Learn to Love What You Hate

Team SGPT:

Been getting a lot of questions lately about swimming and how to get ready and improve for Special Forces.

I went back to this article and beefed it up – added video and more tips – so if you have seen it check it out again. If you haven’t read it… get ready for the download.

Upgraded Special Forces Swim Workouts and Tips

Woah… I wish I would have had that article before I started BUD/S. I would have printed it out and put it above my bed. Serious.

You know – hardly a week goes by that I don’t get someone asking “So.. What was it like to be a Navy SEAL?”.

And you know… every time I have to think about it as a million images flash into my mind.

Guns, Demolition, jumping out of airplanes, rappelling out of helicopters, Room clearance with flash bangs. Just really cool shit.

Find out what Michael Jordan and Herschel Walker practice daily to make them Champions

But you want to know what I think about when I get asked that Question?

The one thing that I really signed up for — I really wanted to be a Frogman. Like the “Men with Green Faces”. I could see myself in the dark, swimming in the night, coming up on a distant beach – unknown.

And so the thing I remember most and I think of first about being a SEAL is……………

We got to go on really long swim in $#%&$ng cooooooooollllldd water.

Water so cold that you step to the edge and fear/dread started to creep up your leg and into your body and mind. It was awful.

Did I ever tell you I hate cold water? I am from Florida and like warm. I learned to “love” the thing I hated.

That process helped me a lot…. let me explain.

I remember telling myself – this is really going to suck. I was 20 years old. I didn’t know a thing about mental conditioning. I would slowly ease into the water as I could feel my breath getting squeezed out of my warm lunges. I convulsed and shuddered and worked to get control of my body as I knew failing out on a swim was unacceptable. Being too slow or just ringing out from the discomfort was unacceptable.

I could not disgrace my family. I could not disgrace myself. I had to get a hold of my mind and not quit. I had to stay with my swim buddy. And so I trained my young mind to think of something warm. I looked at my swim buddy and said “its ok”. “Hooya this sucks but we gonna make it”.

And so my dread and dire thoughts turned into action. And then my action turned into better thoughts. My better thoughts propelled me forward faster. Moving faster meant I got warmer. Getting warmer was good as now I was away from the shore and could see the buoy a few hundred meters away.

And so this process of moving from dread and negative thoughts gave way to positive thoughts and progress.

This is one of the ways we control the Fear. How we move forward when we don’t want to.

You know…. that is all we want in life. A show of progress. When we do better at something then we come back and want to do it again. Because our brain relishes and feeds off moving forward.

You don’t have to be in BUDS training to find that same experience.

Today – many of us will do things we don’t want to. We will do things that at first we absolutely dread.

But we must move forward – we must enjoy the journey.

Every step (every swim stroke) is building you and constructing who YOU will become.

I can’t emphasize that enough. What you do in your next “movement” will define You.

What will you do? How will you react?

Will you quit and lie down like a dying animal?

Or will you stand tall like a warrior. Or even if you knee is bowed…. will you work to stand back up?

Falling forward. Always falling forward.

Gotta run — big day……

Train Hard!

Brad McLeod
CrossFit Grinder SEALgrinderPT