Navy SEAL Mental Toughness
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Navy SEAL Mental Toughness
A Guide to Developing an Unbeatable Mind.
© 2016 Chris Lambertsen. All Rights Reserved.
Table of Contents
Preface
Navy SEAL Training
BUD/S and Hell Week
Earn Your Trident Every Day
SEAL Missions
Mental Toughness
Understanding Fear
Conquering Fear
Pursuit of Excellence
Becoming Mentally Tough
The Meaning of Success
Preface
In my many years of experience studying high-achievers, I have found that many of the same qualities that are essential to succeed as a Navy SEAL are the same qualities required for success in any endeavor.
This book will introduce to you some of the methods used by this elite force to develop mental toughness and self-confidence in their warriors. These techniques also apply to anyone who is interested in becoming more mentally tough, and who is willing to work toward achieving their specific personal and professional goals.
Learning about how Navy SEALs approach situations and the mentality with which they function, will enable you to contrast your outlook and mindset when faced with challenges or obstacles.
By reading this book you are already a step closer to success. Learn from these extraordinary men and then adhere to their methodology, and I can guarantee positive results on your journey toward your goals!
Navy SEAL Training
The road to becoming a Navy SEAL is long and hard. Following is a short summary of the stages that make up the Navy SEAL selection and training courses that every SEAL must go through in order to become a member of this elite force.
STAGE 1: Naval Special Warfare Prep School
(8 Weeks – Great Lakes, Illinois)
For the majority of prospective SEALs, the journey to becoming a member of the Teams begins after the completion of basic training (boot camp) and assignment to Prep School. This course averages eight weeks in duration, and is supervised by active-duty SEALs and other Naval Special Warfare personnel. In this course, there is a heavy emphasis on physical conditioning. The goal is to condition students to the point where they meet or exceed the established standards for admission to BUD/S, and also to ensure their bodies are toughened to the degree necessary to survive the rigors of the subsequent BUD/S orientation course and BUD/S First Phase.
STAGE 2: BUD/S Orientation Course
(3 Weeks – Coronado, California)
During this course students become familiarized with the Naval Special Warfare Training Center at Coronado and get their first real taste of the daily routine associated with being a BUD/S student. Physical training (PT) remains a top priority, and the intensity of the PT sessions means they train at a much higher level. The students are taught how to make their way, properly and safely, through the legendary BUD/S obstacle course. They also receive basic instruction on some of the equipment that they utilize in First Phase. The students remain in Coronado until they graduate from BUD/S or are dropped from the training program.
STAGE 3: BUD/S First Phase – Basic Conditioning
(7 Weeks)
The primary mission of First Phase is to eliminate the students who lack the will or the physical ability to successfully complete BUD/S. This filtering process is achieved by continuous, rigorous physical-training sessions and other training evolutions. These evolutions are all associated with various training and educational goals, but the reality is that everything about First Phase is designed to push the students to the edge of their perceived physical and mental limitations. As you might expect, First Phase has the highest attrition rate for BUD/S classes—historically around 75 percent.
During this phase the standards and scores required to pass various evolutions and graded events are elevated at the beginning of each week, making each week of First Phase tougher than the previous one. In addition to physical training, students are exposed to various water-related training evolutions, both in the Pacific Ocean and in the BUD/S training pool. A great deal of emphasis is placed on development of a team mentality and teamwork among the students. The class is broken down into boat teams consisting of six to eight students, and almost every training evolution is conducted as a competition, pitting one boat team against the others, and the losers pay a high price.
The fourth week of this phase is devoted to the infamous and much-feared Hell Week, which is a 5½-day evolution consisting of nonstop physical training and other activities designed to make the students colder and more exhausted than they have ever been. This is, of course, intended to make each student continually reflect upon just how badly he wants to be a Navy SEAL. For many, the rigors of Hell Week are simply more than they can endure, and throughout the week, it is quite common to hear the brass bell being rung three times as yet another student quits the course. Hell Week will be covered in greater detail in the next chapter, since it is such an important factor in the development of the mental toughness that’s associated with Navy SEALs.
STAGE 4: BUD/S Second Phase – Combat Diving
(7 Weeks)
During this phase students are trained as basic combat swimmers. Successful Second Phase candidates demonstrate a high level of comfort in the water and the ability to perform in stressful, and often uncomfortable, situations. Candidates who are not completely comfortable in the water often struggle to complete this phase.
As you might expect, students spend the majority of their time in the water learning and practicing various surface and underwater skills. Throughout this phase the students will be evaluated regarding their competence and confidence while in the water—both attributes are absolute necessities for a Navy SEAL.
The students are introduced to open- and closed-circuit diving. Both techniques are commonly used in operational units. There is a significant amount of classroom instruction associated with learning both types of diving, making this phase as academically challenging as it is physically challenging. In addition to training to become a combat swimmer, the students are continually challenged by various graded physical-training evolutions, such as timed distance runs, open ocean swims, and, of course, the ever-present obstacle course.
STAGE 5: BUD/S Third Phase – Land Warfare Training
(7 Weeks)
During this phase the students get their first real exposure to the many tools and techniques that are related to their chosen profession or specialty. They receive instruction on a variety of small arms, and they spend quite a bit of time becoming proficient in their use. Also covered in great detail is the employment of various types of explosives, land navigation, patrolling, rappelling, marksmanship, and small-unit tactics.
Most of the classroom instruction associated with this phase takes place at the BUD/S training compound. The last few weeks of the phase are spent on San Clemente Island, where the Navy maintains live-fire ranges and demolition ranges. Students run through a series of graded evolutions and practical-application exercises during their time on the island.
Throughout this phase the emphasis on physical training remains high and, as always, standards and passing scores for timed runs, swims, and the obstacle course are progressively elevated to ensure that the students find each subsequent week more demanding than the previous one. This continues until the class reaches the long-awaited BUD/S graduation ceremony.
STAGE 6: SEAL Qualification Training
(26 Weeks – Various Locations)
Once the students have successfully completed BUD/S, they attend a course known as SEAL Qualification Training (SQT). This training is designed to transition the students from basically-trained combat swimmers and warrior
s to highly-trained special operators. They must become proficient in many individual and team-based skills, which are essential if they are to operate successfully as a fully qualified SEAL. In essence, this training is very much a “finishing school” that is intended to produce graduates who can be assigned to an operational unit. The goal is to produce SEALs who are immediately capable of performing alongside more seasoned and more experienced teammates.
Students undergo advanced weapons training and extensive instruction in small-unit tactics, they are exposed to advanced demolitions techniques, and become more proficient at land navigation during both day and night operations.
Parachute operations—both static line and free fall—are also in the curriculum. The students receive the official designation of “Naval Parachutist” when they complete this phase of SQT.
Various types of communications equipment and extensive medical skills and life-saving techniques that have proven essential during combat operations are covered. This phase also includes cold-weather training in Alaska as well as more extensive training in waterborne operations.
Upon the successful completion of SQT, students are finally awarded the coveted Trident insignia and they are designated as fully qualified Navy SEALs. Each individual will be assigned to an operational unit, where they will undergo more advanced training and, of course, will deploy with their units on various training and contingency operations.
BUD/S and Hell Week
Now that you have a basic understanding of the training pipeline all SEALs have to undergo before becoming a fully qualified frogman, it is important that you gain a deeper appreciation of BUD/S and what occurs there so you’ll stand a better chance at understanding Navy SEALs. More importantly, you will gain a better understanding of the mindset and mental approach that encompasses the iron will that enables SEALs to do what they do best—produce exceptional results in exceptionally challenging environments and situations.
As you continue reading you will come to understand that within special operations units in the U.S. and around the world, the terms training and selection have two very distinct and different meanings.
A training course is one in which students are educated and trained in specific concepts, skills, and techniques. For example, a SEAL attending the sniper course will learn the tactics and techniques associated with serving as a sniper.
A selection course is one that is designed to screen, test, and evaluate students for certain physical and mental attributes. In most special operations units, candidates must first pass selection before they are allowed to receive any measurable amount of training.
BUD/S is a hybrid of these concepts. It is a training course, which means the students are actually learning some of the skills and techniques associated with serving as a SEAL. It is also a selection course, which means that there’s much more involved in becoming a SEAL than learning and performing the skills and techniques previously mentioned—it is about meeting standards, written and unwritten, that are the hurdles one must clear in order to wear the Trident. I think it is obvious that the BUD/S evolution known as Hell Week is more geared toward selection versus training!
Hell Week
This very short part of the course is perhaps the most fundamentally significant one in BUD/S. It consists of five and a half days of continuous gruelingly difficult activities designed to push the candidates to their absolute physical, mental, and emotional limits. Not only are they running, swimming, and maneuvering boats in frigid waters, but they are doing so with only a total of 4 hours of sleep throughout the entire evolution.
The main purpose of Hell Week is to screen out the students who lack the commitment or mental toughness to endure significant amounts of pain, discomfort, exhaustion, and stress. This is necessary because the academic and physical training that follows Hell Week becomes increasingly challenging. The instructors want to ensure that they have eliminated those who are not truly committed to serving as a SEAL. Typically, 75 percent of the students who start a BUD/S class fail to make it through training, and Hell Week is the most common event during which they fail.
Hell Week explodes unexpectedly, trainees know it will happen, but they don’t know when. They only know it will start with chaos:
They ran us out of the tent, screaming: ‘Go here, go over there, you guys can’t get it right, drop on the ground, get up.’ We were trying to do what they were telling us to do, but there was too much at once, it was impossible. They were spraying us with hoses, shooting off guns. ‘Hit the ocean,’ they ordered and we had to jump in the surf. It was a cold night, and we were freezing. After we were completely soaked, they hauled us back out and screamed at us to do push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups.
—Richard Machowicz, Unleash the Warrior Within
Throughout the week, be it day or night, the students remain in constant motion as they complete a series of training evolutions built around running, swimming, small boat races, crawling through foul-smelling mud flats, and a number of other events, contests, and situations designed to make the students physically miserable. This, in turn, leads them to wage a constant mental battle with themselves as they contemplate just how badly they want to be a SEAL.
After a couple of days of little to no sleep, combined with extremely high amounts of physical output, many of the students are disoriented and no longer know what day of the week it is. Their voices are hoarse from sounding off for the instructors. Some areas of their bodies have been chafed to the point of bleeding, from being in constant contact with wet sand, which seems to get into every crack and crevice of their bodies.
48 hours into Navy SEAL Richard Machowicz’s Hell Week, the instructors put him and his comrades into the cold ocean once again. They brought out the ship’s bell, and announced that they weren’t going to let anybody out until somebody quits.
The class stayed in the water for 30 minutes, shivering from the cold. One guy couldn’t take it anymore, he jumped up and rang the bell three times—he was out. A rush of people followed him, and the bell kept on ringing. In 10 minutes, 80 men dropped out of BUD/S Class 136.
To make matters worse, the instructors drove an ambulance in, filled with hot chocolate, coffee, and donuts, which they served to the quitters.
…Meanwhile, while it seemed our classmates were being rewarded for quitting, the few of us remaining in the water hadn’t stopped shaking … Somewhere in the corner of my mind came the realization that the instructors were weeding us out by playing negative games with our minds. The only way I would be able to win this one would be to play a positive game.
—Richard Machowicz, Unleash the Warrior Within
As a result of sleep deprivation, it is quite common for students to hallucinate during Hell Week, and while the students are not really aware of this, the instructor staff remains vigilant to prevent students from seriously injuring themselves. Medical personnel are present throughout Hell Week, and they do their best to patch up students with minor injuries and get them back to their boat teams.
Most of the training evolutions conducted during Hell Week are competitive in nature, pitting one boat team against another. As is the case throughout BUD/S, the instructors reward the winners of these competitions. It is common for them to grant a winning boat team permission to lie down for 15 minutes of sleep or to allow them to stand close to a warm fire, while the losing teams are punished unmercifully.
During Hell Week the instructors constantly harass, ridicule, and taunt the students, often using bullhorns to broadcast their nonstop barrage of insults, sarcastic comments, and offers of “hot coffee and donuts” for those who have had enough and want to quit BUD/S. This, of course, is the main goal of the instructors—to get the mentally weak to cave in and ring the bell three times.
SEAL training is intense for a reason: it’s designed to sift out the strong of spirit from the weak of will. As Dick Couch, a Navy SEAL veteran from the Vietnam era, wrote in The Warrior Elite:
SEAL training, beg
inning from day one at BUD/S, is designed to create warriors … It is a sorting process that finds young men who would rather die than quit, then instills them with a relentless desire to fight and win as a team … It is a ruthless process; for every man who succeeds, four men will fail. It’s a rendering for men of character, spirit, and a burning desire to win at all costs.
—Dick Couch, The Warrior Elite
How do these young men weather such brutal training, brave through the terrors of Hell Week, and endure to graduate as Navy SEALs in the end?
While you have to be physically strong to survive BUD/S, you also have to be mentally and emotionally resilient.
Hell Week isn’t designed to kill you. It’s designed to make you wish you were dead—or at least to push you to the edge of physical and mental endurance to see how you react. While the demands are mostly physical, the journey through them is all about mental attitude.
—Rorke Denver, Damn Few
BUD/S students often mistakenly believe that Hell Week is all about physical strength and endurance, but those who manage to survive it and continue on to become SEALs say that mental toughness is the critical factor required to get through this evolution. Once they pass Hell Week, the vast majority of students will indeed go on to become fully qualified SEALs.
BUD/S will quickly weed out those who lack both the physical capability and the level of commitment needed to succeed as a SEAL. It usually takes longer, however, to identify and eliminate those who are physically capable of serving as SEALs and who truly want to do so, but are lacking the strength of will and mental toughness to serve as SEAL Team guys. Historically, those making it through Hell Week have a very high probability of making it through the entire pipeline and becoming SEALs, but there have been cases where men who survive Hell Week ultimately fail to complete BUD/S. I once heard a BUD/S instructor say, “The millstone of BUD/S grinds slowly, but it grinds finely.” I thought this to be a profound statement then, and still do today.