Navy seal SWIM TRAINING

There’s many different facets of swimming at BUDS. Here are 8 categories you need to become proficient at before you head out to Coronado.

1. Treading

Navy SEALs must master treading water for long periods, often while wearing heavy gear. With and without fins. Training often involves hands-out-of-the-water drills and added weight.

2. Drown Proofing

This survival skill teaches SEALs how to remain calm and move efficiently while their hands and feet are tied. Techniques include bobbing, floating, and traveling.

3. combat side stroke without fins

The Combat Side Stroke (CSS) is the preferred swimming technique. It combines elements of the sidestroke, freestyle, and breaststroke, making it an efficient, low-profile stroke that is stealthy.

4. Combat side stroke with Fins

Adding fins to the CSS increases speed and endurance while reducing effort over long distances. SEAL candidates train extensively with fins - especially in open water.

5. Open Water Swimming

SEALs train in rough ocean conditions, strong currents, and low visibility. They focus on navigation and teamwork to ensure mission success. If the first time you’ve ever been in open water is at BUDS, that’s bad news for you.

6. Lifesaving

SEALs learn how to rescue and transport injured teammates in the water. Techniques include buddy towing using the cross chest carry.

7. Breath Holding

Training includes static apnea (holding breath while stationary) and dynamic apnea (holding breath while moving). SEALs develop CO2 tolerance and mental resilience to operate in underwater missions. You must stay calm. Also, proper pullout technique is necessary to maximize your efficiency under the water.

8. Knots

Navy SEALs must tie and untie knots underwater, often in complete darkness. This skill is crucial for demolition, setting up underwater tools, and survival scenarios where securing equipment is essential. The 5 main knots are: bowline, right angle, square, clove hitch, and Beckett’s bend.

Now, let’s go more in depth on each of these swimming subjects…

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).

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 you can do breaststroke the entire time but nobody does that because breaststroke is for suckers.

It is not uncommon to see guys side stroking with a breaststroke kick instead of a scissors kick. This is discouraged, because it is slow. And, sucks big time for buddy towing.

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 are way behind if you go 12:30.

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.

We’ve had a few guys break 7. I think all of them were swimmers growing up.

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. One eye in, one eye out when you breath. The less head movement the better, as the head leads your body.

• 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

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 99% 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).

how to swim combat side stroke faster

how to swim combat side stroke faster

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

Open Water Swimming

At BUDS, most of your swimming will not be in a pool, it will be in the 63 degree ocean. Every day is different in the open water and the most important thing you must learn how to do is swim in a straight line.

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? Where are the waves breaking? The more you know, the better, as you must assimilate with the ocean.

swimming in a straight line: HOW TO SIGHT

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 can sight without breathing - by sighting only with your eyes, leaving your mouth and nose submerged. We call these alligator eyes. The better mobility you have in your shoulders and neck, the better technique you can have while doing this. The most you come out of the water, the more drag you create. Guys can go REALLY slow due to bad sighting - you want your mouth as close to the water as possible.

When you sight during sidestroke, think about leaning on your bottom arm - try and keep that arm close to the surface of the water.

You can also sight by doing a breaststroke stroke. Do a few normal CSS strokes, then do a fly kick with a breaststroke pull. I do like this for guys that undulate and dolphin kick well. I like it because you get a longer, more comfortable line of vision.

Foggy masks suck - how do you know where you are going with a foggy mask? Try and get the newest mask you can get and make sure you do a nice job of spitting in your mask. Once your mask goes on, don’t take it off. If you break the seal, you will need to spit in it again to combat the fog. If you have a super old super foggy mask, keep some spitty water in your mask and when it gets foggy just shake your head and the water will clear you right up.

Training Strategies for Open Water

1. Distance Matters: Every week in BUDS you’ve got a 2 mile open water swim. This is over an hour of straight swimming. Make sure you are doing longer swims in the pool with fins on. Train both sides. Do longer threshold sets. This means stuff like 20x100 on 2 minutes holding 1:40.

2. 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.

3. Sighting in the Pool: Practice sighting techniques in the pool. 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.

4. Swim on Both Sides: Most of the time you will be swimming with a buddy - 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 with fins. Not so much for normal CSS.

5. Buoys: If you have access to open water, get yourself a buoy with a kayak anchor. This is probably the best way to work on sighting. It doesn’t matter where you put the buoy - just swim at the buoy repeatedly, sighting. Go from different angles and distances.

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.

LIFESAVING & BUDDY TOWS

A buddy tow is a swimming technique used in lifesaving within Navy SEAL training. It involves one swimmer (the rescuer) towing another swimmer, 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 buddy 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 - you need the oxygen. Breath every 2 or 3.

Your bottom arm is a small scoop - just like in your typical CSS stroke.

Pay close attention to your head position while you tow - especially when you start to get tired. 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.

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 can’t open up or you’d kick your buddy. So breaststroke kickers tend to tow their buddies on their butts, which then leads to them slipping off. They need to be on your hip - not your butt. Don’t use a breaststroke kick. Learn how to scissor kick for buddy tows.

LIFESAVING

The lifesaving portion at BUDS is a little bit of wrestling, a little bit of swimming, and a little bit of weight lifting.

It’s all procedural - it is pass or fail - it is not timed. You do not need to rush.

You start by jumping into the pool using a stride jump - or what I like to call a very slow step into the water. 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 your head doesn’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 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 need to dive under the water, grab the victim by the hips and turn them so that their back is facing you. Now crawl up there back and 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. 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 2 or 3 times to gain momentum before you give it a go. There butt should land on the deck with your foot now under 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.

A very typical set for us is 8x50’s Brick Buddy Tow on a 2:00 minute interval. Switch right side/left side each length.

It’s also helpful to do the entire Lifesaving circuit multiple times with multiple buddies so you practice with different sized people and distances. We do this every week.

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.