Hey everybody. Welcome to another one's ready podcast. You're in the team room right now. We're going to talk about one thing that you guys are all asking questions about to all of us, and that is the pool session. So it's about the get real. Okay, cool. We're going to jump right in. Something that comes up all the time with us are , uh , you guys are always asking these questions and rightfully so is the pool session. What it's all about why do we do it? What are some of the things that you can expect, right? So in this podcast we want to break that down and at least give you guys an idea of what you guys can expect and maybe get your mind right about how to better prepare for it, right? So as we jump into it, everybody here has got a lot of experience with , uh , the pool sessions, whether it's , uh , Brian doin , uh , being an actual A&S slash Indoc instructor or Aaron at the PJ university, right? So may, I don't necessarily have that experience other than just going through it and Trent is kind of in the same boat as I am, right? So we're going to attack this pool session and kind of break them down for you. So what I wanna do is I wanna start with Aaron right now and we're going to talk about a little thing called gear set up.
Oh man. Oh man. Gear set up. So I was telling this story when we were getting ready for the podcast, right? So to have you come in and you set your year, you've got fins and a mask and a snorkel. And some weights and some booties and all this other stuff, right? And it has to be set up exactly correctly. And the first couple of times you try to do this thing, it never works out. Like everything gets thrown in the pool and stuff isn't right and people can't figure out which side to put it on or put it off. Here's the reasoning behind it is the instructors want to see that one. You can follow directions and two , attention to detail. I'm not going to get too dramatic about it, but attention to detail can kill you if you're a jump master and you miss a major and it kills somebody, like that's a real thing. And it can be very minor. It can be a little bit of canopy that's outside of a parachute. It can be one simple thing that's not routed correctly. So I get it. But what it turns out to be is it turns out to be, Hey, your tape isn't correct, you're dead, and then you get in , you get in a lot of trouble, man. And like the, the gear setup is extremely important because it sets the tone for the entire event. So when you get in there, like the one thing that you don't want to sit up, they used to sit leadership but they still do, they sit the team leadership in the center. Right. And I was the NCOIC of my team and I would just be praying as the instructors were walking down or just please don't let something be screwed up. Please don't let something be screwed up. And I don't know how many times I looked over to my right and I looked at my officer, as soon as stuff started happening, I was like, well off to a bad start sir. I guess this is how we're going to do this today. So there's always somebody scared . It doesn't help either. My team was terrible. So our , the motto on our team was a , it wasn't like teamwork and bring everybody into the family. It was F your buddy and see if he quits. So what you would do is you would just put like a tear on your buddy's water bottle or on his fin tape. And then like when they saw it they would just be like, why is the tape on your water bottle torn? And y our friends, the closest friends y ou ever had in your life would look at you a nd they'd be like, I know it was you and I hate you w ould just be the worst. But that was our team. Like that was our team dynamic cause they were just like, I don't know, we're not very smart so we might as well be tough. But gear set up, I mean it's important. It sets the tone for the entire event. You always want gear set up like, cause the first thing you do with gear set up and then you count because you're going to go to the next and we're going to talk about underwater. But the best story about the counting that I possibly have is they wanted us to count off by twos , right? So they wanted to get us in two separate groups. So it should have sounded like one, two , one, two. So there I am, I'm sitting next to the major and I was like, here we go, gear set up. What about counting? And they're like, count off by twos and the first guy goes two and the second guy goes four. And the third guy goes six and like it was one of those I just completely deflated. I was just like, here we go. And uh and we did and it was great. That's gear set up, man. It's a, these pool sessions, they can, they can go one of two ways that did not go the good way.
PEACHESYou're right. And, and I think it's, I think it's important, right to, there is a reason why we do attention to detail. Right? So Brian , yeah, now Brian , whenever, what is to be expected of a team once they show up, right? And, and they're setting up their gear and kind of like, what is the phase one of that when they arrive at the pool?
BRIANSo anytime that the team shows up , uh , to start a pool session, they get dropped off by the bus. You haul your stuff out the back of the bus, set up your team gear on the side. Cause we have like a display, we expect them to have each time and there's, you know, common to all equipment. There's a bunch of equipment that needs to go up for the team year. And then once you're done setting up your team gear, your rucks are all nice and aligned. You go ahead and start setting up your gear on the side of the pool. So that's what they're talking about with gear setup for you guys that haven't been there, haven't seen it before. A gear set up is there's a whole OI in the back of the student pamphlets where we have pictures and show you exactly what things are supposed to look like. Um, as long as everyone's the same. Now I didn't , I personally didn't memorize every single detail of that because honestly that wasn't my goal. It wasn't like, you know, AFI, those kinds of regulations is more, can you guys just talk to each other and make sure that everyone's stuff looks the same? Cause some guys would get like too detailed and there's like a layer of duct tape and then a layer of the white tape and then you put a clear tape over all these tapes to make sure that you know it doesn't. It's like I don't care what you guys do, but as long as you all do it the same way .
AARONListen, don't make me hate you is what Brian is saying.
BRIANYeah. That's all I care about . When I walk down the line.
AARONYour face right now, look at , Oh look at how I can see the rage building inside somebody out there. It's like Brian's about to drop this podcast.
BRIANOh, like whenever I walked down the line, all I expect for you to do is your job using that .
PEACHESI don't understand why this is such a big deal for you. Why is it so difficult? So we know why we know why gear set up is important, right? Because it then translates on to the rest of the job is all that you know, minor or not minor, but some of it's minor details. Some of it's major details because Hey, guess what, as a, as a joint terminal attack controller, if I happen to type in the wrong grid or I happen to have a little bit of dyslexia and pass the wrong grid , like, or somebody is having a bad day and it's not the enemy, right? It's us. So I want to continue on the pool session route, right? And
I want to talk about underwaters. Now this is actually one thing that I, I did not like one bit , um, probably lends its hand to me being a little short, maybe not, not as optimized in the , uh , in the water, right? So instead of some of these, you know, taller studs that are taking four strokes, they get across the pool. I am more of a 12 to 15. So as you know, I'm not even kidding. And the more you're more, you move right under water , the more oxygen you're burning up. So you're sucking wet right. And that's, that's one of the things. So , uh, Brian, I'm gonna stick with you right now. Can you kind of go into some of the, explain some underwaters for their that don't know.
BRIANAlright , so the underwater event is just referring to exactly what it says, swimming underwater for 25 to 50 meters, depending on what phase of training you're in. And when you do it, it's at an interval. So the stopwatch starts on zero and then you know, three minutes later, if it's a three minute interval, you're going to go again. So that's how three minutes work. I explained that because I always get the question on my workouts are like, what is a three minute interval mean, does that mean I take a three minute rest or do I? So you start the watch, three minutes later you go again. That's how, let's say it again for the people in the back. You did it. I'm so proud of you. Yeah, yeah. Just hit the reverse. 15 seconds, stop, watch, and then go. Yeah, exactly. Make sure it's a waterproof stopwatch. All right , so that's what the underwater is. And you're gonna use the keyhole stroke to get to the other side. You touch the wall to turn around, you push off and then you freestyle back to your position and you wait until the three minutes tells you to go. That's what an underwater is. So I mean the biggest reason why people are scared of it is obviously you're deprived of oxygen. If you pop, then everyone's going to see it. All the instructors are walking around and watching who's popping. And then also later on in the weeks we throw on some ABUs and throw on some other gear. So that's basically the underwater in a nutshell.
AARONUnderwaters are not, they're not hard. I don't understand why people freak out about underwaters.
PEACHESBecause some of us take 12 to 15 strokes to get by, how about that?
AARONSo here's, here's the dirty secret about underwaters. A ll r ight. There's only l ets, so like the graduation s tandards i s the standard that everybody freaks out about is the 50 meter. And then you have to do five of them on a one 30 interval. Right? So we say go fun, fun note Ones Ready is the first thing you s ay. O h crazy. It's a little p eek behind the curtain. But h ere, let me blow your mind real quick. There's only four on an interval. The first one is on an interval of your entire day. You haven't done one yet. I f you're not doing five on one 30, if you did five on one 30 that means you would do one and then you would do five more on a one 30 interval. So people will overthink this stuff all the time. Like if you're inefficient, it's going to suck. I told him maybe six exactly. But uh , like if you're inefficient, it's going to suck. I get it. But it's, it's just an underwater, it's when you think about it, okay, go onto the water and go touch that wall and you're going to be fine. And uh, the only other thing I'll say is I will do a 50 all day if you give me a choice between five one thirties and 50. Nope, 50 a hundred percent. It's not even a question.
PEACHESAh, [inaudible] on that one too . To each his own. Whatever.
AARONIf my math checks here. Peach . That's 743 strokes for you as a 50 meter.
PEACHESOh, that definitely is . So I got it, man . I'm in . Alright . So generally at a pool session, you know the gear set up is first, which is not that stressful really. And then you have underwater . So after the underwater session, generally we move to a mask and snorkel recovery, right? So
if you're not familiar with what a mask and snorkel recovery is, you have your scuba mask, you have the snorkel and it gets dropped at the far and deep end of the pool. You on the shallow end of the pool, you are, you know it . Depending on what your number is, you are called Ones Ready go. You go subsurface and proceed and underwater the entire way until you reach your mask and snorkel. Then while you are still submerged underwater, you are donning your mask and your snorkel, clearing your mask and then coming up to the surface and given an okay to the instructors. Now, a lot of people struggle with this because they're not used to having water in their mask. But have you guys , uh , we'll specifically go to Brian . Have you seen anything that has really gotten guys or tips to make guys better at this?
BRIANYeah, I think good job like explaining what it is and how they do it. But like the key things that I see guys mess up on is that there are, there's certain things they were looking for in any objective underwater. Most of all we're looking that you can learn something and put it to use under a somewhat stressful situation. I always tell guys, you're in a pool that is temperature controlled most of the time, as long as it's not broken, there's a little tent over it. There's like a paramedic on each side of the pool. There's nothing else going on. I mean it's, it's a pretty peaceful environment. If you were to go there by herself or go to the YMCA, you know, 70 year old people, this is what they do for exercise. So think of it and in that context and let, like I said, I'm trying to make you, we're trying to make you guys perform under a somewhat stressful situation where you're holding your breath. So a lot of times , um , guys will, once they put on their mask, they'll just push off the bottom and jump up or not. Look up. That's the biggest thing I see and why guys fails. They don't just look up and you're supposed to be looking up to make sure you don't hit your head on anything. It's there's a reason behind every single thing that you do in a selection. So , um , just follow the procedures and stay calm and that's the biggest thing that you can possibly do. And then muscle memory, you know, you can practice all this stuff in your room. So get to the point, just like, you know when we go to the shooting range, you dry fire a lot more than you actually throw any lead down range. So same thing dude , do that in your room. Practice in your room when you actually go to selection, this is your only task that you have to be concerned about while you're down there, it's only going to be four weeks of your life. So stay on task and make stuff happen. Cause you know what the material that is required of you is. So
AARONyeah, there's, there's no secrets. And there's a saying in jujitsu , drillers make killers like guys that consistently work position after position after position and know what to do. It's the same thing. You can go through every single one of these movements to where it's just remember that, you know , amateurs practice until they get it right. But professionals practice until they can't get it wrong. So it's just the same. It's a , it's one of those things where you can totally drill this in your room. It's totally fine. It's not, it's not that hard, it's just a mask.
PEACHESSo yeah , it's not that, you know, and I think, yeah, and I think , I think a special reconnaissance probably, you guys definitely follow that same suit where ever you guys are doing tasks, right? That you're not just doing tasks to do things because it's, it's silly and it's a way to get, you know, gotcha. On guys. You're doing it because you're trying to engrain attention to detail.
TRENTRight, right. And I was just going to say with the, with pool stuff, it's, it's amazing how many times you can see those guys that do a 25 underwater with four strokes and then you put 'em in for the mask snorkel recovery and they're doing like eight strokes to get to the them
AARONCompletely screwed up. Like what are you doing guy?
TRENTThe name on the front end, you only need to do three strokes to get there. And then they get so nervous about the change , um , and that they make it more in their mind and then that they forget everything that they knew about how to do an underwater properly . Um, and you also see a lot of these other guys who F and not tangent too much before they even show up to the pool is where they will let their stress get the better of them. Uh, the, the pool is a , a huge stress management , uh , opportunity. So if you get off the bus and you're already shaking and you're already burning all your O2 standing there, sitting there, it's not going to be a great day. So calm yourself down. However, you know, do it in the bus. When you get there, get that checklist going in your mind on what you're going to do for that underwater , for that mask snorkel recovery. Run through the checklist right and it goes for almost everything that we do. Run the checklists , do it correctly, attention to detail, and that's it. It's the key to the gain side. That's everything.
BRIANJust as a side note , um , how many dudes have you guys seen poop in the pool, either on TV or.
AARONAre we, why are we doing this right now?
BRIANI'm just saying related to the stress thing, you know, it happens when, when I was an instructor, when I was on team, there's always that same dude that used to poop in the pool. Whenever I got stressed out , like on black Thursdays, we'd have our uniforms on. We used to wear Speedos on there too , so I don't even know how he got that thing out of the Speedo, but it would be like, you know, every Thursday is like, Oh, this guy again, I'm not gonna say his name on here or whatever. I don't know where he's at in his life, but.
AARONDude, I have a name in my head right now that I'm holding back. I'm just whole , I'm just like, don't say it man, because I me too, so anyway, that's going to happen to be you guys. Yeah. Hey, remember the last podcast we ever did? Me too.
PEACHESYeah. So, well, I want to , I want , I'll be difficult . Really. Uh , this is a really go South from here, so I'll go ahead and try and pick this attack . Uh, Brian , you covered two things that I actually wanted , uh , to revisit real quick. You threw out a two acronyms that some of the folks may not be familiar you threw out AFI, which is an air force instructions, which are one of the regulations that we use. And then you also threw out OI, so operating instruction, which is another reg or publication that we use , uh, to help to help do things. So, Aaron as the gorilla in the podcast, right? Not the Silvaback,
AARONbut not the Silvaback now , but the ,
PEACHESyou know, the monster aggressive [inaudible] dude.
AARONUm , yeah,
man. So , uh, I'm glad that you gave that lead in, right? Cause like the initial thing that you want to do is you think you're like, I'm going to attack this and I'm going to give it all my energy, man. Uh, you know, as a guy that can can wreck people. Like when I was doing selections and stuff, I'm typically pretty good at uh , making people fail at Buddy breathing if I want to. If you just hold onto your buddy and you think about your buddy before yourself, you're gonna win. If the only thing that you think about, right? So buddy breathing , we have a snorkel, we're sharing a snorkel. We have to pass it back and forth. That's the only way that you can breathe. And the instructor is doing everything. He's trying to take the snorkel, he's trying to break your grips. He's trying to take, he'll cap the snorkel and he'll keep you from breathing in the snorkel, right? So he'll steal your breath if the only thing that's in your head is, I tried to stay completely loose, completely relaxed. I grab on him . The only thing that I'm grabbing really hard as my buddies wrist and this snorkel and I'm just forcing the snorkel towards my buddy every time that I feel him get a breath taken, I'm like, I have to breed so fast to get it back to him. The best feeling in the world is when you get a breathtaking and you hear your partner go like this and that snorkel is coming right back to you because you know that they're in the game with you. The worst thing in the world is you. You just got to breathtaking and you here and you're just like, Oh no. Like , and again, I'm downplaying a lot of this because it is stressful and I don't, I don't mean to, you know, I don't mean to condescend or condescend means talking down to, by the way, I'm sure he guys didn't know that. But anyway , um , if you, if you think about it, you're only going to go without a breath for like five to seven seconds. And if you're completely loose and you're just floating there and you're just shoving your snorkel at your buddy and you're just like, you need to breathe , you need to breathe, you need to breathe. And that's all because that's all, that's all I used to think about is he needs a breathe, he needs a brief, get him the snorkel and then you kind of take yourself out of it. The second that you start thinking, Oh no, I need to breathe. It is over. It is over. So you buddy, you had scary and you know, some instructors are really good at it. I know, I know old tech Sergeant Silva over there had a pretty good record of wrecking people in the pool. Um, but the , the point is , is like, just think about your buddy. Just get them that air and then stay relaxed, float , stay relaxed. Don't let go your buddy. Get them air. It's pretty simple. It's really not that complicated.
PEACHESNo . And, and I agree with that. And Brian , as a instructor who would actually be in the pool with these guys, right? What is something that you would notice as at least what I would notice as a guy in the water with somebody. Um, the always seem to notice the guys who would hog that snorkel. That from my point of view,
BRIANyeah. My only job was to provide a situation and a lot of people think, you know, it's me versus the instructor and that's fine if that's what it takes to get you over it I guess. But really all I was trying to do is provide an environment for them to train under because I can't throw them in the actual ocean and you know, do 30 foot swells with hurricane winds or anything like that...
AARONWhich is terrifying by the way. And I'll tell you what like that , like it's one of those dumb things, but buddy, breathe . I've been underneath rotor wash like really, really scared a couple of times and been like, man, I'm, I'm actually pretty glad that we did buddy breathing because this is, this is not necessarily as bad sometimes, but Holy crap. Yeah.
BRIANYeah. I remember that time we were down , uh , doing some training with um, Bidinger
AARONThat's exactly talking about they get , yeah, so not to go off on a tangent, but it was the scariest training iteration of my life. Like I swear I tell that story all the time, but if it wasn't for buddy breathing, like man he , I had , he came out of that hoist. Like he almost like peeled off the hoist. The helicopter almost hit us. It was terrible. Terrible.
PEACHESIt was this , was this with sixties, 53s, or 22s? 60 sixties yeah , but it was at night . It was off the coast of California. It was terrible.
BRIANI just remember , sure there's four of us in the water. You guys are going up the hoist first and then it was nighttime and you were hooked up with Bidinger or your rack round him and then all of a sudden you guys just take it like pick up , take off and I see another splash. It was , you guys are just being dunked like...
AARONAnd he had come. So the, and the whole reason there is he had come out of the harness, the harness wasn't routed correctly. The guy miss routed it. So the second that we put weight on it, the running ends flip slip right out. And we were swinging out over the ocean because they, we were on the wrong side. So they swung us from the opposite side of the aircraft. And I literally had my legs wrapped around him and was just hugging him to get pulled up. Like he was not attached to the helicopter. It was terrifying.
PEACHESYou gotta be so worried about you gotta being so worried about that cable too . Oh man. Especially at night, cause you have no idea where that cable is that, that's awful . So I , so buddy breathing , right. It has obviously has real world , um, you know, aspects to it and not just sitting under a helicopter, but also if you're diving, I mean that's kind of where this comes from is, you know, whether you're, you know, you run out of air while you're doing scuba diving, right? Or even if you're doing rebreathers, you know, you can also buddy breathe that way too. So this has real world applications to it. It's not just a way to make it suck even though it sucks.
BRIANThe other thing that I want to just real quick for guys that are training and preparing for buddy breathing , um, thing that I tell guys to focus on is obviously stay relaxed except for your buddy grip. Cause Aaron was talking about stuff , um, that I used to do and most of the time it was buddy grip or snorkel that I would grab and throw out of the pool. If you get your air source taken away, which is just your snorkel, then you know it's game over. That's like just like Peaches saying your scuba gear. Um, and then your buddy grip. So everything else on your body should stay relaxed and should be a hunched over and floating on top. You shouldn't be kicking for air or doing any of that stuff. So stay as calm as possible. But hold on to your buddy. Cause if you lose your buddy, act like you're in that 30 foot swell or in a river and you're gonna lose them forever. So air source, buddy, and keep it past
AARONTaking you to the pool to me forever. Yeah.
PEACHESAll right , cool. Well since we're already talking about scuba, right though, we are not doing scuba during the pool sessions, right? We are doing what's called equipment recovery. Um, and Brian, can you dip into that a little bit please?
BRIANSure.
So equipment recovery, you're going to start out with a weight belt. You're going to come off the edge of the, basically there's a decline where it goes into the deep end. You're going to come off, you're going to have to tread out in the water. There's a prescribed amount of time that you need to tread and then the instructor will tell you to go. So submerge yourself and ditch your equipment. You go down, ditch your equipment and you have to set it up in a certain way, just like you have to set it up on the side of the pool. Um , you set up a certain way. It looks good. You come up to the surface and you're just waiting until the instructor is checking your gear and then if it's good or not, they're going to tell you to go down. Don your equipment, you swim down, you down your equipment in a certain order. You make sure you clear your mask, make a proper ascent to the surface. Again, you're wearing a weight belt, now you're wearing a weight belt back on. So you hold your hands up, tread to the side of the pool, and then put your hands, you know, get yourself out of the pool, hands on your head, don't touch anything and you wait to be inspected until you know the instructor gives you a tap on the head or whatever tells you you're good to go. Um, if he mess up anything, then you can expect that you go again and do it all over again, whether it's immediately or they're being nice and giving you a break.
PEACHESBeing nice or maybe you're just jacked up and Hey, you know, you got to go back and you do it again.
AARONYeah. I had a friend that use to be able to do this in like eight seconds. It was the most frustrating thing ever. He would go down and he was perfect at it. Every single time. I thought I was fast at it. He was lightening quick at it. Never bothered him at all. They would make them go two or three times. It'd be like, I don't care what's at 20 seconds. He was like, I don't care, but he would openly talk crap. He'd just be like, Oh, okay , you want me to do it again? You want to see if I can do it in seven seconds so it can be done. It's easy. It's just people, people panic or people don't set it up right and then they start getting frustrated. It's a funny thing, but yeah, ditch and don is... It's completely a completely doable.
BRIANI the I think one of the key things, sorry I didn't mean to cut you off. Just one of the key things with the ditch and don is that guys and knot tying is that guys really focused on one things and like their vision and making sure everything's correct. When it's the same kind of muscle memory thing that you can do with any of the other stuff like mask and snorkel and everything. You should be able to feel it. Like boom, you do like three checks on your gear and you know that it's good to go and then you just go to the surface. You shouldn't even need to like really look at it. So that's just one of the things that um , and guys end up passing out because they're trying to focus on those little things so much. So I just want to throw that in there.
PEACHESNo, that's good. That's real good. I mean, Hey, we, we preach attention to detail, right? But there , there is a point of no return if you are so focused, you know, in the three knots that you have to tie, if you're so focused on that one and making sure that it's completely perfect and you don't get the others well, Hey, that's a, that's still a fail buddy. There's no fail. Has no fail worse than a slow fail. Oh, that's right. Fail fast, man . There was no man, there was no mess worse than a really slow miss. No, that's right. It can be entertained . Okay. So moving on
to drown proofing. Now for me, drown proofing was, was kind of the relaxing part of the pool really. Um, I know it did freak some people out, but um , this was a time where I could, in the pool session that I could really get my heart rate down. Um, so as where you have your, your hands and your feet bound behind you, and then you're, you're bobbing and then you're also kind of traversing the pool and whatever way you can, and you're also floating. So this is a , I can't, I can't think of a real world reason why I have experienced any kind of drown proofing other than learning how to relax in the water when you don't have all of your extremities. That's, that's the biggest thing for me that I got out of it. Um, do any of you guys have anything specific to drown proofing.
TRENTI think though , one of the things I always tell the students is people freak out being bound, right? Like are putting their, their hand on their back and bounding the risks and about in their feet. I tell them it's a positive because if I throw you in there , I make you hold your hands together and your legs together. That's just more energy to put out. So I always just take the opportunity to talk about perspective for the students. Like if I call you up, you have to zero energy into maintaining that , uh , you know, that straight up and down a figure that we said makes you Bob much easier. You know what I mean? I just don't have to worry about it. I actually don't mind. Uh, I , my , my wrists are bound, you know, cause you just gain that perspective. It's just like everything else. It's just like everything in the pool . It's , it's putting out and relaxing at the same time having the right perspective and uh , and just realizing that it's not as bad as you think it is. Yeah .
AARONI've gotta be honest, nobody in the history of the world has ever quit on drown proofing. Like it's literally everybody's favorite of them cause you're just like, you're just like, Oh thank goodness I'm , I may have overstepped there because apparently Jay , but like I don't know. I this is the same, the same thing for me. Like for me I was just like, ah, thank goodness. Drown proofing you have to take a break. Cause then like your buddy is drown proofing. But everyone else is literally just standing there. You're just watching your buddy drown bro . I'm like, man, I like if I can get to drown proofing, I'm like check pool session done. Thanks.
PEACHESYeah, I don't actually remember, why we still do it. I really don't because it's that easy and it's that relaxing.
AARONYeah. And it's one of those things. So it actually came from way back in the day, some years . And this is the story I heard and I'll just pass it like it's true, but some , a UDT members were uh , were caught in Vietnam and they were basically thrown, you know, hands and tied and thrown in and uh, because uh, they had not done drown proofing before. They were unable to continue to float and a couple of them died. So there was a story that was imparted to me by a couple instructors, but who knows, it's still an event so,
PEACHESWell I like it . That's a pretty valid story then if that's the case. Makes sense to me, then I'll buy it. Yeah .
BRIANYeah. I will say when I was an instructor though, they were a couple of guys that actually, you know , um, didn't graduate or at least a couple of, I almost didn't graduate because of drown proofing. And the biggest thing was that they just couldn't relax and when you have to grab that mask and your teeth that ended up choking on water. Actually that happened to me at dive school. Cause we only train in the Skylark, which is the nine foot pool and dive school. You have a 12 foot pool. So I'd never done a 12 foot drown proofing. I kicked off the first time like I was in a nine foot pool water back down and I was like, you are crap. You are a full Peaches away from the surface. Nobody told me that this is going to happen. So a couple inches away. So anyway, all I'm saying you guys , make sure you train 12 foot pool if you guys are there and only training at Skylark. So that was my takeaway on that. And then you know , um , we'll make, I'll make some more videos about ways to do it and stuff for , for you guys out there that are training for this stuff. But it is a pretty relaxing time cause no one's yelling at you . You can't do anything like, Oh they yelled at me, see I'm going back down. I'll think about it all the way down.
AARONBubbles out of my nose as I do. You could do all the way to the pool.
Yeah. So next we're gonna move on to finning. Now I can talk about finning and I can tell you guys how to Fin from somebody who is , um , the slowest person in the history of finning. Uh, just for example, when you're at pre dive or, or you're a scuba school, they have teams, you know, one through 40, we'll call it, right? And your buddy team, you've got your swim buddy, right? The faster the team means the, the lower numbers . So number one team are the two fastest finners out of the entire class. And then so on, right? So as example, I was team 40 and then , and then a guy would, would quit and then I moved up as , you can't have a {...} g oing t o b e a t wo o r three, but it was a war. That's all it was. Yeah, exactly. I ended on team 35. Right. So I , I slowly moving up. Right? So I am no expert on f inning. I just know that I'm not good at it. So Aaron, can you dive in on fitting a little bit?
AARONYeah. So I was actually a , I was a pretty fast, pretty fast finner. So when you're talking about when we're doing it at A&S, so you make your money on the turns . If you have efficient turns , you're going to do open turns, right? So you're not going to do flip turns. You're going to hit the wall, you're going to turn around, you're going to go back underneath. I found, so I was a water polo player and a swimmer and walls were inherently important, at least in competitive swimming, right? Well fitting is no different. So that's the first tip that I'll kind of throw out there is like, use your wall . It's got a good push off those walls, good, tight, streamlined , really big kicks, and then get into it. So the lead arm trail arm is how you're going fin , right? So you're going to have, it's exactly what it sounds like. You're going to have one arm out in front of you. You're basically going to be looking down that arm. Um, when you're finning look and where you're going, and when you breathe, you're going to kind of look opposite that arm. You're going to put your mouth out of the water, you're going to try to breathe. So number one, be as efficient as possible. If you do it right, you'll have to just barely move your head cause you'll create a wave and there's a little pocket behind the wave and that's where you can breathe. Big kicks. So you know, we do flutter kicks. A lot of flutter kick is a one of the staple calisthenics that we do in A&S , uh , before predive. You know why? Cause you have to use your hip flexors a lot to fin and that's why we do flutter kicks a ton of them. Um, so use your walls when we're in the pool and then when we're, you know, open ocean or whatever else, lead arm, trail, arm, you can also use the combat recovery stroke , um , where you're , there's a method where it's too long to get into where you can meet your hands together and you're basically using them to push apart. So you're still using lead arm trail arm you're still about on your side, like a 45 degree tilt . And then you're using those big strong kicks of the fence, a good stiff in a good , um, efficient body position where you're planed out like where you're more flat and almost parallel to the surface or to the bottom of the pool. If it was a flat surface then you'd be fine. Um, so finning is actually, it's another one of those, there's nobody harassing you. It's more of like an endurance event. Getting you ready for those open ocean are those open water fins that you're going to do later on in your career. Um , and there've been, you know, I took a couple of heinous fins in my life where I was really glad that we, we focused on it, but um, yeah, finning is fnning is pretty good and it's all technique 100%. Like there are very few times, like as soon as you figure out kind of where your body positioning needs to be and what feels right for your pace, it's one of those things where you're like, Oh, okay, got it. I can do this.
PEACHESYeah, I know that's a , that's all solid. And , uh , even then when you figure out your technique, I mean maybe you just don't have the, you know, not the leg strength but maybe the leg width. Yeah. Who knows how to make maybe even, that's what I was saying. I don't, I don't make those decisions. So Brian you had anything to add in on the finning?
BRIANYeah, a big thing for finning is the types of fin that you guys use. So the trainers are the ones that fit on kind of like socks. You don't need another boot or anything to, to wear them . Uh , I'd say start out with that before you join . Um, you know, if you are, have a long enough time to train like , uh, eight months or a year, then you can buy your other jet fins like four months in or whatever. But work yourself up because those jet fins are going to be heinous on your ankles. Anybody that, I mean, all of us can attest that we seen some dudes feet tore up and you know, they, they cramp up on the top or bottom of their foot all the time. I mean, it happens to everybody. And , and it happened to me , um , a lot when I first started with these jet fins because it was just so kind of bulky. It's like, you know, you throw in your, you're used to drive in a four cylinder or whatever, and then you put that four cylinder on a bus and you're like, Oh crap, I'm not going anymore. It's not meant to work this hard. So , um, you know, try and work your way up to to that. So you're, you're not getting too many blisters or not cramping up too much. That's the only thing I wanted to add in there.
PEACHESYeah. Yeah. It'll, it'll definitely crush your arches. So , um , Trent, I wanted to talk to you about the clock, right? So yeah, we've talked about fitting , we talked a lot about a lot of the events that happen, right? But most of the guys know that it's going to be a four to five hour pool session, right? And you already brought up, Hey guys that are freaking out. You know, they're almost hyperventilating as they're getting off the bus because they're so amped up. Right. Instead of trying to call them , they're new . So they're already getting their heart rate up, which is a bad thing, right? But when we talk about time and the clock, it can't be stopped. So as an instructor, what would you want to say to some of these guys that are just starting to like, Oh man, I got a four hour pool session going.
TRENTI mean, it's just like everything else you can't take the entire time and compress it into right now. You know what I mean? Gonna end. So only focus on that next step, that first step right at you. Um , and , and as a student, like you might think that, you know how long a pool session is going to go, but based on talked about , um, the , there's comes a certain point where instructors will modify what's going on in order to make sure your team is as successful in the future. That's not the way we put it. Right? Um, but the, it will end , uh, but you can't focus on the end, right? It's like letting a , a horse run home or whatever. Right? You can't, you never let it run home because it's focusing on the end. Um, uh, you just gotta you just got to pace it out. Like when you get your, your, your down, you sit down, you knock out whatever happens. But you have to have that just relaxed, calm, cool, collected mindset , uh , to just get through it. All you're thinking about is like, I'm almost done. I'm almost done. I'm almost done. Like there it's a fin , uh , water con session , a run , uh , you think that I'm not running right past the schoolhouse every once in a while? that's evil, bro . I will slow it down and then I will blow right past it just to , you know what I mean? Um, I mean, as students do that with the pool sessions and I do that with the whole pipeline, they, they'd be like, Oh, I have two years of that . And they just tried to cram all that stress or what they think they know about a stress into this very moment and it never works out well for them. It just shoots your cortisol, your heart rate goes up and you quit.
AARONAnd I will say, I mean sometimes the instructors, I would always tell the students, listen, I might not be able to make it longer, but I can make it harder.
PEACHESOh we can always make it harder.
AARONI know I'm telling you, I think we're just trying to pack all the inappropriate stuff into one podcast. So that's why that wasn't double entendre baby. I know where you're going with that thing or not. That's going to be based on my , my poop joke. I didn't want to be the one that was bringing up all the , that kind of stuff.
PEACHESSo we're just keeping it between friends. This one's going to be called double entendres at the pool. So okay. So as we, as we talked about the clock and the time, right? Aaron, why does everybody, why is everybody scared of the pool?
AARONAnd it's you . It's the great equalizer. It's why we use the pool in our selection, right? Because while we do focus on teamwork and we place a really high value on being part of a high performing team, that has to start with personal accountability. So when someone is underneath the water and you're like, listen, I don't care how you make this happen, but you're going to stop breathing and you're going to tie those knots and you're not allowed to come up until they're done. That's a very personal thing. Like you can get to the heart of somebody very, very quickly and if they're not really, really secure in their skills, if they're not really secure in their stress management and you can tell right away and I think it exposes part of yourself. Like Brian was saying earlier with, you know, or you were saying like, you know guys with, you know, adonis type bodies that go in there and you're like, Oh, you're totally, you're totally good about it . You can watch the pool break those guys like, and I think, I think that's always in the back of your mind, but it's one of those things, it's like, it's like our crucible, right? Like when we get out of there. I mean you really think like Brian and I'm telling that silly story earlier about, you know, being in that situation underneath the helicopter, like I was like, Hey man, I've been through indoc like I've almost passed out. I refuse to quit. Just a quick story on this, I was doing a selection. We were doing a post interview and a guy had popped. We're going to talk about alternative water con in a second, but a guy had popped and I said, Hey, I didn't, I did not like seeing you do that. And he's like, well I did. I went right back down and then I went across and he was trying to kind of soften the blow of of my input and I said, Hey, here's the deal man. There's going to be some time in between. There's going to be some time in your career where there's a firefight going on and in between you and where you got to go is going to be your life. It's going to be, you're going to have to make a decision on your own life and death. You don't get the pop in that scenario, you don't get to come up and then just start that event all over. That's not a good thing. Cause it's real life. Yeah. That's real life man. Like you showed me that man, you were in the middle of that fight and you were like, Nope, I gotta I gotta pause for a second. I don't care that you reattacked it. I cared that you didn't stay down there until the job was done. Right. Like the question isn't, how far are you going to go? The question is do you possess the constitution to go as far as you need to? And I think, yeah, you like that, but I think the pool, I think the pool like no other place exposes you a little bit there. And I think that's what people, people get in their head about it , man. Like they really do. I've seen, I've seen strong dudes just be like, Nope, not today.
Yeah , no, that's, that's really good. That's solid. And Brian , what are some of the ways that the guys can be successful in the pool? I mean, I know the way I was successful, but man, like I said, I was, I don't want to say I was mediocre, but I was never a a stellar performer at indoc at all. Especially in the pool.
BRIANYeah. I think the pool is the most difficult thing for most guys. There are guys that message me and they're like, Oh yeah, 1500 meters. I totally got that. Smoked it. Like I can do underwaters with four strokes, no big deal, you know? Yeah. Um, but I think like keeping it in perspective, the , the biggest thing that I, I see guys do is they separate themselves from the team. Whenever I know that somebody's gonna quit, they're sitting there, they're on the side of the gunwhale, all they're getting ready for their 10 up, and then, you know, we're like Ones Ready, and then they say like high side though side or whatever, and you can see that one guy, he's, you can see him. He's not looking at anybody else. He's not looking at the instructors. He's not looking at anything else. He just knows that that go is coming.
AARONI know a squealer when I see him and that guy, you can see that guy, you can tell on his face, you're just like, no , you are in your pain cave. I know this.
BRIANYeah. So all they're looking at is right here and all that's right here in their face is that water that they don't want to jump into. So you know, if you're in that zone too, you're scared of whatever's in, you know, look to your left and your right , realize that your , you know, with your team and you don't want to let your team down. You don't want to let down yourself and you want to look back and say, you know, I did the absolute best job I can do, whether it's passing out or not. You know, you have medics on the side of the pool there that are gonna pull you out. I've pulled out hundreds of dudes from the pool. So there we're pretty experienced that , you know, making sure that she survived. So don't worry about that. Worry about your team. And just like Aaron was saying with buddy breathing, like you're just worried about your buddy. That's right there next to you. You don't want to let them down. You want to perform and make sure that you add to the mission success and not take away from it. So
PEACHESYeah, I think, I think you're right. Um, two things on that one. You could, you could always see the , the person, cause they, they would delay coming in, right as , as they're getting ready to at 10 up or whether it's the underwaters or whether they're going to do equipment recovery and that , Hey, it's, you know , one's ready go and that guy is still just like, huh,
AARONyou don't that guy, that guy is not going and you can see it. Right.
PEACHESAnd here's the problem with that, right? Is that that guy is now going to create extra training for everybody else, not just for himself. You know, it creates training for everybody else. Everybody's paying for the man because why? Because we're a team. That's why. And I , I'll tell you why . That's when you can really see somebody's soul just getting crushed.
BRIANOh yeah. I've seen lots of grown man cry. They didn't want to go. Like, I'll just sit there. I was like go. I said go, whatever your name is, you know. Go, so we'd all, all the instructors just come around and just swarmed to this guy. Ben started in the pool just splashing in the face and he's just sitting there like crying, like, no, don't . So what is it like it really highlights, you can replay this after you're done. But anyway, it really highlights you and it comes to a point where you know, you owe five because you didn't do a pushup. Correct. Or popped on those last five. So we're going to keep you out there until you do it or no , you quit basically. No . Oh boy.
PEACHESI completely agree. And, and one of the last things I, I'd say on the, the pool sessions really is, man, everybody has a bad day. Right? Um, you know, everybody comes there to perform, right? But someday , you know, and you never know what day it's going to be. You will hit it, whether it's in the pool or whether it's on the track running or rocking. Man, everybody has at least one bad day. Whether it's like, dude, I don't know man. I just can't get my stuff together. Like this is crazy. Um, and that's the day that you damn well better perform, right? Yep . Because you can't just sit there feeling sorry for yourself and expecting, Oh God, I can't wait to this poor session ends. I'm having a bad day. No , that right there is when we need you to perform. So , um, what, I'll toss it out back at everybody else's. Anybody have anything they want to add? Uh , on the pool sessions specifically?
AARONI think we covered it. I think, you know, people just get in their head, right? Like people, you know, you're going to do it every day . That's the problem with pool sessions is just like, you know, just like the two o'clock train, there's another one coming. You're going to be in that pool tomorrow. You're not getting away from it. You're going to go. So you better just make your peace with it. Like embrace the suck, whatever you know, t-shirt logo that I'm supposed to put here to make you okay with it. Like you're not going to get out of it. So you might as well get into it. You might as well be efficient at it. You might as well find places where there's totally places where you can rest if you're efficient, if you're really good at underwaters, guess what? That's more rest on the back end. If you're, if you can do ditch and Don in eight seconds, guess what? You can do ditch and don in eight seconds. You get to rest alternate watercon, when we start punishing people in the pool and all this other stuff, it's meant to raise your stress, right? It's just training. Like we're, we're there to , to train. Like it's always for a purpose, always everything that we do, everything that's done at A&S and everything that's done in your career is done with a deliberate purpose in mind. So the sooner that you, you're just okay with that fact you turn a corner and you feel way better. And pool sessions get way less stressful. And it's , it's funny looking back, you know, my, my couple of different times , um , one, you know, the first time and then the second time full sessions were completely different for me. And it was just because I was like, no, it's, it's training. This is what we gotta do. And uh , today the training is going to be a lot harder cause it's Thursday and we're wearing extra stuff. Okay. Got it. That's what it is. But you know , you can only manage your reaction. You can't manage the situation because the situation is going to be leveled on you. You can't manage really the outcome because the outcome is going to be what it is. But you can manage your reaction to it.
PEACHESIt's also not personal like a lot of guys in this head, Hey, yeah, exactly. There , there is nothing personal about all those . Now they're going to be times that you may feel that is personally can't leave me and this guy is pointing me out. Well maybe he's pointing you out because you're not performing to your fault. How about that? Right. But it is not personal. And I'm sure, you know, not neither Brian nor Trent have ever made it personal, you know, because , and , and I, and I know I smirk when I say that, but like it comes across that way. Right. I remember distinctly, some of the hardest instructors I had were also the fairest . Totally. They were professional and they were fair. And it's like, man, I know this coming in. He's, he's the instructor on deck for the pool session. Right. And it's going to be a tough one. It's going to be, it's going to be fair though. And I knew, I knew going in, okay, this is fair. So that would be my last 2 cents on poor sessions.
BRIANYeah. And just for me. Yeah, I definitely never made it personal. I , there are people that, you know, in my own mind, I liked better than other people of course, but I never tried to make it evident to the team or like, Oh, why don't you go ahead and take a break or here's some Gatorade or any of that kind of stuff. And uh, if they messed up, I yelled at them equally and proportionately to how much they messed up. So each person, you know, is the same story. And then just on the, on the pool thing real quick. Um, I like to make the analogy like it's kinda like driving a car. If you're in a, every time you're in a car, you get into a car accident, you're going to be scared of getting into a car. So figure out how, get to the pool on the weekend or at night and make it into like a fun experience too where you're playing whatever like Frisbee or like underwater golf or do do whatever and make it fun with your guys and your team and don't make it into a car crash every single time that you go to the pool because that's going to just, that's all it's going to be in your mind. You're just going to think as soon as you're sitting on a deck, you're like, Oh man, as soon as I entered this pool as going to suck and everything, everything's going to suck. So get out of your head and make, make the pool a place that you can control. It's just a thing. It's not like the pool was gonna open up and swallow you whole or like keep you under it . You're in control of your yourself as long as you do the task. So that's all I wanted to say on that.
PEACHESYou know what you say? That reminded me of a , when I was a kid sitting in the pool, then I'd always imagine a shark would come out of the deep end. Kiddin me, first of all, I don't think , you know , the mind of a five-year-old, hey Trent over to you.
TRENTYeah. Just going to say the, I like break things down kind of mathematically. And if it's the worst parts about the pool ones that you're most worried about as a student happen in 30 to minute long iterations of most, you know what I mean? Uh, even with the most buddy breathing, it might last just a bit longer than that, but that's who can get to the point where like all your fins or your swimming, it's just exercise and your underwaters are just not that big of a deal. Then you're just condensing down the suck into almost nothing. And then that allows you, that gives you the bandwidth to master one of the other tasks and master that task and gives you the bandwidth to master the next task. So , um, it's like you have no downtime at the pool. It's not balls to the wall the whole time, every time, plenty of time to recover and think about it. Um, just like it, like that whole pool set in like four hours is going to be terrible cause it's not, it's, it's only little snippets of, you know, really hard things sounds for guys that are accustomed to it yet.
AARONIt's just like a deployment. It's , it's hours and hours and hours of mind numbing, boredom spiced up with moments of sheer terror. That's all it is.
So that's awesome. Okay, well we'll wrap it up. Uh , as you guys know or may not know, we have partnered with a couple companies out there that we believe in and that we utilize their products. So it's not just some, you know, ad that's coming at you . Right. So , um , Trent, I know I saw you drinking some of it. I've been sucking down some of it as well. Strike force energy . It's a, it comes in a little sachet like this. You'd dump it into some water and then Bob's your uncle, you're on the go, right? So if you guys want some of that, go over to strike. Force that strike force energy.com enter the promo code ONESREADY for a 15% and then we've also got alpha g uru Aaron.
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PEACHESIt's delicious. Awesome. Thanks a lot. And then Brian over to you the finish us off buddy.
BRIANAll right, so wrapping this thing up. Um, you know the pool, we can go for days and days talking about this stuff and our experiences that we've had in the pool. It's a , one of the things that most people quit on, which is why we wanted to bring it up and talk to you guys about it. Um, so we broke down each of these events and um, hopefully the common theme that you guys noticed through all of this is because it's called water con short for water confidence. We want you guys to show how confident you are in the water, how you are able to learn a task and perform under a stressful environment. Because right now the most stressful environment that we can really put you under is, you know, taking your breath away and the potential that you might pass out underwater. Uh , and , uh, guys sometimes aren't willing to fully commit to that. And actually , um, like , uh, the other guys were talking about, you know, just if you're out in the battlefield, there's no option to really pop. I mean, if you pop, that means that you're going out into a corner and hiding from the gunfire where you got your friends are out there, you know, being shot at. So the mission needs to be more important to you than your ability to take a breath or more important to you. Your team has the more important to you then your breathing. So the only way that we can show that is through you doing your underwater task. So keep that in mind when you're, when you're doing these things, you know, and also what you do while you're in the pool. Now , um, when you first get there , uh , obviously as much preparation as possible, but everyone remembers that guy that was always popping or like I said earlier, the guy that was, you know, pooping in the pool of your, your reputation is going to always follow you around no matter where you go. Cause all hers ,
AARONOh , that's in here, right? They were stained , if you will. Absolutely. Crap.
BRIANYeah. So when you guys are going into the pool, keep that mindset, confidence , um, in yourself and in the water as well. So chest out, chin up, know that you're going to do whatever it takes to crush this water content, iteration. And then always look to your left ear , right? Know that you're with a team of the most badass dudes that have walked this freaking earth because that's what we want to create in you guys that are replacing us. We want you guys to be better again than we ever were. And we want you guys to have the confidence that when you step up, you can accomplish any task with keeping in mind that you need to also be humble, to keep it to yourself, that you're confident. All right, so appreciate you guys , uh, listening to another episode. Um, you guys can always hit us up again on Instagram, Facebook, go to the website, look at the , uh, um , submit questions through there. And if you guys are interested in, in a special warfare in the air force, then you can also reach out to your recruiter. We'll add some extra links in there for you guys to reach out, specifically coming soon. So , um, appreciate it again guys. I'll see you next time. Hey , I liked the podcast. Tell your friends about it. Put a subscribe on there. Leave us a comment. All right. All right guys, we'll see you around later .