The Druid's Aquatic Form (World of Warcraft, (C) Blizzard Entertainment)
If you’ve spent much time perusing the gaming aisle or the sci-fi section of your local media emporium, you’ve no doubt noticed the high concentration of military bad-asses featured prominently therein. From the Halo series to Gears of War and Call of Duty to much of Robert Heinlein and John Ringo’s oeuvre (heck, even the Jedi were an elite fighting force), there is no shortage of hand-picked combat troops blowing the bejeezus out of things. Oftentimes, it’s not just the run of the mill Army or Navy enlisted folks, either – it’s the creme de la creme, the various flavors of Special Forces.
There’s no way the likes of us could qualify to do that sort of stuff… or is there?
Au contraire, my friends. The U.S. Navy’s SEAL (Sea, Air, Land) program has their physical fitness requirements posted for everyone to see, and shoot for. Let’s break it down, point by point. Catching sight of Chuck Norris’ path of destruction might be closer than you think. Since SEALs need to be prepared to do anything and everything, these test both strength and endurance for pretty much the whole body.
If candidates don’t make it on their first attempt, they get a short breather before giving it another shot – 10 minutes for the swim and pull-ups, two minutes for the sit-ups and push-ups; maybe they only get one attempt at the run. Since we’re doing this for ourselves, we can be more forgiving – as a monthly personal challenge, perhaps, to gauge our progress.
So, let’s see what the aspiring SEALs have to do.
Swim: 500 yards, using breast stroke and/or sidestroke, in less than 12:30
Challenge Rating: Medium High
This test is all about endurance and stamina. Most of us could run 500 yards in just a couple of minutes (or less, if you’re fast), but swimming is a whole different animal. There isn’t a world record for swimming this distance, using any particular stroke. The world record for the 400m Freestyle is under four minutes (which is about 20% faster than the breast stroke, based on the 100m and 200m world records). At that pace, elite swimmers would complete this in just under five minutes, so we’ll only need to be about 40% as fast as they are.
Getting There: Endurance is built up over time, so preparing to give this a shot is mostly a matter of putting in the time in the pool to develop your ability to, er, just keep swimming.
Self-test: If your gym or local YMCA has a pool, just swim some laps to see how you feel. Twenty 25 meter laps is the full distance, so you’d need to average 37 1/2 seconds per lap. Tough, but doable with practice.
Hardcore Mode: 10 minutes, which breaks down to 30 seconds per lap.
Push-ups: At least 42 in two minutes
Challenge Rating: Decent
This is the perfect intermediate goal to shoot for if you’re giving the Hundred Push-up Workout a try. 42 may be the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, but it’s also a fairly attainable benchmark. This focuses on upper-body strength, so it does favor the guys a bit (since they have a bit more upper-body muscle).
Getting There: This one is a combination of strength (to push yourself up), speed (to do them within the time limit), and endurance (to do as many as you have to). Working in shorter sets, but with abbreviated breaks in between, will develop both strength and endurance. Somewhat counter-intuitively, some folks find them easier to do more quickly, because you get more reps done before you start to get tired.
Self-Test: Emulate the Greek Goddess of Victory and “Just do it.” You might be surprised at how many push-ups you can do right now. Start by just getting to 42, stopwatch be damned, and then work on improving your time. Admittedly, our form right off the bat might not be quite mil-spec, but that can be practiced, too.
Hardcore Mode: 79 in the same two minutes. This is definitely a tougher hurdle to clear.
Sit-ups: 50 in two minutes
Challenge Rating: Not Too Bad
This one might just be the easiest of the bunch. Sure, you can’t cheat by doing crunches, but sit-ups involve moving the least weight of any of these exercises a relatively short distance. This tests your core muscles’ endurance, but that’s about it.
Getting There: Much the same as with the push-ups, working towards this one can be done by clustering sets of fewer reps together with very short breaks. Most folks tend to find this one tougher in terms of endurance, because our ab muscles simply aren’t very big, so they don’t have a lot of energy stored right in them. This means that it doesn’t take long before they’re relying on sugars delivered from the blood stream to keep going.
Self-Test: This is something else you can sit down and take a shot at the very next time you’re in the gym. You can break out the stopwatch and time yourself – either to 50 reps, or see how many you can do in the allotted two minutes. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a bunch of you can do this many right now, and even more with a little practice. One thing to be mindful of, though, is that doing too many sit-ups puts stress on your lower back, so make sure to do a variety of exercises to strengthen your core (the abs, lower back, and obliques) – things like knee raises and plank holds.
Hardcore Mode: 79 in two minutes. Again, this is probably the easiest bogey of the bunch, and some folks might even be able to reach this right now, too, though it’s definitely a substantial step up from the baseline.
Pull-Ups: 6
Challenge Rating: Tough
Pull-ups are one of the most binary exercises I know of – either someone can do them, or they can’t. There’s no middle ground or grey area, it’s just “Yes/No.” Pull-ups are often considered to be a serious but simple test of someones strength-to-weight ratio, and there are a lot of really strong (but huge) weightlifters who struggle to do them.
Getting There: If doing one is out of the question, then six looks impossibly far away. If you’re working towards that elusive first pull-up, using assistance bands, or a platform with a counter-weight on it are good options. You can also use the pull-down machines as well as do arm and back exercises (like rows and curls) to strengthen the muscles involved. If you can already do a couple of pull-ups, keep doing them, and if you’re feeling particularly saucy, maybe hold a weight between your feet, or strap on a weight belt.
Self-Test: Reach up, grab the bar, and pull. Fortunately, if someone is on the “yes” side of doing one, chances are, you can give six a pretty good shot.
Hardcore Mode: Do 11. Yeah, they want nearly twice as many. While not purely evil, it’s certainly going to get your attention.
Running: 1.5 miles in 11:30, wearing pants and combat boots (whether those are Yo Momma’s is not specified)
Challenge Rating: Tough
The simplest exercise, conceptually, of the bunch: Just run. Yeah, and Portal is “just jump through a hole.”
Getting There: As with the swimming test, this one is all about endurance, but with a bit of speed thrown in for good measure. To make the 11:30 benchmark, we’ll need to run at a pace of 7:40 per mile (just over 7.8 MPH). Start slower, and work on building up both your endurance and your speed. For building a good base to work from, you can go further at a slower pace, with occasional shorter sessions where you go a bit faster, to get a feel for it. Working intervals into your longer runs can help break up the monotony, especially if you don’t have a partner or group. If you’re doing the treadmill thing, set it to .5-1.0% incline, since running on one of those is a little easier than running on solid ground.
Self-Test: Hit the track. It’s six laps, so you’ll be able to keep a pretty good idea of how you’re doing in mind: 1:55 per lap will get the job done.
Hardcore Mode: Complete it in 10:20 (6:53 per mile / 8.7 MPH). This is the smallest difference between “making it” and “kicking butt,” and is probably also one that, once you reach the initial threshhold, you’ll have a really good shot at going for.
Those SEAL guys don’t look so impossibly tough now, do they?
Hey, where are you all going?
Let me guess…. the Master Chief is right behind me, and he doesn’t look very happy. *sigh*
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