Stew Smith Fitness News — mental toughness

I realized I have been using my Periodization style of training now for 20 years, after one of my former BUD/S prep students reminded me it was 20 years ago he and his classmates shipped off the BUD/S. This was the year, I learned I needed to make some changes in my personal and professional training program and they needed to make sense with job requirements. My periodization program is A WAY to train – not THE WAY to train. It has worked for me from age 27-47 and took me from a near broken, over-trained, SEAL officer to a...

Over the past several years of writing about high level Special Ops Fitness, there is always a question concerning Mental Toughness.  I get asked if I have any tips on getting more mentally tough.  And I hate to sound like a grumpy, old coach, but to answer that – THERE ARE NO TIPS!  There is no secret sauce that makes mental toughness magically appear in your life.  Mental Toughness is built slowly – sometimes years – over several stages.  Here is how I see mental toughness and resilience develop over time in the following stages: Motivation – There is a...

I am a fitness writer that specializes in military, police, and fire fighter fitness.  I have well over 800 articles on the internet on various sites and several published books / ebooks.  I ENJOY answering questions from readers - especially the younger generation who seeks out information and finds me as a resource for tactical fitness training / general preparation information.  In fact, I answer my emails each day easily seeing 100-200 emails a day.  These give me ideas to write about and very often (more than 50%) of the time I reply to someone with an article link that...

Try the events of the Dirty Dozen Fitness Test.  Arrange in any order you prefer.   You can take the test many different ways:1 - Take the test in one day / one long training session2 - Take 2-3 days to break up the events into - STRENGTH - SPEED/AGILITY - ENDURANCE3 - Take the entire year to break up the events as above using periodization specific training to master each event over the year. Share your scores / times in the in the comment section below: These are the twelve events I call the Tactical Fitness Dirty Dozen that I pulled from...

After the Mental Toughness (Art or Science) article, a friend of mine asked about what I thought the Top Ten List of traits for mental toughness would be.  After some thought and discussions with some successful, mentally tough people, we came up with this. Mental Toughness – How do we obtain it?  Make it stronger?  Many young people ask these questions of me each day and I wish it was a simple answer.  I wish you could be mentally tough by figuring out a magic solution of phrases or training programs.  But it is not that simple.  Being mentally tough...