25 Rules for SFAS Prep
We’ve spent over 25 years deeply studying Special Forces Assessment and Selection. We’ve studied its history from the inception, we’ve tracked its growth and updates, and we’ve seen every part of its execution. We’ve watched thousands of candidates and hundreds of events. We’ve talked to Cadre, Candidates, and leaders. We helped shaped SFAS from the inside and we know exactly what happens...and why. We wrote the definitive guide to SFAS with Ruck Up or Shut Up. And we wrote these rules as a by-product of our experience, research, and writing about SFAS, Special Forces culture, and human performance is general. We’ve spent this time pouring over the literature, watching Candidates fail and succeed, listening to their stories, and being keen observers of human nature. As we’ve done all of this, we wrote our thoughts down. Writing forces you to organize your thinking. We noticed patterns and trends, guiding principles, and best practices for success. As we edited our notes, this list sort of just appeared. SFAS is a unique environment, and it demands the very best of you. We thought that others might benefit from our list. We have found that that it has very much shaped our ideas, even before we could make an actual list.
1. Know your “Why”.
This topic, oddly, gets a little hate. I get it. It’s a little touchy-feely. It feels a little grandiose, even, to declare that you have to have some higher purpose, some sense of duty, or a personal mission statement in order to get Selected. You don’t, but what is the alternative? No purpose? No sense of duty? Do we really want to foster a generation of warrior-diplomats who wander aimlessly? Meander around the geopolitical landscape, third-world backwaters, and high-consequence battlefields with nothing other than a tactical operations order to function under? I’m even okay with your “Why” being simply “I want to do cool shit.” I don’t think that sort of superficiality will be enough to sustain you, but it’s probably good enough to get started. We should endeavor to build into our most elite operators a sense of purpose that can endure the challenging realities of the future operating environment. You wont be thinking of cool shit when the Sandman is kicking your ass, so know your “Why”
2. Have a written plan but be flexible.
Don’t program hop, don’t chase outcomes, and choose your experts wisely. We’ve surveyed the SFAS prep environment, and we found it wanting. There are some good coaches out there. Really good, actually. Well meaning, well credentialed, and very capable. But, as you likely know, SFAS is unique. Camp Mackall is an upside-down world. It requires a deeper understanding to adequately prep guys for. Since we published Ruck Up Or Shut Up we’ve seen some not insignificant shifting in this space. We’ve been pretty open about publishing our “proprietary formula”. We see this is a good thing. Our ultimate goal is to get as many guys Selected as possible, without compromising standards, and without violating the integrity of the process. We don’t care who gets credit. But if your program can’t provide a written pathway, a detailed daily plan, then you should be very leery. This should be non-negotiable. You can always adjust as your performance ebbs and flows, but if you don’t have a written plan then you’re likely wasting your time.
I should note that many plans/planners say something like “Don’t do what I did. I did everything wrong and somehow still got Selected.” And then proceed to promote a program solely informed by their singular experience. Weird.
3. Be consistent.
Don’t program hop, don’t chase outcomes, and choose your experts wisely. Yes, just like Rule 2. One thing that you’ll find as a common thread in proper prep is that most of the rules, principles, and protocols are very basic. Basics build champions. I can tell you, precisely, what you need to do to train successfully. In fact, Shut Up And Ruck is precisely this…we will tell you what do every singe day for 8 months. Shut up and do it. That challenge is that it’s not sexy. It’s…basic. Almost boring. No fancy WODs, no marketing, and no fitness models. Anti-marketing. So, the play is to just be disciplined and consistent. Win the minute to win the hour. Win the hour to win the day. Win the day to win the week. When you win enough weeks, you start seeing real performance.
4. Lift heavy things.
Stronger than the fastest runner. Nobody ever said that they wish that they were less strong…certainly no SFAS Candidate. You might be so big that you wish to be faster or leaner or more mobile, but you can never be too strong. This is especially true at SFAS, where your strength will most definitely be tested. Focus on compound movements to maximize and concentrate on functional strength. Only 6 lifts…Bench Press, Squats, Deadlift, Row, Shrugs, and Overhead Press. No vanity lifts. No body building. Functional strength. Lift heavy things, with intensity, and build functional strength.
5. Run, then run some more.
Running is a simple, and essential, tool in building cardio capacity. Its free, its novice accessible, and it requires almost no specialized knowledge. And early in your training it requires zero specialized programming. Get a pair of well-fitting shoes (many specialized running stores offer excellent scanning/fitting services), some decent socks, and you’re ready to train. Running, slowly, also helps you build the slow twitch muscle fibers that you need to build the capacity to manage lactate threshold. As such, your early prep should include ample amounts of Zone 2 running. We recommend up three 90-minute sessions per week. It takes real discipline to run 90 minutes three times a week and stay in Zone 2. This is a good predictor of your ability to follow a program.
6. Slow down.
I know that you’re eager. You’ve dipped your toes in the information pool, and you keep hearing, “Faster than the strongest lifter…”. So, in your enthusiasm to perform, you do everything at full combat speed. You will need to go fast, but not all the time. Certainly not in the beginning of your prep. You need to slow down. You need to learn technique. You need to learn proper form. You need to build good fundamentals. You need to build muscle and strengthen joints. You need to reinforce good movement patterns and build flexibility. You need to slow down.
A perfect example is rucking prep. Most programs (all that we’ve seen) have you start rucking week one and just add miles every week. 6 miles, then 8, then 10…until you’re up into the 24 miles range. That’s not the best way to build rucking performance. You need to start slow. Weeks and weeks of Zone 2 running to build a cardio base and develop the musculature to properly manage lactate threshold. You need to build bench press and squat strength BEFORE you start rucking. In fact, our program in Shut Up And Ruck has a single diagnostic ruck in week 1 and not another for at least 2 months, and you only progress to rucking when you’ve met the performance prerequisite. Slow down. You’ll get plenty of opportunity to show how fast you are. You need to prep with purpose.
7. Take care of your feet.
Everyone gets blisters at SFAS. Everyone also seems to know someone who makes the claim that they never got blisters, but in my 25+ years of research I’ve never seen it firsthand. Blisters are universal to the experience. So, learning to take care of your feet is a mission critical skill (see rule 13). The best cure is prevention, so we wrote a comprehensive guide to do it properly, and we updated and expanded that guide in RUSU (Page 180). But you need to learn to prevent and treat. I’ve seen relatively minor blisters cascade into Selection ending injuries because guys didn’t take care of them early on. Your prep should include a deliberate approach to this issue. We’re expanding our content to include some video tutorials for Land Nav, ruck management, and gear selection and one of our first videos will be a foot care kit and blister management series.
8. Learn to Ruck.
Rucking performance is the number one predictor of success at SFAS; up to six times more predictive than the next metric. Every important decision that you make at SFAS, you will make with a ruck on your back. You will spend up to twenty hours or more a day under a ruck. Ruck this, ruck that. Ruck here, ruck there. Rucking, Rucking, RUCKING. RUCKING IS KING! And its also a skill. How to manage the unique cognitive load that rucking puts on you. How to pack a ruck correctly. How to acceptably doff and don a ruck. How to manipulate your pace. How to develop a proper shuffle. These are all skills. And then there is the long slow trudge of a process of building rucking fitness. Thick traps, a solid core, and tree trunk legs. Cardio that never quits. It takes time and it takes a rucking specific train-up. Do it right and you’ll stand a much better chance out at Camp Mackall. Do it wrong and you’ll get injured, delay progress, or worse…not perform to standard at SFAS. Rucking performance is the number one predictor of success, so you’d better get it right.
9. Speed up.
Yes, I know that I just told to you slow down in Rule 6, but now it’s time to speed up. All the rules matter, all the time. We never said this would be easy. It’s simple, but never easy. Beyond the obvious reasons for being fast (the timed rucks and runs at SFAS) you need to master the art of timeliness. Everything that you do at SAFS will be under a time constraint. You won’t often know what the time (or distance) standards are, but they are ever present. So, you need to speed up. During Land Nav, we always say, “Move as fast as you don’t get lost”. Stop dawdling. Make decisions quickly. Stop taking rest breaks. Stop doing another map check. Don’t get lost, but if you are moving to your next checkpoint and you are on pace and time, then keep going. Move through every task as quickly as possible. And once you’ve established a solid cardio base, you need to start working on speed work. Shut Up and Ruck includes several speed workouts that you can incorporate when indicated.
10. Eat clean.
The best way to fuel performance is balanced whole foods, usually unprocessed, focused on proper protein intake. That’s it. If it’s processed, then it’s probably bad. If it’s not a whole food, then it’s likely processed. If you focus on getting proper protein intake, then you’ll likely be challenged to eat a bunch of stuff that’s bad for you. Combine Rule 10 with Rule 12 and you’re a great deal on the way to success. The workouts are the easy part, eating right and sleeping well are the challenge. But they are also more important. We have an expansive chapter on Performance Nutrition in Shut Up And Ruck and tracking your intakes and how it impacts your performance (see Rule 19) are an integral part to the journaling. So, eat clean to perform like a pro.
11. Don’t drink your calories.
You will be struggling to manage your diet appropriately. Diet (along with sleep) is probably more important than your exercises. So, you can’t afford to be cavalier with your calories. You need balanced whole foods, usually unprocessed, focused on proper protein intake. Drinks, particularly default American drinks like soda, energy drinks, commercial protein shakes, and coffee drinks are empty calorie bombs that provide faulty (at best) nutrition. They don’t satiate, they don’t support proper performance, they disrupt sleep, and they alter healthy metabolism. An occasional supplemental protein shake is acceptable but focus on getting your nutrients and calories from whole food sources. Drink water and eat your calories.
12. Sleep like your life depends on it.
Sleep (along with diet) is probably more important than your exercises (are you seeing a pattern here?). Operational fitness is something on the order of 80% sleep/nutrition, and only 20% working out. But we treat sleep like an afterthought. And we are like moths to a light to the workouts. To be clear, you need your workout, with intensity and purpose, but if you aren’t sleeping and eating with intent and focus then you are wasting so much opportunity. Frustratingly, we already know so much about how to optimize sleep and it’s so simple to codify. We have dedicated a good chunk of Shut Up And Ruck to non-workout stuff, including sleep and nutrition. It’s also packed with workouts, but we left no performance stone unturned.
13. Learn skills.
Be useful. Don’t just be fit and smart, be skilled as well. Learn skills that are useful to you. Learn how to climb a rope. Learn skills that are helpful to your team like knot tying, lashing, and load rigging. Learn skills that are helpful to both you and your team like land navigation, or communications, and medical skills. Learn a little massage therapy. Imagine how useful you will be to your team at SFAS if you know how to ‘non-medically’ treat tight muscles and joints. Imagine this scenario:
you can navigate like a pro, so your team never gets lost.
you tie knots expertly, so your apparatus never falls apart.
you have conflict management skills, so your team never fights.
you communicate effectively, so your team stays well informed.
you know acupressure, so your team stays nimble.
you know how to treat blisters, so your feet stay healthy.
you know time management, so your team is never late.
you know how to rig a load, so nobody gets thrashed by an imbalanced load.
How do you think a guy that brings these soft and hard skills to the table will do during peer evals? How well will his team perform? How well will you perform?
Learn skills and be useful, to yourself and others.
14. Don’t just be fit, be athletic.
Learn athletic movement like balance and dynamic jumping. Be nimble in that you can move strongly and confidently across multiple planes simultaneously. If you can a dodge a wrench, then you can dodge a ball! Skills like crawling, jumping, and climbing. Athletic movements like catching, throwing, and carrying. These skills will help keep you injury free. They will help you on the Nasty Nick and the CRA. They will help you cross that log in the swamp during Land Nav. And they will help to get that apparatus with the wonky wheel out of that rut that slid in there because you didn’t build the knot tying skill. So be athletic.
15. Learn to communicate, both receive and transmit.
Your ability to effectively communicate is absolutely critical. Every assessment from the Cadre is essentially a critical exchange of information. Every team week planning and building session is a big communication exercise. Every time you brief a route at Land Nav you are giving a micro briefing. So, your ability to effectively communicate, both receive and transmit, is absolutely critical. There are communication style survey tools available online, but I prefer the NC State Learning Style Inventory (LSI). The NC State LSI (Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire (ncsu.edu)) gives you a bit more refined understanding of how you process information. It is also a critical part of rule number 16, know yourself. So, take this 10 minute free survey, build that self-awareness, and learn how to effectively communicate.
16. Know yourself. Be yourself.
There seems to be some misguided notion that that you need to change who you are, reinvent yourself even, to become a Green Beret. I think most guys have this vision of becoming a new man, some secret shedding of your old self to assume the mantle of an Operator. The reality is that you simply start to realize your potential. If you have some imagined flaw, you shouldn’t be running from it. SFAS is not a place to find yourself, it’s a place to prove who you are. If you have issues, you need to sort them out before you get to Camp Mackall. Make your amends, go to therapy, slay your dragons…and then start your prep. You will need a clear mind to ready your body. We want, rather we need, to assess you as your true self. So be your true self, not some character that you think you should play. Carl Jung said it best, “The world will ask who you are, and if you do not know, the world will tell you.” So, know who you are so we can judge you appropriately. Be yourself, just make certain that you are who you need to be.
17. Learn to Suffer.
SFAS…the School For Advanced Suffering. Misery, and not just Ordinary Misery (Freud this time), is what waits for you in the land of the longleaf pine. So, you need to learn to embrace it a little bit. You don’t have to like it; you just need to learn to endure it with dignity. We know how much it sucks. We know how that Sandman presses on you. We are well aware of how blistered and beaten your feet are. We know how much that ruck weighs. We built Selection to specifically be just the right amount of misery. We unambiguously need you to suffer. It is in these moments of suffering that we make our most exquisite assessments. We can judge your true self (see rule 16) because you are suffering so intensely that you can’t hide behind a mask of some character that you have conjured in your head. You are who you are, and we will simply take notes…while you suffer. So learn to suffer.
18. Learn to Land Navigate.
This one is a little bit of obvious, but it needs to be addressed. The state of Land Navigation training in the Army is nearing a crisis level of incompetence. There are squad leaders that have never found a land nav point. In all of their years and in all of their Army schooling…professional development…they have never found a single land nav point. No wonder the Land Nav failure rates at SFAS are at 50% and climbing. The numbers are so bad that SWCS has revamped the Prep Course to include an updated Land Nav POI and has even taken to an ahistorical step of adding 5 days to SFAS (3 pilot courses in FY 24). The numbers at SFAS don’t seem to be improving despite these extreme measures. So, you need to learn Land Nav. Any training is better than no training, but SFAS specific training is best. We developed our Land Nav Musters to specifically address this shortcoming. You will get excellent Land Nav instruction at SFAS, but if you think that this is enough then you will get precisely what you prepare for. We train every month, and the feedback is universal. TFVooDoo Musters are the best training in the best environment. Expert curriculum delivered in real world conditions with targeted skills development. Choose your experts wisely.
19. Be a Systems Thinker.
There are some immutable laws of prep that you need to consider, and system thinking will help you. A rudimentary explanation of systems thinking is to look at the world as a holistic setting with a focus on relationships between parts, rather than the parts individually. The black box theory is a component of systems thinking, wherein the black box is an undefined system, but you can predict and even manipulate the outcomes by understanding the inputs. So, you don’t need to know what happens inside the black box, you just need to understand that certain inputs produce specific outputs. As such, you don’t need to understand the physiological changes that occur to your body when you perform Zone 2 running, you just need to understand what it does for you. You don’t need to be able to trace a drop of blood through the circulatory system, or describe protein synthesis, or diagram the oxygen to blood respiration in the lungs. What you do need to understand is that you need X amount of time at Zone 2 to produce Y amount of endurance capacity. Similarly, you don’t need to know exactly how the SFAS Cadre are calculating your ARSOF Attributes, but you do need to understand that if you act like a bitch when you aren’t immediately relieved during a position swap during the Sandman (the input) then you will not be assessed well (the output). Systems exist that you don’t control, but you do control the inputs.
20. Be a ball-buster.
Military guys are universal, equal opportunity, rapier-whitted, ball-busters. SF guys in particular are world class shit-talkers. Iron sharpens iron and you will be judged more harshly by your peers than the Cadre. In general, it doesn’t matter how dire your situation is, your battle buddies will find a way to hold it against you. It’s a little bit gallows humor and a little bit coping, but it generally comes from a place of comradery and even love. If you’re not getting your balls busted, then you probably aren’t well liked. So, consider it a sign of respect. But be prepared for it. For the uninitiated it can seem harsh and mean-spirited. If I announced to my boys that I had to get my prostate checked, they would make certain that it wasn’t serious…and then a micro-second later they would immediately inundate me with anal sex jokes, prison wallet memes, and K-Y Jelly coupons. As it should be. So be prepared to have your balls busted and be prepared to bust balls. Your ability to deliver biting criticism, deftly, will be measured. And at SFAS it is a valuable communication tool to relay difficult and potentially damaging information without incurring too much actualized risk. If your buddies keep “joking’ about how many rest breaks you need then you are being offered an opportunity to fix yourself before shit gets real. Learn to read the room and take advantage of this. Learn to bust balls and learn to have your balls busted.
21. Shut up.
A lot of newcomers to the SOF community confuse confidence with bravado. This is a delicate balance. Being elite and not announcing it to the whole world can be a challenge, especially for the less mature. The balance between knowing how to get shit done and biting your tongue when others are struggling to get shit done can prove difficult. And early on in your journey you will be eager to engage, learn, and inculcate yourself with the process. So, SF neophytes tend to vocalize their intentions to be the next SMU commander or otherwise set the world on fire. This may not surprise you, but the number of people who gallantly announce their SF intentions far outpaces the actual number of people who show up at SFAS. Exponentially. I call this “glory by association”. You can reap all of the benefits and accolades of being SF, without actually doing any work. So, be excited. Be eager. Be enthusiastic. But be quiet. You don’t know anything, and you haven’t earned shit. Shut up, put your head down, and get to work. Humility comes before honor.
22. Build community.
Humans are tribal by nature. We thrive when we congregate with like-minded people who share our values. We can marshal resources, share information, and challenge each other to perform. This is especially true for the Selection Prep community. By the very nature of raising your hand and volunteering, you are isolating yourself from the general population. The bulk of your current circle of friends isn’t on this path, so the path becomes very lonely, very quickly. At the time when you need more support than ever, your support system is removed. So, build a new system. Build a new community. Find like-minded folks online. Network. When you get to OSUT, seek out the other 18Xs. Rally around each other. Hold each other accountable. When you get to your unit, find the guys that are serious about bettering themselves. Don’t wait for the community to naturally coalesce, be the catalyst. Build a community.
23. Be smart.
Well read and well spoken. You don’t have to have good grades, advanced degrees, or academic accolades. In fact, none of those things guarantee that you will be well spoken or well read. Some of the dumbest people I know are PhDs. But you need to be well read and well spoken. You need to have a good understanding of history and human nature. You should be able to intelligently discuss psychology and performance. A cocktail party conversation about politics and current events shouldn’t devolve into a shouting match. So, you need to read. There is a classical curriculum called the Great Books or the Great 100. This curriculum is predicated on the idea that one could be well educated by reading and intelligently discussing 100 consequential texts. There is some merit to this idea, but some of those texts are truly ancient. You can certainly read Archimedes and have a passing understanding of the natural sciences and mathematics, but you might benefit more from an analysis of Greek philosophy, literature, and science. A guided tour of the best contributors, if you will. I have always resisted publishing my own Reading List because there are so many great ones out there and if you publish one you have to keep it updated. But the demand remains unabated, so we are including a list in Shut Up and Ruck as part of the mental prep component. We have selected seminal texts (modern, but seminal nonetheless) that are well written and informative. Entertaining and educating. Read these books, fan the flames of intellectual curiosity, and become a formidable thinker.
You also need to learn to write and speak intelligently. The current information environment prioritizes quick hits, sound bites, and shorthand texting. As such, we are conditioned to be dangerously brief in our communications. Nuance, detail, and value is lost in this truncated exchange atmosphere. Like it or not, how you communicate matters. An email rife with misspelled words, grammatical errors, and improper syntax is almost jarring. Someone who can’t engage in a little light banter without obviously flawed logic and incessant cursing won’t do well in the senior leader meeting or the Embassy briefing. So, learn how to read, write, and speak…you fucking Philistine.
24. If it’s stupid and it works, then it’s not stupid.
One of the contradictions of following a plan, someone else’s plan, is that some stuff just doesn’t work for you. If you are incapable of critical thinking, then you blindly follow these ideas and fail to recognize opportunities for improvement. If you understand the principles of programming, the intent behind the scope and sequence, then you can adapt the plan to maximize performance gains. The key to this process is being deliberate and recording all of the variables and their outcomes. If you’re doing something different, and it works, then it’s good. So yes, shut up and ruck…but know when to adapt, compromise, and overcome.
25. Know The 3 Rules.
Always look cool.
Never get lost.
If you get lost, look cool.
The 3 Rules are not just a witty little quip to slap onto a T-Shirt or rattle off to explain why you bought another piece of dubious use gear. The 3 Rules are a blueprint for how to get selected and how to effectively live the SF lifestyle or just a life of purpose and intent. We spent some time in RUSU explaining what this means, and we talk about this as our lead topic at or Land Navigation Musters. Learn the 3 Rules, learn them well, and start applying them in earnest, and they will serve you at SFAS and beyond.
