The Houston Chronicle article said as a prerequisite to BUD’S, you had to be able to do 42 push-ups within 2 minutes, 50 sit-ups within 2 minutes, 6 pull-ups, and then a 500-yard swim within 12½ minutes, and a mile and half run within 11 minutes, all in quick succession.
And then, only 14 out of 205 of his class made it through. This is men who could do the aforementioned prerequisite. That means around 90% of those who could do those things above couldn’t handle it.
Sheesh. No wonder they say their’s is the toughest in the military, probably in the world.
That’s Olympics-level physical conditioning. Amazing!
That physical screening test you mention is not difficult, any decent swimmer can go over twice that speed without any real difficulty. I’m not surprised that the actual training program is far more demanding. I would be concerned if that were NOT the case actually.
“Sheesh. No wonder they say their’s is the toughest in the military, probably in the world.”
From what I’ve read, the tests necessary to become part of the US Army’s Delta Force are incredibly strenuous too. Eric Haney detailed a lot of it in his book “Inside Delta Force”.
Regardless of whose testing is toughest, I’m so very glad we have people like that protecting us!
It’s a lot more than just the # of pushups etc. It’s a lot of other stress and phobia testing. Fear of heights, claustrophobia etc to ANY degree means a drop from BUD/S. BUD/S trainees (I was one) swim laps in a pool with feet tied together and hands tied behind the back. And get stuff off the bottom of the deepend with their teeth, while so bound. That’s just one example in one area. You can be an olympic athlete. That does NOT mean you can do all of the many many stress and phobia tests in every area you can imagine.