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Staying Healthy During Special Forces Selection
Prevent colds and injuries with these 3 tactics.
If you dream of becoming a special forces operator, SOF selection is the biggest obstacle you will face on your journey. There will be no other moment on the special forces pathway when you experience such mental and physical shock (other than actual combat). When you enter a selection course like BUD/S or SFAS, you make the transition from being a civilian to being a warrior – and that transition is grueling.
Underperforming or cracking under pressure aren’t the only ways in which people fail selection. Another significant contributor to dropouts is injury and sickness. It doesn’t matter how tough you are or how fast you can ruck. A broken bone or severe infection will take you out of selection immediately. In this OA guide, we’ll give you the three principles you need to stay healthy and injury-free at BUD/S, SFAS, or any other special forces selection course.
Preventative Maintenance
Special forces selection is fast-paced and unpredictable. You won’t have much (if any) control over your sleep, diet, or schedule. As such, it can be nearly impossible to control your health in such a chaotic environment.
Does that mean you can't influence your performance at selection? Absolutely not. You simply have to take a proactive, preventative approach to maintain your health. This means that the best way to stay fit throughout selection is to prepare your body adequately before you ship out. Here are three tactics you can use to ensure you perform at your best even in the harshest conditions:
Tactic 1: Adapt to Change
Having the physical fitness to qualify and make it through SOF selection is crucial. But unless you have access to a beach, ocean, inflatable boats, and massive logs, you’ll never be able to truly replicate selection. No matter how you train, starting BUD/S or SFAS will always be a shock to your system.
Oftentimes, injuries in selection happen because the mind is more motivated than the body is ready. In other words, aspiring operators push the pace and get injured as a result. If you want to avoid becoming another medical discharge, you must ensure that your body can handle the pressures of selection.
The best way to achieve this is to exercise your physical adaptability – your body’s ability to perform in new and dynamic environments. The easiest way to start training your physical adaptability is with cross-training in other disciplines. If your workouts usually consist of running and weightlifting, it’s time to mix things up. Try to incorporate a unique type of training at least once a week. This can include playing team sports, rock climbing, swimming, and martial arts – anything that gets your body out of its comfort zone and forces it to adapt.
Start cross-training today, and in a few months, you will see a massive difference in how you overcome new physical challenges.
Tactic 2: Supercharge Your Immune System
When most people think about reasons for dropping out of SOF selection, sickness usually doesn't come to mind. Despite this, an illness can put you out of commission just as swiftly as an injury. At selection, you are exposed to the elements and live in close quarters with dozens of other applicants – ideal conditions for viruses and infections.
If you want to survive selection and graduate as an operator, your immune system must be bulletproof. Achieving this requires you to take preemptive measures to fortify your body’s ability to fight off illnesses.
If you don’t already take cold showers, start doing it today. Apart from helping you get used to voluntary discomfort (a valuable trait in the teams), cold showers put your body into a brief temperature shock, causing your immune system to activate. We wrote a different guide about
the benefits of cold showers, so click the link to check it out now!
Other things you can do to strengthen your immune system include being up to date on your vaccines,
eating a healthy diet
(we wrote an OA guide about this too!), and avoiding smoking and alcohol.
Tactic 3: Get Stable
Although every selection course involves slightly different exercises, they all have one thing in common: there is a lot of walking, running, and lifting. Whether you’re in BUD/S, SFAS, or any other selection program, you can bet that your training will require you to traverse some unforgiving terrain.
During selection activities like rucking and running, injuries like ligament tears, pulled muscles, and rolled ankles are common. These injuries can put a swift end to the special forces dreams of even the fittest candidates. If you’re like most aspiring operators, you likely already train daily. But what you might not be doing is supplementing your regular workouts with exercises that focus on improving your joint and ligament stability. We wrote another OA guide going into this topic in detail, so click here to read about
Balance Exercises for Performance, but here’s the abbreviated version:
You need to train how you will fight. In other words, you need to subject your body to the strains you’ll experience at selection. Start by
improving your flexibility. The greater your range of motion, the less chance you have of pulling a muscle or hyperextending a joint. Next, change your training environment. If you typically run or ruck on paved roads, start exercising on forest paths and fields instead. The decreased stability and traction of your setting will help your body get used to stabilizing and making micro-adjustments on the fly. This ability can save you from countless rolled ankles.
Physical fitness is at the core of special operations. If you can’t pull your own weight, you become a liability to your team. SOF warriors operate at the cutting edge of war. As such, an operator’s success relies on his ability to move faster and fight harder than the enemy. If you want to join the teams, daily physical training is mandatory. That’s why we teamed up with SEAL Commander, Greg DeLuca, to create our custom OA workout plans. Whether you want to get shredder or ruck faster, we have the program for you.
Visit our workouts page and get started now!
