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#4 Mental Toughness Apr 25, 2018

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Navy SEALs and SWCC possess a high degree of mental toughness. You can too. Find out how from a Navy SEAL Force Master Chief. For more on this visit www.SEALSWCC.comFull Transcript00:00:02:05The only easy day was yesterday. (Intro)00:00:20:00I’m Daniel Fletcher, and today I’m speaking with a retired Navy SEAL Force Master Chief about the mental aspects of Naval Special Warfare. Let’s get started…00:00:30:00DF: We’ve carved out a little time to talk mental toughness with a decorated Navy SEAL, ...We all know that physical exertion is a big part of the training process, but we hear a lot about the mental aspects of the challenges, whether it’s in training or after graduation, even through deployments, whether it’s separation from family or just facing general adversities, stressors, all this kind of stuff...if you could tell us, from your perspective, after having a career as a SEAL, what aspects of the, we’ll call it a job, in your mind required the most mental toughness.00:01:11:00M: Absolutely, Daniel. Thank you for the time here, and I’m very interested in setting our future generation of SOF operators up for success, so I’m glad to be here today talking to you. I would say anecdotally, any SOF selection course is roughly 80% mental, 20% physical. In fact, I just came from talking to 20 students that DOR’d today, and nine out of ten students that dis-enroll from this program are for lack of mental fortitude. So, what we’re attempting to do today is to take things that most of our operators have utilized unwittingly their entire careers and present these mental tools as a process up front to our students coming in the pipeline now so that they can start to cultivate these mental skills early on in their training in the hopes that they will be more mentally resilient than we were and stick around and do 30 years in SOF with their families intact, living purposeful, meaningful lives and able to handle, readily handle stress and crisis.00:02:21:00DF: So, where do you think that kind of starts? Is this something you think, ideally, starts before recruitment process How do you see this process starting from a blank slate if you had the opportunity to kind of sculpt a 13-year-old to come into NSW kind of program? Where do you think that kind of starts in, in early adulthood or late childhood?00:02:41:00M: Absolutely, Daniel, fantastic question. So, I would say in reference to developing mental toughness in adversity in your life, the key is to constantly challenge yourself, do things that you’re uncomfortable doing every day. It could be something as simple as taking a cold shower in the morning, where you’re subjecting yourself to being uncomfortable and getting comfortable being uncomfortable. And the more adversity you face prior to showing up for the pipeline, the stronger your mental toughness baseline will be.00:03:14:00DF: What are the ways you think that young people can kind of start incorporate some mental training into their lifestyle?00:03:20:00M: Yeah, sports is a big part of it definitely. You know, when you’re out there playing football in the summertime, and you’re doing double sessions where you’re working out all morning and over lunch, you’re so sore you can’t even move, and you have a whole afternoon session, that’s probably the closest experience I could equate that, that could crossover to BUD/S, is working yourself to that degree and at a minimum. You know, I know our wrestlers and our football players and water polo players have a higher probability of success in the training because they, they’ve had some upstream stress inoculation from playing competitive sports00:03:57:00DF: I’ve heard mentioned a few times endurance athletes tend to do very well, and I think that does kind of tie into the mental aspects involved, and you kind of see that a lot with professional endurance athletes...they develop a lot of mental fortitude through their life, and they’re able to push themselves, what do you think about the idea of pursuing endurance sports specifically for mental fortitude?00:04:19:00M: No, absolutely, Daniel, and ironically enough, I think it’s, it has less to do with motivation and more to do with willpower and determination and discipline, I think the challenge is accelerating the discipline of a young man that doesn’t have a whole lot of time on Earth...00:04:35:00DF: Do you have any, ideas on how that process can be accelerated for a civilian?00:04:41:00M: I think, I think the best thing that a young man can do is constantly stay uncomfortable, stretch the limitations of what you think is possible, do things that you think that you can’t succeed at. As an example, go out and run a half marathon with no preparation and pull that out on nothing but sheer will and determination, and your conditioned confidence will grow with each new challenge that you conquer, especially with things that you didn’t think were possible of doing…If that makes sense 00:05:11:00DF: Right, right…Yeah, no, that does make sense, kind of, my sister actually, her specialty is mental performance training in high level athletes, and so I hear a lot of similarities between the kind of high performing NSW candidates and career people and some of the things I’ve heard her echo. What are some of the specific tools or techniques that, that you’ve developed or that you recommend people try to do to kind of increase their mental fortitude?00:05:35:00M: Absolutely, we’ve been doing these things all along. Our folks never would be at this stature of their lives now operating the teams nonstop for the last 16 years and sustained combat. We’re trying to take these tools now, and they’re all based in a foundational principle of never letting a negative thought complete itself in your head The concept is foundational in everything that we teach, and I had a young officer lieutenant in charge of SQT that follows the same line of thinking that we’re instructing, and he’s like, “Well, that sounds great. The concept sounds fantastic. How do you operationalize that concept?” And I said, “Sir, it’s nothing more than this. When you wake up every morning, and the negative thoughts start to flood your head about the day’s coming events, first thing I do, I roll over, and I look at my beautiful wife, and I crush out those negative thoughts, first thought about my family, grateful for the family that has stayed with me through 33 years in this community. Next thing I do is I lean down the hallway, and I look at the bay, the 40-foot sailboat sitting out back on the pier. That replaces another negative thought, and I start to think about all the things my sons have accomplished, and they’re happy, healthy and strong in their lives and all the things that I’m grateful for. So, the premise, the point to the, the foundational concept of never letting a negative thought complete itself in your head is if you go through this gratitude routine every morning and appreciate that everything you’re here for, for the student, you’re out here in sunny Coronado getting paid to train on the beach. People pay thousands of dollars for adversity. You’re getting it for free at the expense of the Navy, and enjoy your time out here, enjoy the evolutions. Use these evolutions to cultivate and grow your mental skills. So, that’s the foundational concept. The actual skills, what we found in the research is that you need three core skills in order to develop your mental toughness program. One, the messenger of the skills has to be trusted by the students. They have to trust that the messenger’s not going to put them in harm’s way. They can’t be in fear mode when you’re trying to instruct them on mental skills. They have to be receptive to inculcate them in the right way.00:07:48:00Two, you need to give them skills, and the actual skills that we teach here are called the Big Four. The Big Four are goal setting, which is nothing more than segmentation. Visualization, which is nothing more than mental rehearsal. Self-talk, which is internal dialog, mind control, controlling your response to the unknown. And arousal control, which is a stress technique that we term as pause, breathe, think, act. You’re pausing to allow your danger receptors that go to the primitive part of your brain to end up in your frontal cortex where all the reasoning and logic and training and experience resides so that you’re making a decision based on your training and not on a fear response. You’re breathing to get good oxygenated blood to your head so that you can make an intelligent decision. Then you’re thinking, and then you’re acting. So, we program the students to pause, breathe, think, act. We program them in class, we challenge them. They program themselves every night before they go to bed. So, this arousal control technique becomes inherent, and it’s embedded in their autonomic immune system, just like all the other things we do in this community where we have an emergency response to a situation. We want them ingrained so when that stressor hits, we’re not thinking about it. It’s happening automatically.00:09:09:00DF: You mentioned a couple key areas there, starting with goal setting. Can you do a little bit of a deep dive on each one of those and give us a little bit more detail on some of those individual areas?00:09:19:00M: Absolutely, Daniel. So, goal setting is nothing more than segmentation, and what I mean by that is breaking down colossal tasks into small, manageable bits where you remain in control. You’re tapping into that frontal cortex that we referred to earlier, the reasoning experience part of your brain, and you’re never letting the situation get beyond your control because you’re breaking that situation down into small, manageable chunks, like eating an elephant one bite at a time, and the way this applies to training and to the battlefield is you can very easily overwhelm your circuits when you think of the entirety of an operation, where you get recalled to work, and then you have to fly halfway around the world, in most cases, 12 hours. Then you have to skydive into your platform where you roll into a 24 to 48-hour planning cycle, and that’s all just to get to the area to conduct the operation, and then there’s getting into the area to conduct the op, the actions on the objective, and then you’re reversing that whole process. When you think of that operation in its entirety, you can very quickly get overwhelmed. What we’re trying to teach the young men today is to break down each phase of that operation into small, manageable segments so that your entire focus, you’re in the moment for that specific mission set, and you’re doing well in that phase because you’re giving it your full concentration and thought, and you’re not getting overwhelmed by thinking the whole thing in its entirety. Very, very powerful technique, and each one of these techniques has different threads that spin off into other things. Every successful elite military organization, the elite sporting world, the Fortune 500, they’re all goal orientated people that constantly are setting up goals and knocking them down and creating new goals, so this is a, a good mindset to have in SOF, is to be goal oriented in everything you do.00:11:15:00DF: And then a couple other of those that you talked about, visualization and self-talk, I know those are huge keys if you could talk about how those come into play in maybe specific areas.00:11:25:00M: So, visualization, ironically enough, we do a student class teach back, where the student leadership themselves have to teach these techniques back to the class, and it’s an officer-enlisted pairs that come out and give these class teach backs. Well, the officer had his master’s degree, he’s from South Africa, had his master’s degree in psychology, and he went seven layers deep into visualization and how the elite sporting realm utilizes this technique. And then his enlisted counterpart, as luck would have it, was an Olympic Gold Medalist and swam with Michael Phelps. He took visualization to another level, and he basically validated for us the techniques we’re teaching. But visualization we use in everything we do in SOF. Once again, I mentioned there’s different threads to each one of these techniques. Visualization is building a mock-up of a target so that you can walk through that objective. I’ve been on sensitive operations where we’ve built mock ups out of Conex boxes that replicated a ship or a target objective, and you run through that objective over and over again until you’ve mastered that compound. Sand tables, we manipulate models to replicate the battlefield. Visualization is used in all of our emergency reaction procedures, whether it’s diving, whether it’s jumping. We have malfunction procedures where you have to perform while under duress and be able to do a certain sequence of lifesaving events. So, visualization, whether you want to learn it or not, is a daily part of everything you do in SOF. We’re just trying to present this as a process so young men can start to cultivate these techniques early in their careers. 00:13:02:00M: Self-talk is nothing more than that internal narrator. I think a good example I can give to the battlefield, there was a situation overseas where we were going into a very hazardous area, and we had 65 structures to clear. I’ll always remember this particular objective because I was out there with Pat Tillman, an American hero to me. And for those of you who don’t know Pat Tillman, he was an accomplished NFL football player that gave up all the fame and glory to come in and serve his country, and he later died on the battlefield. But embedded with Pat Tillman, we had to clear these 65 structures, and there were cluster munitions all around the ground, where if you took a wrong step, you could end up with a casualty, so you had to keep your wits about you. And I had a little narrator, a little shooting buddy in my head, and I wanted to give objective number 65 the same due diligence as I gave objective number 1. So, I would go through a little mental jog in my mind upon entering every structure. I would go through that little mental arithmetic with every objective once again so that the last objective got the same due diligence as the first. 00:14:20:00DF: Maybe if you could highlight certain aspects of these kind of Big Four that would be most beneficial to focus on as someone going through the training process trying to enter NSW.00:14:30:00M: Absolutely, Daniel. We try to talk about real-life examples. We try to talk about training examples and then battlefield examples to paint the complete scope of how these techniques can be utilized. Each one of these techniques has multiple threads. Self-talk can be used as daily mantras to gather strength when you’re performing a physical task or a challenging task. Some of my own personal internal mantras are, “Warrior mode, strength attraction, surprise speed, violence of action.” I have others, “I am the captain of my ship and master of my fate.” I learned one from one of our students here last week, who took a Marcus Aurelius comment, quote on mental toughness and pared it down to, “The closer I am to calm mind, the closer I am to strength,” and you can repeat these mantras in times of duress or when you need a boost or a mental charge to get you over that or through that difficult challenge00:15:27:00DF: I think it’s really helpful to hear from someone who is training active operators or involved in the community and that this is a key point. This is not just a, a trick. Mike, if you could just give us a real-life example of how this kind of stuff can be applied to a candidate or potential recruit.00:15:46:00M: Absolutely, Daniel. Well, specifically speaking to the goal-setting, I think for a young man interested in this program, before he even sets a goal, he has to understand why he’s pursuing this line of work. That’s another common theme I find with…

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#3 How to Train for Naval Special Warfare Apr 25, 2018

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Ever wondered how to train yourself for a career as a SEAL or SWCC? Meet the man who literally wrote the official book on physical training for Naval Special Warfare. For more information visit www.sealswcc.com. Full Transcript 00:00:02:05The only easy day was yesterday. (Intro)00:00:15:27DF: Welcome to “The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday,” the official Navy SEAL podcast. We all know it’s not easy to become a Navy Seal or a SWCC, but if there were ways to mentally and physically prepare yourself that could set you up for success? I’m Daniel Fletcher, and today I’m speaking with the director of fitness, SEAL and SWCC training, Mike Caviston to find out more00:00:37:16DF: We’re sitting here in the birthplace of SEAL and SWCC trainees, the Naval Special Warfare Training Center. Today, we’re in Mike Caviston’s office, director of fitness for SEAL and SWCC training to get some expert advice. Welcome, Mike. Thanks for joining us.00:00:49:01MC: Thank you for having me.00:00:50:00DF: So, can you tell us a little bit about what you do here?00:00:52:03MC: Well, my title is director of fitness. It’s actually a pretty broad job. A big part of it is education. My background is education. My background is kinesiology, and so I tried to educate people at all levels, and certainly a big target audience are anybody interested in entering the program from the very beginning. And I try to coordinate the advice that I give with statistics that I’ve gathered based on the success of people that have actually entered the program. So, I spend a lot of time looking at the different training requirements, what people are physically doing and making my recommendations for how to prepare for that.00:01:29:14DF: It seems like a lot of people that are in the Special Forces have a physical fitness or a sporting background. I think that maybe you could comment on that, that the kinesiology of the athlete, it seems obviously that the Navy SEALs are looking for athletes that are capable of even more. Do you think that there’s a specific sport that lends itself specifically to success the Navy SEALs?00:01:48:06MC: I don’t think there’s a particular sport. I don’t claim to have the final answer on that. I know that there have been a wide variety of SEALs that have come from different sports, in other words, just about any sport you can think of is represented in the community. I would say based on my observations and experience and what is required in the program that anybody with a good endurance background is going to have a leg up. So, somebody that’s been, you know, competitive runner, swimmer would probably be a good candidate.00:02:17:19DF: There’s definitely going to be some younger folks listening to this. I think that kids’ lifestyles or teenagers’ lifestyles are largely dependent on their upbringing and their parents and, you know, what kind of physical activity and environment they’re raised in, but for those kids that might have the option to maybe pursue a specific sport or change their lifestyle, seeing as you grew up in a really active environment, and you continue to live in that currently, what recommendations do you make to either parents or kids, you know, about lifestyle as a young person?00:02:49:28MC: Just general physical activity. You know, it’s, I don’t think there’s any magic formula, any one particular sport. I am asked questions or see online those types of questions all the time, younger people interested in what sports they should play in high school or even before. Doing something is the biggest component. Again, I always come back to I think being involved in an endurance sport is a good thing, and if you can become comfortable in the water, that’s a good thing, so swimming or water polo or something that involves being in the water, something that involves running, maybe not automatically track or cross country, although those are probably good options, but something that features running as part of the conditioning process would be good sports to choose. But just being active in general is a good concept, so, you know, spending less time in front of the computer, in front of the television or whatever and more time outdoors doing anything is going to be a good start.00:03:45:09DF: So, kind of promoting an active lifestyle in general…So, you mentioned endurance sports or endurance practice a couple times. Other than running, can you maybe list off a few other types of endurance sports that you recommend?00:03:58:14MC: Yeah, absolutely. I talk about running and swimming because those are measured. I mean before you can get into the program, you have to pass a test that proves you’re a competent runner and swimmer. In the NSW pipeline is the SEAL and SWCC training programs, selection programs. There’s a lot of running and swimming, so you do have to be good at that, but what I find to be the, the biggest factor is just overall endurance, and that can be developed in a number of different ways. And so, if you come from a cycling background, my background is rowing, and I’ve talked to a lot of athletes that rowed before they got into the program that have done quite well. Anything that has a strong cardiovascular fitness component is going to be a good activity, and one of the things I encourage people that are preparing, “Oh, I hear you have to be a good runner,” and I provide statistics that show better runners perform better, so, okay, you want to become a good runner. Some people will take that maybe too much to heart and over-train, and so I want people to become a better runner, but I don’t want them to set themselves on the road to over-training and injury too early. And so, do other things. Do plenty of other things. And so, I mentioned, yes, cycling and rowing are good activities. If you get into a gym and get on some of the different cardio machines once in a while, that would be fine. I mean your heart really doesn’t know or care what you’re doing, you know, as long as you’re doing something that gets it to beat a while.00:05:19:15DF: So, it seems like we have a lot of real specific parameters, guidelines, goals, metrics that are in the, the training philosophy for just getting initially prepared for your first test. At what age do you think people should maybe start training to those specific metrics? Is this something that changes frequently or?00:05:57:13MC: Well, it would depend on when they actually plan to get into the program, and so somebody wants to graduate high school at about 18, and they want to enlist in the Navy and do it then. You know, you want to be thinking maybe two years out would be a good time, definitely by a year out, you want to be specifically preparing. You don’t have to I think prepare five years out, especially at that early age, or if somebody’s plan is to college and graduate, so they’re going to be about 22 by the time they enter the Navy and try to enter the program. Then, again, a couple years out is time to be specific.00:06:11:01DF: Do you think that the environment and climate, altitude of training has a big impact on when people show up to take their first test? Do people, do they need to be training at a specific environment to be able to excel and do well in this program?00:06:29:04MC: I wouldn’t make that recommendation. I don’t have enough evidence to, you know, to make an informed recommendation, but my instinctive response to that question is no, I wouldn’t overthink that…People definitely come from all over the country and all walks of life and are successful. I’m not even current on what the, on what the latest information shows, which parts of the country, and, you know, why that is, is it because of climate, is it because of socioeconomic background, is it because of a variety of different things, so if I’m asked a question like that, my short answer is no, I wouldn’t worry about it.00:07:03:07DF: So, I’ve looked over pretty extensively the, the Navy Special Warfare physical training guide, and it seems like a really good foundation for people building up a program for themselves and readying themselves. I come from a CrossFit background, and it seems like there’s a tremendous amount of overlap here. I mean it is that style of training something that you recommend in a baseline preparation for this test?00:07:27:06MC: No, ss a matter of fact, I’d probably say more the opposite. I would advocate people having a very structured approach, have a very determined end state. For the physical training guide, first thing is to think about their score on the physical screening test, the PST. And again, that references the swim and run components as well as doing some pull ups and push ups and sit ups, and there are certain standards that they have to achieve to even be selected into the program, and certain components, especially the run and swim portions are more strongly correlated with actually getting through the program. So, it’s one thing to be admitted into BUDS or the SWCC program. It’s another thing to, you know, complete the selection process. So, my thinking in terms of designing the physical training guide was to have a very structured approach with a very determined end state.00:08:19:18DF: Okay, that makes a little bit more sense cause you’re really shooting these for very specific numbers for people. And if people are listening and they want to get this training guide, SEALSWCC.com [SPELLS] is the website where you can find this PDF download and print it out and start training for yourself. How often do you guys make adjustments, variations or changes to this guide, or is it something that’s kind of a Bible now?00:08:46:06MC: I wouldn’t, I’d be a little bit arrogant to use it as, you know, to say the word Bible, but it’s been pretty, the format has been consistent for as long as I’ve been in the program, about ten years. I mean that was pretty much the first project when I was hired, was to develop the physical training guide, and I actually modeled it on my coaching background in rowing and working with the premise that the PST features of run and swim portion, where, you know, the timeframe is pretty consistent with how long it takes to complete a rowing event. And so, I just plugged in running and swimming numbers, and, of course, I’ve been fine-tuning and adjusting and trying to figure out, you know, what is usable by, by our audience, but the basic structure has been pretty similar for years. We’ve tweaked the actual guide a little bit, and I’ve added a few things. One of the things I’ve gone back and forth with over the years, my original guidance in terms of putting the PTG together was keep it simple. You know, you want to be just, you know, one recommendation is like one page, and I just put up a 26-weeks schedule. It’s something that people could put up on their refrigerator and follow, and, okay, simplicity is good, but then in practice, people have a lot of questions, and you mentioned, where they can download the PTG. I’d also encourage anybody interested to look at the other supplemental information that’s on the website. We’ve got additional information, some training videos that illustrate some of the exercises that are mentioned in there, and so other resources, but over the years, I’ve received many, many questions related to the PTG, and so over the years, we tried to cut off some of those questions or answer some of those questions, or, you know, make it even more clear in terms of what the intent is and how to go about achieving the goals.00:10:34:18DF: What type of questions do you, can you maybe give a couple examples there or maybe some questions that maybe continually still get to this day that are, there’s not covered anywhere?00:10:42:28MC: Yeah, there are some that are hard to answer definitively, but one of the things I always recognize is that every person’s schedule changes or is different, and so things come up, and so if I say, “On Monday, you do this, and this is the distance, and this is the pace, and on Tuesday, you do this, and this is the distance, and this is the pace, and Wednesday, you do this,” and somebody will come along and say, “Well, I’ve got a problem on Wednesday where I can’t do that. What if I double up on Tuesday, or what if I wait until Thursday, or, you know, what if I think I’m in good shape, and I want to run faster than you say I should run, or what if I’m not getting better, and, you know, what should I do about that?” So, all those sorts of things, I try to make it a little bit more flexible and say, “Look, this is a guideline. It’s not carved in stone,” and I try to educate people on the principles behind the program so that they can make informed decisions in terms of how to, how to modify their program. Now, people still have lots of individual questions, just as I said, and so, I’ll try to answer some of those, and hopefully people will be able to look at that and understand, you know, what the, what the basic intent is so that they can answer those questions on their own.00:11:47:09DF: So, it seems like most of the questions revolve around the programming, specifically in scheduling.00:11:52:14MC: Scheduling is a big thing. Programming, understanding, you know, I try to make the instructions pretty simple. I understand I’ve been doing this for years. What is second nature to me isn’t second nature to, you know, especially maybe a 16, 17-year-old kid. I’ve, I’ve dealt with that my whole career, and so I have to step back and say, “Okay, explain it to a beginner, and, but there will still be some questions, and one of the things in terms of some of the different formats, I give them different options in terms of what type of workout to do, and, you know, they sort of want to know, “Well, what if I did A, B or C? Would that be okay?” Sometimes it is, sometimes it’s a whole different thing, and I try to make them see what the differences are.00:12:30:13DF: That seems to kind of transition into the crawl, walk, run philosophy that’s kind of the foundation for this specific manual, is just getting people to crawl phase really. Is that a correct correlation you think?00:12:43:27MC: Well, that is a correct correlation, and it was designed and intended for people that are interested in the program, maybe don’t have a very strong fitness background, they don’t feel like they’re in great shape. There are a lot of programs I’ve seen out there, you know, 8-weeks to BUDS, or, you know, whatever. No, that’s not enough time, so this is a 26-week program, and I would say take at least 26 weeks, but you need to start somewhere and build progressively.00:13:10:13DF: Yeah, that’s, that sounds about right. I was talking to my sister. She’s a CrossFit coach and a mental performance expert, and her assessment was, you know, six months at the bare minimum or around there, and that seems like that’s pretty consistent with what you’re saying. What would you, if you had to guess, what percentage of people that come through the program are using this document?00:13:31:20MC: I shouldn’t have to guess although I don’t have the numbers off the top of my head. It’s something that our recruiting directorate looks at, and we’ve got a program that exists in Great Lakes, Illinois, so between finishing boot camp and coming out to Coronado and starting either the SEAL or the SWCC pipeline, candidates go through a preconditioning program called NSW Prep. And at that point, they’re interviewed and answering questions like that, and so all I can say is a pretty high percentage.00:14:03:26MC: I mean I would say virtually everybody’s aware of this. I can’t definitively say who actually follows it. Again, we can poll them, they’ll tell us, will they tell us the truth, I don’t know, will they tell us what we want to hear, I don’t know. I talk to candidates in the program all the time, and, again, you know, they tend to tell me, “Oh, yeah, it’s been great,” but they might just be telling me what I want to hear.00:14:26…

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#2 How a Mentor Helps you Train for NSW Apr 25, 2018

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What is a Naval Special Warfare Mentor, and how can he help you train for the world's toughest special operations program? We found out from one of the best in the business. For more info visit www.SEALSWCC.comFull Transcript00:00:02:05The only easy day was yesterday. (Intro)When looking to take on a new challenge in life, mentors can make the difference between success and failure. I’m Daniel Fletcher, today we get some wisdom from an NSW Mentor, check it out00:00:33:18DF: Joe, thank you for taking the time to speak with us. I appreciate itJF: You’re welcome.00:00:38:12DF: It’s not too often we get to sit down with someone with your experience and learn a little bit about what you do. Hopefully, we can, we can dig in deep and find out all the things that most people would be asking at home. For starters, what is a mentor in the SEAL school or the SEAL/SWCC or NSW environment?00:00:58:26JF: A mentor’s someone that they can go to and find out what they need to do to get through their proper pipeline of training, and it’s good to have one, especially these days, because there’s so much stuff out on the Internet, kind of want to keep it simple, but at the same time, give them the information they need and show them kind of in a way if they come to training what’s going to be expected of them.00:01:24:00DF: So, at what point in the recruiting process do you normally kind of interject or become involved in the recruits’ kind of actions?00:01:31:10JF: It’s a good question. You know, what happens normally is if they don’t know they need to go to the recruiter, they’ll call us, or they’ll call a friend of ours or someone that’s, you know, in the teams or in one of the Spec Op programs, and then they’ll be directed to myself, which happens quite often. And of course, I have to turn around and direct them to their Naval recruiting station. So, they go to their Naval recruiting station in their area, and they have to have a physical before they can work with us. Once they have the physical, they are, you know, more than welcome to come down and work out with our what we call boat crews, and we run boat crews in different areas depending on the size and location of the specific Naval recruiting district that they’re working with.00:02:16:09DF: So, it’s really kind of step one into Naval Special Warfare.00:02:19:21JF: Exactly. Step one is to make sure that they are physically capable and don’t have, you know, some sort of anomaly where it’s going to hold them back or get them hurt when they’re training with us.00:02:30:25DF: So, what types of, I guess you kind of touched on it, people thinking that they can kind of fast-track into the Naval Special Warfare program by, by knowing somebody or, you know, what’s the fast way to do this? It seems like that’s first, the first thing you kind of bring them down to ground zero and say, “Hey, we start from the beginning here.” What other types of maybe anticipations you think people have that aren’t accurate to the program?00:02:54:02JF: Well, a lot of times, if they don’t have a brother, uncle or father in the teams, and they don’t know the proper method, they get on the Internet, and they see what they want to do, and they go from point A to point C without going through point B, and point B is going through that Naval Recruiter because regardless of how they want to handle it, they’re going to go in the Navy first, and they’re going to go through boot camp first, and then they’re going to get their pipeline if they keep their scores, and they keep doing the PST, and they get stronger.00:03:23:08DF: So, would it be fair to say your responsibility is to kind of to guide recruits through the process?00:03:29:00JF: Right, and what I have to tell them, and I end up saying this quite a bit is go get a recruiter and get a physical through the United States Navy. They’ll go to their local MEPS, and once they do that, and they get approved by the doctor, then they can come and work out with the boat crew.00:03:47:20DF: Can you describe a little bit about what you mean when you say boat crew?00:03:50:16JF: Yeah, well, you know, maybe a little bit different in the different NRDs, but basically the way that we do it here, and we find it works pretty well is they’ll have a boat crew leader, and they’ll have a boat crew assistant. So, just like you would have in a platoon or, you know, in the military, you’re going to have a guy in charge, a person in charge, guy, girl, whatever, and then you’re going to have his assistant, and between those two guys, they kind of have the responsibility to line the guys up and run the boat crew. And that way, we have control, and we know who’s going to be there, and we know that the person there has already been checked out by the boat crew leader. He knows that, okay, is this guy, is he working with a recruiter, does he have a, you know, does he have a physical, and then they get to meet and greet, and then we try to get him in, you know, incorporated into that boat crew, and from there, and you got to get teamwork right off the deck.00:04:45:06DF: So, there’s boat crews all over the United States.00:04:47:25JF: Well, yeah, there is. The main thing with the boat crew that I find is it puts people, it makes those guys, gals responsible within that boat crew to take care of that boat crew and to get the word out that, “Hey, we’re going to train zero, whatever time it is, you know, be there, be square, whatever, and get the job done,” and it makes them responsible.00:05:09:10DF: So, is the goal of the boat crews to prep these people for boot camp?00:05:14:03JF: Yeah, basically the boat crew, you know, we do workouts on a daily basis depending on where you are and how many people show up. The bottom line is what it does is it makes them responsible to be someplace at the right time and then, of course, the workout, the workout is the meat of the thing, the running, the swimming. And in this area, fortunately, we have quite a few pools to work with. But a boat crew, it adds the military side to it. It makes people responsible, and, you know, my guys, usually the guys that are working out of here, they usually know who’s going to be there, they can tell me a day ahead of time. For instance, they’ll send me, you know, a quick text in the morning and say, “We got five guys or three guys,” today we had five standing by to get on the base, and, of course, they can’t get on the base cause they’re civilians, so we make arrangement to pick them up, usually myself, and then first thing we do is swim, and then we do a run, and what it does is it organizes these guys and gals so that they have a way to get in better shape once the gate is opened, and the gate is getting a military physical and being approved by, you know, their recruiter, the recruiting station in the district.00:06:19:29DF: Can you take a little bit of time and explain to potential candidates to become SEAL or SWCC operators who are these boat crew managers. I don’t know the right word is, manager, but the people that are kind of running these teams or these exercise kind of outfits so to speak?00:06:38:23JF: Yeah, the mentors and the coordinators run the boat crews, and what we like to do is have the boat crews basically run themselves. It’s going to be a little bit different in the different districts, depending again on geographical and the size. You know, we’ve got, last time I knew, we had 12 million people in this, in this district, but you may have districts that have several states, and they’ll still only have one coordinator and one mentor. The bottom line on that is that right now the mentor and the coordinator control the boat crews, and they’re the only ones that can guide the trainees, instruct them in swimming and swimming technique and so on. Based on geographics, again, it’s going to be different, and one of the things about this whole job is that every district is cut into several different states or through different states, and so the bottom line is they’ve all got different places to go and things to do. For instance, in Las Vegas, we have a boat crew in Las Vegas, and we have, we are fortunate to have a person up there in charge of the boat crew that was an Air Crewman, tried to get through BUDS, and now he’s a reservist, and he runs the boat crew up there, and he has a real good idea of what needs to be done, and so, he’s a plus, and he runs a good boat crew, but it’s always going to be different, you know, and once, in one particular area, you might just have one or two guys, and they kind of have to run their own boat crew. So, what’s important is they fill out a log every time they work out, and they ship that log to us, usually scanned or whatever. That way we know that they’re doing the workout 00:08:17:23DF: Okay, so after, after this step of meeting a recruiter, getting involved with the boat crew, how long are they kind of in this, this stage before they’re then off to boot camp or the next step, and how are you involved in that process?00:08:32:23JF: That’s a good point, good question. What happens is they work with the boat crew until they get good enough to be a good enough swimmer, you know, do enough push-ups and pick up a contract, and the contracts aren’t that easy to get because the contracts we’ll put our guys in with the other 25 districts, and they all go back to headquarters, and headquarters puts them up on the wall and starts looking at their scores, so they’ll work with us until their scores get good enough, and they pick up a contract. So, they may be with us a month, or they may be with us six months. We’ve got guys that have been around nine months or a year.00:09:05:06DF: So, you talked a little bit about testing, testing these people, these applicants or potential recruits. Walk us through a little bit about what that testing is like?00:09:18:10JF: Well, yeah, they got to do a what’s called a PST, physical screening test, and a physical screening test consists of a swim and with a 10-minute rest, and then after the 10-minute rest, they do push-ups, and they have a 2-minute rest, and then they do sit-ups, they have a 2-minute rest, and then they do pull-ups, and they get a 10-minute rest, they got to do a run. And we try to hold the line on that and keep the times as exact as we can because when they go to boot camp, and we explain this to them every time, when they go to boot camp, they have that amount of time between each one of those because there may be 35, 40 guys on deck, I’ve had that many before, right now about 25 or 30, and there’s myself and a coordinator and maybe a couple of other scouts helping, but it’s hard for us to hold that line because we have to travel between the pool, and, you know, where we do the push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups and then to the track. And so, what we try to impress on the trainees, the prospective Spec Ops folks is that we’re going to try and hold them to the time exact as we can because when they get to boot camp, there’s enough manpower there to make them do it in that amount of time, and they will do it in that amount of time, and so time is of the essence in this PST, and usually they do pretty well. We, you know, you guys got seven minutes to get from here to there, and then you’re going to get a 3-minute demo, and then, boom, that’s 10 minutes we’re doing the next evolution. It’s important that they stay the timeline.00:10:43:12DF: The PST, is that something that’s been around for a while? Is this kind of a newer development?00:10:48:18JF: Well, I took it in ’73, 1973, so it’s, I understand it’s always been the same with maybe a little bit of deviation as far as which evolution comes first.00:10:59:09DF: But the same basic movements…00:11:00:14JF: Same basic, yeah, same basic test.00:11:02:18DF: Where can folks find out more about those specific requirements that are in this test?00:11:07:18JF: On the SEAL/SWCC website, and that’s the one that I would use. I advise to use that because there’s a lot of stuff out there, and I say stuff. A lot of it’s good, don’t get me wrong, but the SEAL/SWCC website will give you the information you need to pass that test, to know what the perimeters are to pass that test. They’ll have to pass the test.00:11:31:29DF: Can you describe a little bit of your training kind of philosophy in getting these boat crews kind of up and running, maybe how that might differ than some of the other philosophies out there for training?00:11:43:17JF: Well, we start right from the beginning, and the beginning is usually I want to see them groomed well. If they’re not groomed well, they’ll do push-ups. Amazingly, I ran into that this morning, and I’ll run into it tomorrow. I think hygiene is a big deal with us, with our boat crews, and they understand that. On time, on target, don’t be late. I do it almost every morning, and the only times I don’t do it is when I say I’m not going to do it, and I’m at that gate at 6:15 when here in San Diego, and if they’re not there, they don’t, they don’t get to swim. On time, on target is a big deal. It’s just the basics. Philosophy here is crawl, walk, run, and you’re going to crawl a long time, and just to put that in perspective, they’re going to go to boot camp, then they’re going to go to their pipeline. They’re still crawling. And each one of these phases they crawl, and then they walk a little bit, and then they run. You know, you get out of BUDS, they go through Hell Week, they, they, then they start walking a little bit, and then they go to advanced training. They start all over again. They crawl, they walk, they run. They learn weapons and all that stuff. And then they get through there, and guess what, they go to the teams, and they’re all excited, and then they’re junior man again. They’re crawling again, and they’re going to crawl, walk and run until they get in that platoon, and they become the leading petty officer or the chief or, you know, lieutenant in charge. So, we’re talking three, four years here. This is nothing that’s going to happen for these trainees overnight, and they need to realize that. They need to realize that they’re going to put some real time and real effort into what they’re going to get, but it’s worth it.DF: For an extended period of time.JF: That’s right, that’s right.00:13:13:04DF: So, that being said, what other kind of advice or words of wisdom would you dole out to these guys and gals that want to enter the program?00:13:22:14JF: Patience, patience, know what you want, do, look into what you want. We have, we still today, we have trainees that come, and they go down and they get their examination, and they go through MEPS, and they take their, take an ASVAB, and they do all that, and then they get up on deck and, “Why are you here?” “Well, I’m afraid of the water. I want to face my fears.” “Well, we can do that for you, but, you know, let’s make sure that what you want to do is get out the other side, and you want to operate. You want to be a Navy diver, or you want to be a SEAL, or you want to be, you know, you want to rescue people out of a helicopter. 00:13:59:19DF: You think that there’s a lot of kind of difference there in expectations people what maybe joining for the wrong reasons or thinking things are a certain way, but they’re not? Is that something you face a lot?00:14:11:11JF: I have a good example of that. I had a, I just came back from Las Vegas, we have a boat crew up there, too, a good boat crew, and there was a fellow up there who was, he was 23 years old, and he was in the back of the group, and I, “What’s your name?” you know, my introduction, the whole thing, a little harsh maybe but, “What do you want to do?” “Well, I want to be a diver. I want to be a Navy diver.” “Why do you want to be a diver?” “I want to face my fear. I’m afraid of the water.” I told him, I said, “You face your fear by getting a facemask staying in the shower. I said you want to be a diver, you’re going to…

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#1 What is a Navy SEAL or Navy SWCC? Apr 25, 2018

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We talk with two senior operators about what it means to be a SEAL or SWCC, what they do, and how they became leaders among America's elite special warfare warriors. For more info visit www.SEALSWCC.com.(Series Intro): Welcome to “The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday,” the official Navy SEAL podcast, a new series brought to you right from the origin of the Navy SEALs in Coronado, California.We created this as an official source of information for anyone who’d like to learn more about Naval Special Warfare. Throughout the series we’ll give you suggestions for on getting into mental and physical condition, navigate the recruitment process, and dive into important aspects of the Special Warfare Ethos.I’m Daniel Fletcher. Today we start at square one by sitting down with a SWCC Master Chief and a Navy SEAL Senior Chief, to learn the fundamentals of Naval Special Warfare. Today, and throughout this series, active duty operators’ names may be changed for security reasons. 00:01:00:07DF: First of all, I’d like to thank you guys for both taking the time to join us. I know you guys are very busy. If you could just start off and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do, kind of your title, and then we’ll dig in and find out a little bit more about what you’re doing in terms of the details and stuff like that. So, Jack, I’ll let you go ahead and start. 00:01:16:20J: How you doing, my name’s Master Chief Jack, and I’m a Special Warfare Combat Craft Crewman, also pronounced SWCC [SPELLS]. I’ve been in the Navy for about 25 years now. I actually started off in the fleet. I was assigned to the USS Nimitz for my first five years of my career, where later, I went through SWCC training with Class 33. 00:01:38:25DF: Okay, go ahead, Chad. 00:01:39:20C: Yeah, I’m Senior Chief Chad. I came in the Navy in ’96, went through BUDS in ’97 and have been serving just over 21 years now at Team 3, Team 7, have been in overseas tours. 00:01:53:19DF: If you could maybe real quickly tell me a little bit about yourself and what brought you to make the decision to become a Special Forces operator, maybe a little bit about your background, that would be great. If you could start, Chad, from the SEAL perspective, that would be great. 00:02:06:00C: So, I was, I was in college. It was near completion of my degree, which I did complete before I joined the Navy, but I just had an epiphany on a backpacking trip. And you know, I was studying criminal justice getting my bachelor’s degree, realizing that the, the avenues to actually have a career in criminal justice would probably be with the prison system, which means, you know, as you graduate into the prison system and look at the infrastructure of how you promote there, you’re going to be in an office behind a desk. And any selection of career that I chose within my degree was going to get me behind a desk in an office somewhere. So, I just had an epiphany on a backpacking trip and decided that my career needed to change. My mindset needed to change, and I needed to do something that was going to get me out from behind a desk, ultimately speaking. So, I literally came back off that backpacking trip and went into a recruiting office and told the recruiter I’d like to join the Navy. I thought about being a pilot and went into the room where they show you the videos of all the different things you can, the cool things you can do in the Navy, and the first thing he popped in was the SEAL recruiting video. And so, four hours and 23 seconds later, I walked out of his office, and said, “That’s what I want to do.” I grew up kind of in an elite soccer environment. I was pretty good at soccer, played with the best of the best soccer players in Texas, and what was kind of troubling for me is, you know, even guys with some really great talent that could have been world-renowned soccer players just didn’t have the drive. They didn’t have that mindset, that goal to do the best that they could do. They kind of took their talents for granted. So, that drove me. I wasn’t extremely talented soccer player, but I had endurance, and I wanted to be part of an organization where everybody was like-minded. 00:03:53:18DF: Nice. Jack, if you could maybe give us a little bit about your background, that would be great. 00:03:56:27J: when I first came in the Navy, I was 17 years old, and I was assigned, I did a 2-year program in the Navy, was going to do a quick two years and get out. I was assigned to the USS Nimitz, and I really took to being a boatswain’s mate. It’s a job in the Navy, you guys are driving the ships, painting the ships, you know, doing all the, all the stuff around there to keep the boat looking good and driving in the right direction, on top of that, operating small boats. Eventually, I decided to give it another couple years there on the ship, and I gained a couple ranks there, got promoted, and I was actually assigned to be Lifeboat Coxswain, eventually a Captain’s Gig Coxswain. Each ship usually has a boat that’s called a Captain’s gig, and you would be responsible for driving the Captain around whenever he hit a foreign port. So, I had a little introduction, had some good mentors. Top of that, I had a Chief who was assigned to Special Boat Unit 12 back in the ‘80s, and he used to always talk about the SWCC thing. You know, I thought, “Wow, if I like driving boats, why not, you know, maybe look at that,” but I wasn’t totally sold yet. 1996, we actually pulled into San Diego, the carrier, and we were told that we were going to do this force protection drill, and I was actually the Duty Lifeboat Coxswain that day. We had an oil boom around us, and we had a gunners mate with a M-14 on the bow, no actual live weapons here or live rounds because it was a drill, but we actually, we had some SBU-12 guys come in, and they came in harassing us … 00:05:25:12DF: What is SBU-12?00:05:26:26J: SB, Special Boat Unit, okay, so precursors to Special Boat teams. In 2002, prior to that, we were known as Special Boat Units versus Special Boat teams.00:05:35:15DF: Right, so this is your first exposure to the SWCC.00:05:37:13J: Yes, so it was Special Boat Unit 12 at the time, and the operators on some craft came in, they were shooting at us, and they were doing all these drills to kind of harass us to see how the ship security force would react to it. We were helpless as a crew because, you know, they’re coming in with their M-60s, with their 50-cal blanks, just laying us down, and we’ve got one guy who’s hunkered down with M-14, not doing anything other than just sitting there, you know. But I really saw exactly what Chief at the time was talking about, the SB 12. So, later on, as I got off the ship, I decided to put in a package and, and to go through SWCC training and I came in. The SWCC community is actually unique in the fact that all enlisted guys run it. That also interested me, and I wanted to be a part of that. So, I actually, I went through training in 2000 right here, and sure enough, my first command was Special Boat Unit 12.00:06:30:16DF: Nice, well, the reason we’re talking to you today is to paint a more accurate picture for the lay person what the SWCC and the SEAL job entails and what it even is. Not everybody is completely familiar with the responsibilities and roles that you guys do. So, Jack, I’ll start with you because the term SWCC is new to a lot of people. If you could just take a minute and kind of describe what your job is and what your responsibilities are, kind of in an overarching way.00:06:58:04J: SWCC is also known as a Special Boat operator. Going through SWCC training, you are selected, trained and qualified to run all maritime craft for NSW, Naval Special Warfare, and Special Operations forces. So, each operator is trained with a unique shoot, move, communicate skills all, on craft. SWCC are not limited to conventional maritime craft. They can also operate on, on other civilian vessels if, if need be.00:07:26:17DF: I think that’s a good starting point. Chad, if you could go ahead and tell the audience what a SEAL is.00:07:33:02C: Okay, so through the spectrum of Spec Operations, you have foreign internal defense, counterterrorism, our primacy, within the SOCOM umbrella is the maritime domain, our main focus for the primacy of the spectrum of Spec Operations is counterterrorism, so that’s basically the focus of our community.00:07:54:08DF: So, is it fair to say you guys are, are doing things that are, require maybe more specialized training, or maybe it might be more classified, or is there any really simple distinction between the Special Forces and let’s say the Big Navy?00:08:07:18J: In all conventional forces, whether it be Navy, whether it be Army, Air Force, they are streamlined specialized jobs, rates, all kinds of different occupations within those services, whereas Special Operations are limited to specific, direct action, foreign internal defense, Security Force assistance, a few mission sets that all Special Forces under the umbrella of Special Operations command operate within.00:08:35:13C: The thing that sets Special Operations apart, other than the missions, is the fact that we have selection. We have a very stringent selection process, so we take regular Navy folks or people off the streets that join the Navy to come into this program, and they go through a very intense selection process…So, for like general Navy terms, you sign up, you pass the ASVAB, you come to the Navy, go to boot camp, get assigned a job, go to that job selection and then go do that job. For us, it’s trained to be equipped to do Special Operations, and it starts with the selection.00:09:10:29DF: So, how is the selection process, I guess I’ll ask this to you, Jack, how is the selection process unique in terms compared to the Big Navy?00:09:19:27J: To start off, the Navy I would say does not really have a selection process when actually going to each internal occupation, or as we call ratings, within the Navy. So, the, from the very get go, we have preparatory courses, and we have what we call orientation courses to even begin a selection course within Naval Special Warfare specifically. The, the object there is to actually select mentally and physically. We’re looking for individuals that have physical and mental traits that are associated with a Special Operator. And the difference I think between the Navy and Special Forces is the fact that we are actually putting guys under pressure. We are testing the limits of everybody, and we’re going above and beyond to ensure that our Special Forces are ready to go.00:10:08:09DF: All right, I think that’s a pretty good distinction. Do you have anything to add to that?00:10:11:11C: Within the Naval Special Warfare community, we pick the cream of the crop out of the Navy based off the minimum criteria, you know, the PT standards. For us, it’s the physical standards test. And the other one is the ASVAB.DF: What is the ASVAB?00:10:24:13J: It’s the basic test that everybody takes through all services in order to get into the military in general. You have to meet certain requirement of knowledge to be able to even get into the military.00:10:35:04C: It’s basic, basic vocabulary, skills, battery kind of test. We have some math in it, our minimum on the ASVAB is 50 to come in. So, that gives us a more quality person screen just to join the pipeline and then come through the selection process, so I think that’s a key aspect to the program.00:10:54:20DF: Okay, so after you guys have been selected and brought to the team, maybe if you could, if you could start, Jack, by telling us a little bit about the, the boat life, the SWCC lifestyle or the rating in general or the job, that would be great.00:11:09:19J: To begin with, when SWCC operators graduate the basic pipeline of SWCC training, they become SWCC basics. A SWCC basic is your operator that can get on a boat, essentially be a crewman. He can shoot, he can use communications, and he can navigate, and he can maneuver his way around the boat. When he gets assigned to the boat team, he will be embedded or actually attached to a detachment. Once he gets into a detachment, what he’ll be doing is he’ll be assigned for either weapons, communications, navigations. He’ll get assigned a certain cell. That cell becomes a part of a bigger mission if you will or a bigger responsibility within the detachment. So, whenever the detachments get assigned to go conduct a mission, he is responsible for ensuring that his portion of the cell is completed to be a part of the, of the bigger picture if you will.As SWCCs progress within a couple of deployments, they will also look to get further qualifications such as boat captain, also called SWCC Senior. The boat captain is responsible for running his craft and his crew. So, now, not only is he looking for just himself and what he has to do as part of the mission, he’s making sure that his guys in the crew understand and are doing what they need to do as a part of the larger mission. Further on down the road within a few more deployments, possibly three, four, maybe even five deployments, SWCCs will actually attain another qualification called Patrol Officer. And a Patrol Officer qualification is also a SWCC Master, usually a Chief or above, and that Chief is responsible for essentially the overall patrol when going out in the mission. A detachment is usually two boats plus about 8 to 10, 8 to 12 individuals that will go out and conduct missions, and the SWCC Master essentially is assigned to actually work with say his SEAL counterpart, a SEAL Lieutenant (or) Chief that actually runs a SEAL platoon, and normally that makes the larger picture or the larger portion of the mission.00:13:11:10DF: Can you just describe a little bit about some of the daily responsibilities, whether it’s leading up to a mission or when you’re on mission. Could you maybe talk a little bit about some of the individual responsibilities, the things you’re doing with your hands when you’re on these boats00:13:24:16J: Yeah, definitely. If he’s a weapons cell representative, for example, he’s essentially getting all the detachment’s weapons. That includes pistols, rifles, 50-calibre machine guns, 240 machine guns, Mark 19 grenade launchers, and he’s responsible for actually making sure that they are all in safe working condition and getting them ready to mount all over the boat to make sure that they can go out. If you are a navigator, you will actually be doing chart work, pulling out a chart and doing what we call writing out, plotting courses, doing calculations for navigation on the water to get to certain areas of operation. If you’re a communicator, you will be prepping your radios, getting your radios ready and making sure that they’re tested in the boat prior to going out. The unique thing about SWCC operators, too, is that there’s a big maintenance piece behind the platforms.DF: What do you mean by platforms?00:14:18:29J: We call our craft platforms.00:14:20:24J: Everybody’s responsible for making sure their portions of the, of the boat systems actually work, are up and running in order to get there. At the end of the day, the people are what make the mission happen, but without the boats, we’re not going to get from point A to point B, so everybody has to make sure their systems on that boat itself are ready to go.00:14:38:12DF: Nice, I think that paints a pretty accurate picture. So, maybe I’ll just summarize real briefly. You’re part of the team that will put the SEALs where they need to be and maintain the equipment that gets them there. Chad, maybe you could spend a little bit of time in describing what a SEAL is and what they do in a little bit more detail like Jack did.00:14:56:29C: Okay, So, upon graduation from SEAL qualification training, the guys check into a SEAL team. The cycle of the SEAL team is in four six-month blocks, so it’s a two-year cycle. The first six months…

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