6 Tips to Dominate Special Forces Assessment and Selection
Most people preparing for selection get stuck on trivial details and shortcuts that don’t really work. In this article, I’ll share the 6 habits my athletes use to make the most progress possible in the shortest amount of time.
This is important because once you start making fitness progress, you are actually taking positive steps towards achieving your goal SOF career. If you’re spending all day deciding whether you’re going to be a Navy SEAL or Air Force PJ you’re not getting closer to your goal.
Dreaming those wild teams is exactly that, a dream until you actually follow these steps. Remember, your task is getting in shape so you can get selected, your top priority is not figuring out what happens on day 3 hour 4 of special forces assessment and selection, or whether you can bring comic books to airborne school.
Common Objections
Many of you will read this article and say, “My uncle just showed up” or “My cousin’s friend ran 5 miles a day and did push-ups before bed and made it.” I receive comments like this on social media, and I laugh because chances are, you are not that guy. Some people are just built differently with iron wills who will redline every run, and ruck, and will eat whatever punishment comes their way – no matter what
But as a coach, who’s helped nearly 100 guys, I can’t count on them or you to be the 1 in 100 who shows up untrained to selection and makes it. In 99% of cases, you don’t rise to the occasion in the face of adversity, you actually sink to the level of your training. And that’s why this is so important.
If you want to role play as David Goggins, go ahead and show up in your current condition, you can leave this website. But if you’re a regular guy who wants to get selected, you need to follow these steps to the tee. A lot of them may sound basic, but I promise you, you’re not doing them, or at least you’re not doing all of them right.
Get on a schedule
One of the most powerful tools in achieving any long-term goal, especially when it comes to physical training, is consistency. And nothing breeds consistency more than having a structured schedule.
I want you to answer this question – do you have a training schedule? I don’t mean an exact date and time a workout is going to be completed – it doesn’t need to be to that level – but it does mean that you know exactly what you’re training on Monday through Sunday, and you know when your rest day is.
Structure is discipline and discipline gives you the freedom to achieve your goals.
It’s easy to say, “I’ll work out tomorrow” or “I’ll start next week.” But with a set schedule, you commit to specific days and ideally, you will get to specific times. This eliminates the ambiguity and procrastination that come with the just winging-it approach 90% of candidates take.
Be honest with yourself – how long have you been thinking about your goal SOF career? How much time have you wasted?
If from day 1 you had gotten a schedule and committed to it, where would you be?
The best time to get on a schedule was yesterday. The next best is today.
Recovery Techniques For Special Forces
Once you have a routine down, it will force you to get your sleep in check.
If you’ve ever tried to hit a hard goal pace workout after only a few hours of shut eye, you know how hard that is – sometimes it’s impossible.
Imagine what your results and training would look like – if you did everything right.
Sleep is truly the ultimate recovery tool, the time for your body and mind to repair and rejuvenate. If you’re truly training hard, pushing your limits, and serious about your goals, you need to dial in your sleep. Check out these two products I recommend everyone upgrade to improve your recovery (you all have them, but they probably suck!).
I want you to follow these 3 simple steps to improve your sleep – to ultimately improve your performance.
1. Consistency
Just as you have a training schedule, you need to have a sleep schedule. At a minimum, you need to have a bedtime. Over time, if you’re consistent your body will automatically start to wind down at this time.
2. Stop using stimulants after noon
Imagine you’re gearing up for a 12-mile ruck and someone adds 40lbs to your rucksack. Consuming caffeine within 8- 10 hours of bed does exactly that to your sleep. And besides, if you get restful sleep at night you won’t need preworkout in the first place.
3. Limit screen time:
You’ve already heard this before when your body sees that addictive glow from your screen, it tricks your body into thinking it’s daytime. If you’re not able to cut screen time out before bed, I challenge you to at least move your phone out of your room and never look at a screen in bed – morning or night.
Progressive Overload
After you have your routine and sleep in check, it’s time to focus on your effort. This is where progressive overload comes into play.
I had an athlete come to me to prepare for Special Forces Assessment and Selection (SFAS), with a defeated attitude about his squat – all this was over text – but I could tell he had doubts about improving his strength.
When we did the baseline assessments I watched a video of his squat, which he said was hard, and it came right up. It wasn’t a super smooth squat but he definitely 2 – 3 more reps. He just didn’t know how to push it.
This is where so many guys trip up. I see it so often that guys get so stuck in a routine of running 400s at a 6-minute-per-mile pace on their 400s or squatting just under 225 for reps, but they never think to try to see what happens if they run a little faster or put a little more weight on the bar.
When you do push yourself, and this isn’t in every session it should be your all, but when you do have a max effort set – you should be giving your all.
Nutrition For Special Forces
I’m agnostic on fad diets and really don’t care what you’re eating as long as it’s working.
What I care most about is eating foods that align with your body.
You’ve gone to the gym to do heavy squats or lined up for a timed 2-mile run and you’ve felt the sloshing feeling in your stomach and you’ve known it was going to be a bad day. You need to have foods that sit well, energize you, and don’t act as a distraction.
Beyond that, eat what it takes to achieve your goals and get in your protein. It goes without saying that if you want to gain weight, eat more, and if you want to lose weight, move more or eat less
Avoid Injury Training For Special Operations
Let’s be honest, there are guys who get selected with subpar sleep schedules, poor diets, and suboptimal training. It happens. But somebody with stress fractures on day one will not make it to week two.
The mind is capable of overcoming massive obstacles, but physical limitations are just that – physical. So while you may have an iron will and a never-give-up attitude, if you apply that to a nagging injury or persistent pain, there’s a good chance it will come back to haunt you
With my athletes, I am extremely cautious about slowly increasing run volume. Once you have shin splints, it is a painful process to recover from them. Here are two tips to preventing shin splints:
1. Start Slow
I can’t stress this enough. Whether you’re a beginner or an advanced runner, your body needs time to adapt. Rushing into high mileage weeks or intense speed training can be a one-way ticket to injury. Increase your mileage gradually, allowing your muscles, bones, and tendons time to strengthen and adapt
2. Mix Up Your Surfaces:
Consistently running on hard surfaces like concrete is rough on your shins. Almost every time one of my athletes has come down with shin splints, it’s been when they got off the dirt trail and onto concrete. Try to vary your running terrain. I personally recommend my athletes susceptible to shin issues or those without a running background run on gravel, grass, or other soft surfaces. This is highly underrated.
So before you start day 1 with a 10-mile jog, remember this is a journey not a sprint. Get to day 1 of selection strong and healthy, not broken. If you’re broken on day 1, you will break.
Learn to love the process
Tip #6 and trust me when I say this may be the most crucial one: Embracing the journey. I’ve been in this game coaching for a while, and I’ll be honest with you.
A lot of the athletes I coach sign up, they want more than anything to achieve their goal, but after a month of work, in many cases they they focus too much on 6 months, 9 months, 12 months down the line and lose sight of today’s workout, today’s diet, and today’s sleep. If you consistently get that wrong then you’re never going to reach your goal. I try to help everybody see this but some don’t and just aren’t able to focus and fall in love with the process
The athletes who embrace the grind, who learn to love the hard work day in and day out and make it part of their lives. For them quitting or failure is not an option. They’ve been living, eating, and sleeping that life for months.
Bonus Tip: How to Avoid Burnout
I want to give you a practical recommendation on how to avoid burnout when training for special operations. A lot of people wonder how someone can be so consistent and work up to an 18-minute 3-mile run, 275lb bench press, 335 squat, and 435lb deadlift.
What most people don’t see is that that athlete did not start by training 10 times per week. You start slow with something simple that you can accomplish get quick wins, build a routine, follow the steps in this article, and then add a little bit more.
Over time, making little steps every week turns into major leaps in performance. An athlete I’ve been working with for about a month just told me he has people asking him if he’s on performance-enhancing supplements now. He’s an incredibly hard worker but the magic is not an injection or pill you take every day. It’s the work you do day in and day out that will make you successful 6 months from now.
Do that and you will be successful.
