 The only easy day was yesterday. Head off the door! Get your heads up and get your eyes open. Stop trying to hide from the pain. Head off, eyes open. Welcome to The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday, the official Navy Seal podcast. We all know it's not easy to become a Navy Seal or a SWIC, but what if there were ways to mentally and physically prepare yourself that could set you up for success? I'm Daniel Fletcher, and today I'm speaking with the Director of Fitness for Seal and SWIC Training, Mike Cavison, to find out more. Head off, eyes open. We're sitting in the birthplace of Seal and SWIC trainees, the Naval Special Warfare Training Center. Today we're in Mike Cavison's office, Director of Fitness for Seal and SWIC Training to get some expert advice. Welcome, Mike. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. So can you tell us a little bit about what you do here? Well, my title is Director of Fitness. It's actually a pretty broad job. A big part of it is education. My background is education. Kinesiology, and so I try to educate people at all levels and certainly a big target audience are anybody interested in entering the program from the very beginning. And I try to coordinate the advice that I give with statistics that I've gathered based on the success of people that have actually entered the program. So I spend a lot of time looking at the different training requirements, what people are physically doing, and making my recommendations to prepare for that. It seems like a lot of people that are in the Special Forces have a physical fitness or a sporting background. I think that the Navy SEALs are looking for athletes that are capable of even more. Do you think that there's a specific sport that lends itself specifically to success the Navy SEALs? I don't think there's a particular sport. I don't claim to have the final answer on that. I know that there have been a wide variety of SEALs that have come from different sports. In other words, just about any sport you can think of is represented in the community. I would say, based on my observations and experience and what is required in the program, that anybody with a good endurance background is going to have a leg up. So somebody that's been a competitive runner or swimmer would probably be a good candidate. There's definitely going to be some younger folks listening to this. I think that kids' lifestyles or teenagers' lifestyles are largely dependent on their upbringing and their parents and what kind of physical activity and environment they're raised in. But for those kids that might have the option to maybe pursue a specific sport or change their lifestyle, seeing as you grew up in a really active environment and you continue to live in that currently, what recommendations do you make to either parents or kids about lifestyle as a young person? Just general physical activity. I don't think there's any magic formula, any one particular sport. I am asked questions or see online those types of questions all the time. Younger people interested in what sports they should play in high school or even before. Doing something is the biggest component. Again, I always come back to, I think being involved in an endurance sport is a good thing and if you can become comfortable in the water, that's a good thing. So swimming or water polo is something that involves being in the water, something that involves running, maybe not automatically track across country, although those are probably good options, but something that features running as part of the conditioning process would be good sports to choose. But just being active in general is a good concept. So spending less time in front of the computer, in front of the television or whatever and more time outdoors doing anything is going to be a good start. So you mentioned endurance sports or endurance practice a couple of times. Other than running, can you maybe list off a few other types of endurance sports that you recommend? Yeah, absolutely. I talk about running and swimming because those are measured. Before you can get into the program, you have to pass a test that proves you're a competent runner and swimmer. In the NSW Pipelines, the seal and switch training programs, selection programs, there's a lot of good at that, but what I find to be the biggest factor is just overall endurance and that can be developed in a number of different ways and so if you come from a cycling background, my background is rowing and I've talked to a lot of athletes that rowed before they got into the program that had done quite well. Anything that has a strong cardiovascular fitness component is going to be a good activity and one of the things I encourage people that are preparing, they, oh, I hear you have to be a good runner and I provide statistics that show better runners perform better, so okay, you want to become a good runner. Some people will take that maybe too much to heart and over-train and so I want people to become a better runner, but I don't want them to set themselves on the road to over-training and injury too early and so do other things. Do plenty of other things and so I mentioned cycling and rowing are good activities. If you get into a gym and get on some of the different cardio while, that would be fine. I mean your heart really doesn't know or care what you're doing as long as you're doing something that gets it to beat a while. So it seems like we have a lot of real specific parameters, guidelines, goals, metrics that are in the training philosophy for just getting initially prepared for your first test. At what age do you think people should maybe start training to those specific metrics? Is this something that changes frequently or? Well it would depend on when they actually plan to start their program and so if somebody wants to graduate high school they're going to be about 18 and they want to enlist in the Navy and do it then. You want to be thinking maybe two years out would be a good time. Definitely by a year out you want to be specifically preparing. You don't have to I think prepare five years out especially at that early age or if somebody's plan is to go to college and graduate so they're going to be about 22 by the time they enter the Navy and try to enter as time to be specific. Do you think that the environment and climate altitude training has a big impact on when people show up to take their first test? Do people think they need to be training in a specific environment to be able to excel and do well in this program? I wouldn't make that recommendation. I don't have enough evidence to make an informed recommendation but my instinctive response to that question is no I wouldn't overthink that. I wouldn't worry about that. People definitely come from all over the country in all walks of life and are successful. I'm not even current on what the latest information shows which parts of the country and why that is. Is it because of climate? Is it because of socioeconomic background? Is it because of a variety of different things? So if I'm asked a question like that my short answer is no I wouldn't over pretty extensively the Navy Special Warfare physical training guide and it seems like a really good foundation for people building up a program for themselves and readying themselves. I come from a CrossFit background and it seems like there's a tremendous amount of overlap here. I mean is that style of training something that you recommend in a baseline preparation for this test? No it is perfect I'd probably say more of the opposite. I would advocate people having a very structured approach have a very determined end state. For the physical training guide the first thing is to think about their score on the physical screening test the PST. And again that references the swim and run components as well as doing some pull-ups and push-ups and sit-ups and there are certain standards that they have to achieve to even be selected into the program and certain components especially the run and swim portions are more strongly correlated with actually getting through the program so it's one thing to be admitted into Buds or the SWIC program it's another thing to complete the selection process so my thinking in terms of designing the physical training guide was to have a very structured approach with a very determined end state. Okay that makes a little bit more sense because you're really shooting these for very specific numbers for people and if people are listening they want to get into the program guide which is s-e-a-l-s-w-c-c .com is the website where you can find this PDF download and print it out and start training for yourself. How often do you guys make adjustments variations or changes to this guide or is it something that's kind of a Bible now? I wouldn't I'd be a little bit arrogant to use it to say the word Bible but it's been pretty the format has been consistent for this program about ten years. I mean that was pretty much the first project when I was hired is to develop the physical training guide and I actually modeled it on my coaching background in rowing and working with the premise that the PST features a run and swim portion where the time frame is pretty consistent with how long it takes to complete a rowing event and so I just plugged in running and swimming numbers and of course I've been fine tuning and adjusting and trying to figure out what is usable by our audience but the basic structure has been pretty similar for years. We've tweaked the actual guide a little bit and I've added a few things. One of the things I've gone back and forth with over the years my original guidance in terms of putting the PTG together was keep it simple you wanted to be just one recommendation was like one page and I just put up a 26 week schedule and something that people could put up on the refrigerator and follow and okay simplicity is good but then in practice people have a lot of questions and you mentioned where they can download the PTG I'd also encourage anybody interested to look at the other supplemental information that's on the website we've got additional information some training videos that illustrate some of the exercises that are mentioned in there so other resources but over the years I've received many many questions related to the PTG and so over the years we've tried to cut off some of those questions or answer some of those questions or you know make it even more clear in terms of what the intent is and how to go about achieving the goals. What type of questions do you can you maybe give a couple examples there or maybe some questions that you maybe continually still get to this day that there's not covered anywhere or yeah well there are some that are hard to answer definitively but one of the things I always recognize is that every person's schedule changes or is different and so things come up and so if I say on Monday you do this and this is the distance and this is the pace and on Tuesday you do this and this is the distance and this is the pace and Wednesday you do this and somebody will come along and say well I've got a problem on Wednesday where I can't do that what if I double up on Tuesday or what if I wait until Thursday or you know what if I think I'm in good shape and I want to run faster than you say I should run or what if I'm not getting to do about that so all those sorts of things I try to make it a little bit more flexible and say look this is a guideline it's not carved in stone and I try to educate people on the principles behind the program so that they can make informed decisions in terms of how to modify their program now people still have lots of individual questions just as I said and so I'll try to answer some of those and hopefully people will be able to look at that and understand you know what the basic intent is so that they can answer those questions on their own. So it seems like most of the questions revolve around the programming specifically and scheduling. Scheduling is a big thing. Programming understanding I try to make the instructions pretty simple I understand I've been doing this for years what is second nature to me isn't second nature to you know especially maybe a 16-17 year old kid I've dealt with that my whole career and so I have to step back and say okay explain it to a beginner and but there'll still be some questions and one of the things in terms of some of the different formats I give them different options in terms of what type of work out to do and you know they sort of want to know what if I did A, B or C would that be okay? Sometimes it is sometimes it's a whole different thing and I try to make them see what the differences are. That seems to kind of transition into the crawl walk run philosophy that's kind of the foundation for this specific manual is just getting people into the crawl phase really is that a correct correlation you think? That is a correct correlation and it was designed and intended for people that are interested in the program maybe don't have a very strong fitness background they don't feel like they're in great shape there are a lot of programs I've seen out there you know eight weeks to buds or you know whatever no that's not enough time so this is a 26 week program and I would say take at least 26 weeks but you need to start somewhere and build progressively. Yeah that sounds about right I was talking to my sister she's a CrossFit coach and a mental performance expert and her assessment was you know six months at the bare minimum were around there and it seems like that's pretty consistent with what you're saying. If you had to guess what percentage of people that come through the program are using this document? I shouldn't have to guess although I don't have the numbers off the top of my head our recruiting directorate looks at and we've got a program that exists in Great Lake, Illinois so between finishing boot camp and coming out to Coronado and starting either the SEAL or the SWCC pipeline candidates go through a preconditioning program called NSW Prep and at that point they're interviewed and answering questions like that and so all I can say is a pretty high percentage. I mean I would say virtually everybody's aware of this I can't definitively say who actually follows it again we can poll them, they'll tell us will they tell us the truth, I don't know will they tell us what we want to hear, I don't know I talk to candidates in the program all the time and again they tend to tell me oh yeah it's been great but they might just be telling me what I want to hear. I guess my take away there is from the person that might be a collegiate athlete who maybe is studying kinesiology or exercise science who might think they heard something from their professor and they have the golden key it seems I would urge people just based on listening to you speak here and I think you would the same is don't get ahead of yourself this has been structured and created for a very specific use case and it seems to be very successful so if it's more simple than maybe someone who's more advanced in the fitness community I would say don't shy away from speaking to you you think that's correct that is correct and one point I was going to make before though is that it was set up to be an introductory program people with minimal experience not much fitness but it's actually designed or structured in such a way that you can maintain it for an extended period of time and I you know it's based on my training I've been following it for more than 40 years now you know so it's not something that you only do for 26 weeks and stop or say okay now I've got to move on to some other program it's like if you follow the basic program the principles in the program you can use it to fine-tune the program or to increase the level of difficulty or to increase the volume of training yeah it seems to be scalable absolutely but sustainable is the other point I'm trying to make I mean not just for a year but for for many years it seems like the concept of endurance athletes and endurance practice is important to a successful career as a seal or swick do you see injury as as a kind of a hot spot a common issue for candidates going through your training program or is there specific body weaknesses that you see it seems to me that it would likely be a specific area of the body that people neglect and then also the mental aspect which those are kind of my guesses I will come back or we can talk about the mental aspect a little bit more but in terms of injury I've got a ton of information it's just something not only before I came to this program it's just something that part of my discipline, part of my education, part of my training is to look at any sport and say okay what are the common injuries you know any coach wants his athlete to be on the floor and not on the bench or not in the training room so if we can avoid injuries and get that good athlete in the game more that's what we want and we want the athlete to be able to play for several seasons not just one or two seasons and that's absolutely true in the special warfare community and we want not only to get candidates through the tough selection process but we want them to be operators for many years and so we want to try to establish a good physiological profile that will allow them to perform well with minimal injuries and I've spent a lot of time working with our medical staff and looking at talking with the doctors and the physical therapist and the athletic trainers that have dealt with these injuries for years and well what do they say and well okay here are the common injuries that we see and here are the things that might help prevent them there's no way to completely eliminate injury it's going to happen especially in a very tough training program and I think that's true not only in NSW but any sport if you're serious about your sport if you train hard if you put yourself at risk for injury so it's going to happen but we want to have fewer injuries and we want to have less severe injuries and so we can reduce the risk of injury by adopting a training program that specifically looks at well what is the nature of the training that you're going to be doing and what are the common injuries that we see and so let's try to get ahead of the game and try to prevent the injuries before they occur anybody that goes into a rehab clinic and they work with the therapist okay you injured that body part here's what you do to rehab well that's kind of a little too late let's do that before you get injured so that you probably are going to have to go into the training room are there good resources or any recommendations that you have to people I'm sure you've seen my guess is a fair bit of shin splints just based on the amount of running that's in the programming people's hands probably torn up from the pull-ups they're doing are those pretty accurate guesses of common injuries people that are preparing at this stage to enter into the program into the program yeah common training injuries probably involve things like shin splints probably involve knee pain so a lot of probably running related pain again part of the problem is that people might be doing too many miles too soon and so I try to walk the line between saying yep you better be a good runner if you're not a good runner you haven't got much of a chance here but at the same time saying well you're not going to become a good runner overnight you've got to invest some time you've got to train smartly you've got to build your mileage gradually there are common running related injuries that you might be able to eliminate or at least reduce the risk of getting if you add these strength training exercises to your routine along with your running and we want people to show up day one of training here in Coronado feeling fresh and fit and not having an injury because if somebody has an injury and many people do they have well maybe they've had an injury and it's healed somewhat but it's not a hundred percent gone it's going to come out in the wash I mean you're not you know it's just going to be aggravated so I think that that's a good point saying people are very ambitious especially the people that are candidates here absolutely and want to train to want to train a lot to take away there is to take your time and not try to race to the finish line and there's a measured approach which seems to be really well documented by you guys that's a recommended approach and included in that is the amount of time that's taken to kind of ramp up to the mileage that you might need to be at are there any height weight or body mass index numbers that are clear markers either for success or failure obviously there's outliers like if you're really overweight but can you speak to that a little bit a little bit I look at the height and weight of all the classes that come through and it turns out that the average is almost always like 5, 10, 180 pounds so the average candidate is 5, 10, 180 there are definitely it's more like a bell curve there are shorter lighter guys, taller heavier guys both extremes make it through training I don't know that I really have the data to look at the frequency so I wouldn't discourage anybody from coming through if they were a little shorter or a little taller than the average those guys make it through but the statistics are pretty clear that the typical candidate or operator is about 5, 10 and starts out about 180 might put on a little bit more weight once he's been in the teams for a little while it gets a little adds a little bit more muscle but getting through the selection the seal of the SWCC selection programs there's a variety of different things and so I think the middle or the average is probably suited for more of those things that's interesting especially for a group of people that is considered to be so on average you know let's talk a little bit about nutrition and sleep and kind of the care our bodies require for recovery I'd imagine like I mentioned earlier a lot of these guys that are training are pushing themselves really hard do you find that lack of sleep or lack of good nutrition is an issue with a lot of people that come through the selection program I think we're doing better in terms of educating them more and earlier so I think in terms of especially nutrition that were farther ahead than we were 10 years ago always room for improvement in terms of sleep I'm not sure the best way to address that either by my expertise in that field or by recording what is actually happening so I think one of the misconceptions a lot of people have about preparing for the program that comes out in a number of different ways whether it's nutrition or sleep or how to handle the environment or how to train is that they have ideas about what the selection process is going to be which may or may not be accurate but they have those perceptions and so they want to try to replicate them in advance of coming here and so one of those things might be I'm going to deprive myself of sleep and I'm going to spend a lot of time in cold water so I get used to that because I know that's what it's going to be in selection and I wouldn't encourage that hopefully people that are serious about coming into the program are trying to arrange their schedule so that not only are they working hard but they can actually recover and get plenty of rest because that's necessary to be able to adapt properly so do not try to deprive yourself of sleep and put yourself I just want to reiterate that don't try to mimic training that you don't know what it is that's a theme of mine I come back to many many times because it's a strategy of so many candidates it's like oh that's what the program is I'd better do that first and I've tried to come up with a number of analogies over the years to try to convey the error in thinking there you know if you want to run a marathon the way to prepare is not to run a marathon every day for a year until you do your race football teams don't scrimmage all the time you know boxers don't get in the ring and box all the time they do plenty of other things and then just a little bit of high intensity every now and then to get ready for the fight or the game or in this case Buds or SWCC training so yeah I say that often don't try to recreate what you're going to come because it's not a conditioning program it's a program that's designed to break you down and so if you do it before you get here you're going to be broken down before you start and that's not a good strategy not the right time for that for sure you mentioned at the the training guide here keeping a record of your training and that's something my father's an endurance athlete comes from a military background and he's always kept a catalog or journal of his his exercise to me this seems like a really valuable thing to do at what point in the process do you recommend people starting to journal their experience here whether it's just fitness or what do you think that's something that they should start right away well as soon as they make a decision that they want to do the program if they haven't already they should start recording their training you can record more less information I'm not fully up to date on all the different technological advances people have and the way people record their training different apps and electronic aids and so forth I still do it with a notebook and I actually take that and put it into excel but you know that's about as technical as I get but you do want to keep track of what you're doing and you can get really anal and keep track of absolutely every single detail sometimes it takes more time to record what you're doing than it does to actually do it so there's got to be a balance there somewhere but the answer the question I think you asked is that if somebody is interested in coming to the program they should right away start recording what they're doing and then the key there is not just to write it down but to actually go back and look at it from time to time to see if you're training the way you think you're training I mean that's certainly something that almost anybody even experienced athletes are guilty of I know I'm guilty of it myself I have a program I have experience I have knowledge I think I know how to train I think I know how I am training but then I go back and look at my journal and I say oh I did something a little different than I thought and you know maybe it was again I was out of town and I did something different or something changed and I couldn't do what I wanted to do and anyway you've got to go back and verify that you're actually training the way you think you're training and getting the results that you think you're getting if you want to be able to improve how often do you think it's advisable to go back and look back at your workouts and kind of take an assessment is it something that you do just on a regular basis? On a regular basis certainly on a weekly basis if not on a daily basis and you know it could just be again a quick check to verify but if you're more inclined to pursue it further you know there are different ways to analyze it I would say I like to use Excel and I like to go back and look at different things or I like to look at okay my performance in a recent race expected and look at my successful races versus my less successful races and okay what are the common elements you know this is what I did right this is what I didn't do right I want to do the right thing more often so that I have more good performances in anybody that is trying to prepare for the program and maybe they've got a PST physical screening test coming up and they're trying to reach certain numbers they've got to verify that their training is going in the direction that they want it to So let's touch on that a little bit real quick I know that's something that can be that that screening test could be fairly easily assessed on yourself or a self-assessed PST how many times do you see most candidates self-assessing themselves to hit this benchmark or can you talk a little bit about that? Probably just to get used to the format you can do the basic format you know weekly I mean if you don't pursue it as an actual test we're trying to maximize your performance and you're structuring your whole week around it and then you're trying to peak for that event if you just I want to get used to the format I want to get used to running and swimming in the same workout I want to get used to having to do some pull-ups before or after I've swam my arms are tired and I have to do some push-ups pull-ups you can incorporate that into training but you've got to be a little bit more patient and cautious about really trying to nail it about once a month if you want to self-assess and that can be a great way to see how you're doing you know about once a month to say okay I've had a month of training how I should be better than I was last month let's test that out and they could verify that yeah obviously that's something you want to put in the log for sure you talk a little bit about recording some things that maybe some people might not think about in the journal and this something that I thought was interesting when I saw in my father's journal for his runs his mood stayed in mind and I think that that's something that's a lot more powerful than people are able to really quantify easily because there's so many exterior or life stressors that can kind of inhibit your exercise program fill in the blank talk a little bit about how you recommend people deal with the psychological state of mind aspect of this training process well I'll definitely talk a little bit about it it's part of my background I've got a lot of experience in that area but I don't want to talk too much because we actually have many dedicated subject matter experts in that area that I don't want to sort of step on their toes or go into their backyard so to speak but clearly psychological and mental performance is a big factor and I think that the way I've structured the training program allows people to practice some of the basic things that we've been teaching here for a number of years and so whether it's goal setting we have what we call the big four one of them is goal setting set long term, medium and short term goals and so the way you can go through a weekly training session or monthly or six months of training you can break it up into smaller segments and have smaller medium range long term goals and that feeds right into that self talk just how you talk to yourself during a workout or during training can influence and so I'm just trying to be a little bit more positive and emphasize the good aspects get used to being upbeat a little bit more about your training you can practice that as well imagery visualization I would encourage people that throughout the day at some point when they're in a down state just sitting quietly to think about what they've done and what they're going to do next and so just to go to run through it in your mind it might be just the procedures of doing a PST I'm going to do the swim first and I'm going to get out of the water and then what am I going to do next and practice it in your head several times so that when you do it for real it's just more natural what other situations might come up that you might have to deal with think about that mentally and so another of the big four is arousal control and for many athletes in a big game situation they don't want to choke the pressure is overwhelming and you have to learn to deal with the pressure and the same thing is true in our selection pipelines that the candidates going through face pressure many times and so learning to control arousal and taking deep breaths and calming down in certain situations and then in other situations trying to get psyched up I got to go down and get the adrenaline flowing and so being able to regulate your arousal in the direction that you want is certainly something that you can practice in training the other huge aspect of training for a PST is your strength obviously endurance is very important and that definitely builds a lot of the foundation for success talk a little bit about specifically training for the PST in terms of strength training absolutely I emphasize the importance of endurance all the time because statistics show that people that run better and swim better will be more successful but strength is obviously an important part of fitness the problem is that different people define strength differently and so when I talk about training and encourage people that are interested to read not only the PTG resources we have on our website to talk about this in a little bit more detail what strength means and what I'm trying to get people that are interested in the program to recognize is that you've got to be able to maintain a high tempo of activity for several hours a day for several weeks on end and so you're going to have to have the strength to maintain certain body positions and you want to have the strength I guess I'd call them more supplemental muscle groups that most people aren't thinking about when they're in the gym lifting weights and so if you look at our videos and if you look at our recommendations there's a lot of information about training the shoulder with things like external rotation and something called the Y exercise training the legs not just doing squats and lunges which people want to do hours and hours a day and I would say do some squats and lunges but don't do them today do a few of them and then do a bunch of other things that will also give you an overall strength profile that will make you more successful so the lateral hips are weak and a lot of people and that leads to a lot of problems that may cause problem down in the knees for example or just core fitness and there's a lot of different opinions or definitions or interpretations of what that really means but the sort of things that I'm recommending is some basic simple exercises like the front plank and the side plank and the bridge exercises that will get the smaller muscles that provide integrity to the spinal column active and give them not only a strength but the endurance that they need to keep the body in the proper position to undergo some of the challenges that they're going to be facing here many people want to lift heavy weights that can be part of training it's just not something I emphasize and probably I go to the extreme of under emphasizing it just because so many people are so enamored with heavy lifting yeah I guess a lot of people think that strength equals muscle and size and that's not necessarily the case if you can't hold your body up right well you need to have the endurance to do some of the basic things like pass the push up and the pull up portion of the PST when you're in the pipeline you need to be able to maneuver your body through a lot of different environments and so just having simple body weight strength is important there are a lot of different activities in buds the log PT or the boat PT people are aware of and they want to prepare for and so they think that the secret is to lift heavy weights and there's no absolute way to verify one way or the other there's just no way to gather the data but my opinion my subject matter expert opinion is that people spend a little too much time lifting the heavy weights and not as much time doing the supplementary exercises and the core strength exercises they really make the difference it's reoccurring to me and it seems like my big takeaway is training for the PST not for buds training not for being underwater and wet and cold and all these other things that are going to happen in the training the structured process has been well researched by subject matter experts and I think the key takeaway that I'm hearing is don't try to outthink this process because it's laid out right there step one, step two, step three is there's no way to phrase it don't try to outthink the process we see so many candidates hear from so many candidates talk to so many people that try to prepare by doing things that really aren't going to help in the long run and so again they see on the internet or they've watched the special on the discovery channel or they've talked to somebody or they've read a book or whatever it is and they think okay I've got to be out there running in soft sand wearing boots I've got to be carrying logs over my head I've got to simulate it I've got to try to do all kinds of extreme things all the time so it'll all be ready and that's probably not going to help them it's probably only going to hurt them and so get ready for the PST you won't get into the program unless you get a good PST score so you know preparing for buds before you get a good score on the PST is not a productive way to to advance your career but underlying it all is something else that it sounds a little counter-intuitive but I think it's true that if you actually follow the program training guide prepare for the PST you will in fact be doing a good job of preparing for buds or the SWIC training as well so getting a good base in endurance doing some targeted strength exercises some very specific injury prevention exercises doing that in a progressive fashion for a long period of time and getting you ready to take the PST and do well on that when you finish that you'll actually have a good foundation to continue preparing for the program that you're entering Mike if you could just give us a summation kind of wrap up here main takeaways that you'd like people that are just entering this thought process or training process to take away from give us your top bullet points that you think most people maybe overlook or takeaways that you think you recommend well looking at the success rates you know again for many years and looking at what candidates tend to make it through the program and what candidates don't you want to be an endurance type athlete and so you want to develop your running and swimming ability there are some very common injuries that we see and we'll go into them in great detail here people can look up the information and see what injuries we're talking about but have a definite conditioning program that will address that so you minimize your risk of getting injured before you even start the program or when you go through the program and then third is probably to say again don't try to recreate the program before you get into it don't try to do what you think you're going to be doing during the selection process just getting good general physical shape don't get injured, be smart and progressive about your training and let the process work its course before you get here Mike thank you for all the great information where can people find out more about this process and get some more materials well our website saleswik.com has not only the physical training guide but it has a lot of other supplemental information that includes answering common questions that have been passed over the years in areas related to strength training related to swim training related to run training there are sections on nutrition injury prevention we've got a video library that gives people visual representations of the various exercises that we describe so the website has got not only the physical training guide but a lot of other information that can be helpful find out more at saleswik.com and join us again for the next NSW podcast