Former Navy SEAL Chadd Wright walks through his Combat Standards Test, a one-hour fitness gauntlet that mimics battlefield tasks: 25 front squats to load a Humvee, burpee-to-pull-up combos for movement under fire, and patrol endurance work. He emphasizes dependability, skill, and selflessness as the three things that matter in a teammate.
Bust them. It doesn't count till it starts to hurt. All the reps you did before, these reps were just part of the process to get you right here.
All right. Good morning, guys. We are 7:22 in the morning here. In about another eight minutes, we got a pretty gnarly workout, actually written by some pretty special guests. Mr. Chad Wright, getting ready to run us through a workout. We also have my good buddy David Taylor, Olympic gold medalist Penn State wrestler.
Grab five minutes to get your name on the board.
It looks like we got some pretty strong dudes in here, so I would be surprised if one of them puke. But it would make my day if one of them puked mine too. Yeah, I mean, I love freaking seeing people, but I doubt it, but we'll see.
Combat standards test. This is a workout that I designed, I guess about a year ago when I got out of the military, I got back home and I looked around at my fellow countrymen and I realized that my fellow countrymen was so fat and out of shape that they were untrainable. We have the second amendment here in the United States, right? And every redneck where I live owns a gun. And they think because they own a gun that they are good to go. They don't understand what it actually takes to be effective.
In combat. And I use it to test myself. Where am I at? Right? I swore to defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. I took that oath. Right? Well, guess what that means. That means that it's my responsibility to be physically fit enough to actually carry that out.
If need be. But if we don't have standards, we don't know where we're at, right? So we have to set something up there to strive for that tells us this is where you're at. You are good enough or you're not good enough. And if you're not good enough today, that's okay.
Work harder, get better, and you will eventually be good enough. This replicates a half day of training in a land warfare block with a SEAL platoon. This is basically how the day would go in a land warfare training block. The beginning of the day, you have to load the Humvee. There's a big weapon that goes up on the turret of a Humvee. It's called a mod deuce. It's a 50 cal machine gun, right? Loading those Humvees means we are picking that big automatic weapon up and we're pushing it up to the dude that's up there on the turret so he can mount that weapon, right? It means that we're picking up ammo cans, we're picking up all the gear that we need to train that day and we're loading it in the Humvee. That's what that 25 front squats to meant to replicate you picking something up off the ground. The front squats are all going to be from the ground, not from the rack, right? So when you pull the weight up, you can go ahead and squat, get under the weight. When you stand up, that's one rep. That counts as a rep. The next thing we do when we get out into the field and we're ready to start training, we go on patrol.
All right.
Patrol is just a long time on your feet in hard terrain, usually mountainous terrain. In full kit, weapon, body armor, helmet, firefight. This replicates the movement patrol to contact. In land warfare, when you take contact, you do a movement called IMT Individual movement technique. What that means is, is I've got my buddy over here.
He'S down and shooting while I get up and move. But when I get up and move, it's. It's a burpee. I'm getting up here and I'm saying in my head, I'm up, I'm running. They see me, I'm down. So that's why we chose burpee. The pull up just to make it a little bit harder. Because all we got on today is a 25 or 20 pound vet. We don't have a big freaking automatic weapon and a bunch of ammo, right? This is what the standard is for.
The movement, it's a burpee.
Into a dead hang on the bar.
Into a pull up from there. After we have gotten in our simulated firefight, we've got to patrol out, right? We've got one hour to do this PT alright, one hour time cap, positive forward motion. That's what's going to get you through this workout.
Is everybody ready?
The answer is always ready.
Roger that. Three, two, one. Bust them.
It doesn't count till it starts to hurt. All the reps you did before, these reps were just part of the process to get you right here.
Hook solid, hook solid. Keep it moving, keep it moving.
Let's go.
Don't stop when you get to the place you want it to be. Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. One rep at a time and you'll be there.
Don't worry about your hands, your hands will heal.
Good teammates, man.
No freaking crap, dude. There's guys out here, knees are freaking.
Encouraged because they're struggling right now.
It's tough. Very tough.
My legs are cramping so bad.
Whoo.
So how'd you guys like to combat standard steps? The thing gets ugly, right? So all you guys were freaking strong. I just want to share with you guys. I walked into the gym. I had to come into the gym after my second lap, and there were some dudes that were done in there, and they were just sitting around coking and joking, right?
Who was that? A couple of you guys, right? A lot of you guys. When you finish the workout.
You probably would have did the same thing. You probably would have walked in the gym, sat in the gym, while the rest of your team finished up, right? That's a problem. And why is that a problem? Because you're thinking like an individual. When we start something as a team.
The job is not done until the mission is complete, right? But as long as you keep thinking like an individual, you will never become great, and you will never become part of a team. That is great. Three things I look for in a teammate. The first one is dependability. You guys were dependable today. You showed up on time, on target, ready to train. Second thing I look for in a teammate is skill. I need my teammate to be skilled. You guys showed that you have some skill today. The last thing I look for in a teammate and the most important thing and the hardest thing to find is selflessness. If everybody in this team more concerned about the person beside them than they are concerned about themselves, the team will become unstoppable. So I want to challenge you to find a way today here at work to do something selfless for one of your teammates to put your teammate before yourself today. Everybody understand that? Outstanding. Thank you guys so much. It was a freaking honor to train with you all today.
Three kills on me. One, two, three.
Nice work, guys.
Let's go clean up the gym.
