This page is intended to serve as a quick-start guide for students who are interested in fitness training for demanding roles in the military, the intelligence community, law enforcement, and similar fields. Each year, several students ask me how to prepare for Ranger School, Ranger Assessment and Selection, Special Forces Assessment and Selection, BUD/S, etc. My conversations with them begin with the information and resources on this page.

principles of tactical fitness

I recommend four guiding principles for those pursuing a baseline of tactical fitness:

• Your body is one of two indispensable tools in this line of work. Invest in it.
• Train all three fitness characteristics through Fluid Periodization.
• Modify your Fluid Periodization and exercise choices according to your mission requirements.
• Take the long view: Train and rest to achieve career durability.

The remainder of this page mostly elaborates on practical components of the second principle so that the reader can quickly develop a plan and begin training. It only briefly describes the third and fourth principles.

fitness characteristics and fluid periodization

There are several ways of describing fitness characteristics, but I find these three most helpful for tactical athletes: strength, work capacity, and endurance. These three characteristics generally correspond to the human body’s three primary metabolic pathways (i.e. the way the body transfers biochemical energy sources into movement): phosphagen, anaerobic gycolysis, and aerobic glycolysis. The body has many other metabolic pathways, but these are the three big ones, the ones that we train. For the sake of brevity, I will not discuss the metabolic pathways. Just note that it is worth your time to learn them well. They will help you better understand training methodologies, recovery, nutrition, how and whether to use things like creatine, antioxidants, electrolyte replacement drinks, etc.

Strength is the ability to generate maximum work in a short period of time, about 15 seconds or less. Think about a single 25 meter sprint, kicking in a door, shoving an opponent to the ground, or heaving an injured buddy over your shoulder.

Work Capacity is the ability to generate sub-maximal work over a longer time, for our purposes about 15 seconds through 20 minutes and more rarely up to 30-45 minutes. The intense, iterative demands of moving and fighting under fire for 15 minutes with a moderate load will tax the body’s work capacity.

Endurance is the ability to generate low-level work almost continually for 40 minutes through 12 hours or more. Long distance road marching and cross country movement with a heavy ruck are endurance events.

Fluid Periodization is an approach to training that emphasizes cyclical improvement of one fitness characteristic at a time while maintaining the other two. Each week of a four-week strength cycle, for example, might include three strength sessions, two work capacity sessions, one endurance session, and one day of rest. In a strength cycle, strength training comes first. Everything else takes a subordinate role for the duration of the cycle. The relative emphasis shifts during a work capacity or an endurance cycle.

Keep in mind that the three strength characteristics are not mutually supporting, especially at the extremes. Training in one will often cost maximum performance in the others. Fluid Periodization helps reduce but will not eliminate that compromise.

professional programing

For most, professional programming is the best place to begin. Only a few unusually experienced or fiercely dedicated young athletes (with copious free time) are capable of building their own, high-quality programs from the start. If you are inexperienced, busy, have about $30 of discretionary income per month, and have a place to train, I recommend that you start by subscribing to or purchasing training programs that are custom built by experienced professionals.

If you are lucky enough to live near a gym that offers intelligent, fluid periodized programming, especially for tactical athletes, it is worth spending $150-$200 per month or more to train in a supervised, community setting. $200 per month is a lot for a young adult. But refer to principle #1, above. Invest in your fitness.

self-programming

If you are willing to put in the time to plan and if you have a facility where you can train freely, you can develop your own training programs. Below are reputable, characteristic-specific programs that you can use to construct your own fluid periodized programs.

Strength Programs: There are several terrific strength programs that are simple and readily accessible. For beginners, I recommend Mark Ripetoe’s Starting Strength and Jim Wendler’s 5-3-1. For others who have a couple of years or more experience with the basic lifts, I recommend something like Chad Smith’s Juggernaut Training System. Sample 4-week strength program.

Work Capacity Programs: There are thousands of good work capacity sessions online that are free. CrossFit’s WOD history is probably the most well-known example. However, before slapping a bunch of rando work cap sessions onto your calendar, it is important that you identify your training goals first. Then, select, modify, and aggregate work cap sessions that match and complement your training goals. If double unders and inverse burpees don’t contribute to your mission specific fitness goals, don’t do them. Other good sources of free work cap sessions include: CompTrain and Rich Froning’s Mayhem Nation. Sample 4-week work capacity program.

Endurance Programs: In some respects, endurance is the simplest fitness characteristic to train. All you need are running shoes, shorts, a road or trail, and 45-240 minutes. But don’t fool yourself into thinking that all endurance miles are equal. If you do not have a distance running background, find a good program so that you discipline yourself to identify and eliminate “trash miles” at a young age. Trash miles will accumulate and exact a price in years or decades to come. Don’t mistake running a lot for running smart. The same applies to swimming, biking, rucking, etc., although running and rucking will generally exact a larger cumulative toll on your body. Some good running programs include: . You’ll probably need to modify these programs in order to fit in your work capacity and strength sessions. Sample 4-week endurance program.

background and credits

The information on this page represents a summary of my history of trial-and-error while training myself and my soldiers to perform in conventional and special operations. Note that I have never been to BUD/S, SFAS, or several other demanding schools. However, much of my experience is applicable to most of the performance demands of those schools and the units that draw service members from them. If you do not have a better resource readily available, I recommend that you start here while you also look for programming that may be more suitable to your unique goals. Don’t wait. Start training today and improve your training as you go.

While many military and fitness professionals have contributed to my understanding of tactical fitness, two coaches stand out and deserve public acknowledgement: Rob Shaul of the Mountain Tactical Institute in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and Jake Saenz of Atomic Athlete in Austin, Texas. Many of the terms and concepts above originate with them.