Training for the Military Athlete

By: Jack Kuenzle, former Navy SEAL, Cpt Vince Paikowski, winner of the Best Ranger Competition 2021, and Scott Johnston, co-founder of Evoke Endurance

Tactical Training Overview

Military Athletes have different and particular fitness requirements when screening for selection, being successful at selection, or executing their role once they become a team member. Individuals are called upon to carry heavy equipment, handle unwieldy weapon systems, or move quickly over long distances. The following assumes that you are a professional wanting to maximize the gains from your physical training.  You will do your best if you begin to think of yourself as a very special kind of athlete, a military athlete.  The training methods described here are appropriate whether you are preparing for boot camp, BUDS, Ranger School, Marine IOC, or a Tier 1 selection.

Studies conducted by the US military have found that Marines, sailors, soldiers, and airmen who are more physically fit perform better during testing evolutions on both skill and physical portions. Physical fitness is rarely the decider of success on a training mission or combat operation. However, physically fit military athletes can move and execute at a lower level of fatigue and, consequently, perform better. A military athlete’s job is their sport. Their ideal, non-skill conditioning combines elite mountaineering, running, and strength. Relative to other athletes, the tactical athlete faces obstacles, constraints, and limitations unique to their arena. Tactical training takes all of these factors into account.

When Is Tactical Fitness Required?

         The physical demands of a military athlete are highly variable, differing not only between communities but even between different stages in an individual’s career. Generally, a military athlete will start their career with a screening test. Usually, this consists of a battery of calisthenic tests and a short run (less than 30 minutes). After successfully completing the screening test, the next test gate is the selection pipeline. These vary in length, from several weeks to several months, and primarily consist of long days on foot, weighted movements, and upper and lower body strength tests combined with skill acquisition. Upon successfully completing the selection pipeline, a military athlete will begin their actual career, where the physical demands vary widely. While many adaptations are shared, the physical fitness optimum for an initial screening test may differ from what is ideal for the selection pipeline or one’s career. Optimizing entirely for one will come at the deficit of the others.

 

Tactical Training: An Overview of Key Concepts

Energy Pathways

         One of the most important concepts for any athlete is how their body produces the energy that contracts the muscles to propel them in any movement.  Humans have two distinct pathways for producing this energy. Both use a process called metabolism.

• One of these metabolic pathways does not require any oxygen to function. It is known as anaerobic (without oxygen) metabolism or glycolytic metabolism because it can only use a form of sugar called glucose from carbohydrates.
• The other is called aerobic (uses oxygen) metabolism and can use fat or carbs to power this process.

At any level of activity, from rest to a full sprint, both pathways contribute to the energy needed to keep you alive (at rest) or power your movements.  At rest and for low-intensity, long-duration exercise, most energy should* come from fat.   As the intensity of the exercise increases, more and more of the energy will come from carbs.  The percentage of energy contribution from each pathway at a given intensity depends on several factors.

• The intensity of the activity
• The training status and history of the individual athlete
• The dietary history of the athlete

* More on this below when we discuss aerobic deficiency.

Any activity lasting longer than two minutes is fueled primarily by aerobic metabolism. Most selections will involve multi-hour sessions of continuous movement day after day. That means that training the aerobic system is foundational for all military athletes.  You will improve and strengthen each pathway by using/training them. Exercising aerobically increases the energy output of the aerobic pathway; exercising anaerobically increases the production of the anaerobic pathway. Training to increase the output of either decreases the output of the other.

Anaerobic Energy Production

If you have a history of high-intensity training, your body is probably heavily reliant on this pathway. For some athletes with a background in Crossfit and HIIT training, the body must utilize the anaerobic pathways for all paces above walking because the aerobic energy pathway has been de-trained. Athletes too reliant on anaerobic pathways are aerobically deficient. It is unlikely that an athlete with an aerobic deficiency can successfully finish a selection pipeline, but there is a good chance they could pass a screening test.

The anaerobic pathway responds faster to training, is the primary energy source for fast twitch muscle fibers, can only utilize glucose for fuel, and can produce a lot of energy very quickly, but it has two significant limitations.

• The body only has enough glycogen (the stored form of glucose), the anaerobic fuel, to sustain about 90 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise. And even less time for high-intensity exercise. When the fuel supply gets too low, an athlete will experience a phenomenon known as “bonking” and be forced to slow dramatically.
• An over-reliance on anaerobic energy production results in the accumulation of by-products, such as lactate (known as lactic acid), that diminish the anaerobic energy production, which fuels high-intensity exercise. When lactate accumulates above a certain point, the athlete will be forced to slow down and, in extreme cases, come to a halt. Sprint up a hill for as long as you can, and you feel this happening. No matter how strong-willed you are, you WILL be forced to slow, and if you can drive yourself hard enough, you will come to a stop and may even fall over.

Aerobic Energy Production 

The other endurance energy generation system is the aerobic pathway. The aerobic metabolism of fat and carbs is the energy source for slow-twitch muscle fibers.  You use these muscle fibers in a 12-mile ruck, a 3-mile run, and especially for long day-after-day movements.  Aerobic metabolism is slower to respond to training. It can also take up and use for fuel that problematic by-product mentioned above, lactate, keeping it from accumulating. Using that accumulating lactate as fuel, you can maintain a higher speed for longer.  You have undoubtedly felt this when you run too fast, too far but then slow down.  By slowing to a more sustainable pace, you allow the aerobic metabolism to take up and use the lactate as fuel.

While the ceiling for power generation for the anaerobic pathway is higher than the aerobic pathway, the aerobic pathway can be trained to be enormously powerful. The marathon is primarily a test of one’s aerobic engine. For the fastest athletes, that means sustaining a pace of under five minutes per mile for over 2 hours and doing so with energy produced almost exclusively by aerobic metabolism. With proper training, an athlete can see continued gains in aerobic performance for years. Elite endurance athletes will continue to see their aerobic power increase and aerobic paces drop decades into their careers. For more information on energy pathways, endurance, and metabolism, see this article.

Aerobic Deficiency

Many military athletes we have worked with have a history of primarily high-intensity training, often in HIIT circuits, Crossfit style training, or running as fast as possible for as long as possible. Training with this heavy emphasis on high-intensity work makes the anaerobic metabolic system very powerful, but it sends the opposite signal to the aerobic metabolism in the muscles, telling that system, “Thanks, but no thanks, we don’t need you.”  The aerobic system becomes detrained. This means that their aerobic metabolic pathway can’t produce much energy.  The result is that the anaerobic pathway must make up the deficit in required energy and be used for even low-intensity walking and jogging.  In the previous discussion, we talked about the downsides of anaerobic metabolism.  The name for this condition is Aerobic Deficiency Syndrome.  If you are breathing hard, even at low speeds, you should conduct the simple test described in the link below.  This condition is straightforward to correct. It does not take high effort. It just takes months of a high volume of aerobic running.

Intensity Zones

How can an athlete tell which pathway they are primarily using? Heart rate is correlated well with what energy systems are providing fuel. Every athlete has a unique heart rate at which the anaerobic pathway begins to provide more than 50 percent of the total energy for exercise. This heart rate is referred to as the aerobic threshold. In the 4-Zone system Evoke Endurance uses, the aerobic threshold is the top of Zone 2. Exercising in Zone 1 and Zone 2 strengthens the aerobic pathway, and Zone 3 and Zone 4 increase the output of the anaerobic pathway. Determining one’s aerobic threshold is easy and can be done using any one of the several methods described in our article on threshold testing and this one on setting your training zones.

 Real World Examples  

There is a common misconception about endurance training that you must train as hard as you can for as long as you can to improve your endurance.  This translates to doing every run as fast as the athlete can manage.  This is a big mistake. It is wrong from a physiological standpoint and not how elite endurance athletes train.  This does not mean there is no place for fast running in the program of an endurance runner.  But high-intensity running is a supplement to, not a replacement for, the low-intensity running that improves aerobic capacity.

For the skeptical reader, we offer just a few examples from the many military athletes we have coached for various selections and their improved running paces.  These speed increases were accomplished with all endurance training being done at low intensity to enhance the aerobic base. Later in these athletes’ progressions, higher-intensity running was added, making them even faster.

Case #1

At the start of training with us

Best 1-mile time = 8:06

Easy aerobic pace = 14:34/mile @ 145bpm heart rate

1 hour easy ruck pace = 16:28 @ 142 bpm  heart rate

After nine months of training with us

Best one-mile time  = 5:48,  40% improvement with no high-intensity running

Easy aerobic  pace = 10:13/mile @ 143 bpm heart rate

1 hour easy ruck pace = 14:57 @ 141bpm heart rate

Case #2

At the start of training with us

Best mile time = 6:36

Easy aerobic  pace = 14:25/mile @ 135 bpm heart rate

1 hour easy ruck pace  = 16:04 @ 133 HR

After three months of training with us

Best mile time = 6:02, over 9% improvement in someone with a good mile time to begin with

Easy aerobic  pace = 12:02/mile @ 135 bpm heart rate

1 hour easy ruck pace = 15:09 @ 135 HR

Case #3

At the start of training with us

Best 2-mile time = 13:55

Five months later

Best 2-mile time = 12:32, 11% improvement.

Strength Training for the Tactical Athlete  

         We’ve discussed how to fuel the muscles for endurance. Now we need to tackle how to build strength. Both are critical and deserve attention.

Strength and Power

            Strength is the name given to the maximum force that a muscle or group of muscles can generate.  Power represents the rate at which force can be generated.

A couple of examples might help illustrate the distinction.

• A maximum deadlift, which takes 3 seconds to rise to a fully standing posture, is a good demonstration of strength.  It does not matter how fast you move the bar. You only need to generate the required force to raise the bar the entire distance.
• A clean, either standing or from the floor, requires power.  If you do not get the bar moving quickly, you will not be successful in the lift.

Many other examples could be given.  Compare the back squat to the standing broad jump, for instance.

Even in non-endurance sports where the athlete has to overcome gravity to propel their body, such as sprinting, basketball, football running backs, high jump, and long jump, power is more important than strength.  Those athletes must find the optimal balance between strength and power.  Power wins the day, and you don’t see guys built like powerlifters dunking the basketball.  Power is even more critical in endurance sports (other than water sports).

Not every strong athlete is powerful. But every powerful athlete is strong 

The force of a muscular contraction hinges on how many muscle fibers the brain can recruit to perform that action. You can get stronger in a particular movement using two methods.

• Increasing the size of the muscles used in that movement which adds muscle mass.
• Training the brain to recruit more of the available muscle without adding more muscle mass.

In each case, the brain, through the nerves, is the ultimate controller of the force you can generate.  Strength training is as much about training the brain to fire the correct muscle fibers.

 Muscles that wire together fire together

These two approaches to strength are trained very differently.  The second method allows the athlete to get stronger without adding mass.  It is possible to build an enormous amount of muscle, but if the brain isn’t trained to recruit those fibers in a task-specific way, they will never be fully utilized. For the past 20 years, many military athletes have focused too much on adding muscle mass. They could get away with this because they seldom had to carry that excess muscle mass long distances.  Extra mass is extra weight, which will slow military athletes down.

Further, extra muscle mass will parasitically draw blood and, critically, oxygen away from the working muscles. Those massive biceps will use precious oxygen that the legs could use during that ruck. Extra mass carries an energy penalty beyond just excess weight.

The potential shift to peer-on-peer warfare will make carrying excess muscle mass more of a problem for military athletes having to cover long distances on foot.

General and Specific Strength

            Strength can be improved using two different types of exercises; general and specific.

• General strength exercises do not exactly replicate either the joint(s) range of motion or the speed of the movement of the event being trained for.
• Specific strength exercises are those that either exactly or closely mimic the joints’ ranges of motion and speed of the event being trained for.

An example of these may help illustrate the difference.

• The back squat, even though the joint ranges of motion are similar to running, would be classified as a general exercise because it does not mimic the speed of running.
• Sprinting up a steep hill or sprinting, dragging, or pushing a weighted sled are ways to develop power and coordination in a running-specific way

General Strength

While there can be some carry-over to the sport, general strength should provide a base to layer more specific strength and make the athlete more injury-proof. Just as the aerobic system is critical for developing endurance, a solid general strength base is essential for achieving proper movement patterns in specific strength exercises. For a deep dive into this category, see our article “General Strength Training for the Tactical Athlete.”

General strength exercises sometimes target a small group of muscles through isolation. Think of a preacher curl in its use to improve bicep strength. This is mainly useful when overcoming a deficiency or imbalance, as in an injury therapy routine.

In short, most barbell lifts and ALL machine-based exercises are general unless the event you are training for is lifting a barbell or moving while attached to a machine.

In all the literature on strength training, the question remains: Beyond what point does increased general strength no longer transfer over and improve the athlete’s performance?  Stated another way:  At what point in the strength progression should the athlete focus shift to specific strength?  We observe that most athletes focus too much on general strength and not enough on specific strength.

The reasons for this?

• General strength in a weight room is easy to quantify, so gains are easy to measure and highly motivating
• The heavy but misguided influence that bodybuilding and powerlifting have had on strength training methods for athletes
• The social setting of the weight room

Specific Strength

Specific strength training for most sports is relatively simple.  A boxer can train with heavier gloves.  A sprinter can sprint against some resistance.  A mountaineer can do box step-ups with a heavy pack or barbell.  But, the military athlete’s sport is more complex. However, the most demanding strength movement a military athlete will need to perform is picking up a wounded comrade and carrying them to safety.

The preceding is why specific strength training is so necessary. Especially in complex, multijoint movements; the more familiar the brain is with the activity, the more force generated in the involved muscles.

Running-Specific Strength

We are devoting a little extra ink here because running deserves particular focus when it comes to strength training. Most people do not recognize the strength demands of running.  If you can’t run fast for a short distance, you will never run fast for a long distance.  Running speed is a function of running-specific strength and power.  Running endurance merely provides the metabolic engine to support a higher running speed for a longer distance. A world-class male marathoner can run 26 back to back 4minute 45second miles.  It takes quite a lot of running-specific strength and power to run even half a mile at this pace.  It takes a prodigious amount of endurance to keep it up for 26 miles.

Running may be associated with slight track athletes and spindly marathon runners, but their size belies their strength-to-weight ratio.  The 2018 men’s winner of the Boston Marathon weighed 127lb yet still had a 1RM hex bar DL of 2x body weight.  Elite runners favor the HB DL as a more running-specific lift than a conventional DL.

We are not advocating that military athletes look like marathoners, far from it. Our point is that you do not need to trade off strength for endurance.

Being a strong and proficient runner is one of the most essential attributes for a tactical athlete.  Military athletes are a weapon system in themselves, and many primarily move through their environment by hiking and running. The ability to run fast and long is critical to any tactical athlete.

When we speak of running-specific strength, we are concerned with the power the athlete can develop in the propelling movements. General strength training, built in a gym doing non-specific leg workouts, can form a good base, but it needs to be refined and optimized for the runner.

The stronger and more powerful runners are, the farther they will go with each stride. Running speed is a product of stride length multiplied by cadence (the number of strides per minute). Get stronger in the propelling movements, and your stride length will increase, resulting in more speed.

There are two ways to build running-specific strength:

• Running specific exercises like strides and hill sprints. Hill sprints are maximum intensity, 8-12 second sprints on a steep incline. Strides are 15-20 second accelerations to about your one-mile pace executed on flat ground, one to three times per week, mixed into aerobic runs and utilizing the long-distance running form.
• Resistance exercises in the gym.  These are exercises that mimic in a semi-sport-specific way the muscular demand of running by isolating the main propelling muscles used in running without the increased impact loading that comes with the fast running mentioned in the above examples. The most effective exercises are single-leg focused: Bulgarian split squat, single-leg RDL, lunges, and Polequin step-ups. Or the above-mentioned HB DL.

Both these methods of developing running strength belong in your training.

The perennial question for the military athlete is: “How strong is strong enough?”  or, more importantly:  “How big is too big?”  While there is no such thing as having too much endurance, as mentioned above, there is a point where becoming stronger, especially when that strength comes with added muscle mass, will begin to detract from your endurance and can potentially derail your performance in an endurance-based selection.

  Muscular Endurance-Fatigue Resistance

            To perform well, military athletes need first to develop a solid base of aerobic capacity and a solid base of strength.  The next step is to use these to support the ultimate training goal of increasing the athlete’s fatigue resistance by training their Muscular Endurance. This is the physical quality that will define your performance in your selection.

Muscular endurance is maintaining a high percentage of one’s maximal strength for many repetitions of a given movement. The effect of muscular endurance training is two-fold:

• To increase the endurance of the strong, fast-twitch muscle fibers.
• Increasing the strength of the high endurance slow-twitch muscle fibers.

When it comes to running, muscular endurance is the primary determinant of an athlete’s maximum sustainable speed in efforts lasting longer than a few minutes. Separately,  muscular endurance will be a principal determinant of performance during the high-repetition strength tests a tactical athlete will encounter during the selection pipeline, such as squat repetitions under the weight of a log or pushups. For more on muscular endurance, please read this.

Movement Economy for the Military Athlete

You might think that running is such a natural movement that no technique training is required.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Several studies have confirmed that among runners of similar speeds and a similar maxVO2 (aerobic power), differences in running economy explain 65 percent of the differences in their race times. Thus, a less aerobically fit runner might be faster than a fitter but less economical runner. Running economy is affected by many factors. Compare the video footage of an elite runner to that of an untrained runner, and the differences are apparent. Unnecessary bobbing, torso torque, and inefficient leg stride affect economy, as do excess body, shoe, and clothing mass. Stride length is one of the most apparent indicators of running economy. The more economical runners travel farther per stride than less economical runners.

Improving running economy can lead to double-digit percentage gains in performance. However, it requires conscious, attentive practice to change often well-engrained but inefficient movement patterns.  The internet contains videos demonstrating common running technique mistakes and examples of effective technique touch points.  The tactical athlete must find where their body’s economy and comfort converge to ensure long-range success in an often-denied environment.

Mental Training for the Tactical Athlete

            General George Patton famously said:  “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” There is a reason that military selections are tests of endurance.  They are designed to see how you will deal with fatigue extended over many days. You’ll often hear the refrain that grueling selection pipelines are primarily a mental test, not a physical one. While that is true, the fitter you are, the easier the mental trials will be. Many of these pipelines are only physical because exercise is employed to inflict stress and fatigue. One of the most effective strategies to improve your mental preparation for a selection is to improve your fatigue resistance.  Reduce that, and you will deal with the stress of the unforeseen challenges thrown at you in a much more relaxed and resilient manner. That being said, there are specific, actionable steps the tactical athlete can take to prepare them for mental stress and to harden them to the grueling nature of a selection pipeline. Those methods are specifically addressed in this article https://evokeendurance.com/push-back-mental-limits/

Tactical Training Programming

While training is the controlled application of stress, that stress needs to be applied using several cardinal rules:

• The methods used need to be directed at improving performance in the event.  This means using methods that move from more general to more event specific.
• There must be a gradual increase in the overall training load.  Our body will adapt to small changes in load over time but will rebel or break under dramatic load increases.
• The training must be consistent. Random, erratic exercise is not training.
• The training load must be modulated.  Hard days must be followed by sufficient recovery to allow your body to adapt to the new higher load.

Lose the Ego and Pay Attention

You cannot bludgeon your body into fitness.  That’s the stuff of Hollywood movies and the “no pain, no gain” culture.  That will break something and very likely end your dream of attending the selection you are training for.  There is a time and place for going beyond your limits, but not in regular training. That is not the way professional athletes train.  Like you, they make their living with their body. Save those rare occasions of pushing beyond your limits for when they are required.  Doing so on a routine basis will set you up for injury and over-training.  You are a professional athlete. You need to start thinking and training like one.

One of the most common training mistakes is athletes who become slaves to their training plan. No matter who writes it or how perfect your training plan is, it will need to be modified and adjusted as you go along.  None of us have complete control of the stresses we are subjected to.  Familial issues, work challenges, and compromised rest strain the body similarly to actual physical training. A training program must be flexible and administered thoughtfully and reactively to accommodate these external stressors to be effective.

By following the principles of gradual training load increase, consistency in the application of a training stimulus, management of intensity, and prioritization of recovery, the tactical athlete can consistently improve over time while managing the chaos of the work environment

We understand that building a training plan is a big challenge. To help, we at Evoke Endurance have developed a 44-week tactical training plan designed to transform individuals into durable, fatigue-resistant athletes ready to complete a tactical selection pipeline.  For those who already have completed the 44-week program or at least the last phase and have a well-developed aerobic base and are headed to selection, we also have this plan https://evokeendurance.com/selection-preparation-plan/

Overtraining

Highly motivated athletes are at greater risk of overtraining.  You are undoubtedly highly motivated if you are a military athlete preparing for a selection.  Nothing will derail and potentially crush your dreams faster than overtraining. More is not always better.  Overuse injuries are a sure sign of overtraining. But so is exhaustion.  Overtraining is not the usual garden variety fatigue that all athletes are familiar with.  It is a severe medical condition.

 IMPORTANT-READ THIS.

When an athlete trains more than what their body can recover from, they enter what is known as an overreaching state. Positive adaptations will occur if an athlete recognizes this overextended state and increases their recovery.  On the other hand, if they continue training, they can enter a state of overtraining or even develop Overtraining Syndrome (OTS).  This must be avoided. Coming back from overtraining can take months.

Ruck Training

            Because many selection pipelines involve rucking evolutions, tactical athletes may be tempted to prepare for these by using rucking exclusively, or near exclusively, for their endurance training. But they should be cautious. Any weighted training aims to adapt the body to the weight itself. The aerobic engine is still the primary driver for success throughout these movements. We dive deep into this debate in this article https://evokeendurance.com/training-for-weighted-movement/

Additional Constraints the Military Athlete Faces

Unfortunately, tactical organizations often emphasize physical readiness but make little attempt to facilitate proper physical training among their members. Several obstacles a tactical athlete faces can complicate training, including having a variable and erratic schedule, poor access to workout facilities, and poor recovery due to inadequate sleep and nutrition. Our article, https://evokeendurance.com/constraints-on-the-military-athlete/, tackles these in depth.

An Overview of Tactical Training

Like in any physical training, the focus, length, and rigor of preparation depend on the goal. Training for boot camp will require a different level of commitment than training for an elite SOF unit. The more endurance needed for the goal event, the longer the preparation phase should be.

As in any well-crafted program, training for the tactical athlete will begin with general training and gradually shift to move event specific. The initial screening test, the selection pipeline, and a career will require different training approaches. The military athlete will need to hone and improve dozens of physical attributes—the more elements that need to be trained, the longer the required training.

TWO WARNINGs:

1. There are no shortcuts, get-fit-quick schemes, or magical six-week plans. If elite-level fitness could be achieved that quickly, why would world-class athletes train for years to reach their fitness level? 
2. Regarding building endurance, training intensity is NOT a substitute for training duration.  While some high-intensity training is essential to every athlete, it is a supplement to, not a substitute for, a high volume of aerobic base training.  A 30-minute HIIT circuit workout does not have a more beneficial effect nor accomplish the same thing as a 60-minute low-intensity run.  They train entirely different systems in your body.

For military athletes, fitness must stand on robust aerobic capacity and good general strength. In our extensive experience working in this area, most tactical athletes suffer from what is known as Aerobic Deficiency Syndrome (ADS). A military athlete with ADS cannot complete an extended selection pipeline. They need to conduct Zone 2 runs until this is remedied.

NOTE: For a detailed look at this training theory, you would be well advised to read and study either of the books Training for the New Alpinism or Training for the Uphill Athlete.

On the endurance side, all military athletes should do aerobic base training three to four times weekly. One of these sessions should make up 30-40% of the total aerobic volume for the week.  Undulating soft surface terrain is preferred, and trails are ideal for reducing impact and repetitive motion, which can lead to overuse injury. An inclined treadmill and a Stairmaster are excellent tools for increasing the volume of aerobic training in a low-impact modality, either hiking or running. Because cycling is a non-weight-bearing activity, we recommend using it in recovery sessions or when dealing with an injury. Avoid running in boots or with weight, as these techniques offer few benefits and dramatically increase the risk of injury. Finally, if swimming is a part of the pipeline, swim once per week. Swimming with fins is essentially a test of lower-body muscular endurance, and swimming without fins is an exercise in technique.

Screening

This is the initial screening to gain entry into a tactical community. Usually, these tests consist of maximum reps of body weight calisthenics in a set time, a run, and possibly a swim. These exercises are generally executed back-to-back with little rest. These tests can be administered months or years before a candidate starts a selection pipeline or can be embedded into the first day of selection. Some of the most common tests for tactical opportunities in the US are listed below:

Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT)

• Max weight 3-repetition hex bar deadlift
• Max distance 10-pound medicine ball backward toss
• Max pushups in 2 minutes
• Five 50-meter carries/drags—first sprinting, second dragging a 90-pound sled, third doing a lateral shuffle, fourth carrying two 40-pound kettlebells, fifth sprinting—for time
• Plank for time
• 2-mile run for time

Marine Corps Physical Fitness Test (PFT)

• Max pull-ups in 2 minutes
• Max sit-ups in 2 minutes
• 3-mile run for time

Navy Physical Screening Test (PST; SEAL, EOD, SWCC)

• 500-yard swim for time
• Max pushups in 2 minutes
• Max sit-ups in 2 minutes
• Max pull-ups in 2 minutes
• 5-mile run for time

While screening tests significantly affect whether an individual will be selected for training, test performance is not perfectly correlated with physical readiness for a selection pipeline or career. Your ability to bust out 100 pushups, 25 pull-ups, and an 8:30 1.5-mile run will be largely irrelevant when confronting long movements, day after day, with weight, chest-carrying a log down a beach, or buddy-carrying your partner up a sand dune. While there is overlap, the tactical athlete will be forced to specify their training for screening, selection, and job separately. This is changing slightly, with the Army moving from the Army Physical Fitness Test (pushups, sit-ups, run) to the ACFT in April 2022, the ACFT being a far more relevant test than the APFT.

While each event is not typically an indicator of selection success, we see a very high correlation between an athlete’s aerobic endurance (running performance) in these testing events and their ability to perform in a selection.

A military athlete should shift to training specifically for the assessment two months before the screening test. This means integrating some running intervals at the targeted running pace for the screening and muscular endurance training for both the upper and lower body. Upper-body muscular endurance work can be concentrated in workouts or spread throughout the week in a Greasing the Groove scheme. Don’t drop the low-intensity aerobic sessions; keep at least three weekly aerobic runs in the schedule, but reduce the long run. Again, if swimming is a part of the pipeline, swim once per week—or more if swim time is lagging. If you are handling the training well, increase the aerobic running volume.

Selection

The next step in joining a tactical community is the evaluation, selection, and testing pipeline that turns aspirants into qualified operators. Nearly universally, these pipelines are primarily a mental test. That said, the better-prepared one is physically, the easier the pipeline will be mentally. One can never be too prepared. Simultaneously, minimum physical standards often need to be met, and these will differ from the modalities an individual was initially assessed in. For example, in Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training, the primary training pipeline for Navy SEALs, there are minimum times within which candidates must complete 4-mile sand runs, 2-mile open ocean swims, and obstacle course iterations. Instructors will also subjectively assess physical performance during other evolutions, and candidates can be dropped from training for poor performance. Once a candidate arrives at BUD/S, they rarely perform a PST or any calisthenic evaluation. While calisthenics are performed, they are mainly for punishment and not as an assessment of performance.

The ability to endure these calisthenics and be able to perform closer to your maximum capacity still is the goal of the train-up.

Every selection pipeline is slightly different. We recommend consulting individuals who have been through selection, media releases, videos, photography, and narratives, to establish the specific physical demands of this phase of your tactical training.

This should be the most extended train-up phase.  Most of the military selections are much more tests of endurance than strength.  Endurance takes a long time to develop. Professional endurance athletes spend many years developing it.  You will not maximize it or scratch the surface in 6 or 8 weeks.  So, don’t procrastinate in starting your aerobic base training.

After successful screening, if enough time and an athlete isn’t already strong enough, switch back to the general strength regime. Then switch to a selection pipeline training program a few months before training.

Otherwise, begin prepping for the selection pipeline immediately. The long run is vital in building the endurance and structural integrity to move on your feet for several hours each day during the selection.

Post Selection

Following a successful selection, be sure to take time to recuperate. The body just underwent months of high training load culminating in several weeks of very taxing selection. It’s essential to address the deep fatigue you will be carrying.  The first thing to do is to forget about training or being on a training plan for a few weeks.  You need a psychological as well as physical break from structure.  Remain physically active but do things for fun that you have had to eliminate while training was the priority.

Career

For military athletes already through selection, the physical demands change yet again. The most effective approach is to look closely at the physical challenges of an individual’s role and personal aspirations and build training that effectively addresses both. For the most part, career military athletes will be best served by developing a lean physique with excellent lower-body muscular endurance and a high aerobic capacity. While Hollywood abounds with graphic scenes of hand-to-hand combat and feats of brute strength in the tactical community, tactical athletes would be better served by being able to move quickly to and from the objective, often while carrying a heavy load, and effectively employ their weapon system. While a 315-pound bench press is alluring, it bears little relevance to the job, and, in reality, that extra muscle mass will only slow an individual down.

Reflecting on my own time in the SEAL teams, here are some physical challenges typical to a standard two-year training/deployment cycle:

• 5-hour movement on skis into camping
• 10-hour foot movement with ~90+ pounds of equipment into camping while wielding a 25-pound weapon system
• Dozens of 15-to-45-minute high-intensity simulated small-arm contacts
• Dozens of 1-to-5-hour patrol exercises into simulated firefights
• Mechanically clearing doors and obstacles using a sledgehammer
• Physically wrestling noncompliant individuals during room-to-room building clearance
• 20–30 1-to-2-hour fin swims underwater on rebreathers
• Multiple open-water swims in full combat gear while towing positively buoyant equipment
• 50 free-fall jumps with occasional unavoidable hard landings
• Movements on soft sand or rough, mountainous terrain

Balancing Training for Screening and Selection

Military physical training will always involve compromise. You may be able to train up for the screening in 2-3 months.  But if you try to repeat that same approach with its heavy emphasis on the strength/calisthenics and a single 1.5-3 mile run test as a prep for the selection, you will not make it through selection. Handling day after day-long movements on foot for weeks on end requires a very well-developed aerobic capacity. This can only be gained with a high volume of low to moderate-intensity running and rucking for at least six months.  Focus most of your time on developing this big aerobic base while supplementing strength and calisthenics training. You will be fine for the screening and better prepared to start the selection training.  We frequently see military athletes we are coaching for a selection improve their one-mile times from 1 minute/mile up to 2min 30 seconds/mile in a few months of nothing but low-intensity aerobic base running.

The military athlete must train strategically, building a broad base and integrating specific training, like a mountaineer or runner, when relevant.