Ep. 203 - 12 Traits of People Who Pass Special Forces Selection

(00:00):

What's up guys? Welcome to another episode of the Terminator Training Show. I'm Kevin Smith. Today is going to be an episode all about selection prep, mainly 12 things that my clients who are typically most successful at their selections of choice, going to be a little bit biased towards SVS, but just soft selections in general. 12 things that they all have in common in their prep and some of 'em are going to be training related, but honestly most of them are going to be non-training related. But all of these in some way, shape, or form will either directly or indirectly [00:00:30] affect your training. And of course, training is one of the most non-negotiable aspects of showing up to selection prepared, but a lot of people think it's the only aspect. I pretty much was that way when I was coming up and trying to go to selection.

(00:45):

It was like train and then whatever I do outside the gym doesn't really matter. Just eat enough of course, but not really care about my nutrition, not really care about my sleep, not really care about my self-development. I didn't really care about self-development or personal development until I was closer to 30 years old, [00:01:00] but none of this stuff I did and also none of this stuff was really available. Of course, you could really go out of your way to learn this stuff, but now with social media and YouTube and Instagram, anyone who wants to can show up to selection way better than the guy who just really trained hard, way more robust and way more well-rounded. And that's going to be the theme of these 12 things that I'm going to go over today. And honestly, they pretty much will make you [00:01:30] a better, more prepared and more capable individual in general, whether you're going to selection soon, whether you're ever going to go to selection, whether you're just trying to be successful in life.

(01:39):

Some are a little bit more training specific, but some of them are just really good habits to consider implementing in your life regardless of what your goals are. So without wasting any more time, I'm going to get into the first one, which is these guys eat a lot of carbohydrates and although all of my clients are not nutrition clients, some guys are just training clients, [00:02:00] the guys who are nutrition clients always get better results by a long shot, and that's because when you set up your nutrition properly, which by the way most people don't know how to do, most people are all over the map with their nutrition. It is going to fuel your training, it's going to fuel your day-to-day vigor and wellbeing. It is going to make you feel better, it's going to make you recover better, it's going to improve your body composition and it's honestly relatively simple.

(02:24):

But the big thing that I see the most guys fall short on is carbohydrates. [00:02:30] Guys will go about their training in prep for selection on what I call poverty carbs. They will eat absolutely nowhere close to as many carbs as they need to. A, fuel their training. B, improve their recovery, C, actually reduce their injury risk. Believe it or not, having plenty of carbs in your system can enhance your nervous system function and therefore make you a little bit more mentally prepared, physically prepared, able to produce power in a safe manner and also it's a factor. It's one of [00:03:00] the main factors in your overall calorie intake. So often a package deal with people who don't eat enough carbs is they're also not eating enough calories. Oftentimes they're eating way more fat than they think they are, and then they need to be eating proteins hit or miss.

(03:15):

But carbs are always really low, and one of the easiest ways to get your carbs up is to reduce how many grams of fat you're taking in per day. Fat is essential. You need to eat fat, but you definitely don't eat 150 grams of fat every day and [00:03:30] a lot of people without even knowing it are eating that many or more and they're eating like 150 grams of carbs. To put it into perspective, I personally am 36 years old. I am six foot one, probably a little under six foot one these days after 12 years in the army, 193 pounds as of this morning, and I get about 10 to 12,000 steps a day. I do 40 minutes of cardio, sometimes 50, occasionally an hour, three-ish [00:04:00] days a week, and I lift weights for an hour three to four days a week, and I eat 465 grams of carbs every day, and I'm kind of maintaining.

(04:08):

I've been at 1 93 for the last couple of weeks and about 10% body fat and I feel amazing on super duper high carbs, and there are many, many, many people with insanely higher activity levels than I have that are prepping for selection. If you're prepping for selection, by the way, you should have much higher activity levels and higher output needs than [00:04:30] I have right now. As someone who sits on a computer most of the day and is a little bit active and you're eating half the number of carbs that I am, that is a problem and it's not uncommon. I see it all the time. Every single new client that has come to work with me, I have had to increase their carbs and usually it's by a substantial margin and at the same time, I've had to drop their fat. Make sure you are eating enough fat.

(04:52):

You don't want to go crazy low in fat, but also you don't have to be super high in fat even though fat's healthy. That doesn't mean more is always [00:05:00] better, especially in performance nutrition, your goal with more performance, nutrition and maximizing your performance and your recovery while you're prepping for selection. AKA maximum optimal performance nutrition should be to fit as many carbs as you possibly can in with the appropriate amount of calories. I've talked several times about how to calculate your macros, so I'm not going to really get into that, but just something to check yourself on. Make sure you are actually fueling yourself with the most important [00:05:30] macronutrient for performance. When you're doing all these high performance things, there are definitely people in every class that show up that could have been so much more prepared had they eaten more carbs because they're not prepared, because they aren't eating enough carbs, probably one of many reasons they don't make it, so don't sleep on carbs.

(05:51):

Make sure you are getting your proper carbs in. Some of the top sources of carbs that I like are white rice, potatoes, yams, fruit [00:06:00] sourdough bread, high quality sourdough bread. Ideally, the stuff that has three ingredients that you get at the farmer's market or that you make yourself or you get at a mom and pop bakery, oatmeal, rice, and grinds, and honestly, a little bit of honey and syrup, maple syrup, totally fine. And really that's about it. If you just eat those things, you're going to have your bases all covered. And also you are not eating these foods that a lot of people think are carbs like muffins and pizza and donuts. Yes, there's carbs in those, but [00:06:30] also there's a bunch of fat in them. They're not like high performance foods, so don't short yourself on carbs. You're going to feel way better, perform way better and show up.

(06:38):

Therefore, much more prepared for selection. Number two is switching gears a little bit. They identify their character flaws. Every single human, by the way, has character flaws. If you're watching this or listening to this, you have character flaws and a lot of people aren't aware of them, and a lot of people don't understand that with a little bit of work, they can [00:07:00] overcome their character flaws. Maybe not make them into extreme strengths, but they can definitely bring them up. And the thing about character flaws, a lot of people will say, oh, it's like a minor thing, and for some people they are minor. Some people could never do any work on their character and they could go to selection and they could crush it. Personally, I didn't really have any idea what my character flaws were. Luckily, they weren't problematic enough to make it so that I didn't get selected, but a lot of guys are and a lot of guys could.

(07:27):

If they had done work prior [00:07:30] to and they identify their character flaws and they actually brought them up, they could have made it, but they didn't. They just kind of let them go and people don't understand. A lot of people don't understand that you can actually improve on your character flaws. You can bring them up. It's just a series of skills. Every single skill in life can be developed and can be refined and can be iterated upon. The problem is the process of bringing your character flaws up is difficult. It takes [00:08:00] work and it's also very uncomfortable. So the first step, it's basically a three-step process. Pretty simple, but again, not easy. The three steps, first step, well actually prior to getting to the first step, accept that you are the agent in charge of your own trajectory, except that you can actually put this work in and you are not just stuck with what you've got.

(08:22):

Believe me, a lot of people are, they think that these traits, they're just traits and they're just going to stay like that and they can't improve anything and that life happens to [00:08:30] them. They don't make things happen. You've got to change your disposition. If you have that disposition, most people probably don't. If you're pursuing a special forces career, you probably understand that you have the ability to change your life trajectory, so pre-step, the thing that you do before step one, step one is to identify where your character flaws are, and generally speaking, people aren't very good at identifying their own character flaws. Oftentimes, you're going to have to recruit someone, so someone that you're close to. It could be your parent, [00:09:00] it could be a sibling, it could be your spouse, it could be a really good friend, it could be your boss, it could be a coworker.

(09:07):

The main thing you're looking for is somebody who is kind but not nice. You don't want to ask a nice guy. Nice guys. They just kind of tell you what you want to hear. They don't like conflict, they don't like awkwardness, they don't like confrontation. They're not going to tell you straight up what your character flaws are. They're probably going to dance around it or they're probably going to give you a little bit of a compliment sandwich. They'll say like [00:09:30] a compliment, and then they'll say a minor character flaw, and then they'll say another compliment like, yeah, it's really not that bad. It's not a huge deal. That is a nice guy and believe me, girls can be nice guys too. Generally speaking, you're going to want to find someone who is kind and willing to give it to you straight and someone who is okay maybe potentially giving you a little bit of a gut punch, a little bit of an ego blow because typically that's what this is.

(09:57):

This takes some humility to actually go out and ask someone what [00:10:00] you're weak at. From there, ideally you ask a few people, you see if there's any of the flaws that overlap. If you find some overlapping ones, like you get the same character weakness or flaw from three different people, that's probably one you really want to work on first, but one, maybe two character flaws at a time I would say is a great place to start. From there it is 2026 and we have access to an abundance of information, books, podcasts, coaches, courses, [00:10:30] YouTubes, you name it, where we can learn all about these character flaws, learn about the skills that are involved in these character flaws, what makes someone more charismatic, what makes someone a better leader? What skills make someone more of a strong team player and so on and so forth. Whatever your deficiencies may be, what makes someone a little bit better at not overexplaining things?

(10:52):

What makes someone better at interacting with strangers? What makes someone better at looking confident and showing that they actually have some [00:11:00] self-esteem and they have some strong presence, commanding presence, so on and so forth. These are just examples of a lot of flaws that a lot of people have. While you learn about these things, not afterwards, while you learn about these things, you're going to come across practical exercises, things that you come across in a book or things that you hear in a podcast or things that you watch in a YouTube video that you can actually do in practice in order to bring your character flaws up. It's one thing to know about them. Of [00:11:30] course, you want to know about your flaws. You want to know how to fix them. You want to kind know a little bit how you come off when you have these flaws, but what good is it to just know about them but not actually try and bring them up and believe me sounds obvious, but most people skip the actual practical application step taking action because it's really hard and it's really uncomfortable.

(11:51):

Most of us don't like doing things that we're not comfortable with at all. Usually it's just a complete chaotic emotional event, and [00:12:00] so most people skip them and they stay kind of in their comfort zone. You're going to have to go outside your comfort zone a lot. If you want to pursue a career in special forces and going to, for example, the grocery store and talking to someone that might be really uncomfortable for you, it really was for me when I first started doing this or asking some random barista for a discount, so maybe you can get used to getting rejected or putting yourself in a leadership position at work because you usually sit back and you're a little bit more feeble [00:12:30] and you're not confident. You don't have that presence, but you want to work on your leadership skills or maybe challenging your boss when your boss tells you to do something.

(12:37):

Maybe confronting him and having some sort of professional crucial conversation with him. Why are we doing this? Why is this a rule? Why are you making me do this? Or what is the whole point behind all of this? Putting yourself in these for many people, uncomfortable situations and actually assessing yourself on your performance and kind of maybe journaling about [00:13:00] it or at least having some sort of rating system where you can be like, okay, I did this. Well today I'm bringing up this skill by still have this skill to work on and here's how I'm going to do it. Or Hey, this character flaw, I've been working on this one for a while. I feel like I've brought it up significantly. What's the next one I can go to and how can I learn about that? And so on and so forth. Identifying your character flaws.

(13:21):

Not only will this help you at selection, by the way, selection is literally most selections I should say, are designed [00:13:30] to make character flaws that a lot of people don't think they even have. Maybe they just think they're really minor and not problematic. They are designed to magnify them, so whatever your minor character flaws are now when it's day three, a team week hour 22, and you got to rock on and it's cold and raining and you're hungry and you're tired and you're frustrated and your team's the last one in those little character flaws are being magnified. So identifying and working on your character flaws are therefore going to make them less problematic when they're magnified because [00:14:00] you're going to be at least aware of them, but also you're going to have worked before you go to bring them up so that even when they are magnified, there's still not a crazy problem, and this extends way beyond just selection.

(14:12):

Improving your character flaws is going to help you in many, many areas of life. Whatever endeavor you choose to do, whether you are even training for selection or maybe you're going to go to selection, you're going to do a career in soft, and then afterwards, guess what? You're probably not just going to hang it up and do nothing. Having stronger character is just [00:14:30] a sign that you are a capable human being. It's people with strong character are people that you want to be around, that other people want to be around. People are more willing to hire you and more willing to trust you with certain maybe higher demand, higher risk tasks, and you're just going to have better relationships as well, and relationships are a massive part of a healthy, high longevity life. So strongly recommend not just listening to this and [00:15:00] be like, oh, that sounds like I could do that, and then not doing it.

(15:04):

Most people aren't going to do it, but if you do, you are going to be setting yourself apart from the rest of the crew that just goes about life with their character flaws hanging out in their comfort zone and not doing anything about it. Number three is autoregulation. Autoregulation is a fancy training term for adjusting training on the fly based on subjective and objective biofeedback. What does that mean? [00:15:30] Hey, last night I slept four hours and I missed breakfast and my baby is teething, so I'm super stressed out and I have this big deadline at work, but by the way, I'm supposed to hit heavy squats and I'm also supposed to hit repeats today. Autoregulation would be, I don't think I'm really all that prepared for this training session, at least not the way it's written. What can I do to make it so that this training session is more appropriate for the state that I'm going to enter the [00:16:00] training session in?

(16:01):

Maybe you push it to the next day and you get a great night of sleep tonight you really fuel and you show up prepared and do it tomorrow. Maybe you just dial it back. Maybe instead of doing eight by four hundreds, you do five by four hundreds. Maybe instead of doing 97% of your one rep max, which I wouldn't really recommend doing in selection prep, but just as an example on a squat, maybe you do 85% and you just do another set or something like that, or maybe you have three to four sets of most lifts in [00:16:30] your training program and today you just do anything that has three sets. You do two sets. Anything that has four sets, you do three sets, so you drop a set off every lift. Maybe it's a really long run day or let's say a long ruck day and you're supposed to do running portions of that ruck.

(16:46):

Maybe you're getting pretty close to selection, but again, you just go into that session after a tough week of training, you're super smoked. Maybe you're not well fueled for whatever reason. Maybe you made some bad decisions leading in and you're supposed to do maybe a two hour ruck and five out of [00:17:00] every 10 minutes. During that ruck you're supposed to do a ruck run or a trot. Maybe that ruck is just a walking only ruck or maybe you drop 30 minutes off that ruck and do the same thing. Or maybe instead of five out of every 10 minutes you do two or three minutes or on the flip side, maybe you feel amazing and you had a great night of sleep and you get to the gym and your warmups are just cruising. They feel amazing, they're super crisp, you're really motivated, you're super focused, nothing, no other cares in the world, you're just into it.

(17:30):

[00:17:30] You maybe increase the intensity of your training session. Maybe you're supposed to do eight hundreds at a certain pace, maybe on that last 800, you go harder than that pace is supposed to be. Maybe you are supposed to do squats for sets of four to six, and last week maybe you did three 15, you were feeling all right last week, nothing great, but this week instead of going up to three 20, maybe go up to 3 25, maybe go up to three 30 and have a little bit bigger of [00:18:00] an increase in stimulus. This can get a little bit tricky, especially for type A. This is not permission to just go and send it off plan because you feel like you're convincing yourself that you feel amazing. It should still be calculated, but when you track things and you actually pay attention to things like your sleep quality, which will be kind of a later one, your sleep quality, your nutrition, your hydration, your mental outlook, your mental stress levels, it allows you to have a little bit more data going into [00:18:30] your training sessions and make informed decisions.

(18:32):

For example, my clients have permission to auto-regulate any training session they want. Of course they can hit me up in the chat, but if I, for whatever reason, don't get back to them and say they have a workout that day, they had a crazy weekend. Maybe it's a Monday and we're doing something really intense and they're debating whether they should do that training session or not. We talk about this all the time in our coaching calls, probably a good idea to either push that session to the next day or maybe dial that session back significantly [00:19:00] or of course hit me up and I can give them guidance, but if I don't get back to them in time, they have the knowledge and the ability to make these adjustments and live to lift or train another day. That's the thing. Even if you don't injure yourself by overshooting a training session based on your preparedness or just doing something crazy best case scenario, you don't really get much extra out of it because it's going to be extra fatigue that you're going to have to recover from anyway.

(19:26):

It's going to interfere with training in the rest of the week, but most [00:19:30] likely case that extra fatigue is going to interfere more than necessary with training for the rest of the week and maybe even bleed into the following week and the following week. Your results are the sum of all the training sessions you do, all the recovery you do. It's not just one day, so overshooting one day or going harder than your body is capable of one day at best is not going to be fruitful at worst, it's going to be detrimental. That's something a lot of people don't think of. They don't think of second and third order effects and [00:20:00] getting yourself used to thinking about second and third order effects is a great skill for soft because a lot of times when you are given missions or giving training opportunities, you're going to have to think of all these potential second and third order effects.

(20:13):

Of course, it's not training related, but a lot of people are just like, I'm going to do this and I only care about the acute result. What happens right now? They don't think about like, Hey, if I do this, what's going to happen later this week? If I do this, what kind of risk am I putting myself at for maybe [00:20:30] later this week? I have another hard workout and I didn't hurt myself today, but I overshot today so my body's still stressed. I am a little bit more inflamed, and boom, you're injured four days later and you think it was that day, but really it was overshooting another workout or maybe multiple workouts in the past, so there's a rhyme and reason for intensity prescriptions. There's a rhyme and reason for volume prescriptions, at least in my programs. Maybe not every program and autoregulation [00:21:00] is a great way to just make small adjustments, but it's also a great way to make sure that you are sticking to those intensity parameters and not overshooting anything, and you're just listening to your body.

(21:11):

Being able to listen to your body, especially as a type A hard charger that always just tells themselves they're good to go is such a massive skill for long-term success in training, and it's a huge skill for selection prep, especially for guys who are, maybe they have a high stress life, maybe they're working shift work, maybe [00:21:30] they're firefighters, maybe they are in the regular army and they have to go out to the field or they're doing staff duty or something like that. Being able to adjust on the fly is massive instead of just blindly following your program, super important skill to learn and one that it takes time, you have to practice it. You just got to be mindful of it though. That's the first thing is actually be mindful of, Hey, I'm not going to feel great every day. The better I get at telling myself honestly, whether I feel great [00:22:00] or not, the more successful I'm going to be in all these training sessions and therefore my long-term fitness progress.

(22:06):

So that's number three. Let's get to number four, which is they prioritize sleep with the big three. Okay, so there are so many sleep tips and tricks and hacks and supplements and whatnot out there. There is more information on sleep than we've ever had, and yet people still suck at it. People still get terrible sleep. The information is not a problem. I will [00:22:30] say though, there is a potential for there to be information overload. There are so many different strategies discussed out there and protocols. If you listen to Andrew Huberman, you might be overloaded with 'em and you're just like, I don't even know where to start. What can I do? I'm going to tell you what to do. I'm going to tell you three things that are simple, not easy, but simple that you can implement that's going to take care of 99% of your sleep issues.

(22:55):

By the way, I used to think I was a bad sleeper. I always kind [00:23:00] of had that belief about myself. I would tell people, yeah, I just don't sleep well. What was really the case was I was a bad sleep. I did not prioritize sleep. Turns out when you're just go, go, go all day and you don't put certain systems in place and habits in place, your body's not just going to go to sleep when you want it to. You can't just hope your way to good sleep. You actually have to act and do things that are going to bring you closer to better sleep. So three things. One [00:23:30] of 'em especially is going to be very, very difficult and almost no one's going to do it, but if you do, you're going to hopefully very quickly feel the benefits of it and you're going to not want to go back to your old ways.

(23:41):

So the big three for sleep one, make sacrifices to dial in your sleep and wake consistency. What does that mean? Getting up around the same time going to bed around the same time I say around because it does not have to be down to the minute. Honestly, I would say that's overkill. Trying to make it down to the [00:24:00] minute, I'll get into a little bit later, why over focusing on sleep can be problematic, but a general timeframe, ideally a 45 minute timeframe, even better, probably 30 minute timeframe, this will take care of honestly probably like 90% of your sleep issues. Recent studies have shown that sleep quality is actually more important than quantity. What does that mean? If you get seven hours of sleep and it's really, really high quality, like great, perfect sleep cycles, really [00:24:30] good deep sleep, really good REM sleep, not a lot of wake-ups and so on and so forth, you're going to be better off than getting eight hours of sleep, but you're all over the map.

(24:38):

You're doing it at different times. Some nights you just lie awake, barely getting any deep sleep, barely getting any REM sleep. Even though you're getting more sleep, you're spending more time in bed, it's lower quality and you're going to get less out of it. Ideally, you match both of them up. Not always possible, but if you could choose one, it's quality and the most effective way to improve your sleep quality [00:25:00] is consistent. Sleep and wait times. Hands down, no debate. Not doing this essentially is going to throw your circadian rhythm, your biological clock for a loop. An analogy I like to use is if you want to have a very effective next week, let's say right now it's Friday, you want to be super effective on Monday and Tuesday, which by the way, a lot of people, if you're following some of my programs or really ideally a good program early in the week, the training intensity is going [00:25:30] to be high.

(25:30):

You want to be really focused and fresh for higher intensity, higher skill stuff, so low rep lifting, repeats, things like that. If you want to be as effective as possible early next week and really crush those workouts and also be effective in life in general and feel good and feel motivated and driven, and let's say you live in New York City and you have two options for the weekend. One, you can stay home, two, you can fly to LA Friday night, [00:26:00] spend the weekend there, fly back on Sunday. What do you think will make you more effective on Monday? Probably staying home because you are not giving yourself jet lag. Find LA three hour time change from New York City. That is three hours. Typically it takes about a day per hour of time zone change to get back on track, so by Wednesday or Thursday you'll be at full capacity if you do that, whereas if you stay home and of course you go to bed and wake up at the same time, you're going to be [00:26:30] way more effective on Monday, Tuesday.

(26:33):

A lot of people do this every single week, so they will stay up 2, 3, 4 plus hours later on weekends than they do on weekdays and they'll sleep in because they want to get enough sleep. I mean, if you're going to stay up way later, you should probably sleep a little later too, so you're not getting four hours of sleep, but they wonder why they can't sleep on Sunday nights. They wonder why their workouts suck on Mondays and Tuesdays and they're just low motivation. They don't feel great. They don't have a lot of mental [00:27:00] clarity. Usually until Wednesday, maybe Thursday rolls around and guess what? Thursday is the day before they do the whole thing again. So every single week basically for half the week they're ineffective, and also when you're actually over the weekend, not that you have to be quite as effective across the board over weekends because most people have weekends off, you're also ineffective because you are throwing your body for a loop by going to bed late and sleeping in late.

(27:25):

Your circadian rhythm is all over the place and doing this every single [00:27:30] week is going to detrimentally affect your overall outcomes, your physical training, your recovery, your nutrition choices, and like I said, your ability to focus your mental outlook so strongly recommend doing everything in your power to do step number one. Yes, it's hard and that is why so many people are, it's one of many reasons why so many people are ineffective because they are unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary to dial their sleep in. [00:28:00] Yeah, you might have to miss out on watching seven episodes in a row of a Netflix show. You might have to say no to going the bars. You might have to, if a friend invites you out to dinner at 8:00 PM you might have to say no, or Hey, you want to go at six instead. That is just sacrifice, that's reality.

(28:17):

That's sacrifices that you're just going to have to make in order to get this dialed in, but again, you're going to feel so much better. Step two is to set a night alarm. Your night alarm is your cue to finish [00:28:30] the day as you know it and get prepared for the night. The sleep, your body needs to actually get an idea that it's nighttime and that it's about to need to go to sleep. So by setting this night alarm, you're every single day reminding yourself, okay, now it's time to start preparing for sleep. What does that look like? It can look different for everyone. The main rule is that it does not have any screens. So you're not on your computer, you're not watching tv, you're not looking at your phone. [00:29:00] You can do things like take a walk. Usually my wife and I'll go for a walk to start out that hour.

(29:06):

You can read, you can stretch, you can pet your dogs, you can chat with your spouse. You can even call someone. You can listen to a podcast, you can listen to an audiobook, really anything other than staring at screens, and you probably don't want to have stressful conversations either. So no work, no stressful conversations, no screens other than that, anything that's relaxing. You also don't want to do anything super intense like [00:29:30] a hard workout or something like that. That's kind of common sense, but just by doing that, you are going to prepare yourself. Your body is going to be prepared for sleep. Other things that should happen during this time, one is turn the thermostat down. Make sure your house is nice and cool. 66, 67, 68 degrees is a pretty good range. You can get a little bit cooler than that if you want. I would not go anything over 70.

(29:55):

Your body temperature has to drop in order for you to fall into asleep. Deep sleep. [00:30:00] You should also dim all your lights, turn lights off that you're not using and dim your lights always blows my mind to see people have fluorescent lights on in their house at nighttime and wonder why they can't sleep. Dim them, turn them off. Maybe use candlelight, something like that. You don't have to go pitch dark and hurt yourself, but some common sense. Again, another thing I would consider is taking a warm shower. That way when you get out of the shower and your body's exposed to the ambient temperature because by the way you've already turned [00:30:30] the thermostat down, you're going to actually have a drop in temperature and physiologically, this is not something that you can argue. It's like a physiological fact. Your temperature, your body temperature has to drop.

(30:42):

I think it's one to three degrees in order for you to fall into a nice quality deep sleep. And deep sleep is the phase of sleep that happens earlier on in the evening and is extremely important for physical recovery among other things. That one's huge. That alarm should be set approximately nine hours before [00:31:00] you want to wake up. So if you get seven and a half hours of sleep, okay, eight and a half hours, if you get eight and a half hours of sleep, nine and a half hours, you get the picture, but approximately nine hours that way you give yourself at least eight hours, two sleep, and that was step two and three at the same time. So step two was setting your alarm, making sure that your alarm is set at the same time every night. Step three is actually doing a pre-bed wind down routine. So all the things I just went over, those big three right there are massive. If you want to add to it, [00:31:30] you can definitely add certain things or it honestly would be like take out certain things. You want to make sure you're not eating too close to bedtime, like a big meal. You can have small portions close to bedtime, but you don't want to be super full going to bed.

(31:44):

You should also make sure you're cutting your caffeine off at least eight hours prior to bed. For some people, they need to cut it off like 10, 11 hours prior to bed and you might not even perceive that your caffeine is messing with your sleep. But if you have sleep trouble and you're slamming caffeine, really [00:32:00] any caffeine, I would say great idea to cut it off. And by the way, you definitely want to cut your caffeine off before you go to selection so you're not having withdrawals, so may as well start booze. A lot of people think booze helps them sleep. It is sedating you. Sedation and sleep are not the same thing, so no booze. If there's one time to just not drink, it would be the last few months before you go to selection anyway, but no matter what booze is going to throw a wrench in your sleep in a big, big way [00:32:30] even if you don't perceive it to.

(32:32):

And another one that kind of blows my mind is when people just go to bed super well hydrated, they're peeing every 20 minutes because they think they have to be hydrated 24 7. So also consider cutting your water off. I personally, unless I'm really, really dying, which just means I did not prioritize water throughout the day, but if I'm really thirsty, I'll drink some water before bed, but typically I cut water off with dinner last time I drink for the day is around dinnertime. I still sometimes get up [00:33:00] to pee in the middle of the night one time, but there are people who go three, four times throughout the night and to think that that is not negatively affecting your sleep is crazy. So that's the big three, and if you can do those things, again, you're covering almost all of your bases and therefore you're going to recover better, you're going to feel better, you're going to perform better.

(33:20):

Number five is two prep meals ahead of time. There are two different ways to do this. One is more money, less bandwidth. The other one is [00:33:30] more bandwidth, less money. Number one, outsource it. You can go on any sort of meal prep website and order as many meals as you want. I personally use Mega fitt and I love them. Don't have to use them, but that's the best one that I have tried. They're a little bit more premium, especially they're custom meals, but they're one of few that you can actually make custom meals. You can order whatever you want as far as meat and carbs and so on, or you can cook your own food [00:34:00] and cooking your own food of course takes more time. You have to actually go shop. You have to put it together. Generally what I like to do is twice a week when I used to do this when I was in, I would make a big massive dinner on Sunday night and then I'd make another big massive dinner on Wednesday night, Sunday nights dinner.

(34:16):

I would eat for lunch on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Wednesday nights dinner. I would eat for lunch on Thursday, Friday, and then usually Saturday I'd be a little bit more loose. Oftentimes too, I would make some breakfast foods [00:34:30] at the same time like overnight oats, some eggs, and I would eat those for breakfast. Sometimes I ate at the defect, but sometimes I didn't. And on the weeks I always prepared my breakfast for that week too. Basically identify your problem meals. For a lot of people, it's lunch. For some people it's breakfast and lunch. Some people it's dinner, but usually people have a little bit more time to do dinner. But if you don't have a crazy week and you're not going to be able to cook dinner instead of just stopping somewhere random, wherever feels good on the way home, actually take some time and put some effort [00:35:00] in to prepare your dinner.

(35:02):

So that is number five, really simple, but generally speaking, if you don't have a plan in place for your nutrition, you're going to fail. That's just every single successful nutrition plan that I've seen or that I've helped someone with has had some sort of planning done. It doesn't have to be down to the exact fricking every single meal. You don't have to do a seven day, seven hour Sunday meal prep day, but it's got to have some sort of plan in place and some sort of pre-preparation. [00:35:30] So consider that. Number six is a training related one. They all squat, hinge, push and pull, horizontal and vertical, push and pull, but they don't all use a barbell. In fact, I would say a higher percentage of my clients before going to selection don't do barbell squats. They don't do barbell deadlifts. Some of them do barbell bench, but not all of them, and they show up strong and prepared and feeling good, [00:36:00] ready to crush.

(36:01):

I've talked about this a lot in the past, but I will reiterate it. There are no power lifting requirements at selection. You won't have to do a squat, you won't have to do a bench press, you won't have to do a deadlift with a barbell or any sort of deadlift. You won't have to do any power cleans or snatches or anything like that. All these lifts are fine to include in your program, but they're not required to include in your program. Generally speaking, for most people, a squat alternative of some kind, a press alternative of [00:36:30] some kind, a deadlift alternative are going to be a slightly better option because they're going to A be less fatiguing. B, they don't involve as much skill and mental focus C. They still help you build those muscles and strengthen that movement pattern. And for a lot of people, their body proportions, their mobility restrictions just don't allow them to do those movements really, really well.

(36:53):

A lot of people don't realize that they're high skill lifts and so they don't treat them as skills and they just sloppily check the block. With these lifts, [00:37:00] you're usually going to feel less fatigue. You're going to feel like your joints are a little bit less banged up when you choose a lift that is a lot more personalized to you and appropriate for your needs and your body proportions and your mobility. So a few options for a squat that aren't barbell squats or barbell back squats. You could do front squats, but that's still a barbell squat. Still a fine lift, usually a little bit better for some people, but not always. You could do a safety bar squat if you really [00:37:30] are gung-ho about free weights. Honestly, safety bar squats are really good and I would consider doing them anyway as at least one of your squat days.

(37:37):

If you're doing more than one, you can do a hack squat, you can do a belt squat, you can do a leg press, you can do a pendulum squat or you can even do single leg stuff. Honestly, this would be one time where I would probably emphasize a little bit more single leg stuff than bilateral stuff, bilateral lifts, you definitely want those as staples, but at this time, honestly, at selection, you're going [00:38:00] to find yourself on one leg a lot of time. Every time you take a step, you're going to be on one leg, and so supplementing some good unilateral lifts in and executing them properly. Hard training rest in between legs, so on and so forth is going to be massive. For hinge. I really like a barbell for most hinges, but I don't love a barbell deadlift off the floor for certain people.

(38:24):

Some people can definitely do it, but it's quite fatiguing. It's a high skill lift. It takes a lot out of you, and [00:38:30] this one is very subject to different body proportions. So if you have really short arms and your back is parallel to the floor in the start position of a deadlift, that is probably not the best lift for you to be doing right now. At least You could raise it up by using some bumper plates or some blocks, some lifting blocks, or you could do any number of different hinges. You could do Romanian deadlifts, you could do stiff legged deadlifts. You could do single leg versions of those. You can do good mornings. You can do a more upper body hinge, like a 45 degree [00:39:00] back raise that biases the glutes and hamstrings or one or the other. Those are all very acceptable exercises that will make your posterior chain really strong.

(39:09):

So highly consider that pressing and pulling other than a bench press, you can do deficit pushups, you can do dips, you can do dumbbell presses if you like the bench press movement, but it kind of bangs your shoulders up. You can use a safety bar or not a safety bar, a Swiss bar or a Cadillac bar for extra range of motion for pulling [00:39:30] barbell rose. I don't think I've ever programmed for any client, so usually I will have them if they do a bent over row without any support, it'll be with dumbbells, but usually we don't do that. Normally we do chest supported rows or sometimes cable rows, but typically it's a chest supported dumbbell row on an incline bench or a chest supported T-bar row or chest supported horizontal row on a machine of some kind pull-ups, you're going to have to do pull-ups.

(39:53):

Of course, there's no real vertical pulling you can do with a barbell, but you'll have to do pull-ups, [00:40:00] but at the same time, you want to rotate your grip a little bit so it's not always prone grip on a straight bar. Use some ankles nineties, use some rings, at least go with some neutral grip pullups once in a while. Some chin-ups definitely implement potentially some pull downs as well. Overhead press, I would say for the vast majority of people overhead press with the barbell going into selection would not be my top choice. Most guys already have overdeveloped, front dets, and most guys also have not great shoulder mobility, and the [00:40:30] overhead press really requires excellent shoulder mobility, and it also requires lack of ego, and when you don't have those prerequisites and you just continue to barbell overhead press, which a lot of people do, they wonder why their shoulders are always bothering them, and that is probably not the only reason, but it's definitely one of them.

(40:47):

So again, as long as you are getting strong in the movement patterns, you're going to be fine. I promise you, you don't have to squat, bench deadlift. And furthermore, you'll probably see stuff online like you have to squat, bench deadlift, [00:41:00] these numbers, you don't have to do them at all, let alone hit certain numbers. Just remember that. Number seven, they do low carries. Farmer's carries and suitcase carries three days per week, but they never go over 60 pounds. Before we get into the last couple months of selection prep, I'll go a little heavier with my guys. Heavier carries are great and they work, and you can definitely do them. Generally though, as you get closer to selection, you want to be as specific as possible and also being more [00:41:30] specific. In this case, generally what you're going to carry at selection is going to be like 45 to 60 pounds when you're doing low carries.

(41:36):

By increasing that specificity, you are making it less fatiguing as well. Carrying 60 pound dumbbells or 55 pound dumbbells or kettlebells is way less fatiguing than carrying 100 pound kettlebells, and it's also going to translate over a lot better to what you're going to be actually carrying just because you can carry a hundred or let's say a hex bar with 365 pounds on it, 50 [00:42:00] meters doesn't necessarily mean you can carry a 45 to 50 pound water can, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of meters, and by the end of it like several miles, you really want to specify your training and make sure that you are doing the right thing and also allowing yourself to recover a little more. Typically what I have my guys do is Monday and Friday we do just carries. At the end of the training session, we'll do typically one day we'll [00:42:30] have fat grip caries.

(42:31):

The other day we'll have regular grip caries, and typically we favor suitcase carries or one arm carries a little bit more than carrying with both arms just because you're going to be doing that more at selection, you should definitely do farmer's caries with both hands sometimes, but I would favor a little bit more suitcase caries. And Wednesday, we typically do a strongman workout that has carries in it, so it'll be like a bunch of sled work, a bunch of sandbag work, a bunch of carry work all in one training session, and then Friday again, it'll [00:43:00] just be tacked on at the end of the workout. So that's the way I do it. None of my clients have ever come back and say, said, I wish we did more grip work. That doesn't mean my clients never fail. I would never claim that that's ridiculous, but I have yet to have a client give me feedback that we didn't do enough grip work, and it's three days a week, simple, 50 pounds, 60 pounds, that is it.

(43:22):

Number eight, they run two to three days a week and they run twice a week and they cross train one day a week. Typically, [00:43:30] if I have a guy who's really weak at running, we might get a fourth run in, but for the most part it's two or three. If someone's really strong at running twice a week, usually speed work and tempo work, and then we'll do a shorter but heavier and slower ruck earlier in the week, and we'll do a longer and faster, a little bit lighter ruck on the weekend, and that's kind of like the time trial prep ruck. But I see all these plans with cardio every single day. It'd be like three, four or five runs, [00:44:00] one or two rucks, very little cross training, and typically that's going to be overkill. If you only had to be good at running and rucking, yes, it would make sense to do basically every day, do either a runner or a ruck, but you also have to be strong and you also have to recover from all of your training.

(44:17):

And when you're just overloading yourself with too many training sessions, overall your recovery is going to suffer. And then cross-training is just a great way to still get aerobic development, but also in a way that is not going to be [00:44:30] stressful on your skeletal system. So something like a bike row combo for like 75 minutes, 90 minutes, or you can also spend time on your feet, but just in a low impact way. You can do stuff like stairs or incline walking. Those work great too, but some sort of cross training, it doesn't have to be every single week, but most weeks I would consider adding some in, whether it's just a shorter session just to get a little bit more in or whether it's replacing, maybe it's replacing that first ruck of the week sometimes because [00:45:00] you're a little bit spent, you don't want more impact on your body, but simple, very simple stuff.

(45:06):

Number nine, they lift weights two days a week using a full body template, and they do a strongman day and a calisthenics day one day a week. So Monday, Friday, our full body lifts Wednesday is just calisthenics, a little bit of power work and a strongman session that I kind of just went over in the last one, and that's it. If you're training four or five, [00:45:30] six days a week, four, I mean, you might be able to get away with lifting four days a week, but I think it's a hundred percent overkill. But I see guys lifting five days a week, six days a week, push pull leg split, absolutely insane, totally unnecessary. You're just adding way more fatigue than you need to, and you're taking away precious recovery reserves that you could be spending elsewhere on more specific and more appropriate things for SVS, like your runs, your rocks, et cetera.

(45:55):

Number 10, they track their metrics at very [00:46:00] minimum calories and training progress. They have a logbook in the app that I use and they track their calories, they track their macros. Not all my clients do, but my clients who get the best results absolutely do. And here's the deal. If you are just going about this kind of winging it and having no idea, or maybe you think you have an idea of what you're eating, I was talking earlier about fat, how people just overeat fat and they don't really realize it, then you are leaving gains on the [00:46:30] table. You're leaving progress on the table. You are probably, you are not going to have the ideal body composition that you want. And if there's one time to just dial it in and actually be someone who actually cares about what they're doing, it's right now. And honestly, it's not that much to ask to enter the foods you're eating on some sort of calorie tracking app.

(46:54):

It's going to keep things objective, it's going to remove your feelings from it, and it's also going to make it [00:47:00] so that you're covering all your bases with your nutrition instead of just hoping or thinking or praying that you're covering all your bases. And a lot of guys will just wonder, why am I not recovering well? Why am I not making progress where I should be? Or why is this guy who's training with me or training at the same time as I am, why is he making better progress? Oh, he's tracking his macros. Also, you're training. You should be trying to progress progressive overload. You should know going into this week's session how [00:47:30] you performed in this same session last week, assuming you're doing a reasonable program that has similar sessions week to week. If you're always just going, whatever, let's see what happens. How are you supposed to know when you're getting better?

(47:42):

How are you supposed to know how much intensity or how much volume or what pace to run at when you just have no idea what you did last week and you're not going to have any idea what you're doing today or next week. You're just kind of going and winging it. So tracking those two things, especially some of my clients track their sleep and it goes really well [00:48:00] for them. Other guys struggle with sleep tracking. Sleep is one of those things that the more you try at it, the more effort you put into, I need to go get to sleep and I need to beat my sleep score from yesterday or from last week, or I have to get this certain resting heart rate in the morning, or I have to get some certain sleep performance score. Typically for type A individuals who are really competitive, that can be a little bit overwhelming and it results in worse sleep.

(48:29):

It paradoxically [00:48:30] makes you sleep worse. So this one's individual. If you track your sleep and you're objective about it and it doesn't interfere with your sleep, you're not trying to make it a competition or something like that, totally fine. But if you find that looking at your sleep scores every day is just messing you up, I would strongly recommend stopping. Don't track your sleep anymore. Go back to the sleep. I think it was number three or four, go back to the big three in sleep and just do those things and you're going to be totally fine. You [00:49:00] can subjectively rate how you slept. So going back to autoregulation, if you have a bad night of sleep, because most people know when they don't sleep well because you're awake, that's one thing and that's a great idea to be subjective about it. But getting really, really into the data for some people can just be overkill, and being able to identify that about yourself is huge.

(49:22):

And if it's overkill for you or if it worsens your sleep, then don't do it. But at minimum, macros and training progress should [00:49:30] absolutely be objectively recorded. Number 11, this one's going to be real tough if anyone implements it, and that is to restrict or even just quit altogether. Social media use, honestly, there is no reason to be on social media prior to going to selection. It is only going to be more of a distraction. It's only going to be more of a stressor during this time. You're already going to be really stressed. You're going to selection. It is a stressful time. It's probably the most important job interview you've ever gone to. You're physically stressed because you're training hard. [00:50:00] You may have a stressful day at work, or you may have just a generally stressful job adding all these little micro stressors into your day by mindlessly scrolling.

(50:10):

Social media is just going to compound it even if you don't feel it. Generally, people don't realize just how bad their social media habits are until A, they either do a time audit and they see how much time every single week they waste on social media, or B, they just stop using it and they start feeling so much better [00:50:30] and so much more motivated and so much less distracted, and they're like, oh my God, I didn't even realize how terrible that was. So at least make some sort of rule about when you're allowed to scroll, when you're not allowed to scroll and stick to it or just, Hey, the last three weeks before I go to selection, no social media, I'm just going to get off it. I'm not going to go on. And if I want, when I come back, I'll get back on.

(50:55):

But for now, this is the focus. I am not going to distract myself with a bunch of [00:51:00] curated lives and fake shit on social media. I'm not going to go spend an hour, two hours, three hours accidentally just scrolling your life away. If there's any tip on here that you probably don't want to do but should do, I would say it should be this one. And this is coming from someone who makes a living via social media basically that most of my content I put out there, and that's how I get most of my clients. It's how I sell programs. And I'm still strongly suggesting [00:51:30] that even don't even follow my shit. You don't need to know anything else. You already have enough information. They're going to tell you what to do every single day. You don't have to go on Reddit and figure out what's going on this day, this day, this day, what's happening during this part.

(51:44):

All these different tidbits about selection. You just don't need to know it. And you're going to be better off if you don't know it. And you just show up and wait for them to tell you what to do and then go do it to the best of your ability. That is all. Lastly, they focus on the process over [00:52:00] the outcome. Alright, so process over the outcome. Super trite, but quotes don't become trite by accident. Quotes become trite because of shared experience from most people who go through some sort of process and see big outcomes. Generally speaking, they focus on the day to day, the hour to hour, not the what's going to happen on day seven when this condition is in place, or what happens if I get caught cheating [00:52:30] on the Land N course or what happens if I make it all the way to the end and I'm not sure if I made it or not.

(52:36):

And I go into the board and they say, I'm a nons. Select what happens if I step in a hole when I'm doing land nav and I break my leg. All these what ifs are not inside your control. So worrying about them, I know it's easier said than done. I worry about things sometimes that are not in my control. It's not as easy as just deciding not to. But worrying about all these things that aren't in your control is only going to add more stress. And when you are just [00:53:00] ruminating about basically everything under the sun, other than what the task at hand is right now, what do I need to do right now in order to set myself up for better success down the road? What do I have to eat? What do I have to do for a training session? What do I have to do to prepare for my training session?

(53:16):

Maybe it's the evening. What do I have to do right now to prepare for better sleep? And you stack day after day after day after day of worrying about or focusing on, I should say, it's not really even worrying. Worrying because you're present. You're presently [00:53:30] focused on what has to happen. Now you're clearing your mind of all these future potential outcomes that are only just going to overwhelm you. And one of the main reasons for of course, you're going to feel a little bit of doubt, you're going to feel a little uncertainty and worry going into selection. But one of the main reasons for it beyond social media, the last one is thinking about outcomes and not thinking about the present. Those who focus on the present see better results. So if you can get yourself to stop thinking about these future potential [00:54:00] outcomes and just focus on the present, what has to happen right now and get that done and do it to the best of your ability, and when that's done, you focus on the next task and then the next task and so on.

(54:13):

Your mental health and your clarity is going to be so much better. And also, it's great practice for selection because when you get to selection, if all you're thinking about is what's going to happen tomorrow, what's going to happen five days from now? What's going to happen seven days from now? Instead of what has to happen right now for me to crush? [00:54:30] Segmenting your days down, it allows you to get through them easier. It actually lowers the burden of doing those things, and you're also just going to have less of a miserable time. So that is it. That is 12 things that if you strongly consider implementing in your life, I would guess that you're going to have significantly better selection, prognosis. And yes, those things are hard. A lot of them are hard. Some of 'em are really simple, but still people won't do 'em. But if you do, you're [00:55:00] going to set yourself apart from the rest and you're going to show up, you're going to win and you're going to crush. So thank you guys for tuning in. I'll be back soon with another episode. Till then, Terminator out.