Stew Smith Fitness News

Failure IS a Learning Experience and Assessment Tool - Nothing Else. Learn from Failure and Keep Moving... Resilience and mental toughness emerge from your willingness to confront failure head-on. Face it: Building resilience and mental toughness is uncomfortable. It’s a complex mix of fatigue, frustration, and self-doubt that resides outside your comfort zone. The magic happens when you push against these limits. Accept that feeling burned out and challenged indicates you’re in fertile ground for growth. Each struggle is a testament to your determination to become tougher and stronger. Have you ever wondered why some of the most gifted individuals...

Two aspects of the discussion during Tactical Fitness Report 246 that resonated with me were his focus on the spiritual side of the Four Pillars of Wellness for the Tactical Service: Physical, Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual, and his discussion of Eye Movement Desensitizing and Reprocessing EMDR Therapy for Post-Traumatic Stress (PTS). My first question to Dan: “What exactly does the spiritual wellness pillar mean?”Dan:  Spiritual wellness/resilience and the daily practice are the foundation for this. It's a foundation for tactical professional service. The practice of spiritual wellness is your capacity to love to be helpful, to be useful, to be driven by your...

Unleash the Never Quit Mindset If you are human, you will at some point doubt yourself. You will doubt whether you are smart enough, strong enough, fast enough, tough enough, or ready for an upcoming challenge. Instead of having doubt cripple your efforts and put an ALL-STOP on your progress, use it for good. One of my favorite uses of doubt is to use it as an assessment tool. I listen to doubt as an inner voice that is my coach, telling me I need to improve something, better myself, or refine a product in my business. The truth is,...

When Do You Know You Are Ready to Go? No Matter What the Challenge... Pic Credit - D.McBurnett How Will You Know You Are Ready? Being mentally and physically ready is more than just saying, "I will never quit" and passing a fitness test. While there are fitness tests that confirm you are prepared to enter special operations training, how do you know if you can handle the mental and physical demands of what comes next?  To assess whether or not you are physically ready for any endeavor, you can see lists like this Physical Assessment Tool for average scores on...

Work to Achieve These Scores / Times on the Following Events(Then - You MIGHT be Ready) Jeff Nichols and I recently did a Tactical Fitness Report on how we assess candidates throughout the process of training.  Not just as an initial assessment, but this chart can help you see where you meet up on the spectrum of training that will place you in the top 25% of candidates in spec ops selection programs.   The Tactical Fitness Report (video) The Charts and Exercise Standards of Selection Preparation TRAINING PROGRAMS FOR YOU - IT DEPENDS ON THE FOLLOWING:- your athletic history (sports/training...