 Life is about constant evolution. Always better today than we were yesterday. There are no shortcuts to a successful fitness regimen. Only hard work and consistency. And to navigate through the mountain of fitness advice available, candidates must learn to separate fad from function. I'm Daniel Fletcher. Welcome to the Only Easy Day was Yesterday, the official Navy SEAL podcast. In this extended series, we'll speak with select special warfare performance experts to clarify common training misconceptions and provide insight into areas of focus specifically important to special warfare candidates. Today, we extend our fitness series with a discussion about push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups with director of fitness for SEAL and SWIT training, Mike Capiston. Let's get started. Well, Mike, today we're talking about push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups or whatever order you want to put it in. Usually following the order of the PST is I'd have to guess. Obviously, there's movement standards that they're going to have to hit during these tests and it's a big part of what people are kind of staring down the train tracks that they know that they're going to be tested on. Touch a little bit on people maybe falling into the mistake of overtraining in these areas and how that impacts people's programming. Well, if it wasn't for the PST, the physical screening test and the requirements to do certain standards in push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups, I really wouldn't talk about them at all because those three exercises fall within the overall framework that we've talked about previously for training the upper body and the core so those are exercises that should be part of your overall balanced routine but in a perfect world, they wouldn't be emphasized or overemphasized exclusively. The reality is that people have to pass the standards for the PST and so they're going to have to spend a little bit of extra time working specifically on those exercises. We want to try to walk the line between developing the ability to meet the standards without violating the principles that I've talked about previously in terms of over-developing certain areas. There are actually reasonable ways that we can do that. So maybe you can unpack that a little bit. I know pull-ups are a big, I guess, hurdle for people that may be just starting to work out and they want to try to nail it until they're really good at it. Well, so if you can't do even a single pull-up, that's kind of a problem. Ideally, to get into budge, you want to be able to do in the upper teens, you know, 20. I actually wouldn't encourage people to do more than that because the statistics show that people that do large amounts of pull-ups in the 25 to 30 range are much more likely to get injured and not any more likely to get through the program without quitting. So more is not necessarily better, but you got to get past one. So how do you recommend people kind of scale that or kind of assist themselves? Yeah, a couple of different ways. You can do assisted pull-ups and so different people have used bands so that they can take out part of their body weight and if you can't lift your entire body weight one time, you can lift part of your body weight one or a few times. So what do you mean by that when you say using bands? I don't have an example right in front of us here but on elastic bands, such as over there, so you put it around your feet. Like a large elastic band. We're talking about something that's maybe two inches or so, different colored bands. Even probably more realistic or easier to do if you're in a gym that has a lat pull machine where you can use the plate stack and use less than your body weight. Are you talking about one of those where you would rest your knees or part of your body with it? There are a couple different ways. So you're talking about what I think it's a gravatron that will do that. So there are different designs that allow you just the actual weight stack machine where you grab the bar and you sit down and you put the weight stack to an amount that's less than your body weight. I got you, okay. So a couple of different ways you can approach it, but one way is to do several reps with less than your body weight until you develop enough that I can do 10 at say 70% of my body weight, then eventually you can do one or two with your body weight. But another even simpler way that you could do it is to do negative pull-ups. So you would get a pull-up bar, get a step or a stair or some sort of platform that you can step onto so that you can put your chin over the bar and then lower your body weight down. Kind of like an arm hanging. An arm hanging and then resist gravity. So the negatives are the important thing. If you can't do one pulling yourself up, you can still do one lowering yourself down. And so you can do one rest for a few seconds, do another and in the beginning you might only do that five or six times, but after a few sessions you'll get enough strength where hopefully you can eventually do one. If you can do one complete pull-up, then you can do it and take a little break and do another complete pull-up and eventually get to the point where you can do two or three. And then once you get up to where you can do five or six, you're on the way to being able to do even more. And then kind of incorporating that in smaller rep counts and kind of building from there. Yeah, but the biggest stumbling block, again, if you can't do one, then that's a problem. You've got to figure out a way that you can at least do one and then gradually build from there. Now I read in your training guide kind of changing up the variety of grips for yourself. Is that more of an advanced thing? You recommend that? It's not an advanced thing. And I think that over the years I've probably come away from that. I don't say never do it. It's actually fine to do it occasionally, but it's probably not the most important aspect. Do you think that's because people kind of can fall down that becoming a specialist that pull-ups kind of attract? Yeah, exactly right. So I'm just, I'm trying to discourage people from spending too much time on pull-ups as an example. And my recommendation for push-ups, set-ups and pull-ups is to try to get the most benefit out of the least amount of training that you can do. And so you're really trying to be streamlined and efficient. And so if you're on the pull-up bar, exploring all sorts of mixed grip and wide grip and narrow grip and different grip, then you're going to be spending too much time on the bar altogether. So that's something that's not necessarily over-developing your pull-up but not developing other parts of your regimen. Yeah. Okay. Is that an area where you think applying, like we talked about this briefly in terms of training the core, adding resistance, whether it's weight, weighted vest. Well, you can get to the point where if you can do pull-ups in the high teens that you might want to add a little bit of extra weight. So yeah, you can do that. Again, I don't necessarily encourage people to strive for that, but if you can do 20 perfectly executed controlled pull-ups with your body weight, then rather than doing 30 perfect controlled pull-ups with your body weight, I would say you can add a little bit of resistance so you can put on it. Start with a 10-pound or a 15-pound weight vest. Or if you're on the lap pull machine, you can pull down more than your body weight. You know, you can adjust the plate stack so it's less, but you can also adjust it so that it's more. So there's other ways that you can create a little bit more resistance. Do you echo, I guess, that same recommendation throughout the other movements of push-ups and sit-ups as well in terms of adding weight or resistance, however you see it? It's probably a little bit different for push-ups and especially sit-ups because it'd be a rare person, especially somebody that was seriously considering budge that couldn't even do a few sit-ups or a few push-ups. And so if you've got something that you can build off of, then you can get started. If you literally couldn't do a single push-up, you would do the exact same thing. You would start in the front-leaning position and lower yourself carefully down to the ground. Maybe you can't lift yourself up, but you could lower yourself down. So lower yourself down, take a little break, lower yourself down, and get to the point where you can do at least a couple of regular full-scale push-ups. And it would be a long time later, although as part of regular strength training, you're going to be doing some resisted chest-press exercises anyway. You're going to be doing some dumbbell presses or some bench-press or something like that. So you're probably going to be doing some resisted chest-press motions in addition to the push-ups that you're doing to prepare for the PST. I know that push-ups is an area specifically where there's a little bit of variety in terms of hand positioning that can be either beneficial or potentially detrimental. Maybe you can unpack that a little bit for us. Well, two things. I would say make sure that you investigate the current standards for the PST so that if you show up to take one that you'll know exactly what they're going to expect you to do in terms of what your hand placement is, how far your range of motion is, where, if anywhere, you can rest during the test and recognize what all the requirements are so that you can practice that. But besides that, my encouragement is to keep the hands pretty much below the shoulders. If we look at the website Sealswick.com, we've got some discussion on that and I've pointed out some technical things that I would encourage people to consider. But the important thing about the push-up is that you keep the hands relatively shoulder-width, maybe only slightly wider and not very much wider, and that you incorporate proper body position, back position, identical to doing the front plank. And it turns out that people that are struggling with push-ups, a good compliment to preparing for the push-up is to do a good core strengthening program. We talked with, if I can remember, I think Steve Drum at NSW Prep, and he kind of hammered home perfect push-ups, perfect form, and I think it was him that recommended recording yourself and watching yourself. I think that's a really great idea and I just kind of want to throw that in there because I'm never hearing that from you. But again, it's important to recognize the standards that are going to be enforced when you're doing your PST. So you might think you're doing a good push-up, you better make sure that your view agrees with the official view. Do your research, do due diligence to make sure that you're not wasting your time training improperly. In regards to sit-ups, I think this is kind of an area that I've heard potential for, you know, rink in your neck or maybe the back, maybe potential injury there. Talk a little bit about maybe some of the stuff that you see specific for ab training and core training that you would maybe incorporate, whether it's some lumbar support or foot clamp type apparatus. The thing that I would recommend for abdominal work or for actually a variety of different exercises that are involved in core and even some lower body exercises would be awareness of the pelvic tilt. And if you sit on a Swiss ball, that big round globe filled with air, and if you sit down and you start to think about the different movements that your pelvis can do, you can bend your pelvis forward, you can tilt your pelvis back, you can shake it from side to side. You want to try to maintain a fairly neutral pelvic tilt. And if you're doing a sit-up or if you're doing an exercise like the leg lift on the ground, if you lie on the ground, the small of your back should be pressed against the ground. If there's an arch or a space that you can put your hand underneath, that's improper. That's a forward pelvic tilt and that'll create pressure on the spine that you want to avoid. So a good general thing to learn to apply to all the different exercises that you do is how to control your pelvis and how to make sure you keep it in the neutral position. And so whenever I have guys on the ground doing sit-ups or leg lifts or any sort of exercise like that, we'll talk about the pelvic tilt. And I'll have them imagine pressing the small of your back against the ground. If I see daylight, I'll put my hand under there and I'll say press against my hand. And when they're doing it, keep the sensation of your back pressing against the ground because once that daylight opens up again, you're tilting the pelvis forward and that's going to create problems. That's a really good thing to bring up. I think that's really overlooked. It's a common thing that you see with squatting all over. It's just kind of a lack of awareness of the position of their pelvis in general. Maybe recording yourself if you don't have a buddy. Maybe just take a look at some information to kind of at least bring your awareness to that. And in terms of training and volume with sit-ups in general, are there any numbers that you think, you know, when you're able to hit this unbroken or something it's like maybe it's time to not focus as much. You have the specific recommendations in the physical training guide available on salesweek.com. And so again, the goal for the PST specific exercises is to accomplish your goals with the least number of reps possible. And a general guideline I throw out there for pull-ups is not do more than 50 in a day and not do more than 200 in a week. And for push-ups and sit-ups it would be not do more than 200 in a day and not do more than 1,000 in a week. And so what you want to focus on is doing the best quality you can maybe in sets of 50. For example, for push-ups, you know, a little bit more if you can. For example, you're going to do four sets of 50 making sure that you're maximizing the quality of each push-up. And then if you're getting in better shape then you can reduce the rest in between your sets. And if you can combine them into, you know, sets of 60 or 75, that's fine. But when you get to the point where you can do like 100 consecutive push-ups with good form, that's enough. What are some of the general faults or what are people not doing right in terms of movement standards to have their reps not count during these tests? Is it, you know, something specific that you see over again for the different movements, for the pull-ups, push-ups? Well, for the pull-ups it would be not getting the chin over the bar so the chin's got to go over the bar and for the descent not locking the arms out completely and it's got to be controlled and there can't be kipping. So people are used to it. And what do you mean kipping? Kipping, like kicking the legs, trying to pump with the legs to get the torso up. Like a swinging motion. So yeah, so you're not allowed to do that. So you've got to be able to keep your body completely still and only use your arms to get the chin up all the way over the top of the bar and then back down to full extension. For push-ups it's making sure that the back stays straight and making sure that the arms are fully locked out at the top and that the chest comes all the way down to the ground in the bottom. For sit-ups it's making sure that the knees are kept at 90 degrees and then the arms have to be crossed across the chest and grabbing the shoulders so if the elbows don't come all the way to the knee or if the hands lose contact with the shoulders those will be discounted. So pay specific attention to yourself when you're doing your movements. Not just counting reps but making sure that you're not doing any of those faults. Correct, it's not just counting reps it's making sure that each rep is correct. Or else that's likely to be a slip-up for you. It won't be counted in your PST and you won't get credit for doing the exercise. Again the data shows that contrary to expectations if you get very high numbers of push-ups and pull-ups you're less likely to succeed and you're more likely to get injured. So everybody always thinks more is better but I think more is good for push-ups you want to be able to do in the high 90s maybe 100 more isn't better. For pull-ups you want to be able to do in the high teens maybe 20 more isn't better. So when you can do that stop and go on and do something else. Well Mike I think that's a pretty comprehensive look at pull-ups push-up sit-ups. Obviously these guys are going to be hammering these when it comes to the PST and throughout their training. And hopefully they'll train smart as well as hard.