My friend is going into pararescue this summer and needs to improve his distance running, swimming, bodyweight strength, and all that good stuff. He’s having trouble maintaining a 7:30 pace for repeated miles right now. He needs to enter the training camp capable of running 3 miles at 7:30 pace. He needs to also be able to swim 1500m in 30 minutes and do 25m underwater 4 times within 10 minutes. He’ll also have to be able to do 65 situps, 10 pullups(lol), 50 pushups, 120 flutter kicks…and that’s with like 3-10 minutes rest between tests.
What sort of training program can I give my friend to help him get to where he needs to be?
These are just some thoughts… I’m not an expert by any means - but these things have worked for me.
Treadmill work (3x a week or so) at faster than 7:30/mile pace will help. I see that the run is after the swim, so he should have a comfortable buffer to be sure he’ll make it. I’d recommend he do intervals at 9-11mph in addition to general conditioning. The overspeed intervals I think will really help him get used to running more comfortably at a pace that is at or faster than 7.5min/mile.
Something I’ve done that I’ve enjoyed doing and really helped my ability to run distances between 1-4miles is:
-get warmed up
-11mph for 1minute
-2min break; 11mph for 2 minutes
-3min break; 11mph for 3 minutes
-4min break; 11mph for 4 minutes
… until I don’t think i’ll be able to finish the next run.
This is probably too fast for what your friend is looking for, but 9 to 10mph would probably be a good speed. In order to reduce the # of runs, he can also do the same thing but instead of doing every number of minutes, try only doing the even minutes.
I know nothing about swimming.
One push-up training method is to pyramid. (Do 1, then 2, then 3, … then 9, then 10, then 9, then 8, then 7, …, then 3, then 2, then 1)
Between pushups, take the same number of breaths as you just did pushups for a break. The total # of pushups done is the square of the number you go to. If you go to 8 and back down, you do 64 pushups. if you go to 15 and back down, you do 15*15=225 pushups.
As it happens one of my best friends is an ex-PJ. The stories he told me about the training are pretty brutal. They have a higher wash out rate than BUDS, which is saying a lot.
PJs (like SEALs) are essentially triathletes from hell, but with first aid kits. Therefore, I would look at the training programs for triathletes. I’m sure there are several good web sites and forums as well as good books that can help him structure a training program. I would also recommend that he be able to perform better than the minimum test requirements.
