re on minimal sleep, cold, wet and tired the entire time.00:12:16AG: So, what would your advice be for someone knowing that? You know, you’re on the other side now. You can see what holds people back.00:12:24B: My advice would be starting from the time that you want to become a SWCC developing grit within yourself. So, there’s great information out there publically, open source, they can just check out right on the SEAL/SWCC website on what they should be doing to physically prepare, and you need to immediately start working towards those targets, and if you hit those targets, exceed those targets. Never be satisfied, and every single day, be building a habit of grit, and they can do that indirectly even though they don’t have these exact tools just through their lifestyle. When they’re working out, are they truly pushing themselves, or do they listen to that little voice in their head that, you know, tells them that they want to stop or slow down and do that? Are they, do they set themselves at rigid schedule, or are they letting themselves just wake up every day in the morning whenever they want to? Are they doing everything they can to start having a lifestyle of grit is what I would suggest to anyone that wanted to become a, become a SWCC.00:13:31AG: Lifestyle of grit, I like it. What did you do to, to get to this place? How did you prepare before you, when you decided you wanted to go that direction?00:13:40B: Ten years ago, there wasn’t a SEAL/SWCC website with as much information. Wikipedia had the, the entrance scores required. I was working at the time, so I would wake up before work to go use the pool every day and, and just work out twice a day until I came in. I would, I had quite a big deficit to do with things like pull-ups and other upper body physical because I grew up playing soccer, so that was where I had the biggest improvement that I had to make. The running, I had to mainly just maintain. At the time, I was a decent runner, so I was still working on it. However, the swimming and the upper body strength, I had a lot of work to do, so that’s where I devoted most of my attention to try to become the best overall possible.00:14:29AG: That’s good to point out to people that might think that, because they’re not the best swimmer right now, there’s no reason they couldn’t get there, (B: No, absolutely not) or any other form of physical…00:14:41B: Absolutely not. If there’s enough time, and there’s information out there that if this is what you want to do, you, anyone out there could, through enough personal effort, become ready, if you haven’t ever swam before, there’s great information on there on how to swim. They need to learn the combat sidestroke and practice it every day until they feel good enough at it and then do it a standard amount for the workout templates that are out there, maybe three times a day. If they, if they didn’t run very much growing up, then they need to work on that, and usually what’s much different for people is being comfortable in the water. I grew up on the West Coast, California, so I was able to go into the ocean pretty often, you know, so I had an advantage of being slightly more comfortable in the water than someone that’s never been in the water before. So, that is, if they don’t have access to the ocean, they absolutely need to get in the pool as much as possible and just get comfortable in the water, and that’s by spending more time out in the water. 00:15:54AG: And it also sounds like you don’t necessarily have to know how to drive a boat to…00:15:57B: No, so fundamental math skills, it is needed for navigation, so if you frontload that, meaning, you know, if you graduated high school eight years ago, and you haven’t touched math in a while, being able to do everything on paper, not use a calculator, long division, decimal, multiplication, those basic skills, you know, you just need to brush up on real quick, but everything else we will, we will teach you here what to do with navigation, with the boats, with engines, with communication radios. The training is extensive when they get here, and as long as they’re willing to pay attention in class and do their homework, they will have ample opportunity to perform at their required needs.00:16:48AG: Do you think your job is pretty cool?00:16:50B: Yeah, I do.00:16:51AG: It looks cool from the outside in.00:16:54B: Yeah, so I mean just what we were saying before with how many jobs out there get to show up each day, work out for a while and then, you know, essentially practice being a team. So, it’s, you feel like you’re in a team each day where you show up, work out and then just refine your skillsets, and it’s, it’s great each day.00:17:17AG: What about when you’re actually…

Full show notes at the publisher

#9 Injury Prevention Jul 09, 2018

Show notes

Training inevitably leads to injury, but with the right guidance you can avoid most issues and recover faster. Our staff physical rehab expert talks about how you can reduce your risk of injury. For more info go to www.SEALSWCC.com.00:00:02:05The only easy day was yesterday. (Intro)In training, when you push yourself to the limits there is always a risk of injury. In the special operations field this is even further magnified. Today we speak about the fundamentals of fitness and injury prevention with expert Don Kessler, a man from the highest levels of competition. He is on the ground every day helping Special Warfare trainees perform their best and has some solid advice. Let’s get started.00:00:43DF: Thanks for taking the time to sit down with us and speak about what you do for NSW. First, let’s talk a little bit about you for a minute, 40 plus years of physical fitness background with athletes varying from high school students to Olympians. What do you think uniquely qualifies you for your specialized position that you have at NSW?00:01:10DK: Well, I started out as a hospital corpsman after getting my master’s degree in physical education, and this was during the Vietnam time, and I eventually got stationed at the US Naval Academy and working as a hospital corpsman there. I moved into athletic training as my profession, but I had years of experience in the military going into that, and I loved it so much that I decided I was getting out of the military to continue on in athletic training. So, I went through, again, working in high schools, colleges. I worked at the Olympics, I worked with US Soccer, so there were many different variations I went to, and when the time came to retire from college athletics, I didn’t feel like I should stop. And so, I contacted some people in the NSW community that I knew and said, “I think I could be some help or benefit to them,” and they said, “We agree.” They thought that my experiences would be able to help teach some of these people some of the things that we do in athletics but also that we should treat the NSW people as Division 1 or professional athletes.00:02:17DF: How does the training that you do now specialize from the typical sports medicine that you’ve seen earlier in your career?00:02:25DK: My job in the medical side of BUDS training is that I’m to do the functional rehabilitation. So, we have three physical therapists that work with us that will work with the initial part of an injury, and I’m to functionally get them back into full action. They call it the BRIGS program, taking you from the very simple things of coming out of an injury or post-op and getting you back to able to do the obstacle course. So, that’s what my job is, it’s unique among any of the programs that we have in that I have to know what are the things that they ask of the students, both SEAL and SWCC, to make it through the training. And so, my functional rehabilitation is built towards what do you need to do to pass, or what do you need to do to pass through Hell Week or the tour.00:03:21DF: So, it is very similar to a lot of other athletic training, you just, a different kind of endgame, so to speak, in terms of what their capabilities need to be?00:03:30DK: It’s, like with any sport, and as I used to tell the students that I would have as athletic training students, that you have to look at the team you’re working with and know what is required of them in each thing and even watch people coach them and decide if I’m going to rehab them, what am I doing specifically for that sport. If it’s a thrower, if it’s a swimmer, if it’s a runner, I need to know specific things I need to do to get them back to full rehabilitation. And so, what I did was spend about two months just watching what they did in training and say, “All right, when I go to do my rehab, these are the things that I’m going to need to incorporate in the functional training to get them back to full 100%.00:04:19DF: Is there differences because of the loading that these guys are under a lot of times with heavy packs? It seems like to me that that’s one of the differences between training for a marathon or another body weight endurance sport versus the types of things that these operators do. They carry a lot of gear. Would you say that that’s accurate?00:04:39DK: In the, in the early phases of training, the heavy gear is just moved from one place to another. It’s not something that they’re really training with. They will eventually step it up and move it up, and they get later phases, but most of the problems we run into are things that involve endurance, whether it’s a run, whether it’s a swim, whether it’s an obstacle course, and we have to get them ready to be able to handle those and repeat those over and over and over again.00:05:09DF: Do you see that the injuries that you typically see are, like you just mentioned, are a result from maybe a too sudden of an increase of exercise volume?00:05:19DK: I would say there’s certainly an increase in volume. Some people come in trained too much for it already, and any addition that is made to their training puts them over the edge. The people who are peaking slowly have less problems, and that’s what BUDS prep does, and that’s what BO does, is to try to peak you and bring you along slowly, so most of that works fairly well. Many people come in way over trained and become stale as they say in athletics, and therefore, start on the downslope even though they’re going to slowly start increasing what they had been doing.00:05:57DF: So, I think it would be helpful if maybe you kind of unpacked that a little bit, talking about the progression of the scale or intensity. You’re talking kind of about peaking in terms, do you mean condition or wear on the body? Can you maybe unpack that a little bit?00:06:14DK: I would say more than anything else from the injury wise, it’s the wear on the body. On the physical therapy side, 60% of the injuries that we see on a daily basis are stress fractures, 60% are stress fractures, and so we have to slowly build them up, and if they do get a stress fracture, we have to again start at ground zero and build that up slowly. So, that’s what I mean by that. With the prep students, they start them doing a little bit of running and try to increase that as time goes along and try to make it go faster. When they get to here, again, in basic orientation, again, it starts a little bit slow, trying to show you what you’re doing and doing it once in a while and then start increasing it as you get into first phase. You will then have everything thrown at you every day, and then when you get to Hell Week, it runs on 24 hours a day. So, it peaks, the progression does. That gives them the ability, if you’re doing this right, to be able to handle that peak, but some people come in too high already, or they try to do extra beyond what is needed to be at that phase, and then it’s too much for them when they add more.00:07:29DF: I see what you’re saying. So, is there a difference between what the SWCC recruits are seeing versus the SEAL recruits in this process?00:07:38DK: The SWCC and SEAL will start prep together and do everything the same in prep. They will do BO together, and then after BO, they will break off into their branches. The BCT that the SWCC people do will be a little bit modified. They won’t be doing quite the much as, quite as much quantity, but they will still be doing the same things that the SEAL people are doing. So, again, it’s the same exact training. They keep right on up until they break out, and then there’s just a slight variation as to the quantity that’s done.00:08:13DF: You’ve mentioned the term BO a couple times. Can you tell us about that, what that is, what that means?00:08:17DK: BO is Basic Orientation. So, when the students come from prep in Great Lakes they are, all start out in Basic Orientation, and it’s a slow process of trying to learn what is required of them on a daily basis for their swims, for their runs, for the obstacle course, for their barracks inspection, personal inspection. It’s a watered down advance part of what’s going to happen in Hell Week or the tour or any other phase, and so they slowly as the weeks go by will increase the intensity of what they’re doing and the quantity of what they’re doing.00:08:57DF: Okay, let’s roll back maybe a few weeks or months in this kind of process. I’d imagine part of the reason why your voice would be so helpful here is being able to have these recruits hear you before they arrive and go through this orientation process. This is I think the kind of the jewel of being able to talk to you. What do you think these recruits should not do when they’re preparing for their PSTs before they even arrive?00:09:28DK: I would have to say it’s almost like getting ready for a track meet. You don’t want to be training for a marathon to be able to do a one-mile race, and the same thing goes with preparing to go to basic training and then to go to prep and then to go to BO. If you’re trying to do the amount quantity wise and the intensity that you’re going to need further down the road, you’re going to break down beforehand. So, it’s important to remember there are requirements to pass the PST. Shoot for what you need to do to be prepared for those requirements and not worry about what you need to do to get through Hell Week in that the amount of mileage you need to put in, the amount of lifting you need to put in or the amount of swimming you need to be in is nowhere near the amount that you’re going to need later, but you need to be able to do well at what you’re going to do at a lower level, but by being prepared to doing something at upper level won’t necessarily make you better and may break you down when you get to that upper level.00:10:31DF: I think that’s a really important distinction to make because we’ve talked with a number of people through this process, and there’s a sense of continued reflection on the documents and the guides that have been well-vetted and written for recruits through this process. I think that there’s a tendency, especially coming from a very high performing collegiate background, all these people are athletes, to want to push, want to push, want to be the best, want to be the top, and I’m hearing that continuously don’t push to the point where you’re hitting your limits. Follow the measured approach, the crawl, walk, run approach that’s kind of been echoed by a few different people, so it’s good to hear that from you, too. It seems like the guides that are available for people and the training programs that are available for people are designed for your success. They’re not necessarily for the lowest people on the rung to be able to get through. There is a measured approach for a reason, and it’s not only just to get people in the right condition but to prevent long-term injury.00:11:39DK: Absolutely right. The people that I end up seeing for medical treatment are usually those people who’ve pushed too hard. And that’s why I was brought in because they felt that in the past, if you were dropped because of medical reasons, many times you were left by the wayside and never really could get back into what was going on. And they found that many of these people were some of the best athletes that they had, and they just over trained or had a freak accident and got an injury. And what we wanted to do is take that out and say, “Hey, we want people like that. We want people who will push themselves, but let’s give them a framework to work in,” and rather, instead of just going crazy doing a lot to say, “Here’s the measured amount you need to do to get better,” and that’s what we have honed over the years to say, “I know exactly what it takes for you to have a fracture to get back to running full, and I know how many weeks it takes, I know how much intensity I have to do it each one, and if you add more to that, you’re probably going to get injured again.” And I’ve seen it time and time again. As it is with the people who have followed the pattern, and I’ll just say with stress fractures, we’ve dealt with stress fractures. I’ve had 148 guys I’ve used the Altered G, which is gravity assisted running, and of those people, all of them have passed. Only six people were reinjured, which is about 4%, and the history with stress fractures is if you’ve had one, it’s the best predictor of getting another one, and you have a 40% chance of being reinjured if you’ve had a stress fracture. So, we’ve been able to hone that down to about 4%, which is amazing. I’m going off on lectures at colleges and universities to talk about that, to try to help them with what we’re doing, but that’s what we’re saying. We have done this, we have seen this, we have a measured approach as how much to do, and the word we try to get out to you beforehand is don’t wait to get hurt to do this measured amount. Do the measured amount beforehand so we can bring you along gradually through the training throughout the cycle.00:13:47DF: So, for the people that don’t have a world-class rehab facility whenever they’re in the earlier stages of training, is there anything you can say to them about comparing the type of pain that’s causing injury versus the pain of, of your muscles burning? Can you speak to that a little bit?00:14:04DK: Well, again, looking at most of…DF: Like when to stop I guess…DK: Mostly people have had, are athletes of some sort, whether they’re swimmers or water polo players, ice hockey players. They have an idea from high school training or college training about what I need to do to get in shape, and there is that, you know, soreness when you start getting in shape, but after that, it never should be a real soreness. You should say, “Hey, I got a good workout,” but you never should be getting sore that the next day, “Oh, I don’t think I can do it.” If you’re doing that, and you’re getting more sore each day, then you’re already start over training, and that’s one of the best things that we’re trying to say is that, yes, there should be a breakdown, but there also has to be recovery. You just can’t keep pushing every day although you can do running one day, swimming a day, biking a day, almost like a triathlete and say, “Hey, that will get me there. It gives different parts of my body a chance to take off, but I’m still working towards the end,” and that’s the approach we push with the patients who are already injured, but certainly it’s necessary for the people who are just starting out.00:15:13DF: Right. So let’s say you’re earlier, you’re earlier on in this process, maybe you’re six months into training for your PST, and maybe you sustain an ankle injury, or you, you determine that you maybe might have stress fractures. I’d imagine it’s very important and even more so later on in the process to be able to maintain your engine, your cardiovascular capability through an injury. Is there anything you could recommend to people that might be “nursing” an injury early in this process to be able to keep their fitness level up instead of just drowning out?00:15:45DK: Absolutely. We always keep the conditioning. When we have somebody who is injured, and again, we’ll use stress fractures as an example because it’s one of the most prevalent injuries that we see, those people even if they are injured and are on crutches, they are working out, and their workout for aerobically will be sitting in the seat and doing an upper body arm bike, or they’ll be swimming. And eventually if they’re off crutches, we may have them biking and changing the speeds and resistance and things like that, so they’re constantly doing aerobic conditioning, and then we will eventually take them along to what the phases of running is concerned. But if they had an upper body injury with swimming say or the obstacle course, again, they’re on the bike, and they’re pedaling away, or if they can run, they will run, so the…

Full show notes at the publisher

#8 Mythbusting BUD/S Jun 26, 2018

Show notes

People say a lot about SEAL training, but only we can give you the true, updated info. We asked two First Phase staff to debunk the popular myths about BUD/S and tell us how it really is. For more info check out www.SEALSWCC.com.00:00:02The only easy day was yesterday. (Intro)00:00:30:00SC: Hello, everyone, I’m Scott Williams, a member of the Navy SEAL and SWCC Scout Team here at Naval Special Warfare Center. I’m here today with Ken, a retired SEAL currently on the training staff at basic training command and an active duty SEAL, Steven, who is also on the training staff. The topic of our discussion today is myth-busting BUD/S, so let’s get right to it.00:00:56:00K: Hi, my name’s Ken. My background is 33 years active duty service, retired in 2016, was hired on about right after retiring to first phase at basic training command, and I’m the deputy OIC [Officer In Charge].00:01:12:00S: Hi, my name’s Steven. I have almost 20 years in of active service and still active, and I’m currently on the training staff at Basic Training Command, BUD/S.00:01:21:00SW: There’s a lot of chatter and written material on the market these days usually produced by ex-SEALs, and it talks about how candidates can prepare for BUD/S. Most of this seems to be from the perspective of guys that went through the SEAL pipeline years ago. Is it the same old BUD/S it used to be?00:01:43:00K: Well, from my perspective of having gone through it 33 years ago, no. It’s more professional, it’s harder because the candidates that are coming our way are better prepared than they ever have been, and what we’re looking for is that mental toughness. The attributes that we’re looking for are, or the traits: grit, integrity, honesty, team before self. Those words were never used when I went through 33 years ago, but they’re used today, and that’s what we’re looking for young men to display those things.00:02:24:00SW: Thanks, Ken. Steven, your perspective?00:02:27:00S: I would absolutely agree. I went through 17 years ago, so half of Ken. It’s absolutely more professional now. Without a doubt, I would, I don’t know if I would say it’s easier or harder, but it’s absolutely more professional. The reason I would say it’s hard is that everything we do in the training pipeline is to elicit a response from the students of what we want to see, and the characteristics that Ken just listed out, you can’t get those from every single class. Every class has their own personality by doing the exact same thing every time, so there’s small changes that are done for a reason to elicit certain responses that we want to see or to encourage certain attributes that we want to put forth.00:03:18:00SW: It seems like there’s a lot of books or videos out there that give you tips or tricks on how to game the system so to speak. Can that be done? Is that realistic?00:03:32:00S: I think it’s hard, especially the way we look at the program now with getting, encouraging those certain attributes. The pipeline is so long that a lot of the tips I would think you see are just for potentially first phase, which is only seven weeks of a over a year long pipeline. If you are using tips or tricks, they might work for a day, a week, two weeks, but with a pipeline being so long and so professional nowadays, that’s going to come out at some point in training in my opinion.00:04:05:00K: Yeah, I would say you can. The young men that come through this program, if they get with the wrong sort, those that have been in the pipeline for a long period of time, never having even completed first phase yet, could lead some astray, like, “Hey, cut this corner doing this way. Cut that corner doing that way.” That’s not what we’re looking for. Can it happen? Yes. Do we want to see it happen? No. We want everybody to experience BUD/S the same way. The kid that gets out of this program who cheated to get through the program, most likely even if he gets through the whole entire over year process, it’s 64 weeks long, he will be found somewhere at SEAL team I don’t care cause he will display that color. Leopards don’t change their spots, so if he cheated from the frontend, it will come out somewhere along the way.00:04:58:00SW: As members of the training staff, how do you evaluate candidates? What, what are you looking for in those guys when they’re out there on the grinder, in the dunes?00:05:13:00K: We’re looking for the individual who will, again, put team before self. So, when you think of log PT or you think of a boat on your head with seven guys underneath it running, we’re looking for the young man that’s going above and beyond. He sees that his partner’s hurting; he picks up that extra weight.00:05:32:00S: For me, the meathead version is I look for guys that will be hard when it’s hard. Things like cheating the system or cutting corners is, is being easy. That’s, that’s not what I’m looking for. As Ken referenced, the hard stuff, log PT, land portages, Hell Week, I’m looking for the young man that will display the characteristics that we’re looking for and be hard, be a good teammate when it’s hard to be a good teammate.00:06:04:00SW: Some of these outside sources have recommended taking things like caffeine pills or other chemical training aids. What do you say about that?00:06:16:00S: On the anything chemical aids, I think a lot of the stuff that’s probably designed for the average guy walking around doing the average job, it’s extremely dangerous to put that in your body in the training pipeline that we conduct because we are, your body’s going to put through stuff that that stuff is not designed to be in your body when you’re doing it, all day long calisthenics and physical activities. We see a lot of young men, unfortunately, that will have glucose issues or overheat, and some of those are attributed to taking something as simple as Monsters. So, anything that is designed to influence your heart rate one way or the other I think is extremely dangerous in a pipeline of this caliber and how intense it is.00:07:10:00SW: Did you say glucose issues?00:07:12:00S: So, you have your insulin in your blood or not enough sugar in your blood, so you’ll have issues, not be able to physically perform, which puts your status in the pipeline at risk because if you’re not performing to the standard, then you can be removed from training.00:07:30:00K: Yeah, I mean every class will see it, and it’s an unfortunate thing. We put in front of these young men nutritionists that give them all the keys to success to physically get through this program on what to eat, what not to eat, when to eat and how much to eat, what to stay away from. Every class, they come in thinking because somebody told them, “Take this supplement. It works. It got me through.” Well, it didn’t. It didn’t get them through, and it’s unfortunate. So, like Steven said, we will be out on evolutions, and you will see young men go down, and when you pull the string on it, there’s something there. They didn’t eat the breakfast they were supposed to eat, they didn’t eat the lunch they were supposed to eat, or they were taking a supplement they shouldn’t be taking.00:08:18:00SW: Now, they get plenty of food when they’re in BUD/S, don’t they?00:08:22:00K: Oh, yeah, probably too much food.00:08:24:00SW: I mean it’s not like during Hell Week, you starve them, right?00:08:27:00K: No, they get to eat four times a day during Hell Week. On top of that, they add in, or we add in, snacks and hydrates, so the young man can get through this thing. And what happens is we’ll set the young man up for failure as well if he’s on a supplement in the first three weeks, and then he gets into Hell Week, and he no longer has that ability to get to whatever he was taking, it comes out real quick, and he crashes, and he’s no longer in the program. So, my advice to anyone is don’t take supplements. Heed our words when we tell you don’t take them.00:09:02:00SW: Part of the mindset that’s been put out there is, is ways you can make your life easier at BUD/S, and the instructors have been described as being pretty tough, and, of course, training is tough, but the suggestion is that they can be bought off by, you know, coffee and donuts at the barracks inspection and so forth. Do you, do you see that happening?00:09:32:00S: I see occasionally during barracks, barracks inspections students leave stuff out purposely, but I don’t know how it’s worked in the past, but I would say in the last at least five years if not more, we treat those as gear drift like you would in any inspection, and you’ll see it the first, maybe the first inspection, where someone’s read something somewhere saying if I leave gifts out or tobacco out that I’ll get an easier time during the inspection, and now those are hits in the inspection, and they failed because of that stuff, and then you’ll see it the one time, and they’ll figure out, “Okay, yeah, that was complete crap that I heard or read, and that absolutely got me in more trouble than trying to put it out in the first place.”00:10:19:00K: Yeah, I can’t add anymore to that other than it’s funny to watch the look on their face when they believed in their hearts after whatever they’ve read that this gift, this offering would make it easier on them. And when they see it go sideways, and it doesn’t work out that way, it changes the behavior.00:10:38:00SW: Along those same lines, some have characterized the instructors at BUD/S as sadistic and violent. Would you say that’s the case?00:10:48:00S: Absolutely not. I would say that, as I alluded to earlier, the staff, every interaction we have with any of the candidates is to elicit a response. It is calculated and done for a reason. That’s why we try to make each class experience going through BUD/S to be exactly the same, but there is small nuances that elicit some of those characteristics we want to see, so can the staff be audibly aggressive or intense in interactions with the candidates? Absolutely, but that is a calculated move done to elicit a certain response to see a performance change or to see a character attribute change. There’s never, the only time staff ever comes anywhere near the students is for safety reasons or something like that. There’s no…It could be, I can see how a student would see cause they’re not behind the curtain, thinking that it’s sadistic, but in actuality, it’s a calculated, calculated method to elicit certain responses.00:11:56:00SW: No beatings behind the dunes and behavior like that?00:12:00:00S: If there are remediation tools that we use, and it is told to the students why this is happening before it happens, what they learned, when there’s discussions afterwards what they learned, and that’s, again, that’s a tool used to elicit certain responses or to promote good behavior vice bad behavior.00:12:24:00K: You know, we can’t speak for the past. I can only go two years back. That’s when I was hired on, and when I say our staff is more professional today than it ever has been before because of things like what Steven just put out there, we look for and we elicit behavioral responses based off of what we do. Now, in the past, had there been potential for instructors with students sadistic behaviors taking place, I can’t speak to that, but I will tell you today for the last two years, that does not happen.00:13:01:00SW: So, just a few years ago, Naval Special Warfare Center created the Instructor Qualification Course, the IQC, to formally professionalize the instructor cadre of all the phases. Have you seen that as a really significant step toward how instructors carry on their duties within first phase?00:13:32:00K: It has definitely helped in a sense of giving the instructor tools to be able to use as he’s in front of the student, student base. It has allowed a more confident instructor to stand before them with better knowledge and is equipped better to handle that student I want to say cohort ’cause it is. It’s about 150 to 200 people. So, from a professional standpoint, yes, it has. 00:14:07:00SW: But I think the idea is that, or the impression is out there that BUD/S instructors have the latitude to on a whim decide they’re going to be tougher on the class today. And Steven, you spoke about this earlier, about how every response, every evolution out there is pre-briefed and is not as random as the students may think it is.00:14:38:00S: Just like certain operations are planned months in advance, you also have time sensitive operations that are done hours away from now. That’s almost the exact same thing with the BUD/S training pipeline, at least for First Phase. We have schedules, but if we are not seeing the attributes or the responses that we need to, we will change the schedule. We will add things, take things out, but every time we do that is to elicit a certain response. Every interaction with the student base is for a reason. It’s to have them display to us something that we want to see, and if we’re not seeing that, we can make minor tweaks. But the bottom line is those interactions with the student base are for a reason to elicit certain responses or to have them display certain attributes that we want to see.00:15:35:00SW: So, it’s not just the beatings will continue until morale improves. There’s, there’s an objective to every evolution and even remediation.S: Correct.00:15:45:00K: And there’s a curriculum that’s followed almost to a T, but there is the, if you’re not giving us the response that we need to see and that we’re looking to see, we have other tools to make you show us that. It may come off as we’re being sadistic, but we’re not. It’s just physical activity to elicit a response that we want to see.00:16:10:00SW: Now, I’ve heard this around the campus before that BUD/S is to some extent a bit of a mystery. Should it stay a mystery to candidates, or is some of the information out there actually good to have before they get here? 00:16:30:00K: Can you give a specific?00:16:33:00SW: Some websites will give out training information, for instance, how to train for BUD/S. Is that worthwhile information to have before it gets here?00:16:47:00K: Sure. Again, the program itself, because of the length of it, and we’ll talk specifically just for first phase at BTC, you can know all the keys to the kingdom; you still have to physically go through it. So, log PT’s coming, you can practice log PT activities if you want. There’s plenty of videos out there showing you how to do it. It’s not the same until it’s game day, and you’ve got six other people on that log trying to do it. Working by yourself is easy. Working as a team, that’s what we’re looking for, is teammates, individuals who will work hard together. So, yes, we don’t mind, get yourself physically ready for this program, but the program itself is tough. You can’t hide from it.00:17:42:00S: I would concur. I don’t know, I don’t know how you would train for BUD/S other than putting in the work. You know there’s going to be running, you know there’s going to be swimming, you know there’s going to be a lot of calisthenics, so I don’t have any problem with anybody trying to get ready for that.00:18:02:00SW: But what is your best advice to a candidate that’s thinking about coming into the SEAL pipeline or getting himself or herself ready?00:18:15:00S: There is going to be growth on the mindset side going through this program, specifically first phase. It is hard to plan on doing some physical growth when you get to this program. You need to show up physically ready to go through the program but also have an open mind that you’re going to grow mentally a lot more than physically here. We’re going to beat you down physically to grow you mentally. What I mean by that is I think students sometimes come, and they want to try to cheat the system on a uniform inspection or a barracks inspection when in actuality what we’re trying to ferret out is I’m only going to give you, I’m not going to give you a gun and a…

Full show notes at the publisher

6 How to Become a Navy SEAL May 30, 2018

Show notes

You want to join Naval Special Warfare? Recruiting can be a confusing process. A Navy Recruiter, a SEAL and a SWCC break it down for you. For more info go to www.SEALSWCC.com00:00:15:27DF: Welcome to “The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday,” the official Navy SEAL podcast. Whether you dreamed about becoming a Navy SEAL as a kid, or just found out that being a SWCC is something you want to learn more about, you probably have a lot of questions. I’m Daniel Fletcher, and today I’m speaking with three experts on the SEAL and SWCC recruiting process. We’ll hear personal experiences from an active duty SEAL and a SWCC operator, whose names have been changed for security.00:00:39:26DF: So, from the top here, let’s just have you guys introduce yourselves. I’ll start with you and then go across, and you guys can just give us a brief summary of what you guys do here.00:00:08:48:25S: Okay, awesome. My name is Sean. I’m a United States Navy SEAL, here stationed at the SEALs SWCC Scout Team with these other two gentlemen beside me, and just basically part of our job is to do outreach and reach out to the youth, high school kids, the college kids to give them ideas of what it takes to be a Navy Seal or a SWCC.00:01:06:06BM: My name is Chief Brian Murray. I coordinate the outreach efforts, plan the trips, help put the budgets together and act as kind of the liaison between the operators and the recruiting districts.00:01:19:26F: Hi, my name is Frank. I’m a SWCC operator, special warfare combatant craft crewman. I’ve been doing that for about ten years, and my role here at the SEAL SWCC Scout Team is essentially the same as Sean’s. We go out, we talk to high schools and colleges, narrow down to athletes and try to give a real-world perspective on what it takes to be a SEAL or a SWCC.00:01:41:24DF: Nice, well thank you guys for taking the time to talk with us again. Let’s go through this process from the beginning from your perspective, kind of first just steps for somebody that might be interested in it, in a career in naval special warfare. Yeah, if you could go ahead and just give a little brief…00:01:56:15BM: Okay, so for anybody that’s interested in this program, the first step that they need to take is to go down to the local recruiting station. What’s going to take place at that meeting first is they’re going to get mentally, morally and physically qualified. What that means is they’re going to take an ASVAB test or a practice ASVAB test to make sure they meet the minimum requirements academically. They’re also going to screen them, check and see if they’ve ever been in any kind of trouble. If so, what waivers are available for them, and then they’ll also set up a physical a MEPS to make sure that they don’t have any physical problems, surgeries, things that they need waivers for. So, they’ll, once they get prequalified, we’ll schedule a MEPS day, and MEPS will bring them in, check their heart, check their vision, their hearing. Once we determine that they are qualified for this program, they’ll start working out with local Navy recruiting district scouts similar to what these guys do but a little different. They’re just responsible for the local area, guys and girls, and they’ll take them out, they’ll do physical screening tests, different things on a local level and get them ready for the process until they are selected.00:03:04:06DF: Maybe we can go a little bit deeper into that from your perspective. These are, these are any Navy recruiting centers, or is it a specific Navy SEAL or Special Operations kind of track that these people have to go take?00:03:16:04BM: Well, first they’re going to need to go visit a traditional Navy recruiting station. The reason that is is because to join the Navy as a Special Warfare Operator, you first have to join the Navy. So, you have to get qualified to do those things. Now, they can go get prequalified without joining the Navy and still go work out with the Special Warfare Operators scouts. They’re there to get them physically ready, but they can’t actually take the step of joining until they’ve visited a real recruiting station, and those typically, if you go onto Navy.com or our website, SEALSWCC.com, they’ll have links to those recruiting stations, and they’ll be able to find, put in their zip code and figure out whatever is closest.00:03:57:05DF: Okay, can you tell us a little bit about the ASVAB test for people that might not be familiar with it?00:04:01:21BM: Okay, so the ASVAB test, it’s an aptitude test that’s broken down. I believe it’s eight different categories. It’ll be everything from mathematics, arithmetic, reasoning, spelling, word comprehension, mechanics. There’s a couple that I’m leaving out, but you probably get the gist of what it is. So, we’ll test them in several different categories. Each job field will require a score made up of a couple of those categories, maybe two to four, depending on which job it is, and they’ll take those scores to make sure that they’re eligible for these programs.00:04:35:09DF: Do people have a chance to retest, or is this something that’s kind of like a once and done thing, or how does that work?00:04:39:23BM: That’s a good question. You can take the ASVAB from the first time you take it, if you don’t do as well as you want, you can take it again 30 days later. If you still don’t get the best score that you want, you can do it 30 days after that, but after that third test, you have to wait six months until you take another ASVAB. So, the best advice I can give you is to go online. There’s a lot of practice ASVAB tests. So, to do those online as much as you can before you take the actual test.00:05:04:26DF: And what is MEPS?00:05:06:10BM: Military Entrance Processing station. That’s where they go into to take their physical, so that’s their entry into the Navy basically.00:05:15:09DF: Okay, so after the regular Navy recruiting process, how does the process differ for Naval Special Warfare?00:05:25:01BM: So, they, the process is only different as in they get additional training. Instead of just going to learn to be a sailor and about their specific job, they actually have physical requirements that they have to maintain throughout the process. So, what they’ll do with these scouts is typically a couple times a week, two to three, it just depends on the scout’s schedule, they’ll take them through and work them out. We actually just visited the recruiting district in Denver, and Sean actually helped monitor the physical screening test. So, they’ll do that a couple times a week, whereas somebody that joins in a traditional job rating, they would not have to do that.00:06:03:25DF: Okay, so, physical requirements, athletic requirements, we’ll say, are kind of the main difference at that stage, and then the steps that follow that, maybe you could just walk us through the next steps through I guess you call the selection process, or if there’s another term for that.00:06:18:04BM: So, it is. They call it a draft. It’s similar to I guess you could maybe compare it to a sports draft. They will perform the PST as many times as they can and get their scores as elevated as possible. Once they get done to the point to where they’re competitive nationwide, they’ll be put into the draft system. Naval Special Warfare will pick as many candidates as they need or they feel that they want to take on each month, and they’ll select from that group of individuals.00:06:49:09DF: So, other than the PST scores, what are the people in the, looking for in the draft? Maybe are they looking at the metrics of the person’s physical stature, or is it a collection of things? Could you maybe tell us a little bit about that?00:07:02:04BM: It is, it’s a big collection of things, and it can be complex at times. First, they’re going to look at their ASVAB score, their PST scores, they’re going to take a, kind of a psychological test. It’s called the CSORT. For those of you that don’t know what CSORT stands for, it’s Computerized Special Operations Resiliency Test.00:07:23:21DF: So, this is something that’s done on a computer I’m guessing.00:07:25:21BM: It is done on a computer in a recruiting station, and you will have a proctor that won’t be in while you’re taking the test, but they have to administer the test, and they will print out your score, and that will be sent in with your application package.00:07:39:10DF: How long does that take normally would you guess? 00:07:42:09BM: From, are you referring to the draft in general, the test? It depends on the person. If the person is really spending a lot of time trying to answer the questions perfectly, it could take them a couple hours. But in reality, there is no perfect answers, so you should just take the test, answer whatever your first instinct is for the answer, and it typically would take an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes. 00:08:09:03DF: I see. So, they’re looking to select people that will make it through the training process and become an active operator.00:08:17:10BM: The CSORT is almost a predictor mentally for who can make it. Obviously, physically, I mean there’s a lot of variables that could happen while they’re in training, but, and this isn’t a definite answer. I mean this is just something that they use to gauge. So, let’s say if somebody gets a low CSORT score, they’re going to have to have elevated physical standard scores. If they do really well on the CSORT, meaning mentally they’re prepared as much as, you know, this test says they need to be, then maybe they’re physical scores can be a little lower, but they’ll use a combination of those.00:08:51:08DF: Is there anything that you would recommend, in regards to this kind of psychological kind of the evaluation or the ASVAB test, kind of approach to this process, like kind of off the cuff advice you’d give to somebody, like just kind of things that you’ve seen people do wrong or right or kind of dress to success kind of behavior?00:09:11:06BM: So, assuming that somebody’s listening maybe their freshman year, 13, 14 year old and trying to figure out how to, how to navigate this to their senior year, the best advice I could give is to take the classes that are going to keep them at an academic standard they need to be. If, if they have the opportunity to take accelerated math and science classes, they should definitely do that. Those, those things are going to be on the ASVAB. The psychological test, there’s really no preparation. That’s by design. That’s something that we will want to know without any preparation what kind of answers they’re going to come up with, but the ASVAB test really just goes back to school. Instead of taking a semester where you take some random elective classes that you don’t need, you really need to focus in on taking math and science classes. And physically, those are things that they need to get on our website, SEALSWCC.com, and we have workouts, and they need to start doing those really from their freshman year on to their senior year. I mean it’s never too late, but it’s never too early to start either.00:10:15:01DF: I think that’s some really good advice. Well, next, I’d like, I’d like to open up and talk to you guys about kind of your specific experience going through this recruitment process from the SWCC and SEAL perspective. So, Frank, if you could just talk to us a little bit about your journey through a recruit to being an operator if you could maybe walk us through your journey.00:10:36:27F: Sure, yeah, so I would dare to say that things have changed a bit since, since my go around. It’s been nearly ten years, so, but for the most part, I think that there’s so much more information out there nowadays, and it makes, I don’t want to say easier, but so much more accessible with…exactly. Well, so here’s a for instance. When I came in, most of the process that, that Chief Murray was talking about was mostly the same as far as the physical, screening test, you had to take that in order to be applicable for any of these programs. And so, for those who may not know, the physical screening test is, is comprised of five different evolutions, and the first one is a 500, 500-yard swim, sidestroke and or breast stroke. Then you have maximum push-ups in two minutes, maximum sit-ups in two minutes, maximum pull ups in two minutes and a mile and a half run. And so, the sidestroke was something that was extremely foreign to me when I went to go, you know, take on this challenge. I’d never done, I’d swam in high school. At my senior year, I was on the swim team, but all I did was the 50 free, which was essentially where they put slow people.00:11:45:29DF: Is it, you know, something that you pursued because you wanted a career in the Navy or specifically Special Warfare?00:11:50:24F: No, actually I was sent to military school my senior year of high school, and well, you had to play sports. It was mandatory. We didn’t have a football team, and the two sports that I, interested in the most were wrestling and swimming. Unfortunately, these two things were both in the same season. I ended up doing both of them, but I was exhausted all the time, but it did make me a lot stronger and more resilient, and I think that did add to my preparation for the training, no doubt. But by the time I actually got to the point where I knew that that was what I was going to do, I still had no clue what the sidestroke was, and when I went to approach it to learn how to do this, all I found was on Navy.com was a two-page hand-drawn diagram of a person doing the sidestroke, and that’s how I learned how to do the sidestroke. So, nowadays, you go onto our website, for instance, and you can find videos or, you know, just going onto YouTube, you can find it. There’s people who train in so many more locations. There’s just, you know, information out there is infinite, so it’s really easy to find that type of stuff to help better prepare, and just like Chief Murray said talking about the, just the workouts alone we have on our website, not to mention any other training programs that are out there. 00:13:09:06F: So, so that being said, when I came through, there was a lot less information, but it was something that I really knew I wanted to do starting about mid, midway through my senior year, and I just made the leap, went through the recruiter’s office, and I’d heard a lot of stories that I think a lot of people can sympathize with this if you have listeners that are already in the Navy or people who are thinking about it, maybe they’ve heard these stories before, where you hear these horror stories of dealing with military recruiters, right. So, that was my, that was my thought going in that I’m going to go in, they’re going to hassle me, they’re going to try to sell me on something, and I didn’t experience any of that. I went in, and I was confident about what I wanted to do, and I think they sensed that. I think they knew that I was a man on a mission, and so they just pretty much like, “Okay,” you know, and they made things happen the best they could. Once I went in, first I went to all the different recruiting offices, went Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines just to kind of narrow down my decision. I always tell people when we go do our presentations that’s exactly what I did, so I suggest that’s what you do, that way, you’re making the most informed decision. And then I decided finally on the SWCC pipeline. 00:14:19:02DF: Let me just interject real quick. For people that don’t know, SWCC versus SEAL, to my knowledge, that’s a relatively new kind of distinction. Can you describe a little bit or guess explain for the laymen what a SWCC is?00:14:34:06F: Sure, yeah, absolutely. So, SWCC stands for Special Warfare Combatant Craft Crewman. Military loves acronyms, so it’s a lot easier to say that way, right. So, SWCC, our job is the Maritime Mobility Asset for Naval Special Warfare, and what that really means is we drive the fast boats for Naval Speci…

Full show notes at the publisher

#5 Earning a SEAL Contract May 04, 2018

Show notes

Wanna be a SEAL or SWCC? You gotta go through HIM. We asked a Master Chief SEAL how he selects candidates for contracts. For more information visit www.SEALSWCC.com.00:00:02:05The only easy day was yesterday. (Intro)00:00:21DF Intro: In the Naval Special Warfare selection process only the best and most qualified are offered an opportunity to compete for a SEAL or SWCC contract. Selection hinges on the performance and metrics of applicants, which are tracked and analyzed extensively. I’m Daniel Fletcher and today I speak with the Master Chief responsible for who makes the cut. You’ll want to pay very close attention to what he has to say.00:00:45DF: Well, thank you Master Chief for taking the time to talk with us today. Your perspective and what you do in the organization is really critical, even though it may not be out in the forefront most people seeing what you do. Obviously, it’s a very important part of the process people moving through NSW program. If you could take a couple minutes and explain your path to where you came with NSW organization real quick.00:01:09WC: Yeah, yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me, so just my background. I’ve been with the SEAL teams for 19½ years, west coast primarily, SEAL Team 1, SEAL Team 3 and SEAL Team 5 with instructor tours kind of in between there. I also taught all the leadership development courses for the SEALs on the west coast and east coast prior to doing the position that I’m currently doing.00:01:33DF: So, the audience that’s going to be listening, people that want to become Navy SEALs and SWCC operators, usually I’ll ask if you could talk to the people going through the selection process or even before the selection process begins, kind of from an outside perspective, is there any big overarching things you feel that would be really worthwhile to implement or at least be made aware of if you were a recruit in that process from your perspective? Is there anything that you see is missing? Obviously, they’re going to be aware of the PST scores that they want to try to hit, but outside of that, are there kind of any intangibles that you feel should be communicated to the people that are going into this process that maybe they might not be aware of?00:02:13WC: Yeah, that’s a great question. There’s probably a lot that could be said on that. I think one thing I’ll kind of start off with for the audience is my position is, is the SEAL program manager, which program manager probably doesn’t mean anything to anybody, but more or less what I do at the recruiting command is I am selecting the best and most qualified applicants that I receive for the SEAL and SWCC community. So, the process itself can be convoluted because each, each individual as you make the determination to go and speak to a recruiter might kind of get a different story, but to break it down more or less, once you decide that SEAL and SWCC is something that you’re interested in doing or just doing any other job within the Navy, you go to a recruiter, and that recruiter will ask you a series of questions to get a little bit of background about you, kind of start the initial processing piece. From there, they’ll schedule you to go to, to MEPS and take your ASVAB exam. Your ASVAB exam, if you’re unaware of that is just a, an exam that allows the Navy to see where your strengths are. And then MEPS is the location where they actually do a physical on you so the Navy has an idea of what your physical and medical capabilities are, any issues that might arise. It’s kind of full disclosure for the Navy. At that point, the applicant can go and talk to a Warrior Challenge mentor or coordinator, and that Warrior Challenge mentor or coordinator will help the applicant prepare for the PST, will teach the strokes and the run clinics that the applicant needs, come up with workout programs, diet programs for the applicant so that they can best perform the PST, and they will also be the ones that administer the PST. So, roundabout I’ve answered your question, but an applicant ultimately should be looking to be in contact with that mentor or coordinator. There are scouts out there, which are recruiters, that are labeled scout because they’re more involved with the Warrior Challenge program. So, I know everybody here probably knows what Warrior Challenge is, but I’ll just kind of define it. Warrior Challenge is SEAL/SWCC. It’s also Navy Diver, EOD and Air Rescue communities. That’s an umbrella term that recruiting puts on, on that. So, the scouts will be more involved with Warrior Challenge, and they can also be a good point of contact for you guys as applicants. But ultimately, you want to get that relationship with a mentor and coordinator. They will be the ones that, that help you get your application to me.00:04:58DF: What ways can you think of that an applicant can help enhance their capability or, likelihood of selection? Is there anything that you can think of off the top of your head that, that quickly sets people apart that maybe not be something easily measurable that is predefined that you guys look for?00:05:13WC: Yeah, that’s a great question. Honestly, we’re looking for individuals that excel both intellectually and physically. I recommend getting involved with sports if you’re not involved with sports, sports like wrestling, water polo, things like that. By no means am I saying these are the only sports to get into, but there is a, there’s character building that happens along the way. And so, we’re not just looking for intellect and physical capability. We’re looking for character as well. You can imagine with the risks that are out in the world and our operators being at the forefront of those risks, we’re looking for individuals that are mature, that have character, they’re good decision makers in times of great challenge. So, I’ll go back to the, the sports teams. Those are great opportunities to work with other individuals similar or different from yourself, challenge you in ways that you wouldn’t otherwise be challenged.00:06:12DF: So, I think a big part of the reason why we’re talking to you and all the other people that we speak with specifically is to kind of go and read between the lines of what maybe the, the numbers, the goals, the individual measurable things that, that you look at specifically to say, “Yes, no, yes, no,” or find out more here or there, I’m kind of hearing that it would be good for people that are younger to step up, take leadership positions, like you’re saying on a sports team, take on responsibility, challenge yourself and that way, not necessarily just physically, to develop and, and challenge yourself to see what you can do. I think that’s kind of reading between the lines with what you’re saying. It’s something that maybe not, you know, measurable, you know.00:06:54WC: That’s a great assessment. You know, we, we’re looking for individuals that are self-motivated, like to take on challenges, like to push themselves, so things like, college degree, for example. You don’t have to have a college degree to join the Navy or come into one of these programs, but that shows us that you’re continuing to push yourself, that you have a vision for your life, you have goals that you’ve set, you just haven’t graduated from high school and…sat around, exactly. So, any opportunity you have to show the mentor or coordinator that you’re willing to take on challenges is a great thing. The mentor or coordinator ultimately will give you a recommendation, and that recommendation we define as character and consistency, consistency that you show up when you say you’re going to show up. You also, in the character piece, you show up on time, you take on leadership positions, you’re willing to think outside of yourself.00:07:52DF: I think that’s a big point, right?00:07:54WC: Yeah, if you focus completely on yourself and you getting through the program, then most likely it’s not going to happen. If you’re focused on your teammates and the whole group getting through the program and constantly pushing yourself to, to be there for each one of the guys that you’re with, then you’re thinking more outside of yourself, and that’s the kind of guy that we’re ultimately looking for because when you think of the SEAL teams, you know, team is a big part of that…we don’t want individuals. There’s individuals that are highly capable, highly intelligent, but put in a team, they’re, they’re useless to us, and we’re really looking for the teammate.00:08:31DF: I think that’s a really good highlight because a lot of people I think have that kind of champion mentality or assume that that’s what it takes, and, and I don’t think that is what it takes. Can we talk a little bit about waivers for a second? It seems like that may be an area of concern for some people. Maybe you could address your kind of perspective on that.00:08:49WC: Yeah, so there’s a couple different waivers out there. There’s ASVAB waivers, and there’s also legal waivers out there. Now, for the SEAL program and SWCC program, we’re not taking a lot of waivers. To kind of put things in perspective, the program managers are allowed to do up to a certain amount of waivers, but depending on the community need, we will, you know, we will either do those waivers or not. So, ASVAB waivers from time to time, very seldomly, we will look at an ASVAB waiver. Generally, if we are going to look at it, we’re going to want to see a guy that has pushed himself, i.e., college, before we even consider something like that. 00:09:30DF: So, in line with that, obviously, me personally, kind of on the cusp of not being applicable for Naval Special Warfare contract, how do age limitations and maybe medical limitations kind of play into that same kind of concept?00:09:46WC: I guess simply put, we don’t do exceptions to policy. So, if you are outside of the age limit, then, you know, thanks for coming out and giving it a try, but we’re, we’re not looking at exceptions to policy. 00:10:00DF: Are the requirements for candidates the same, including with females? I know that that’s kind of a new topic in terms of how far females have gotten through the, the training process so far. Is that something that you hold to a different standard, or can you maybe expound upon that a little bit?00:10:16WC: That’s a great question. So, so we, we look at everything back to the first thing that I said, I’m selecting based on best and most qualified. I’m not subdividing that into best and most qualified men, best and most qualified women, best and most qualified race, best and most qualified religion. There’s no separation there. It’s just straight best and most qualified.00:10:40DF: So, you’re looking at numbers, very black and white in that area.00:10:42WC: Very black and white, yep, so gender-neutral. If you have what it takes, then we’ll definitely take a look at you.00:10:48DF: Through this process, what types of applicants are you screening?00:10:52WC: Okay, so, yeah, I’m looking for what we call new accessions. So, new accessions, you could, kids that are coming off the streets, never had any military experience before, that are just showing interest in the Navy.00:11:07DF: I see, as opposed to transitioning from the Big Navy to Special Warfare.00:11:09WC: Exactly. So, that is, that is one category. That is the biggest category of actually, the individuals that I’m screening. The next category that I’m looking at are Navy veterans and other service veterans, so other services being Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard, individuals that have gotten out of those branches and now are interested in trying out for our community, so I will look at those as well. So, I screen other service veterans, and then I also look at the Navy veteran packages as well. So, it’s a different process. So, if you are a other service veteran or a Navy veteran, it requires a different application that is submitted up, so realize that there’s a little bit more time and effort that will go into it, but your recruiters and your mentors and coordinators will help you out with that.00:12:00DF: I’d like to talk a little bit about the mentorship program. It seems like you’re obviously a fan of the idea of people being close in relationship with the mentor, making sure that they are on the right path. Maybe you can expound upon that a little bit about the importance of the mentorship program 00:12:13WC: So, I’ll start off with your mentor and your coordinator, are both individuals that are part of these communities. So, your coordinator is an active duty member, usually first class, Chief, Senior Chief, that is part of SEAL/SWCC, Navy Diver, EOD, Air Rescue. Your mentor is someone that’s retired or separated at some point from one of those communities. So, both of those individuals are tied to those communities and can speak to those communities. They’re the subject matter experts at that level who can communicate to you what you need to know about the program. So, the mentor, mentor program is important because, you know, who better to mentor you other than somebody that is actually a part of that community? And the mentor and coordinator, we want to see you succeed. So, we want to try to get guys and gals to their highest level, their peak performance, both their performance, both their, and their character. So, we utilize exercises in which we have kind of a mental toughness program where the mentors and coordinators will actually sit down with applicants, and they’ll talk about things like character and dedication. You may be asked to write an essay on the community that you want to join and why you want to join it. A lot of times, we see something in a movie or in a book that seems interesting, but we don’t truly know what we’re getting ourselves into. So, that developed research into those programs could be what it takes to solidify our decision to join that program or maybe consider a different program within Warrior Challenge or in the Navy in general, so.00:13:57DF: Within the current structure of the recruitment process and the training process, what do you think is the key to getting more people graduated and, and turned into active duty operators?00:14:10WC: Well, that’s a good question. I mean for the last 50 years; the attrition rates of BUD/S have been the same. You know, we tweak this, we tweak that, and at the end of the day, it kind of stays the same. But ultimately, what we’ve succeeded in over the last 15 years is making sure that our candidates are showing up to the first day of the pipeline training. So, for those who want to be SEAL, you have, you have boot camp, then after boot camp, you have prep, NSW prep, and then you go into BO, and then you’ll start first phase of BUD/S. So, our idea is to try to get you to the front door prep so that the guys at prep can prepare you for the next thing. So, it’s a very, it’s a stepladder approach that’s being taken where each group of individuals is preparing you for the next step. We’re not preparing you necessarily to graduate from SQT. We’re preparing you to succeed in the next step that you’re going to be faced with. So, the mentors and coordinators, you can look at them as preparing you to make it through boot camp and continue to excel at your PST scores, whereas the guys at boot camp, they’re preparing you to take on the stressors that you will face in prep and so on and so forth, so.00:15:28DF: So, what’s the best advice you can give to a candidate?00:15:31WC: I’d say the best advice is, is really take some time to think about what makes you tick, why are you the way you are, why do you want the programs that you want and pick a piece that what, what is important to you. Is it service, is it patriotic duty, is it brotherhood, is it sacrifice? What, what is it about these communities that drives you to that? Take some time to really focus on that because if you understand your purpose, and things get difficult, you can always…

Full show notes at the publisher

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

The Official Navy SEAL and SWCC Podcast

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected