Month 5: Force Fitness owner training for elite forces selection standards

September 30, 2024 3 min read

Force Fitness owner Rich isn’t an elite athlete or a member of the special forces. He’s a husband, Dad, and business owner. But he does love a fitness challenge. 5 months ago he started working with Building The Elite on a 12-month training plan, with the goal of achieving the selection criteria standards for the special forces. In this blog series, we track his training and see how he’s getting on. He’s now 5 months in, so how are things going?

Force Fitness – inspired by the world’s elite athletes and military

The ethos of Force Fitness is to take inspiration from elite-level military, outdoor adventurers, and the special forces, making it accessible to everyday people. That’s what underpins Rich’s challenge. the ethos that underpins Rich’s challenge. Can he get in special forces selection shape whilst travelling, running a business, and being a family man with a young son?

Can an ordinary person train to meet special forces selection criteria?

Rich has always trained hard – first as a bodybuilder, and then in endurance events (including an Ironman triathlon). He got interested in the all-round fitness of special forces training and wanted to find out if he could train across the different modalities of strength, endurance, and capacity work.

Rich is working with Building The Elite, who specialise in special ops selection training, and his goal is meeting the entry standards of the special forces.

The standards Rich will need to pass by the end of the 12 months

Running -

Anything under 2 miles - 6 min miles

3-4 miles - 7 min miles

5 miles - 8 min miles

Rucking/Tabbing -

50lb pack under 15 min miles for 12 miles

Pushups -

100 in 1 set

Pull Ups -

15 in 1 set

Sit ups -

70-80 in 1 set

Swimming -

460m under 10 mins

Strength training – see below

Power endurance -

500m row - 1:30

2000m row - 7:00

Power -

Broad Jump - 9ft

Vertical jump - 30”

100m Row - 1:20 500m average pace

Month 5: selection prep sessions

Month 4 of Rich’s training included benchmark testing across strength, work capacity, and conditioning. You can read about it here and see what some of the tests involved.

In month 5, the volume of training ramped up significantly, with the introduction of fortnightly workouts that simulate selection day. BTE advise athletes that these mega sessions could take anywhere from 3-8 hours to complete. These multi-part sessions are done blind (you can’t look at what each section contains until you’re ready to do it).

Elsewhere, Rich’s programming still had a lot of work capacity training, with plenty of loaded farmers carries, pull ups, and push-ups, plus lots of sprint work in the running sessions. His strength training included a block of higher reps

Rich’s highlight of month 5

Here’s what one of those massive selection day simulation sessions looked like. This took Rich about 5 hours. Abd don’t forget, Rich wasn’t able to see what was coming – each part only revealed itself when he’s ready to go.

Part 1:

1 x AMAP +50 push ups – continuous movement. Break into sets of 10-20.

1 x AMAP +30 pull ups - continuous movement. Break into sets of 5-10.

Part 2:

3 mile ruck – HR zone 2.

Part 3:

2 mile run with 15 second sprint at the end of each mile.

Part 4:

10 x 30 seconds single farmer carry each side, no rests between sets.

Part 5:

4 mile ruck – HR zone 2.

Part 6:

2 mile run with 15 second sprint at the end of each mile.

Part 7:

Bear crawl x 30 seconds.

5 x pull ups, 15 x push ups.

Single arm kettlebell rack carry x 60 seconds each arm.

2 arm farmers carry x 60 seconds.

Rest 60 seconds, repeat 5 rounds.

Part 8:

4 mile ruck – HR zone 2.

Next blog: month 6 of Rich’s training with Building The Elite

We’ll catch up with Rich in a month to see how he’s coped with even more of these long, challenging simulation sessions. If you’ve been inspired by this series, check out Building The Elite to see what they do.