Episode 181: Fitness for SFAS Vs. Q-Course Vs. ODA; Similarities, Differences & Key Principles

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What's going on guys? Welcome to another episode of the Terminator Training Show. I'm Kevin Smith. Today we are going to talk all about special forces and fitness. More specifically, the differences, the similarities, the misconceptions about fitness requirements for SFAS or Special Forces Assessment and Selection versus the Q course, special forces qualification course. I'll call it the Q course. Throughout the episode and being [00:00:30] actually in group on an ODA, depending on where you're at among those three things, you're going to have a slightly two significantly different fitness requirement and I think there's a lot of misconception about the fact that Green Berets are always ready to go and smash selection like a Green Beret that's been in group for 10 years could easily go and crush selection if asked to do so next week. And that's not really the case, although there are definitely some physical freaks that could go out and do that.

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Most guys and rightfully [00:01:00] so are not selection ready all the time. You've probably heard me talk about this in the past that just prepping for selection over and over again or always maintaining selection preparedness is not very longevity friendly, nor is it necessary. And this episode will kind of show you why and explain why I'm going to go over specific fitness requirements. I'm going to go over the differences in the requirements between all three SFAS versus the Q course versus on an ODA [00:01:30] and I'm going to go over some tips to cover all of your bases on that note. Right now, all of my PDF programs, which I will explain which ones kind of apply to different phases here in the episode, but all my PDF programs right now are on sale for 25% off until the end of the day, midnight on Monday night, the 22nd of September.

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So if you are interested in any PDF program on the site, go to terminator training.com or click the [00:02:00] link in the description and enter code fall 25, no space at checkout fall, FALL two five, no space at checkout, and you'll get 25% off whatever you order. So listen to this episode, see if any of the programs kind of match up what your goals are and kind of go from there. So let's hop into the first portion of the show, which will be SFAS. So SFAS, special Forces Assessment Selection. You might hear me recur or refer to it as SFAS [00:02:30] selection. Probably those two words that is a 21 day. It may actually be a little bit longer or a little bit shorter. Now I'm not a hundred percent sure because they're always changing it, but it's about three weeks. It's got three main weeks, which I'll get into here in a second, where they test guys ability to potentially be a good green beret.

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So they are basically looking and assessing you as a overall human, like your character, your mental fortitude, but also of course your [00:03:00] physical fitness and how well you prepared specifically for that event. You could be really, really fit but not selection fit. You could be really, really selection fit, but not really overall general fit and honestly going to selection, not really. Overall general fit is a better idea because selection has a select few things that it specifically test guys on. It doesn't test you on a bunch of things like a CrossFit competition would. It literally is testing [00:03:30] just a few things and you have to be good enough at those things. You have to be proficient enough, meet those standards and those things in order to move on to the next phase, which is of course the Q course. A big mistake in general, I'll get into specifics in a bit, but a big mistake in general that people make is they do a more generalized training program in preparation for selection rather than a selection specific program.

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So like they're really generally fit. They might do well at a CrossFit competition or they might be able to [00:04:00] do a lot of different fitness events or domains pretty well, but are they good enough at the specific things For SAS, if you follow super general program and also you're not a super genetic elite freak, then probably not some key aspects of SFAS two. It is short and it has a specific start date, has a specific end date generally about what you're going to be doing each week, maybe not each day down to the minute, but generally about each week. [00:04:30] And also it has very clear standards and it's repetitive, so you're not going to go and just get surprised all of a sudden you have to do a power lifting meet. Even though a lot of people think that the power lifts is required for SPS, which we'll get into here a little later, you're not going to go and randomly get given a bike and say, Hey, go bike 10 miles or 15 miles or 20 miles.

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It is very, very specific and there are really no surprises. So you know exactly what you have to be capable of [00:05:00] and when you have to be capable of it by. And there's really no if sands or buts about it and the standards are the standards. A lot of people think that at SFAS they have some sort of quota, but that's not the case as far as I'm aware. It is no matter what, if you meet the standards you pass, if you don't meet the standards, you don't pass. If 75% of the class meets the standards, 75% of the class passes, I don't think that's ever happened. But hypothetically that would be the case. If 75% [00:05:30] of the class doesn't meet the standards, then guess what? 75% of the class is not going to make it and that's just how it is. And that scenario has definitely happened before.

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So the way SFAS is split up, it's split up into three main weeks. They're not all perfect seven days, but it's three kind of phases and some of 'em are a little shorter than a week. Some of 'em are a little longer than a week. You got to get the picture. But you go there and I'm going to just kind of break down the fitness requirements for each kind of phase and what to consider. So you have [00:06:00] gate week, which is the first week. That's when you do your rucks, your runs your obstacle course, your CRA and you do a lot of classroom stuff. So the main fitness requirements for that phase obviously are mid distance running endurance. You're probably going to have to run anywhere from two to six-ish miles in three runs. So you'll have a two mile run on the first day.

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That's the only day that you're going to know exactly what the distance is. It's two miles because it's part of the PT assessment. And then you're going to have throughout the rest of the week, you're going to have two rucks and two [00:06:30] runs, one ruck and one run are going to be a little shorter. One ruck and one run are going to be a little longer and like I said, probably max six or seven miles for the run and I would say the R are probably the first one's probably five to seven miles. The second one's probably 11 to 13, 11 to 14 miles. I really honestly don't know what the exact distance are and that's okay. You can train based on known distances and known times. If you can run five miles [00:07:00] super well and smash the 40 minute standard by several minutes, then you're probably going to be okay when asked to run six miles, even if you don't know it's six miles.

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So just consider that as well. So that week fitness requirements are upper body muscular endurance because you're going to have to do hand release pushups, two minutes of 'em also, you're going to have to do dead hang pull-ups, which are kind of like a sort of muscle endurance if you can do a ton of reps. Yeah, there's some muscle endurance involved, but it's mostly relative strength. Strength compared to your body weight. [00:07:30] You're of course going to have to have leg muscle endurance because that is what's required for continuous running and rucking along with cardiovascular aerobic endurance. You're going to have to have a little bit of baseline strength. There's not a lot of strength required in the first week as far as being able to move heavy shit that's going to come later. But you have to be at least strong enough to get yourself through the obstacle course.

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You have to be strong enough to complete the events in the CRA and you have to be strong enough in general to just carry your ruck every day because [00:08:00] there's definitely a strength component to carrying your ruck. Yes, rucking for time and distance is mostly endurance, but also if you're just at a freak runner with not a lot of strength, you're probably going to struggle when you have a 60 pound ruck on your back, which is give or take about what it weighs maybe a little bit more. So that week in order to even get to the second week, you have to have certain fitness traits that I kind of just went over and they're not really all that negotiable. If you're too slow under a ruck, whether it's the first ruck, the second ruck, both rucks rucking in general, [00:08:30] you're not going to make it to the second week.

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If you're too slow at running, you're not going to make it to the second week. If you can't do enough pushups and pull-ups, you're not going to make it past the first day because you're not going to pass the PC test. By the way, the numbers are very, very easy. The standards, the actual official standards are super easy to pass, but there is a gap between the official standards by the book and what they're actually looking for. For example, the official standard is a 40 minute five mile sub, 40 minute [00:09:00] five mile. If you ran a 39 55 mile at SVS, yes, you're technically beating the standard, but you're going to be in the back of the pack. You're probably going to be in the bottom. I would say 20% and it's not going to be a great look. So all those things are required for week one, very, very specific.

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Notice I didn't say you have to be able to jump super high or you have to be able to squat bench deadlift a certain total or you have to do this clean and jerk or this snatch or really anything other than what I just said. Ruck [00:09:30] run pullups pushups and obstacle course and of course a plank, but you should be able to pass a plank in your sleep without training for it. But if you need to train for it, no big deal. Assuming that goes well for you, that's when you go into week two, which is land nav. And really the main fitness requirement for land nav is just being able to repetitively day after day, hour after hour, night after night, day into night, all that handle rucking at a relatively slow but steady enough to meet the [00:10:00] time standards for a land nav pace.

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So that is just going to be a little bit of muscular endurance in the lower body. It's going to be a little bit of general upper and lower body strength to kind of support that ruck day after day and it's going to be a little bit of overall cardiovascular endurance, but at no point or this is how it should be, unless of course you get lost, you got to make up ground, you got to take off running whatever, but at no point should you be completely smoked like you are at the end of a 12 mile ruck where at the end of a six mile time trial running [00:10:30] it should be more of a slow and steady burn. It still sucks, it's still miserable, but the terrain luckily is not super difficult compared to some other places that do land nev and it's not overly difficult to walk if you're relatively fit and you show up relatively prepared.

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So really that's the only few things required for that week. So assuming you do well enough at Land N to get to team week, you haven't gotten dropped yet. Now you've reached team week the last four days or so of the actual physical events. Team [00:11:00] week is depending on what team you're on, depending on the quality of your team, the skill level and the competence of the guys around you team week can either be pretty terrible or absolutely miserable, and if you're on a bad team or if you just kind of get unlucky and get a bad lane or a bad day or it's bad weather or something like that, it's going to be a miserable day for you. And if that happens twice, which usually doesn't, most guys are on at least one [00:11:30] of the teams that they're on is solid, but that's not always the case.

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But if that does happen to happen to you for the entirety of team week, you're on two bad teams by the way. You get switched halfway through. So first two days you're on one team, last two days, you're on another team, then it's just not going to be a good time. But either way, the more fit and the more capable and the less of an attitude and the less ego that everyone of your team has, the better your team's going to do, the better time it's going to be for you and the more likely you are to get [00:12:00] selected. So showing up physically prepared to team week, of course there's definitely a character component, and I'm not going to get super into how to build character here in this exact podcast, but I've talked about it several times in the past and will in the future.

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We're talking just physical here, but you're going to be needing to carry your ruck the entire time. You're going to have your 65 ish pound ruck on, but also you're going to be carrying a bunch of other stuff. You're going to be carrying things over your shoulder. You're going to be carrying things across your [00:12:30] back like apparatus poles with a bunch of weight hanging off it. You're going to be doing a ton of low carries. Usually one-handed or suitcase carries, whether it's a water can or an ammo can or a lashing that is lashed around a big long telephone pole that's super heavy, lots and lots of carrying. So you're going to need a ton of grip endurance. You're going to need the most strength requiring weak overall gym strength, requiring weak, but kind of specific to [00:13:00] the strong man style carries and moving stuff around and drags and pushes is team week.

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So you're going to need a good amount of general overall full body strength. Of course endurance. Aerobic endurance is just going to be a mainstay for the entire thing. It's going to help with recovery, it's going to help with repeated performance, it's going to help with durability, which is another just all encompassing trait that you're going to need. Durability can mean a couple of different things I like to say it is the ability to repeat your performance day after day, week after week without [00:13:30] a significant drop off in output or performance as well as the ability to do so without getting hurt. So that's kind of durability and then mobility. A lot of people over index mobility and think that it's like this thing you have to do every single day or else you're just going to show up and fail. Mobility is important, but the amount of times I did mobility before selection and mind you, I went and passed and did really well was zero.

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I didn't do any mobility and I'm not the most mobile [00:14:00] person. You just have to be mobile enough to get into certain positions on mainly the obstacle course as well as during team week, you're going to be in some weird positions. So if you're really, really restricted on mobility and you really know that, hey, my shoulder mobility's terrible, my hip mobility's terrible, my ankle mobility is terrible, then absolutely work on your mobility. Do some mobility drills. Also emphasize lifting with a full range of motion because that's the best way to improve your mobility. Whatever that doesn't take care of, that's when [00:14:30] you can move on to some mobility drills. But if you are perfectly able to put things over your head, if you're perfectly able to bend, bend over and pick things up, if you're able to twist, if you're able to get into a full deep squat and hold it comfortably, then you don't need to spend 30 minutes a day on mobility or 60 minutes a day on mobility.

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Don't become a mobility king. It is important but not that important. You're not going to be a Cirque sole dancer or anything like that, so just consider that. That is kind of the general [00:15:00] breakdown of selection and the fitness requirements. So the main things to consider as you prep for selection are rucking, both speed slash ruck, running endurance time, trial endurance, as well as repetitive walking steady pace, rucking endurance, running endurance, middle distance, upper body, muscular endurance, full body strength, grip strength, endurance. Of course, that's a huge one. And the all [00:15:30] encompassing things are things like mobility and durability, the ability to get into certain positions and the ability to repeat your performance day after day without getting injured. So that's kind of the breakdown of selection. The best way to prep for selection is of course to follow either my SFAS program or rock run lift.

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If you want a detailed breakdown of ruck run lift, go check out episode 1 78 where I go through it pretty in depth including a comparison between ruck run Lift and SFAS. So if [00:16:00] you're kind of up in the air determining which one you should choose, go listen to that episode and I'll link it in the description so you can find it and that'll kind of help you guide your decisions. But if you don't want to do that, then specify your training. Make sure your training is specific, especially the last couple months before you go. Now you don't, like I said earlier, you don't want to be a perpetual selection prepper, like if you're going to selection two years from now, you don't have to start a selection prep program tomorrow. You should not start a selection prep program tomorrow. You want to build a base [00:16:30] for quite a while.

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More general base. Yes, you can do some selection specific things like get good at running, get good at rucking, maybe work on your calisthenics periodically, but you don't have to follow a specific selection prep program if you have still a while before you go to selection. A solid base building program would either be T eight 50, which you can follow just indefinitely if you want. It's a subscription based program updates every single week that's on train heroic LinkedIn, the description, or you could consider either Jack [00:17:00] Zel, Jack Zel original or Jack Zel 2.0, or if running is more of a weakness, you can consider the two and five mile and you can do these programs until you actually get up to when you're about three months out, maybe four months out from selection. If you want to do run lift, it's closer to four months.

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If you want to do SFAS, it's three months that'll set you up four. Way more success than either starting to prep for selection now or as I was mentioning earlier, just doing general programs, general fitness programs. Don't get me wrong, guys have followed all the programs I just mentioned the pre-selection [00:17:30] prep programs for selection and still made it despite me recommending against it, but for max specificity and max preparedness showing up as ready as possible to crush, you're going to want to follow something more specific and that would be either Ruck, run lift or SVS. So you'll notice that of all the fitness traits in existence, I did not cover all of them. I did not mention that all of them are required because not all fitness traits are required for selection. Things like [00:18:00] sprinting speed and jumping ability and agility and power lifting strength or Olympic lifting strength didn't mention any of those things because none of those things are critical for selection.

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Yes, you want to be strong. Yes, you should absolutely do some plys and some skips and some hops and some jumps because that'll support your running and your rucking, but you don't have to be super duper powerful able to just produce force really quickly or jump super high or sprint super fast. You're just not going to get tested on that stuff for selection [00:18:30] of course. But as you'll hear soon, that doesn't mean those things aren't required ever throughout your career because they are. So let's get into the Q course. What I'm going to do, because the Q course and what being on an ODA are similar enough to lump them into the same category, I'm going to lump them into a same category. Not that they're similar day-to-day necessarily, or the dynamic is similar, but the way the schedule changes, the lack of predictability, [00:19:00] the long days, the sleep deprivation, the food deprivation, the going out to Camp McCall is kind of like going on a little mini deployment or JS a it kind of mimics in a sense life on an ODA.

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Of course being on ODA, you're going to be there for a lot longer and some of the trips are going to be longer, some of the schedule predictability is going to be a little bit less. You're going to have to do certain training events where you go away and so on and so forth. So it's going to be a lot more magnified on an ODA than it [00:19:30] is in the Q course, but if you're struggling to handle all this stuff and still stay fit in the Q course, then you're really going to be struggling when you get to an ODA because it doesn't really get easier certain parts of the year, depending on what you're doing. Yeah, it can be pretty easy to maintain your fitness, but other times it requires a lot of sacrifice and effort and really thinking ahead and I'll get into that as we go.

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So again, Q course ODA are going to be in the same category, the same fitness requirements, [00:20:00] but also at the end I'll kind of talk about some key differences. So one of the unique things about the Q course or being on an ODA is the day-to-day requirements are always going to be different. Generally during the Q course, you're going to be doing similar things for a while just based on what phase you're in. So if you're a medic and you're going to be in medical training Monday through Friday for most days out of the week if you're an SET, if you're going to be doing SET pretty much every day if you're in group, usually [00:20:30] most teams try to batch things and make their training weeks like, Hey, this is range week. We're going to go to the range this whole week, but not always.

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Some days you're going to be just randomly going out to jump three times. Some days you're going to be going out to the range, Hey, we could get this range one day. We're going to go out today and it's going to be a long day into the night, but we got the range for one day. May as well go and use it. Despite common belief, it can be a little bit of a chore for Green Berets to get range time. It's not quite as easy as just deciding to go to the range and doing it [00:21:00] whenever we want far from it. And then other days you might be just sitting on a computer checking email or shooting the shit with your team or you go in for a couple hours, then you go work out and you go home. So the fitness requirements are going to fluctuate.

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One day you might have to display a bunch of different fitness requirements or a bunch of fitness requirements that you don't usually have to display another day. You might have to display no fitness requirements. If you're checking email all day another day you might have to display a bunch of other fitness requirements, like maybe you have to display your [00:21:30] endurance on one day and two days prior you had to display your overall strength and your relative strength because you were doing a bunch of urban movement and CQB and things like that where you were going up over walls and going into houses and fun stuff like that. Additionally, unlike SFAS, it doesn't really have a definitive start date and end date. Yes, the Q course does have kind of a start date and end date, but it's always going to fluctuate for people because most guys get recycled at some point throughout their Q course time, so their end date's [00:22:00] going to be delayed or it's going to be a little later than they thought it was going to be and that's totally fine, but it's not quite as set in stone.

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I have to be this fit. I have to meet this standard on this day at this time, or else it's more like I just have to be generally fit throughout the entire Q course, which of course is very difficult to do because certain parts of the Q course, you're going out to KA McCall and not eating enough, not sleeping enough, not training for a while, whether it's SEER or SUT or Robin [00:22:30] Sage, that's a solid amount of time that you're spending out in the field basically most, for the most part in the field without lifting consistently and not eating enough calories and sleeping nowhere near enough. And also by the way, your day-to-day life is high stress because you have to pass and some of the stuff that you do out there is not super easy. So that adds a challenge to maintaining your fitness throughout the Q horse as well as in group.

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When you go away for training or you go on deployment or you're just doing a very [00:23:00] time intensive and resource intensive and energy intensive training event, even if it's at home, you're going to sleep in your own bed every night, but it's 20 hour days and you're not getting enough sleep and you're just super high stress, your fitness is going to fluctuate because you're not going to always be able to do exactly what you want, when you want to do it, how you want to do it. So whether you're on an ODA or soon to be on an ODA, you're in the Q course. That's kind of how it's one exception though, is language school. When you're in language school in the Q course, you have six months of pretty [00:23:30] much a very predictable schedule, a very reasonable schedule. It's like 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM or nine to four or something like that.

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Plenty of time to train, not a lot of additional stuff going on, not a lot of additional stress. Usually you're not getting smoked if you're fit enough, at least when I went through it. If you were fit enough, if you got a good enough PT score, you didn't have to do the required pt, you could just PT on your own, which is awesome. I don't know if that's still a thing, but that language school is the time to really, really [00:24:00] maximize your fitness. And coincidentally, it's literally right before the last thing you do, before you show up to group. So you can show up to group super fit unless you don't take advantage, then you show up to group fatten out of shape, and that is not a good first impression. I've talked about this any number of times. So the general fitness requirements for the Q course slash being on an oda, the Q course is a little bit more specific because you're going to get tested on certain things quite often and you want to be good enough [00:24:30] at things like rucking running calisthenics throughout that entire time.

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Yes, that stuff's important in group, but also the most important thing in group, of course, you have to maintain your currency by passing PTE assessments, but the most important thing in group is that you can operate on the battlefield. On the X, you can do everything you need to do potentially hypothetically if you go on an actual mission. So in the Q course, it's a little bit more biased towards running endurance, rucking, endurance [00:25:00] and calisthenics. Yes, you want to maintain your general strength, you want to do some more speed, you want to do some more agility, you want to do some more power because that's ultimately going to help you once you get past the Q course into group, but you're not going to get tested on that stuff while you're there, so it's a little bit less important. But power, agility, sprinting speed are very, very critical things to have once you get to group because you never know you may need to use some or all [00:25:30] of those things at any given time.

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And what a lot of people will do is they kind of just maintain their Q course habits. I did this for a while too where they just worked on strength and endurance and although you're a really good hybrid athlete that way, you kind of let other things like speed, power, agility, fall by the wayside mobility and that depending on what the trajectory of your career and where you go and what happens, that can come back and bite you in the ass because you need speed, power, agility in certain situations. [00:26:00] Also, you need endurance and strength in certain situations. So basically what I'm saying is your goal should be to be a jack of all trades and a master of none. The better you are at any one given fitness domain, the more another fitness domain is going to have to sacrifice. There are people who are absolute genetic freaks that are just receptive to being a really, really fit person.

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Anything they do, they get crazy results from it. They're super strong, they're super jacked, they're super fit, they're super fast, they have great work capacity, [00:26:30] they have great mobility, but most people aren't like that by default. Most people are not genetic elite. So ideally what you do is identify the things that you hate the most, which usually coincides with the things you do the least and identify your weaknesses. Really work on those. Maintain your strengths. Don't put your strengths on the back burner, but you don't have to if you're already super strong, for example, you don't have to go and try and get stronger, especially if you're also slow [00:27:00] and you struggle with endurance. You don't have to go get more jacked at the sacrifice of the thing you already suck at. And I know this seems really obvious, but so many people to include me bias the things we like in training, which also are usually the things we're good at, and therefore we detract from our ability to actually do and recover from the things that we aren't as good at but really need to become better at.

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And it's not the best cycle to be in because you're just going to get better at things that [00:27:30] you don't need to get better at and worse at things that you don't need to get worse at or that you need to get better at. You're going the opposite direction. So that's a major mistake that a lot of people make and something to avoid. Basically the whole premise of the Q course as well as being on an ODA is planning out your future couple of months and looking at what your obligations are going to be and planning your fitness around that instead of just winging it and being like, oh, I hope I'm [00:28:00] able to train here. I'm hope I'm able to train here. What you want to do is get as fit as you possibly can or maintain as high a level of fitness as you possibly can between periods of time where you get deployed for 45 days or you go to a school that's in the middle of nowhere out in the field for 60 days, maybe ranger school or something like that, or you are traveling overseas to do A-P-D-S-S and you know you're not going to have equipment access or gym access for the next week [00:28:30] if you're super fit before you do these things.

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Yes, you're going to regress, you're going to de train everyone is whether you're really fit, kind of fit or not fit at all. But if you're super high up and you regress a little bit, you're going to be still pretty damn high up fitness wise and you can easily regain it at the end. If you do the right things and you don't rush back into it, you don't force anything. You don't try to make up for time off by doing extra training that you missed. Not very good idea. You want to ease back into it. But that is kind of the whole [00:29:00] idea of it, is you want to maintain that higher level of fitness because although it'll fluctuate, it'll still stay high even when relative to your normal fitness, it's low, it's still high relative to the fitness standards. So when you're approaching your training, think well-rounded over very, very specific.

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Of course, unless you're training for something specifically like you're going to SMU selection or you're going to some other school that requires fitness that you don't usually have. Yes, work on that of course, but generally [00:29:30] speaking, you're going to need the following traits. You're going to need to be, I would say above average, but nowhere near elite in the following traits. Some people are going to be closer to high performing in certain traits. Other people are going to be closer to not performing very well in certain traits, and those are coincidentally the traits you probably want to work on and identify, but you need a good degree of full body strength as well as relative strength. So strength compared to your body weight, you need to be able to run long distance to mid distance. So anywhere from two [00:30:00] miles to probably 10 K is probably the most you'll ever get tested on a run.

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It's usually going to be two miles and five miles. Muscular endurance, upper and lower. You're going to need long slow rucking ability. You're not going to need other than certain parts of the Q course where you get timed in a 12 miler most of the time in group, you're not going to really need to be able to do a fast 12 mile ruck time trial. You will at certain times, but it's not going to be like all the time. You don't need to be rucking for that. You don't need to be training for that all the time. [00:30:30] Whereas in the Q course, you want to maintain some semblance of consistent ruck training because you're probably going to do at least two, maybe three, maybe four, depending on what they're doing these days and how long you're there. Timed 12 mile. So if you never ruck ever, yeah, you can still probably do all right if you're in really good running shape and you're really strong and you're just generally athletic and have good genetics, but ideally you do at least maybe a ruck a week and maybe two rucks as you get closer to a time 12 miler with some ruck running [00:31:00] to kind of cover all your braces and make sure that you're able to go and crush that because yes, you want to crush everything even though the standard is three hours.

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If you're anywhere near three hours, you should fix yourself, in my opinion. You want to be crushing the standards, not just barely passing them. And that goes for SFAS, that goes for the Q course, and that goes for group. Always try to crush the standards. You may not crush everything, but trying to is your best bet at at least giving yourself a chance. Sprinting speed, power, agility, coordination, and [00:31:30] proprioception. Oh, by the way, those are required a little bit at selection for the obstacle wars mobility and durability. Those are kind of just universal. The more durable you are, the more able you are to repeat your performance and hopefully not get injured. Anything can happen in sf, but being more durable is never a bad thing. So that is kind the rundown of the fitness requirements for being a solid operator, whether you're in group or in the Q course.

(32:00):

[00:32:00] Critically, there's some more important things I'd like to talk about on how to go about your training on more of a micro level. The career you're about to get into is not very longevity. It's pretty anti longevity. You're going to be banged up all the time, most of the time, not necessarily because you did anything wrong, just because that's the nature of the job. You may have some hormone issues, not necessarily always because you did anything wrong, although that may be why, but also because of the job. It's just lots of stress, lots [00:32:30] of travel, not a lot of sleep unpredictability. It's not the best job to feel great and enjoy yourself and chill out. It's like very high strong. It's go, go, go. That's the nature of it. So to combat these inherent longevity detractors or things that are just going to make you feel not as good and be less healthy, you want to be very, very intentional with your training.

(32:55):

So exercise selection is critical. You do not need to use a barbell [00:33:00] for every single exercise. In fact, most soft guys or aspiring soft guys should not use a barbell for every single exercise or even close to that. Nothing wrong with it, but it's not required. There's no barbell competition at selection, and there are tons and tons of tools in 2025 that will allow you to provide stimulus for your muscles to grow and get stronger. So just consider that exercise execution. A lot of people downplay this, it's not that important. I wholeheartedly disagree. I think [00:33:30] exercise execution is super important, not just for making the gains you want, but mainly for being able to continuously train and therefore make the gains you want because you're healthy, because you're actually taking exercise execution seriously. The better you execute certain movements, the less likely you are to, oh, my shoulder hurts.

(33:53):

Or, oh, for whatever reason, my knee hurts, my hip hurts. Well, have you looked at your execution? Of course, that's not the only thing. There are other [00:34:00] things that I'll talk about here in a second. Sequencing what exercises to do first versus later in the workout volume and load management. That's going to be the biggest one for overall staying healthy and not just running yourself into the ground as well as huge one for pretty much anyone who is pursuing this line of work is outside of training habits, generally speaking, green Berets have absolutely terrible outside of training habits. And what I'm talking about here is like sleep, lifestyle [00:34:30] vices, stress management relationships. A lot of SF guys live off caffeine and nicotine throughout the day and booze by night, and they wonder why they are always feeling terrible or they always just don't sleep well on the nights that they don't drink booze or that they don't recover well or that they have a beer gut or that they just can't get lean or that once in a while they perform poorly in training and usually it's self-induced.

(34:55):

So really focusing whether you're in the Q course on a team, especially [00:35:00] in SFAS prep, but basically as much as you possibly can control your lifestyle and your habits, doing so is going to be your best bet at combating the anti longevity aspect of being in group. Easier said than done, but very, very critical. And I've seen some absolute dumpster fire lifestyle habits that really, really detract from guys' potential fitness ability and overall performance. And before we wrap it up, I want to talk about a nuance [00:35:30] between being on an ODA and being in the Q course. Unfortunately, I wish this wasn't the case, but unfortunately group is less stringent for the most part on fitness standards than the Q courses. And I think that's a mistake of course, because guys get complacent. Honestly, I would say a good solid portion of Green Berets past E seven kind of get complacent with their fitness and it's not a very good look in my SLC class, for example, [00:36:00] senior leadership course, literally a course designed to make sure that you're good to go and be a senior leader, a K senior on your team and then subsequently master leadership course to be a team sergeant.

(36:14):

Probably a good 30% of my class either didn't run the five mile or finished slower than 40 minutes, and I just think that there's no excuse for that if you're injured. Okay, got it. But if you can't run five miles in 40 minutes, you should be able to do that in your sleep from day one of [00:36:30] when you join the Army to the day you get your DD two 14. In my opinion, it's not hard. It's eight minute miles. You have to run 7 59 miles, you can run four miles at eight minutes and then 1 7 59 mile and you're going to be good. And unfortunately that none of those guys really had any sort of consequence. And that's kind of the case for a lot of groups in a lot of situations is like, Hey, you get a slap on the wrist for not meeting the fitness standards or for being overweight or something like that.

(36:59):

This [00:37:00] may be changing, it may change in the future, but right now that's one of the main nuances, the differences between ODAs life and the Q course. If you don't meet the standards in the Q course, you're not necessarily immediately going to get kicked out all the time depending on what it is. You might get a recycle or you might have to retest it the next day. For some reason, I've never been able to understand this. For some reason, guys will fail a two mile run one day and then retest it the next day and somehow they pass, they'll fail by a good [00:37:30] amount and then they'll somehow pass the second day despite the fact that they ran an all out a supposed all out two mile the first day. So I've never really understood that. But anyway, you might get a chance to retest it.

(37:39):

You might get recycled, but there's no guarantees you might get dropped if you do it more than once, you might get dropped. And I would say one of the bigger mistakes besides not training and not keeping yourself fit as a potential upcoming new guy that's in language school is getting on some crazy sarm cycle or PED cycle and just getting crazy, crazy jacked [00:38:00] and you show up to group crazy, crazy jacked, but you get dusted by your team. You can't even keep up with anyone in your team on a super easy conditioning session or something like that. That's not a good look at all, whether you show up unfit or just looking jacked, but still unfit, not a good look. You're literally setting your first impression and you're going to have to do a miraculous come from behind performance in order to resolve your shitty first impression.

(38:27):

So consider that. Now [00:38:30] let's get into my overall advice, just some principles to consider as you go about preparing for hopefully all three of these things or if you're already past election, congratulations, Q core stuff, or if you're already in group, awesome ODA stuff, but just some general principles for each phase SFAS. Be specific. Vet your program slash coach, do your best not to make your own program. I promise someone else's program from [00:39:00] a trusted source that is unbiased, that has programmed for a lot of people, does not have to be me, but someone can make a better program than you can for yourself, I promise you that. Target your weaknesses, maintain your strengths. If you're super strong but can't run, you should probably bias running a little bit. If you're super fast but can't lift, you're super weak, probably bias, strength and eating a little bit aim to win everything.

(39:25):

Be competitive. Yes, it's not a competition, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to [00:39:30] win because if you try your hardest to win, then even if you don't win, you're at least going to have tried your hardest. And a lot of people go to selection kind of like coast and pace themselves, and that is not always the wrong thing, especially if you show up not super well prepared. But if you show up super well prepared, you should be able to go really hard pretty much every single day and repeat it day after day after day. That durability thing, which comes from repetitive training and consistent training and proper increases in volume and load and intensity. Practice [00:40:00] land, nav, do lots of land nav practice. I know this is a fitness topic, but land nav is critical because yes, there's a fitness component to land nav.

(40:08):

You have to be fit enough to walk from A to B and do it again and again and again, but also you have to be able to plot your points and get yourself from A to B without using Waze, which is becoming harder and harder and harder here in 2025 for a lot of people because they rely on Waze or Google Maps for pretty much everything, or they just don't spend any time outside. [00:40:30] They're kind of hanging out on their computer all day, neither of which are great. So definitely practice ran Land up. Don't forget to be a good dude, show up, be a good dude. There's a lot of different ways to skin that. And I would say just generally be a man of strong character. I will link a couple of resources in the description on how to build character, including one of my articles on substack that goes over 24 prompts to ask yourself to improve your character.

(40:59):

And [00:41:00] if you need a program, follow over up run LIFT or S-F-A-S-Q course principles. Stay on top of your fitness. Don't let it slide. Don't focus on the wrong things, stay on top of it. It's going to be hard sometimes. You're going to have to make sacrifices, you're going to have to pre-plan things, but it's very doable if you actually take advantage and make it happen. Just I can't emphasize that enough. It sounds obvious, but until you get there and see it, you're going to see and it's bewildering. You're [00:41:30] going to see guys just kind of slacking off. Do your absolute best at everything, even if it's not perfect, especially if you're like an 18 x-ray going out to SUT and you're kind of drinking from a fire hose. Do your best. Ask questions. Stay late. Practice extra. Find a ranger tab guy in your squad or another squad and learn from him.

(41:47):

Ask your instructor, instructor things and put your absolute best effort into everything because they want to see guys trying hard. Yes, there's standards and you either meet a move or you don't. But also [00:42:00] the fact that you're trying hard, not looking like you're trying hard, but actually trying hard is a good look. And you want a good look from day one. Your reputation starts the first day You show up to the day you get out of the army and it's either being tarnished or improved based on what you do. You don't need to look like a bodybuilder when you graduate the Q course. Nuff said, try to win everything just like selection, try to win everything. You're going to notice that I mentioned this again here soon. [00:42:30] And as far as programs, if you want a program for the Q, Jack is L jack is L two, two and five mile or T eight 50 are all great Q course programs as well as ODA programs, ODA principles.

(42:41):

Do not get complacent. Do not be that guy who shows up to SLC and fails the five mile run enough set aim to set the standard, not meet the standard set the standard set a new standard for your team, especially if you show up as the fucking new guy, the FNG. The only thing you really bring to the table as the FNG is your [00:43:00] physical capabilities and your MOS skills. And if you're lacking the former physical capabilities, that's not a good look. But if you show up and you're an absolute physical freak of nature, even if you're not great at other things, you're not supposed to be great at other things, especially if you have no experience, you're like an 18 x-ray, you're at least setting a really good first impression. And the other stuff can be taught. Discipline to train is harder to teach than certain skills that you're going to need on day-to-day ODA life.

(43:29):

So [00:43:30] just remember that. Set the standard. If you're an old guy too, set the standard, try to beat the FNGs when they show up. That's what I did throughout my entire career. And usually that was the thing that kept my fire lit. And I would do my very best to not get beat by new guys who are 10 years younger than me, and usually I wouldn't. But it's because I actually had that as a principal and had that in the back of my mind, and it kind of fueled my training and my decisions around what to do outside of training. Accept and embrace imperfect conditions. You're not always [00:44:00] going to have the most perfect conditions to train and eat and sleep, and being able to kind of adjust on the fly. Like, Hey, I don't have great gym access right now, so I'm just going to kind of try and maintain.

(44:12):

Or like, Hey, I'm sleeping three hours a night. Is it really good idea to train six times a week? Probably not. There'll be certain periods of time where you can get after it. Certain periods where you can't accept it, embrace it, adjust on the fly, be adaptable. That's one of the main traits for SF guys anyway. And just know that [00:44:30] your fitness is going to fluctuate, and that's okay. Everyone's fitness is going to fluctuate. That is literally part of the job description. But if you maintain that higher level of fitness, it will fluctuate down to a lower level for you, but it'll still be a higher level than a lot of guys around you. And lastly, don't let any of these fitness traits slowly dwindle away and slide. Don't get too into randomly Olympic lifting. You're doing a ton of Olympic lifting and you just quit all forms of conditioning.

(44:59):

You quit all [00:45:00] other forms of other strength training. You don't do any calisthenics. You're just doing snatch and clean and jerk all the time, or power lifting, or you get super into burpees. These sound ridiculous, I know. But guys actually do get so into these things that they forget about all the other stuff, and they let it slide not forever, but for a little while until they have some sort of wake up call, like a PT test. And they may do really well on certain events, but really, really bad in other events because they just have let that trait slide. So make sure you kind of have a good 30,000 [00:45:30] foot view every so often on your overall approach and make sure it's not missing any significant weak link because it's just going to become a weaker link. And that's it, guys. Hopefully that gave you guys a good idea of some of the differences in similarities, but mainly the differences in the approach between preparing for SFAS versus navigating the Q course versus navigating life on an ODA. Definitely [00:46:00] not all the same. Definitely don't need to be SFAS ready 24 7, 365 for your entire career, and in fact, you probably shouldn't be. Hopefully that episode explained why you probably shouldn't be. So thanks for listening, guys. I'll be back soon with another episode. Don't forget to check out that sale. And yeah, till next time, Terminator out.