Stew Smith Fitness News

What's Your Excuse? Build Habits That Are Excuse Proof! Not Every Day is Perfect Weather with Enough Time to Train Do you find yourself making excuses to miss a work out? It’s pretty common. Are you a master at skipping workouts?  Or just occasionally fall off the habit of training?  And we all have those days. Some days the excuses win - some days you win. We are all human so give yourself a break when an excuse not to train wins, but try to keep the win to loss ratio higher in the win column.  Limit "excuses" to REAL...

Typical Strategies Given During Recent USNA Summer Seminar Event (2nd session) The loss of the sounds system caused a different style of workout that was more doing than coaching. Usually I am able to give the following pieces of advice when it comes to preparing to get TO and THROUGH any type of future training program you seek to endure. First you have to get accepted INTO the Service Academy (in this case, the US Naval Academy) by crushing your grades, tests, medical qualifications, sports, leadership positions, and the fitness test called the Candidate Fitness Assessment (CFA).  It consists of...

How Many MIles Per Week of Running Should I Be Doing Prior to BUD/S / other Spec Ops Selections?  I get asked this question so often but I have not written an article about the answer because there is no one size fits all on this answer. The range of anywhere from 25-40 miles is logical BUT it depends on many factors.  Many have called this journey into special ops a "running man's game."  You will be running a lot in any military spec ops selection program. Preparing for such volume is key, but there is no one answer that...

Tenacity Is a Talent:Persistence Matters if You Want to Succeed Failure is not the end. We all fail on any challenging journey at some point and have to re-group and start over again. Failure is a learning experience not the end of a dream.  Persistence and Tenacity WIN everytime so keep moving forward even if you get knocked down to your knees. It just depends on how bad you want it and how willing you are to prepare fully for any upcoming goal and challenge.  Have you ever wondered what the difference between failure and success really is? The difference...

Underthinking / Underpreparing For Highly Competitive Programs Will Crush Your "Dreams" Before You Even Get Started Being thoroughly prepared to get accepted INTO a program as well as making it THROUGH that program are part of a two part process I have been coaching for decades - The Phases of Tactical Fitness. For many competitive challenges people seek there is a process that requires a "wanna-be" to prepare significantly to become a competitive candidate.  This is often the end of the road to achieving a potential goal by soon realizing they are ill-prepared to meet the standards of such programs....