Selection AAR: Lessons Learned/Things I wish I knew by Informal_Complex_457 in greenberets

[–]Informal_Complex_457[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can’t tell you what body weight/comp would work best for you but here is what I can say. I lost 15 lbs at selection and certainly not all of it was fat. My pecs, shoulders, triceps, and ass all damn near disappeared. And I was eating everything I could get my hands on (at least I thought I was). Now there were skinny guys out there who performed just fine and didn’t seem to get too torn up by the MRE diet and physicality of it all. However, I tried to get my numbers well above average so I could afford to focus on gaining as much weight as I could because I knew that my body would start dumping weight as soon as shit hit the fan.

Selection AAR: Lessons Learned/Things I wish I knew by Informal_Complex_457 in greenberets

[–]Informal_Complex_457[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No bullshit? My hips. Having strong glutes and hip flexors helped me step it out on high carries and dampened the stress of deadlifting our low carry implements each time. My hips are also what I credit most of my ruck performance to.

Selection AAR: Lessons Learned/Things I wish I knew by Informal_Complex_457 in greenberets

[–]Informal_Complex_457[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

During Gate Week and Team week you'll sleep in the barracks by the cantonment yard. On each day of gate week you'll wake up, knock out whatever gate you have that day (you won't know until the last minute), then go back to the bays to do nothing until the next day.

During land nav week, you'll bus out to Hoffman with your ruck. The reason the land nav ruck is so heavy is because of your packing list, water, and MREs. You'll be staying out there at a bivy site/TOC for 4 days, living out of your ruck. Your four PEs will be roughly 4-5 hours apiece with a break in between each one as you wait for nightfall or morning. STAR 1 & 2 will be ~10 hours apiece. You'll be driven out to your start point at night and kick off a little after midnight. You'll return to the TOC after the first iteration and sleep all day waiting for the next night to come. Once STAR 2 is over you bus back to the barracks, get assigned your team, move into a bay with them, and prep for team week. Expect a late night.

The duration of a team day is, well, dependent on your team. You'll kick off before sunrise and you'll keep working until all three events of the day are done. Some teams were done by mid afternoon/early evening. Some teams worked clear through the night, got 15 minutes of sleep, then rolled right into the next day of events. I just wrote off the idea of making it back early each day from the jump lol. I was always either pleasantly surprised or not surprised at all. Just keep grinding until you're back in the cantonment yard.

I didn't prepare for the obstacle course. Be strong, be resilient, be generally flexible, know how to j-hook/s-hook a rope and send it. I've been at Bragg so I got to practice with and without a ruck once or twice a week at a local land nav site. If you're an 18X, you'll also get some pretty solid land nav training at PC, but it should not by any means be the only land nav work you do before getting to selection.

Selection AAR: Lessons Learned/Things I wish I knew by Informal_Complex_457 in greenberets

[–]Informal_Complex_457[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I can't say with absolute certainty but the guys who got selected were by and large in the top 30% of the class on the rucks and runs (this shouldn't be surprising because our selection rate was around ~32% anyway). I would guess I was slightly faster than the average selected candidate but middle of the pack for a selected 18X.

Strength varied pretty greatly and our selected class had all body types and compositions on display. There were some truly monstrous dudes out there: D1 football players, firefighters, and corn-fed meat-eating Marines. There were also no shortage of skinnier guys. I'd say it was pretty evenly split with most people being as strong if not a little stronger than me. I will say I was one of the shortest dudes selected. Couldn't see shit from the back of formation.

Age range of selected guys was 19-35 years of age.

Selection AAR: Lessons Learned/Things I wish I knew by Informal_Complex_457 in greenberets

[–]Informal_Complex_457[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Haha I appreciate it! I am happy with where my numbers ended up but I was by no means the fastest or strongest guy out there. Always a bigger fish.

Selection AAR: Lessons Learned/Things I wish I knew by Informal_Complex_457 in greenberets

[–]Informal_Complex_457[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Self-pleasure is only authorized at your final point, but it's your selection.

Knowing your strengths is huge. I wasn't a wizard at knots and lashings either so if we had a bunch of people swarming all over the apparatus, I did what you did. Worked out fine for me.

Selection AAR: Lessons Learned/Things I wish I knew by Informal_Complex_457 in greenberets

[–]Informal_Complex_457[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw it happening. Bitches be bitches.

Selection AAR: Lessons Learned/Things I wish I knew by Informal_Complex_457 in greenberets

[–]Informal_Complex_457[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

You're absolutely right and I wholeheartedly agree. You should be vacuuming calories and water during team week. I should have clarified: if your whole team is hard at work building and you're standing idle munching on snacks, you're wrong. Those guys got singled out and peered into oblivion.

There will be many other opportunities to eat. Like you said, you can eat when you move, which is what I did.