Hey Athletes! This week’s AMA is on how to prepare for a special operations selection! Tune in to not miss out!
Episode 27 of Ask Me Anything is up!
Ask Me Anything: How to prepare for special operations selection
In this week’s episode of Ask Me Anything, Jerred and Joe answer Devlen’s question: Will the Hard to Kill track effectively prepare military personal to complete a special operations selection? The guys dive in and give their advice on how they think one should prepare for special operations selection.
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Jerred
Transcript:
Ask Me Anything: How to prepare for special operations selection
[00:00:00] Jerred Moon: Welcome to garage the math. He asked me anything. It’s pretty simple. I’ll be answering questions from the thousands of athletes that follow our daily programming. If you have a question or topic you want submitted, go to dot com slash AMA. Let’s get started.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage podcast. Jeremy Moon here with Joe Courtney, who is very close to the camera.
Joe Courtney: I was reaching out for my water. I just wanted to
Jerred Moon: really get in there. I thought you were just giving us a. What’s up. This is ne giving us the I’m
Joe Courtney: just going to go full, full, full mr.
Wilson and just hide the bottom of my face.
Jerred Moon: Dude. Mr. Wilson, I haven’t heard of improvement. Reference namedrop. I mean, I don’t know how long has it been? Like 20 years. That’s insane. All right. Well, let’s get into this one. This one’s from Devlin and I [00:01:00] get this some form of this question. A lot. So the short of it is, will the hard to kill track, effectively prepare military personnel to complete a special operations selection.
Um, and this guy’s earned his ranger tab, doing some other stuff. Uh, I’m not going to get into all that, but. He’s just asking, will it, will it help you with a selection? And I get this question all the time, you know, guys, wondering if it will help them for what they’re doing with, with SWAT, if it will help him get him, get him ready for becoming a PJ, like all of these different things.
Um, and so I’ve answered this question, maybe, I dunno, a thousand times via email. So it’s good to get something on video here. Uh, do you have any thoughts on a Joe?
Joe Courtney: Oh, I was just going to take a back seat to what you normally get in waiting in there.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. So there are definitely some things missing in our programming that you need to think about.
I think that it’s a phenomenal, the hard to coatrack track is a phenomenal way to just stay ready and [00:02:00] prepared for, um, really any kind of selection process. I think that it, it will, it is a good base to the program, but it can’t be the only thing that you do. Uh, in my honest opinion, like I think. You could to some degree, uh, only do hard to kill.
And maybe if you, like, if you’re at more of the competitor level, you might be able to get through selection. But the things that we would probably be lacking for stuff like this would be. A lot of these, uh, selection programs have a swimming component, even if it’s not like seal training, most of them have some sort of like 500 meter swim or something sometimes in uniform.
So we have absolutely zero swimming in our programming. Um, so you might want to start throwing that in it doesn’t, you don’t need to become a swimmer, like look at your specific test and see what they’re going to have you do. But most selection across all branches have some sort of some components. So you need to train that, you know, a couple of times per month, if you can get to a pool, other things, uh, you know, we’ll, we do [00:03:00] print plenty of calisthenics, but just adding a couple hundred reps, um, Up to a thousand reps per week into your routine of just pushups and sit ups, flutter kicks, things like that, pull ups and just throwing them in make, make, making a huge part of your warmup.
A huge part of your cool-down throwing in the reps whenever you can, because it’s not really about that strength. It’s just, you’re trying to be as prepared as possible for getting smoked and running through all these PT tests and everything else. Um, and then the last thing I normally recommend is a ruck.
You can’t truly. You can’t just be really, really fit and then go tackle like these serious rocks, like a 13, 15 mile ruck, because there’s a certain level of like, like running a marathon, like untrained before, but I was super jacked up because tendons ligaments, my feet, all these things were not prepared.
They not built up the calluses and yeah. And gotten the repetition and impact they needed to truly be Baird for something like that. So there’s rucking [00:04:00] and all these programs as well. And so yeah, you need to, you need to be rucking. So rucking and a lot of calisthenics is what I would add here a year.
And you can add that on the weekend. Like we only program those couple of days per week, you know, you can add a lot of this stuff in on the weekends and get a little more serious about your training. I think just for the selection tests. Yeah. You know, which are pretty sure, you know, whatever, like all the selection tests are just like you do it in a day and an hour or two we’ll have you pretty prepared for that.
But I’m more worried about someone when they get to the actual school and surviving. Uh, you know, daily training for months on end, you’re going to have to be prepared for those things as well. So that’s kinda, that’s my 2 cents on what you need to add to hard to kill, but hands down, hard to kill, probably the best track you could be on for selection.
Um, maybe in year at this point, if you have an endurance background, like our fear lacking an endurance background, uh, but any of our other tracks, I wouldn’t recommend, uh, for selection.
Joe Courtney: Yeah, I’ve gotten this a few times [00:05:00] from support as well. And usually I will, I’ll always say hard to kill because I mean, it’s called heartbeat.
You’ll anyway, it’s going to be bounced all around. But I think there is a case for Indira as well, because I’ve known some guys that have gone that have been Rangers or I’ve been preparing for like tech D or things like that. And they’re doing like, Three to five mile rocks. And then as soon as our rucks down, they’re doing three to five mile runs.
And that’s a lot of, that’s a lot of endurance. It’s a lot of volume for that. So as long as you’re doing, if you’re doing endear, then adding in extra prep on your, on like a fifth day, cause we only do four. We only put against full four days a week. So if you do an extra like weighted stuff on your fifth day, like a rock and some other things, adding that in will, will be big as well and then calisthenics, but hard to kill.
We’ll cover all the bases and no matter what. You need to add your Rutkin, but at least within Deere, cause you know, you’re going to need to do either rucks or swims. You can sub those Indira and stays for those elements. If [00:06:00] need be like we, we, we might do some 40 minute run days where you just feel like, well, I’m going to do this 40 minute run for a rut this time and then it’ll be easy.
It’ll be kind of easy to sub that way.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. And barbell strength is almost useless in these. Types of events like, and I’m not saying don’t train strength because strength is important for being more resilient, but three times your body weight on the deadlift is useless when it comes to selection. So being able to really handle your body weight on the barbell.
So I’m 185 pounds. If I can do a lot of different things with 185 pounds, you know, whether that’s, um, high rep squats or dead lifts or whatever, that’s really important, but. I’m just talking about for setting your goals. Yeah. I need, you got to move away from wanting to be really strong. A lot of dudes do just in the military in general, that, that process or that mindset still gonna be there.
And so you do kind of have to drop that and just, yeah. Be okay with getting that, like getting your endurance really up there and, uh, be more well rounded on, on hard to [00:07:00] kill. I think, hard to kill what might prepare you slightly more for the resiliency piece I’m talking about, but in gear would definitely help.
I mean, it’s. Operators, basically endurance athletes in all honesty, who can do a lot of body weight, stuff like that is if you had to like put them in a nutshell, like a ranger and a seals, like they, they segue really well into, um, Like triathletes, not powerlifters or anything like that. You know, they, it’s just a natural transition.
Cause these guys have huge engines and can do pushups and stuff for days. So that’s, that’s what you need to be able to do. Yep.
Joe Courtney: There was one guy that I knew while on active duty, when he was preparing for the, for like three months, he lived on base and he would run to work, which is like a two mile rock.
And then he would do like a five mile on the way home, like after work. So, you know, getting seven miles a day, just rucking, just because that’s a lot of volume that you need.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. The rucking, uh, my brother went through [00:08:00] selection and he did pretty well and everything. And. Got crushed on the RUC. Cause it wasn’t, it just wasn’t something he prepared for.
Right. Um, and so that’s another big reason I, I talk about it cause I know, I know what can happen if you’re not, not really ready with that weight on your back and your feet, haven’t blistered and all this other stuff. That’s what I did Murph in boots, whatever this past Memorial day. And I got a blister.
I had boots on for that. I think I did Murph that day, um, with boots on like 30 something minutes and I got a blister and it’s okay. Only because I don’t wear boots that regularly anymore for exercise, you know? And so you got to factor those things in, and there’s no way to prepare it like that. It has nothing to do with my VO two max, how many pushups I can do.
It’s just a matter of like, my feet were not prepared for this activity. Cause I haven’t done it in awhile. All right. I think that’s it. If you guys want to ask a question, go to garage, gym, athlete.com/ama, and we will get [00:09:00] your question answered. If you’re on YouTube, go ahead and subscribe. Leave us a comment.
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