Welcome to Part 2 of my experience with SEALFit Comprehensive Academy and SEALFit Kokoro Camp, in which you’re going to get as many tips and tricks as possible for the SEALFit Academy. Even if you don’t plan on attending any SEALFit events, there are plenty of takeaway gems here for anyone who wants to achieve challenging feats of physical or mental performance.

In the next article - Part 3 of this three-part series -you’ll learn exactly what happens at SEALFit Kokoro, and some my own takeaways, tips and tricks - but in the meantime, let’s jump right into what you need to know for the six days of the SEALFit Academy.

Even if you don't plan on ever going to a SEALFit event, you're going to learn a ton of useful information about how to get physically and mentally stronger!

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Day 1 abruptly began at 4pm with a very brief orientation from Coach Dave (most of the coaches here go by “Coach”, followed by their first name - so don’t call them Sir or Mr. or anything like that), during which we introduced ourselves and selected a team leader. We then went straight into the coach barking orders at us as he led us through the initial PT test on “The Grinder”, which a hard, textured concrete surface at the US Crossfit facility in Encinitas, California.

The Grinder looks like this (fun, eh?):

During the PT test, which is performed in highly stylish black pants, white t-shirt and combat boots, myself and the 10 other Academy attendees were tested for the SEALFit Academy physical standards, which are:

-50 pushups in 2 minutes -50 situps in 2 minutes -50 squats in 2 minutes -10 dead hang pull-ups (6 for women) -1 mile run in 9:30 or less

Here’s a photo of the PT test from Academy.

As you can see, based on my physical training for the Academy (read about it in Part 1 of this series), I did just fine. But come prepared, because the candidates that failed (red circles) were pretty severely reprimanded for it. Take the standards seriously.

Other quick tips for the Academy PT test include:

1. Pay attention and be mindful, especially if you have a creative mind that wanders (like I do). Reign it in! Focus. Every tiny little detail matters at the Academy, especially when a coach is giving instructions for a WOD (Workout Of The Day) or any other activity. For example, I incurred a 50 burpee penalty for our whole team by simply running on the sidewalk rather than the road during the run portion of the PT test. I thought this would be safer, but it turns out that at SEALFit Academy and Kokoro, they pretty much avoid the sidewalks and almost always run on the road, even at night.

2. Suffer in silence. No grunting or weird workout noises. Be careful with grimacing too. Practice keeping a stone face, or better yet, smiling even when the going gets tough. Deep breathing helps with this.

3. Don’t show off or be a Rambo. Be a team player. As soon as I finished my run well ahead of most of the others, I was instructed to sprint back out and bring the rest of the team in. Unless instructed otherwise, always prioritize helping your team vs. just showing off your fitness.

4. If you can lay down a strip of duct tape or kinesiotape vertically down your spine, it will help you not get back blisters from situps on the hard Grinder surface. This helps because if you start the week with a chafed back, it’s going to hurt a bunch during the rucks, leg levers, flutter kicks, and pretty much any other time something is rubbing against your back. I learned that lesson the hard way.

5. Practice strict pull-ups to an above the bar chin position and full extension at the bottom, along with a hook grip in which your fingers wrap around your thumbs. Avoid“suicide” gripping on the pull-ups (a thumbs off position).

After the PT test, we sat in on a lecture with Coach Mark Divine - the owner of SEALFit, in which he introduced the core principles of The Unbeatable Mind, adapted from concepts in his book by the same name. I’d highly recommend you read both Unbeatable Mind and 8 Weeks To SEALFit well in advance of showing up for any of the SEALFit events. You will be way ahead of the game if you read them and do both the mental and physical activities in the book.

Following Coach Divine’s talk, we were cut free for a team dinner on our own. As the team leader, I was given $100 to divvy up among the team, so we went out for some team bonding at a restaurant across the street from the SEALFit headquarters, then an early bedtime. When you get a chance to sleep at the Academy, plan to do it - as you don’t get many chances for a solid night of sleep and you never know when you may get ripped out of bed and thrown into the ocean or shoved into a midnight workout (seriously - keep reading for more details on that).

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We awoke to a glorious breakfast on Day 2. Unlike Kokoro, you don't get crappy MRE's (stands for "Meals Ready To Eat"). Instead, the Academy is catered by a trained chef named Kathryn, who is also a nutritionist, yoga teacher and meditation expert. For breakfast on Day 2, Kathryn served us scrambled eggs with vegetable, gluten-free raisin nut muffins, and an assortment of fruits and yogurts.

Of course, the only downside is that as soon as your glorious breakfast ends, you can expect to be rushing to a hard workout - during which you'll often get the unique experience of tasting breakfast a second time, especially if you overeat on proteins and fats. As a matter of fact, at the SEALFit Academy you can pretty much expect to be rushing from the moment you awake - to breakfast, to a workout, a lecture, another workout, lunch, another workout, a lecture, a skills clinic, etc. Sometimes the rushing seems intentionally programmed to keep you slightly outside your comfort zone. For example, for lunch on Day 2, we had a fantastic but extremely filling chicken sausage and squash casserole - which was immediately followed by a 1 mile fast run in the heat.

This takes me to an important lesson: the use of digestive enzymes to help digest meals more quickly. I used this trick many times during Academy week and even during Kokoro - popping just a couple digestive enzymes with or immediately before meals to help things get through my digestive system more quickly and to help me absorb extra nutrients.

After breakfast, the first workout of Day 2 was "Grinder PT" with Mark Divine. You can get an idea of what it looks like in the video below. We did movements like this for a solid 2 hours, and finished with a sandbag run to the top of Lookout Hill, which sits about a quarter mile from the Academy.

At the top of Lookout Hill, Mark finished by bringing us through a Warrior Breathing session, which involves hyperoxygenating the body with sharp intakes of oxygen through the nose, then very quick exhales. During our Warrior Breathing, we practiced visualizing our "internal warrior" (Coach Divine's is King Leonidas of the Spartans). But I was baffled and slightly frustrated during this exercise, as I simply couldn't find or visualize my internal warrior. Images that floated through my head included a wolf, an archer (like Robin Hood), and even a shark, but none of these seemed quite right. I know this sounds cheesy and woo-woo, but being able to picture your warrior before a hard workout or intense physical challenge can give you a huge advantage. On Day 4, which you'll read about below, I had my first intense emotional breakthrough of the Academy, in which I finally did discover my internal warrior.

After the workout, Coach Divine gave a lecture on the principles of SEALFit, adapted from the book 8 Weeks To SEALFit. Then we moved on to a 2 hour clinic that covered sandbag skills, kettlebell skills and barbell skills, in which we learned 8-10 different exercises and movements for each of these tools. This doesn't sound like much of a workout, but 2 solid hours of practicing with sandbags, kettlbebells and barbells adds up pretty quickly.

After lunch, we had another lifting clinic, this time with Coach Adam, who taught us proper form for deadlifts, cleans, overhead press, push press and bench press. As you are probably noticing, you can expect to spend a lot of time with a barbell in your hands at SEALFit events.

Next, we settled in for another lecture with Coach Dave, during which Dave discussed training principles and the SEALFit components of Endurance, Strength, Stamina, Work Capacity and Durability. At the end of the lecture, he abruptly announced that we'd go do "Cindy" - a relatively famous Crossfit workout consisting of an AMRAP (as many rounds as possible) in 20 minutes of 5 pull-ups, 10 pushups and 15 air squats. After 26 rounds, my hands - already a bit rubbed raw from the amount of barbell holds - were ripped open and bleeding. So I'd recommend you bring tincture of benzoin and