If you’re reading this article chances are you probably want to be an operator, are an operator, or tell people on the internet you are one. There have been thousands of books written about their exploits (looking at you SEALs) but very little written about the training standards and statistics that help them maintain their incredible level of fitness. This article will cover the science behind their fitness and show you exactly how fit you need to be if you want to join their ranks.
Much of this article will be based off of a great piece of research that was recently released call, “Fitness Profiles in Elite Tactical Units: A Critical Review.” The authors of this study looked at a huge number of studies and chose the best ones to include in a research review that examined the physiological characteristics of special operations forces, and police SWAT teams.
It’s an incredibly read, and I highly encourage you to check it out for some of the details that we won’t be able to include in here.
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An Operator of a Different Sort
The first thing we should explain here is that these statistics are aggregated across different services, and different units, with different mission sets. The study does include statistics from the following units: Britis SAS, US Army Special Forces, JSOC Personnel, Norwegian SOF, and SWAT Teams.
As many of you might know these fitness requirements are going to be fairly divergent. US Military personnel will have to maintain a much higher ability to ruck march than say a SWAT unit will. Likewise, a unit that spends much of its time in water, will spend less of its time in the gym, getting jacked and tan. There are trade offs, depending each groups specific mission requirements.
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Operator Strength Stats
Because there are a huge variety of great strength tests, it is hard to find just a few that have been reproduced across many studies, but the authors did manage to find some great studies that looked at two exercises in particular: bench press, and leg press.
They found that the operators in all of the studies they reviewed had these average strength numbers.
- Bench Press Strength: 217lbs
- Leg Press Strength: 594 lbs
As you can see these strength stats aren’t especially impressive by comparison to many functional fitness athletes. According to Beyond the Whiteboard the average one rep max bench press for an athlete is 220lbs. This is great news for gym memebers who joined because they wanted to be Navy SEALs, basically…
It’s important to keep in mind that moves like bench press, while good predictors of overall strength, aren’t especially useful in an operational context.
You also have to keep in mind that the average operator’s bodyweight was only 160 lbs with the highest average bodyweight being recorded for one of the SWAT units at 202 lbs. With this in mind, a 200 lbs bench press is much better if you weigh 160lbs.
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Operator Muscular Endurance
Muscular endurance is one area that military and police personnel are much more thoroughly trained in. For this section we will cover the stats for the following:
- Strict Pull Ups: 8.34
- Push Ups: 60.4
- Sit Ups (2min): 59.49
Now these numbers are a bit more impressive, but again, functional fitness athletes are doing slightly better with an average strict pull up of 12, with the exception of push ups where the operators are crushing the functional fitness athletes who only average 40 reps.
Operator Cardiovascular Fitness
Cardio vascular fitness is a key component of fitness for everyone. It also varies wildly between groups of operators. Here are the following average numbers.
- VO2 Max (ml/kg/min): 53.59
Remember that VO2 max is simply a measurement of the total amount of oxygen that your body can use. An international rugby player will have a V02 max of around 55, and an olympic marathoner will probably be in the 70-80’s.
If you look at a previous article, covering the physiology of functional athletes, you will see the operators are right around the average for experienced functional fitness athletes.
But this is one area where there is some extreme variability. Some groups averaged 60 ml/kg/min (Norwegian SOF) which is comparable to some professional marathon runners.
Operator Power Output
These tests showed that the operators were quite powerful, and could move their bodies very quickly and athletically.
- Vertical Jump (in): 19.5
- Peak Power (during Jump): 3251 watts
These are two of the easiest moves to measure power and they have a high degree of repeatability. A vertical jump of 20 inches indicates a decent amount of leg strength and more importantly, the ability to quickly use that strength to generate power.
Operator On the Wall, Who is the Fittest of Them All?
So far we’ve learned some pretty impressive stats regarding elite operators from the military and police. However, these stats have only been averages and haven’t shown us who is the fittest overall. Drumroll please…. Norwegian Navy SOF takes the victory. Here are their individual stats
- Average Age: 28
- Average Height: 71.5 in
- Average Weight: 174 lbs
- Average Body Fat: 11%
- Average Bench Press: 228 lbs
- Average Strict Pull Ups: 9
- Average VO2 Max: 60 ml/kg/min
Now before you all go crazy posting America is #1 memes, realize that part of the reason they came out on top was because they had the most detailed study. Many top units like British SAS and Rangers, did not include some of these measures. It’s also important to note that some JSOC units like Devgru and Delta were not represented in this study, and I would suspect they would probably compete very well against Norwegian Navy SOF on a physical basis.
Take Aways
Many folks erroneously believe that all operators look like Arnold from the movie Commando. Look at that sweet biceps camo!
That’s really not true. In my experience you will rarely see someone in the military that size. Yes there are some exceptions, but most military personnel in these careers fields have to be able to move quickly over along distances, and you just won’t see bodybuilders being able to do that.
I would say that in my opinion as a coach that they have a lot of room for improvement. Currently they are getting the job done, but they could easily improve physically.
I wrote this article which gave some concrete goals based off of predictions in muscular size, strength, and anaerobic efficiency for operators to shoot for. They are also great goals for normal folks like you and me, as well!
I think for an average functional fitness athlete it’s evident that we can obtain this kind of fitness as many of the benchmarks fitness athletes were at, or very close to the operators. This doesn’t really mean that we are “fitter” just that they are better at a few specific tests that happen to take place in a gym. Have fun trying to beat these guys on the battlefield!
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