Part I: Time, Volume, and Patience.
Key Takeaway
The amount of time it should take to prepare for a SWAT or SOF selection is going to depend on the length of the selection you are attending, the physical capacities required, and the individual fitness level that the trainee is starting from.
If you have been following our “day to day” programming for several months; which is designed to train the generic physical capacities for Police, Firefighters, and other tactical populations…you will have a large baseline of fitness that can be steered towards specific capacities that may be tested at one of these events. If you’re starting from nothing, then you should probably reconsider dropping your packet until you have put in some time preparing.
You can’t (or shouldn’t try to) rush certain adaptations. The aerobic system, tendons, ligaments, and local muscular endurance all need time/volume to learn how to tolerate the demands you will put them through. Attempting to cut corners will only heighten your chances of injury or burnout.
Time
At We Go Home Human Performance,our SWAT Selection program is 8 weeks and our generic Special Operations Program is 16 weeks. The reason being is that most SWAT tryouts are usually at most a few days (or shorter) in several major metropolitan Police Departments across the United States. Yes, some are longer, and yes, some have a short “selection” period and then a challenging pipeline that needs to be completed. Regardless, a larger base of fitness will not only let you be successful at the initial stages of your departments process, but it will keep you healthy until you are officially on the team.
For our 16 week Special Operations Program we built in more time for a few reasons. This longer time period lets you start your training program with more general training modalities that help support rucking and other physical capacities. This lets you work on building your overall work capacity through various movements, strength training, and generic aerobic conditioning methods.
Then as the program continues, particularly in the last 8 weeks, we get a ruck on your back and more time on your feet.
For example, here is week 1:
Two total body lifts and three Aerobic Focused days (one that is loaded).
Now lets look at a Week 9 of the program:
This is about as specific as you can get for preparation. Notice we took eight weeks to get here. We gave ourselves plenty of time to build a foundation of strength and aerobic capacity. Now we start to get a bit more sport specific and test ourselves a bit before we hit a few more weeks of training before we drop the volume a bit to let ourselves recover. Week 9 is kind of like a “check in” to let yourself display some of that fitness you’ve built over the past couple months.
Closing
Time. We never have enough. Sometimes we also don’t get the heads up fast enough that our department is putting on a SWAT selection. Maybe you only get a few weeks notice or less.
How do you mitigate that? Stay in shape. Keep yourself at a high level of physical fitness all year. This shouldn’t even be an issue. Every so often maybe sprinkle in some activities you know the team has their candidates do, but no you cannot try to build up to the selection because you never know when its going to happen.
However, if you do know when you’re attending selection and it is particularly intense…think about your BORTACs or some of the Major Metropolitan SWAT teams out there…take your time building to it. Maybe even use our 16 week Special Operations Program which will be overkill for most of these events but you’ll be well prepared. Regardless, let your body adapt to what you need it to do. If you don’t have the maturity and patience to do so you might let a great opportunity pass you by.
Questions? Reach out or comment below.
