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 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.