CRUSHING THE SWIM portion of the Navy SEAL PST
The Physical Screening Test (PST) to become a Navy SEAL/SWCC/Diver/EOD starts with a 450 meter swim.
There are 3 pool sizes - called courses. LCM (Long Course Meter is 50 meters long), SCM (Short Course Meters is 25 meters long), and SCY (short course yards is 25 yards long).
The Physical Screening Test (PST) to become a Navy SEAL/SWCC/Diver/EOD starts with a 450 meter swim.
There are 3 pool sizes - called courses. LCM (Long Course Meter is 50 meters long), SCM (Short Course Meters is 25 meters long), and SCY (short course yards is 25 yards long).
If you are in a yards pool, it will be a 500 yard swim. These are not great equivalents but these are the equivalents. If you can submit a 450 SCM swim, it’ll be about 15-20 seconds faster than the 450 LCM swim.
The entire swim should be combat side stroke (CSS) with open turns (you don’t flip). Technically I believe you can do breaststroke the entire time but nobody does that because breaststroke is for suckers.
STOP DOING PULLOUTS
Stop doing pullouts - or as Stew Smith calls them, “double arm pulldowns”. They are slow and waste far too much of your oxygen. Instead, work on having a great push off and streamline. Use 1 butterfly kick to get you up and into your first pull. Pushing off the wall is the fastest part of your swim. Instead of holding your breath and starting each length slowly, come up with the quickness and get right into the stroke.
Stop doing pullouts. They are slow and waste oxygen.
What’s a good time for the swim?
I believe the minimum standard is 12:30. That’s ridiculously slow. You need to get to the pool and start training.
We do most of our training in a long course pool - the big boy pool - which is generally the slowest of the 3 courses because you have less walls to push off of.
Average is between 9 and 10 minutes.
Above average is between 8 and 9 minutes.
Elite is under 8 minutes.
MORE TIPS FOR THE SWIM
Sometimes I see guys switching sides every length. Don’t do that. You have a strong side. Stay on your strong side.
Start off slow. Control your heart rate. Build into it. This is 9 minutes not 9 seconds.
You get to breath every stroke so you don’t need to worry about breathing - it just happens as a part of the stroke.
You will know you are in great swimming shape when you complete the PST, go a best time in the swim, and say, “I felt like I wasn’t even trying on the swim.” That’s where you want to get to. I hear this time and time again from candidates.
But, you need to train consistently and with purpose. You need to know what you should be going in practice. You need to become obsessed with the pace clock and what you are going on everything. If your best time is 11 minutes flat, that means you are averaging 1:13 per 50 meters. To get under 9 minutes, you need to average under 1:00 per 50 meters. If you don’t know what you are going or what you should be going, then what exactly are we doing?
You should be able to go faster in practice than in a PST because in the PST you know you still have a lot more to do. We’ve had practices where the entire group PB’s a 450 for time.
HOW MUCH SHOULD YOU TRAIN?
Minimum 3x per week in the pool for 1 hour. I’d like you to be in the pool more often vs. longer durations. 3x 1 hour is better than 1x 3 hours.
Consistent means 12 practices a month for 3 months in a row. Or, even better, 20 practices a month.
What's Next?
Join the Combat Side Stroke Workout Group
To enhance your combat side stroke and make the most of your preparation, the Swimnerd app can be an invaluable tool. Receive custom workouts, upload your stroke technique videos for evaluation, and learn everything there is to know about CSS from Coach Nate.
How to swim combat side stroke FASTER
Navy SEAL swim training
PROPER combat side stroke technique
Combat Side Stroke (CSS) is a unique blend of freestyle and breaststroke. It’s quiet and powerful. Having the proper technique and understanding how the stroke works is key to swimming fast. The way I think about it is in a sequence - a cadence of: “Big arm, little arm, together, shoot.”
#combatsidestroke
Combat side stroke ARM PULL
You can swim CSS on either side (right or left) and I like to teach everyone to be able to do so. It’s nice to be able to switch sides during a long ocean swim. In Phase 3 of BUDS, you have a 5.5 mile swim. That’s roughly 8,800 meters. In a pool, if you did 88x100’s on 2 minutes, it would take you about 3 hours.
If you swim on your left side, your left arm will be closer to the bottom of the pool. This is called your bottom arm or little arm. Your right arm is the top arm, also known as your big arm.
Bottom Arm = Little Arm
Top Arm = Big Arm
bottom arm/Little ARM
The bottom arm, I call the little arm, because for 98% of guys, they go faster with a shorter, smaller bottom arm. This is the biggest misconception when it comes to teaching combat side stroke - the bottom arm does not have to go all the way down. It can be just a little circular arm motion - a scull of sorts. When you pull your bottom arm all the way down to your side, you have both of your arms at your side, and your velocity plummets to nearly nothing. Guys that swim like this are easy to spot because they are so herky-jerky. If you hooked them up to a velocity meter, you would see a big spike up and a big spike down. When you shorten the bottom arm, you maintain speed better.
You should play with the length of your bottom arm. If you want to lengthen your stroke, make the bottom arm circle bigger. If you want to speed the stroke up, shorten the bottom arm. It’s nice to have a longer stroke when you are doing 2 mile ocean swims every week in BUDS. But if you are trying to post a really fast 450 for your PST test scores, then a shorter arm is almost always faster.
I think of the bottom arm as a scoop. One huge mistake I see all the time is guys using a straight arm. Don’t do that. Straight arms are weak arms. You need an angle - a power angle. The bottom arm is a circular scoop. Make the circle bigger if you want to make your stroke longer.
TOP ARM/BIG ARM
The top arm, I call the big arm, because it’s always a normal freestyle pull from top to bottom - it really can’t or shouldn’t be shortened. There are plenty of mistakes that can still be made, though.
The biggest mistake I see is guys doing is not fully rotating over on to their stomach and really reaching out with their arm to lengthen the stroke and put the arm in a position to properly catch the water. I’ve seen a lot of guys with their big arm’s elbow coming out of the water during their pull - which is not good.
Another popular mistake is pulling way outside their body or not pulling deep enough - both are something that can be fixed by rotating a little more, too. This can be helped with a slight flutter kick or two after your scissor kick. We will talk more about this later.
It is critical to get your fingers pointed towards the bottom of the pool, while keeping your elbow as high on the surface as possible, when you begin your top arm pull. This is called your catch - this is you putting your paddle in the proper position before pulling. Your fingers shouldn’t be glued together or fully spread out - just a little spread in between your fingers.
During the recovery phase of the stroke, unlike freestyle, your arm won’t come out of the water. If it does, you’ll get yelled at. This typically happens as practice goes on, guys get tired and lazy and the arms begin to come out of the water to get away from the resistance. Keep it as close to the surface as possible while not having it come out. Long Dog Paddle drill is helpful in practicing this.
bringing the arms together
“Big arm, little arm, together, shoot.”
Your big arm and little arm should meet each other at about your shoulders. Another common mistake I see is guys leaving their top arm on their side after their big arm pull. Don’t do that. It should always be moving. We always want to be propelling ourselves through the water or streamlining. “Shoot” is shooting both arms into streamline while scissor kicking. You are essentially kicking yourself into streamline, which is why Single Arm CSS is my favorite drill. We’ll talk about that more and how it helps with the connection of your stroke.
Kicking during combat side stroke
Some people say you shouldn’t flutter kick during CSS, and I highly disagree. But let’s start with the scissors kick.
scissor kicking
Like the CSS arm pull, the CSS leg kick has a bottom leg and a top leg. If you are swimming on your left side, your bottom leg is your left leg, your right leg is your top leg.
The bottom leg is your kicking a ball leg. It’s your propulsion leg - perhaps the most important part of the entire stroke. You bring your heel to your butt and whip it back down like kicking a ball.
The top leg is your heel kick leg. Your knee will come up and you will heal kick back down.
Your legs do this at the same time, which makes you look like a scissor.
One of the biggest mistakes I see is having a huge massively wide kick. When you do this, you create a ton of drag which is suboptimal. Try keeping your knees together. While nearly impossible, give it a shot.
You should also begin stretching a lot more. You definitely do not stretch enough. Hip flexors and quads especially. Proper swimming technique is about being able to put your body in the most ideal positions that reduce drag.
flutter kicking
Now, some folks think doing flutter kicks after the scissor kick is dumb and wastes energy and oxygen. But that is just not true. If you want to sprint combat side stroke, then an aggressive flutter kick after a scissors kick is a must. But the flutter kick doesn’t have to be that egregious during longer swims (same goes for freestyle). Instead, we are looking to use the flutter kicks to rotate our hips so that we can lengthen out the stroke, putting our arm in a better position to pull. If done properly, you should be doing a flutter kick at the same time as your big arm is anchoring the catch.
Some guys do find that a breaststroke kick is better for them instead of a scissors kick. A breaststroke kick, sometimes called a frog kick, is not usually faster for most but worth testing out. The watch never lies. We’ve had people drop 30 seconds in a PST simply by changing from a scissor kick to a breaststroke kick. That being said, the breaststroke kick sucks for buddy towing. It is beneficial for you to learn both - plus the egg beater kick (sometimes called single leg breaststroke kick).
What's Next?
Join the Combat Side Stroke Workout Group
To enhance your combat side stroke and make the most of your preparation, the Swimnerd app can be an invaluable tool. Receive custom workouts, upload your stroke technique videos for evaluation, and learn everything there is to know about CSS from a professional swim coach.
Training and Preparation for Open Water
At BUDS, most of your swimming will not be in a pool, it will be in the ocean. Every day is different in the open water and the most important thing you must learn is how to swim in a straight line. You can be the fastest swimmer but if you swim an extra half a mile, you’ll surely be the slowest.
Open Water Swimming
Open water swimming offers a unique and exhilarating experience that takes you beyond the confines of the pool. Open water swimming presents swimmers with an entirely different set of challenges compared to pool swimming. It often involves unpredictable conditions, varying water temperatures, and the absence of lane lines. At BUDS, most of your swimming will not be in a pool, it will be in the ocean. Every day is different in the open water and the most important thing you must learn is how to swim in a straight line. You can be the fastest swimmer but if you swim an extra half a mile, you’ll surely be the slowest.
The first thing you need to do when you arrive on the beach is assess the situation. Which direction is the wind blowing? Which direction is the current going? What are the tides doing? How big are the waves? The more you know, the better, as you must assimilate with the ocean.
swimming in a straight line
Learning how to swim in a straight line is half natural instinct and half sighting properly. Sighting is simply breathing to the front instead of the side. Though, you don’t really even need to breath if you don’t want to or don’t need to. You can simply sight with your eyes, leaving your mouth and nose submerged. We call these alligator eyes.
Training Strategies for Open Water
Distance Matters: Every week in BUDS you’ve got a 2 mile open water swim. For most guys, this will take about an hour. Make sure you are doing longer swims in the pool with fins on. Do a 3,000 for time or an hour long swim.
Train in Open Water: There is nothing better for training open water than to be training in the open water. I’ve heard multiple guys say the first time they ever got in the ocean was at BUDS. That’s not good. You don’t want that to be you.
Sighting: Practice sighting techniques to maintain your course in open water. This skill is crucial for staying on track. You are better off sighting more and staying in a straight line, then sighting less and falling of course. Yes, you can practice sighting in the pool.
Swim with a Buddy: If possible, join an open water swim group or at the very least swim with a buddy. Many times you will be buddy swimming - swimming about 6 feet apart, face-to-face. This means one person is on their right side and one person is on their left side. This is another reason why you should train and become proficient on both sides.
Train with Fins: You will have fins on nearly every time you get in the ocean. At BUDS, these will be the rocket fins. They are big, heavy, and rigid. Get a pair and train with them. You’ll need booties, too.
What's Next?
Join the Combat Side Stroke Workout Group
To enhance your combat side stroke technique and to make the most of your preparation, the Swimnerd app can be an invaluable tool. Receive custom workouts, upload your stroke technique videos for evaluation, and learn everything there is to know about CSS from a professional swim coach.
how to Buddy tow
A buddy tow is a swimming technique used for lifesaving within Navy SEAL training. It involves one swimmer (the rescuer) towing another swimmer (the buddy), who may be incapacitated or injured, through the water to safety.
A buddy tow is a swimming technique used for lifesaving within Navy SEAL training. It involves one swimmer (the rescuer) towing another swimmer (the buddy), who may be incapacitated or injured, through the water to safety. This technique is critical in special operations and combat swimming scenarios where a SEAL may need to assist a teammate like Michael Thornton did back in 1972. He towed his comrade for two hours. So lock it up.
buddying towing techinque
First, realize that towing someone is slow - and that slow and steady wins this race.
Buddy towing is a modified version of CSS where you scissor kick and pull with your bottom arm at the same time. Usually 2 or 3 times before breathing. Anything over 3 is overkill IMO - you need the oxygen. Breath every 2 or 3.
Your top arm goes across your buddy like a seatbelt and you grab him right where his arm pit meets his pec. Make sure you’ve got a nice, tight grip on him. Do not have a soft grip. You must be aggressive.
Your buddy’s lower back will be situated on your top hip - you should look like one person - so make sure they are glued to your hip. If you look like two people swimming side by side, you are doing it wrong.
This is also why breaststroke kick sucks for buddy towing because your hips open up into your buddy and you kick him. Don’t use a breaststroke kick.
Pay close attention to your head position during tows. When you aren’t breathing, you ideally want your eyes looking towards the bottom of the pool/ocean so that your hip stays up. You can even push your head down to pop your hip up if you need - your body essentially is a teeter totter in the water - if you push down with your face and chest, your hips and backend must come up and vice versa. This is helpful when initially getting your buddy onto plane - you want to get him horizontal as quickly as possible. Pushing down with your head is also helpful when you are towing a heavy hipped guy.
The cadre doesn’t exactly make this easy on the rescuer. It’s more of a little wrestling match and this is where guys get into trouble. The lifesaving portion at BUDS is a little bit of wrestling, a little bit of swimming, and a little bit of weight lifting.
You start by jumping into the pool using a stride jump. A stride jump is basically spreading your legs as far apart as possible like your taking one giant step. You are trying to create as much surface area as possible so you don’t go under the water. Your arms do the same thing, out to your sides. You must maintain eye contact on your victim the entire time.
From there, you will swim head up freestyle (aka Tarzan drill) to your victim, maintaining visual on your drowning victim.
For a compliant, non combative victim, you’ll simply grab them by the wrist and pull them into your tow. This is the wrestling portion of lifesaving and should be fast and aggressive. For an uncompliant, combative victim, you probably need to dive under the water, grab the victim by the hips and turn them so that their back is facing you. Now get them into your tow. You must be aggressive.
Once you get them to the side of the pool, put your knee in their butt so they have somewhere to sit. Stack their hands on top of each other on the pool deck. Exit the pool like you normally would but with one of your hands holding down your buddy’s hands. It’ll be a 3 hand stack. Now it’s time for the weight lifting portion of lifesaving. Grab your buddy’s wrists - they should be crossed, yours shouldn’t be. You are going to dead lift your buddy out of the pool and twist them at the same time. The victim’s top arm will point the way they should spin. Dunk them a couple of times to gain momentum before you give it a go. There butt should land on the deck with you foot now in their butt so that your leg creates a back rest for them. Bring them down slowly, laying down their arms first, then their head.
drills & TRAINING for buddy tows
You will most likely have some sort of extended Buddy Towing evolution at BUDS. You should prepare yourself for doing an hour worth of buddy towing.
To work on technique, do the Buddy Tow Drill. Just pretend you are towing someone. Once you get the technique down, start towing your diving brick - place it on your top hip, exactly where your buddy would be. Do these drills on both sides.
It’s also helpful to do the entire Lifesaving circuit multiple times with multiple buddies so you practice with different sized people and distances.
What's Next?
Join the Combat Side Stroke Workout Group
To enhance your buddy tows and make the most of your preparation, the Swimnerd app can be an invaluable tool. Receive custom workouts, upload your buddy tow technique videos for evaluation, and learn everything there is to know about buddy towing from a professional swim coach.