Building the Elite blog

Resources on how to get ready for SOF selection and improve human performance. Building the Elite blog article topics include physical and mental components essential to success during Special Operations Forces selections and deployments.

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A Treading Water Guide for SOF Selection Candidates

Being comfortable in the water is a generalized skill, but treading water efficiently is a very specific essential skill ...
Underwater Knot Tying Building the Elite

Underwater Knot Tying

Underwater Knot Tying Most maritime special operations programs involve some form of underwater knot tying. This is a way ...
Swimming for special operations selection training

Swimming 101: A Guide for Special Operations Selection Training

Swimming Technique Like treading water, swimming is not a problem that can be solved with sheer physical effort. Your ...
Water competency training in swimming pool

Water Confidence Training

Water-based events in SOF selection are ruthlessly effective ways to reveal the interaction between mind and body. To a ...

Honest Dogs: Mental Patterns Favored in SOF Selection

Dogsled mushers, the people who race with sled dogs in events like the Iditarod in Alaska, use the term ...
Nutrition Fundamentals Building the Elite

Nutrition Fundamentals

Nutrition, like many topics covered in our book and on this website, are vast topics that people spend decades ...

Adaptation Principles

In order to understand programming, you first have to know how and why your body responds to training. When ...

Visualization

Visualization, like segmenting, is exactly what it sounds like - the practice of mentally rehearsing something before you do ...
stress inoculation through cold water exposure

Stress Inoculation in Practice: Cold Water Exposure

“It is according to opinion that we suffer.” - Lucius Annaeus Seneca One of the main things setting special ...

Self Talk

We’ve all got a running commentary in our heads throughout much of the day--scientists call it an “internal monologue”. ...

Reimagine, Revise, Re-store

Scientific studies of memory are a little scary, because the evidence is in, and your memory sucks. Memories are ...

Segmenting

A little-appreciated fact about selection is that a surprising amount of the quitting happens on a Sunday night or ...
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