What does a SEAL know about Extreme Fitness?

And why should you care? Two good questions and ones that I asked myself when examiner.com contacted to me to write about the subject. They felt I was the “perfect” writer (no pun intended since I created the Perfect Pushup) because of my Navy SEAL background. On the surface it seems logical – former Navy SEAL writes about Extreme fitness. I know a few things about suffering through Hellweek or 1000 situp sets or 20 mile runs with 40lbs on my back or 5 mile open ocean swims in 55 degree water, but honestly, how many people really care about that, let alone would actually do it in their normal fitness routine? There’s only two kinds of folks that I can think of – sadists and those trying to be Navy SEALs.
SEAL training is certainly not for everyone and it’s not designed to be for everyone, BUT the lessons learned in SEAL training can be for everyone. Though the workouts above sound so extreme they might be considered ludicrous, to all of us going through SEAL training those workouts just pushed us a little further than we had been the week before – they kept us out of our comfort zone. Of course we started training at a certain level of fitness and then each week our instructors pushed us a little more. For example, our first open ocean swim was a mile, then it was a 1.5 mile then 2 miles – then 3 miles and so on…this methodology was applied to every element of our training. Had you told me before I started training that I’d be doing a 20 mile run with 40lbs on my back or 5.5 mile swim I would have laughed at you. But once you started pushing yourself a little more each week, the extreme became the norm, not the exception.

Let's define Extreme Fitness – extreme fitness to one person could be doing ten pushups when they couldn't do a single pushup last week or it could mean doing 120 without stopping. The concept I shared with you yesterday is that Extreme Fitness is "Get Out of Your Comfort Zone" fitness.

Teammates, I want to hear from you! What's your definition of Extreme Fitness and how do you get out of YOUR comfort zone?

CHARLIE MIKE -- ALDEN