The Definitive Spec Ops Resource
Let’s start Monday and the week off right with the basics of pushups, sit-ups, and crunches, then to the bar for V-ups, pullups and dips before a 4-mile run. Remember to stay hydrated and mark your progress in your workout log book.
Training:
More preparation for the UBRR
1 x 1-minute Pushups
1 x 1-minute Sit-ups
1 x 1-minute, Crunches
1 x 1-minute, V-ups
1 x Dips as many as possible to muscle failure
1 x Pullups as many as possible or to muscle failure
4-mile run
Stretch well after completion
Sunday morning Rucksack march. Do a quick warm up of pushups and sit-ups before heading out. Head out over varied terrain and try to go as fast as you can without running.
Stretch well both before and after the event. Remember to drink plenty of water and stay hydrated out there. With the heat of the warm weather months upon us, it is imperative and you don’t want to go down with a heat-related injury.
Training:
Warm up
2 x 20 Pushups
2 x 20 Sit ups
8-mile Rucksack march over varied terrain with a 45-pound minimum. And mark your times in your workout log book.
Stretch well after completion
Back in the gym this Saturday morning for a shoulder and back workout. Towel pullups if you have no access to ropes or climbing ropes if they are available. Followed by a four-mile run. Log your numbers down in the workout notebook and prepare for a long ruck on Sunday morning.
Training:
More Preparation for the UBRR:
3 x 10 Lat Pulldowns, rear
3 x 10 Barbell Dead Lift
3 x 10 Wide Grip Pullups
3 x 10 Towel Pullups
3 x 10 Dumbbell Side Raises
3 x 10 Seated Bent-Over Delt Raise
3 x 10 Dumbbell Shoulder Press
3 x 10 Arnold Dumbbell Press
4-mile run
Stretch well after completion
It is Friday so it is also Leg Day at the gym. Starting with Squats – (front, dumbbell goblet, and barbell), then some lunges and the weighted sled push. And then finish the workout with a five-mile run. Mark your progress down in your workout log book and stretch well after the session.
Training:
Continue to prep for the UBRR.
3 x Front Squat 20-15-12 reps (lighter weight)
3 x Goblet Dumbbell Squats 20-15-12 reps (lighter weight)
3 x 10 Barbell Squats
3 x 10 Dumbbell Lunges
3 x 10 Romanian Lunges
3 x Weighted Sled Push
5-mile run
Stretch well after completion
Syrian military forces loyal to embattled President Assad ignored warnings about approaching a small US base that houses its Special Operations Forces this week and was hit by a US-led airstrike.
This was the second attack in just the past month against Assad’s forces by US airstrikes in what the Defense Department characterized as self-defense measures.
“Despite previous warnings, pro-regime forces entered the agreed-upon de-confliction zone with a tank, artillery, anti-aircraft weapons, armed technical vehicles and more than 60 soldiers posing a threat to Coalition and partner forces based at the at Tanf Garrison,” the U.S.-led coalition said in a statement.
The statement said the U.S.-led coalition communicated with the advancing forces through an existing hotline set up to ensure that Russian and U.S. aircraft can operate safely in Syrian airspace. Despite the warnings, the Syrian forces continued to advance, prompting the U.S.-led coalition to destroy two artillery pieces and an anti-aircraft weapon, according to the statement. A tank was also damaged.
It is unclear how many troops were killed or wounded in the bombing run and what legal rationale might cover the U.S.-led forces continued strikes on Syrian government forces operating within their borders.
On May 18, U.S. forces struck a convoy of pro-Syrian-government forces that were driving in the direction of the U.S.-base at Tanf. After warnings, both through the hotline and overhead passes, U.S. aircraft struck a number of their vehicles. That convoy, roughly 18 miles from the U.S. outpost, came to halt. In response, the U.S.-led coalition added additional “combat power” to help defend the Tanf base and dropped more than 90,000 leaflets telling the Syrian forces to leave.
“We are not increasing our role in the Syrian civil war, but we will defend our troops,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters after the May strike. “And that is a coalition element made up of more than just U.S. troops, and so we will defend ourselves [if] people take aggressive steps against us.”
The Tanf base, which houses British as well as American Special Operators, is located on a key highway in an area where the borders of Iraq, Jordan, and Syria meet and is considered of vital importance.
To read the entire article from Washington Post, click here:
Photo courtesy Associated Press
We have been getting a lot of mail and tweets here at SpecialOperations.com and as we pointed out in our earlier post a day ago, many have questions about the Selection courses and what can be expected when candidates begin their quest to become part of the Special Operations fraternity and become part of the Regiment.
And included in many of the queries we get are the legitimate questions as to what life is like in a Special Operations unit with most centering around the Direct Action (DA) side of the house. Don’t get me wrong here, Special Forces guys are very good at and all love to do DA operations but where they’re best at and where they stand above all others is in their ability to teach.
While DA missions are linear and much easier to judge the success or failure at, the true art of a Special Forces A-team lies in their ability to teach an allied soldier or guerrilla fighter to do those same Direct Action missions. Setting up intelligence early warning networks or leading a dedicated guerrilla force to success in the Unconventional Warfare (UW) environment isn’t as tangible, nor as sexy. There won’t be those “must-see” YouTube moments in most of those type of missions but they are essential for successful mission accomplishment.
Being able to reach and teach a foreigner in his own language and teach them is a tremendous boost to building rapport, earning the trust, and creating a successful joint team with our foreign allies. That’s where the cultural awareness and language training become so important.
As an example, Special Forces weapons sergeants (light and heavy) can break down and assemble any weapon that you’ll find on the modern battlefield as well as teach light infantry tactics. But what makes them so valuable is that they can immediately pick up a weapon of an allied host nation’s soldier and teach him, in his own language, how to zero the weapon, qualify with it, fix his flaws and then teach the same tactics to make the allied soldiers more effective.
Some cultures and languages are much harder to learn the nuances of than others. Many of the customs and dialects of the Middle East are extremely difficult to master and are very different from what operators may find in South America, where Spanish is mainly spoken and their culture, more closely aligned to our own. But even there, problems in teaching would always crop up.
While teaching some soldiers from the Andean Ridge countries in counter-narcotics training, we learned that many of the local soldiers from the mountains, speak Spanish as a second language and had issues both reading and writing it. Many spoke their native Indian tongue first, Quechua is the language of the Incas and still spoken by around 8 million people. Amayar and many offshoots of it are still spoken by 2 million people in the region.
A few questions we received asked about the “high speed” training done with our foreign allies. In reality, much of what Special Operations Forces teach are the basics. And that is why they’re so successful. The operators know and train on the basics backward and forward. The basic fundamentals are the keystone to everything else that will follow.
And it all begins in the training. If the instructors for the Special Operations Forces in their respective qualifications courses aren’t doing a great job of doing their jobs, then they won’t be putting out high-quality operators. The instructors are the first people you will see upon arriving at a Special Operations training course.
The process of learning to teach and doing it effectively begins at the home station. A few years ago, the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School, (JFKSWC) revamped the old Instructor Training Course (ITC) and created the Special Operations Instructor Course (SOIC).
There was an old saying in Special Forces that stated, “Those who can, do (operate), those who can’t, teach and those who can do neither administrate.” That’s not really true, but it used to be a way to rib the guys who were levied to teach at the schools of the JFKSWC, many of whom didn’t want to go there because they preferred to stay operational.
But ask any operator today and they’ll tell you who the best instructors of their courses were, not only did they teach what was in the curriculum but went above and beyond what was required and taught them the things that they’d need to know in the real world once graduation was behind them. And conversely, most will remember the instructors who weren’t so great either. Nobody wants to be remembered as such and thankfully few of them are.
I remember my primary instructor at Robin Sage, he knew his subject matter extremely well as well as his operational area and we learned a ton while out doing the exercise. He would always answer questions framed around a question of his own and said frequently that “this is a thinking man’s game.” At the time, we didn’t completely get it but he was right.
So, for the young candidates out there, don’t just give lip service to the teaching side of Special Operations. Embrace it, learn it and become the best at it, because that is the life blood of what is done when working with our overseas allies.
Photo Courtesy of DOD
Back to the gym this morning and start with a Chest and Triceps workout today before a 5-mile run. Remember to stretch well before and after and to stay hydrated. Mark your progress down in your workout log book.
Training:
More Preparation for the UBRR:
3 x 12 Bench Press
3 x 10 Dumbbell Flies
3 x 10 Dumbbell Incline Press
3 x 20 Pushups (alternate sets with wide, narrow and shoulder width)
3 x 10 Kip Ups
3 x 20 Sit ups
3 x 20 Cable Push Downs (rope)
3 x 20 Dips or until muscle failure
5-mile run
Stretch well after completion
I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately again about passing the selection course and many of them have to do carrying a rucksack and many of the candidates are worrying about being able to tote the pain pill to the standards in the course.
The first piece of advice I’ll give is to step back and take a deep breath. It really sounds like some of the candidates are psyching themselves out and are hearing the horror stories of many of those (who don’t get selected) and are thinking that the standards are impossible to obtain. Nonsense. Thousands of guys have gone before you and been selected. Is it easy? No, of course not. It is very challenging, but if it was easy than anybody could do it.
You’ll have to work hard and truly push yourself, but if you do that and put the time in, then there’s no reason to believe that you won’t be able to meet the standards. We publish a PT program daily here at SpecialOperations.com and if you follow that, you really shouldn’t have any problems.
I’ve posted some tips previously on here based on my experience that I feel will be of good value to you. I don’t claim to know it all, nor be a personal trainer but after many years in SF, these tips and techniques worked for me and hopefully they’ll work for you as well.
One of the questions I got asked was why was the majority of the days running days instead of rucking days. And it is a good one. If you get into some distance running, especially in soft sand or dirt trails, it will help your rucksack carrying ability extremely well.
Our PT preparation work focuses a lot on shoulder work and for a good reason. That is one spot that you’ll find as a novice that will be really sore, perhaps even sorer than your feet. You don’t have to be a bodybuilder to pass selection but if your shoulders are strong, it will take a lot of the stress and strain off when carrying a rucksack, not to mention it is invaluable when climbing ropes or toting the really heavy stuff during Team Week. But I digress… back to talking about rucking.
The easiest way to get better at it is to practice. Many emails and Twitter messages had the same concern, the candidate has trouble speeding up without taking off in a jog. Nobody does at first, that’s why you must practice, practice, practice. Just like a musician has to practice long and hard before getting to Carnegie Hall, the Special Operations trooper has to learn to handle the rucksack like it is an extension of his own body.
I personally found rucking a bit easier for me, being over 6 feet tall, I learned quickly to lengthen my stride and it allowed me to set a good, fast pace that I could maintain over a long distance. But that didn’t come overnight, it took practice. So, my advice is to increase your speed and distance with running and it will definitely help carrying the rucksack.
But with anything else, if carrying a ruck is your weak area, practice with it until it is a strength. There is no magic formula to it, just ensure that you’re stretched out and then just strap it on and go. I will repeat what said in an earlier post about running with a ruck in training.
When it comes to increasing speed, I don’t recommend that you run with a rucksack on your back while in training. It puts way too much stress on your knees. There will be times on steep downhill, you can pick up a shuffle for a few steps but as for running a distance with a rucksack while prepping for selection…DON’T.
From our last article on rucking, “They’ll be times in your selection course or the qualification course that you’ll have to make up time or want to pick your pace, especially on the downhill slopes. At those times, you’re going to have to do what you must,” Learn to increase your speed without running. Running with a ruck will hurt your knees and back…take it from the guy with two arthritic knees and an arthritic back to boot.
You’ll have to learn to lengthen out your stride naturally and generate power with your legs and then your speed will come without having to resort to running. But in the course…do what you must do to pass.
Adjust your load in the rucksack so that the weight is higher, up between your shoulder blades, the waist strap is buckled and nothing is rubbing either on your back or shoulders. Have a couple of pair of boots broken in and ready to go and get out and hit the trails.
Vary the terrain if you can, and hit the soft sand if there is any in your training area. If you’re attempting SFAS, you become intimately familiar with the soft sand of the trails and it is best to get used to it now.
Don’t get caught up in trying to go too heavy either. The standards will be 45 pounds in selection or the training courses. Yes, once you get to an operational unit, the weight will be much higher. But don’t worry about that right now. Don’t go more than 5-10 pounds more than the standard in your training program. Save your knees and back for down the road…trust me, you’ll need them later.
If you get to where you can easily make the time limits (and you should aim to be well under them) with a 45-pound ruck, then you should have no problems. Don’t let your mind play tricks on you and don’t listen to the all the rumors out there, most of them are totally wrong. The biggest obstacle facing you in the Selection courses is your own head. It sounds too simple but it is so simple that it becomes hard for people to understand.
I got an email from one candidate who was told the horror stories of the first few days of Selection. I encouraged him to bring a good book. And when the cadre didn’t have him doing anything, to read and disregard the murmurs of the “rumor mill”. To quote my favorite coach, “ignore the noise and do your job.”
As always, hydrate well while out training. It is a habit that you should carry over in the course. With the warm weather months here, becoming a heat injury can happen quickly. Don’t let that happen to you.
If anyone else has any questions, feel free to send them along to [email protected] or at my Twitter page @SteveB7SFG and I’ll be glad to answer them.
Photo courtesy of US Army
The United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) is home to some of the most elite forces in the world, SEALs, Green Berets, Rangers, Air Force Special Operators, and Marine Raiders. And all of them are using a host of new vehicles that were specifically engineered for their use.
SOFREP and Special Operations.com had an opportunity to see these vehicles up close and personal at the recently held SOFIC industry expo in Tampa. These vehicles are versatile and adaptable and most rely on speed rather than armor as a means of protection.
Polaris makes popular all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) and side-by-sides driven all across America, tearing it up in the most challenging off-road conditions. But they also make vehicles for the Armed Forces.
These ATVs are also very popular with the Special Operations Forces (SOF) and Polaris has a division called Polaris Government and Defense that specializes in building ATVs like the ones you could drive on the farm, but ramped up and adapted for military purposes.
In just five years, the MRZR platform has grown to 4 vehicles, and is a part of the miltiary in the U.S. and more than 25 allied countries. SOF and the wider military regularly rely on the advanced capabilities MRZR 2, MRZR 4 and DAGOR for their work downrange. The United States Special Operations Command has acquired a whole slew of them for their forces.
These SOF-grade MRZRs feature on-demand, advanced all-wheel drive. When more traction is needed, the vehicle automatically engages all four wheels and can automatically revert back to two-wheel. This advanced tech translates into more power when an operator needs it on a mission plus less general wear and tear on the vehicle.
Both variants also reach a max speed of around 60 miles per hour and sport engines that have 88 HP, designed for extreme performance in the toughest terrains. The vehicles have fantastic throttle response and acceleration.
The MRZR 2 can carry 1,000 pounds while the MRZR 4 can carry an additional 500 pounds.
SOFREP had the chance to interview the Polaris reps and see the vehicles up close. They can be tailored for mission use and present a layer of flexibility that will lend itself well to Special Operations. They are already in use by USSOCOM and they’ll be more in the pipeline in the very near future.
To read the entire article from Fox News click here:
Photo courtesy SOFREP, Polaris
An ugly day outdoors if you live on the East Coast, so a good way to begin Tuesday is head to the gym for Leg Day. Begin with pull-ups and towel pullups for those who don’t have access to climbing ropes. Then squats, lunges and the sled followed by a three-mile run
Training:
Continue to prep for the UBRR
3 x Pull-ups 10 reps
3 x Towel pull-ups 10 reps
3 x Front Squat 20-15-12 reps (lighter weight)
3 x Goblet Squats 20-15-12 reps (lighter weight)
4 x Sled push heavier weight
3 x 10 reps Dumbbell lunges
3 x 20 Side Planks
3-Mile run
Stretch well after completion