Early Morning PST

The Navy PST has remained unchanged for nearly 40 years, as I have seen it as a candidate, student, instructor, and post-service coach. The standards have changed over the years, usually making times and reps tougher for candidates competing for jobs like Navy SEAL, SWCC, EOD/Diver, Rescue Swimmer, and HM SOIDC. Here is a great question that I get asked often but never put down in writing:

What are the top individual exercises, scores, and times that you have personally seen on the PST? Good question. I get asked this one every now and then. I've seen some crazy scores. Um, this isn't all from the same person. So these are like the best reps and times I think I've ever seen.

Swim. I have seen a few sub-six-minute swims, but the fastest was 5:40. That is the fastest I've ever seen: a 5:40 500 yd swim, CSS. This guy was a collegiate Olympic-level swimmer. I think he did it with a breaststroke kick, and it looked like sidestroke, but it was probably more breaststroke than sidestroke. He just crushed that swim. Now, he didn't do great on anything else, but he crushed that swim. He could have focused on his weaknesses a little more than he did, because he nearly failed every run and was called COMNAVGOONSQUAD for his near-daily appearances in the goon squad.

Goon squad – Also known as “motivation squad”. If you did not perform to the instructor's standards, you got the opportunity to receive “extra BUD/S. The goal was to motivate you to never want to be in the goon squad again. Hard sprints, fireman carries, bear crawls until the instructors were tired usually did the trick for 15-20 minutes of extra training.

Push-ups: I've seen a guy do 170 push-ups, and they were legit push-ups. In fact, I was on the officer selection board that year. When he came onto the board and we all saw this 170, we were like, “Oh, that's BS,” right? Everybody was like, “BS.” I said, “Well, I gave him the test. I saw it, and they were legit.” And they're like, “No way.”

He came into the officer board interview wearing his SDBs (a suit/tie) uniform. They said, “All right, never seen 178 push-ups. Let's see what you got.” We timed him, and he took off his jacket and tie, and cranked out push-ups. The board's first request of him was, “Let's see how many push-ups you can do.” And he did like 160 legit push-ups at that moment. Everybody was like, “OK, that's good. We're impressed.” So yeah, 178 on that.

Sit-ups: I think I've seen like 145, which is crazy, as it's more than one per second. Legit sit-ups. And this kid won some kind of sit-up contest when he was in grade school, back when they had to do flat, straight-legged sit-ups. So, when he bent his knees, he was killing everybody. Right. That was impressive.

Pull-ups. You're not going to believe it, but it was like 72 pull-ups in one set. Now, this was back in the day when there were no rules on how you did these pull-ups. You could hang, and if you could hang with one arm, shake out an arm, hang with the other arm, shake out an arm, and do five more, right? There was no rule against doing that. So, everybody was like, “Yeah, if you have the grip enough to hang up there with one hand, we'll let you do it.”

And that dude just did like 50 nonstop, and then he did five sets until he got 72. Very impressive. Never seen that before ever since.

1.5 Mile Run in boots and pants. This was back when we did it in boots and pants. I'm sure somebody's broken it with running shoes, but the fastest I've seen with boots and pants is a 7:15 mile-and-a-half. That's fast. How about those numbers for a bunch of freaks?

Good question, though. That always takes me back to some fun times. Well, some of those were back when I was a student. So back in the late 80s – early 90s, some were when I was an instructor in the late nineties. Then in the last 25 years, I've seen a few faster. Those scores are from generations of candidates.

If you want to crush the PST, check out the Navy PST Workout, but if you want to be successful once you get to your training selection, you need to focus on the specific events of your future training for a phase while you maintain high PST scores:

Check out StewSmithFitness.com for access to these programs and send Stew Smith CSS critiques and questions via email or weekly LIVE QA sessions.

Your Mission Starts Now

Let today be the day you refuse to quit. Let today be the day you adopt a mindset that transforms setbacks into comebacks. Join the Never Quit Mindset revolution and discover your limitless potential.

Act now—seize your $100 savings and begin the transformation that will last a lifetime.

 
Buy Now!
Never Quit Mindset Book, eBook, Audio Book, and 
Online Video / Audio Course