04-27-2012, 11:00 PM
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SEALs push U.S. Olympians to limit in their training
Looks like we got a secret weapon for our national sport' teams... 
SEALs push U.S. Olympians to limit in their training
Quote:
The session starts genially enough, with a video presentation, some talk about becoming a Navy SEAL and a quick overview of the separating-men-from-boys "Hell Week" part of SEALs training.
Then the SEALs warn their audience, comprised mostly of U.S. sailing team members: "We're going to re-set your baseline today."
Within hours, some athletes are on the edge of hypothermia, some are crying, others are cursing like, well, sailors, and all are fully immersed in misery.
At the end of their four-hour "Hell Afternoon," filled with pushups, runs, drenchings in a freezing lake, waiting for orders in a bracing wind, rolling in dirt, and countless group hoists and carries of 200-plus-pound logs, the sailors are asked what they've learned.
"Never give up," says one.
"Dirt is warm," says another.
"We push in our training," says Zach Railey, a 2008 Olympic silver medalist in sailing, "but this was just a totally different type of physical and mental exhaustion."
The London Summer Olympics are nearly three months from now with the opening ceremony July 27. The training several U.S. Olympians have done with the SEALs — 10 U.S. teams in Olympic sports have been through at least one session in recent years — is an arduous, indelible part of their preparation.
"To be honest, after I did it I wanted to mount up and go and try to become a SEAL," said Olympic gold medalist Garrett Weber-Gale, who went through the training with Michael Phelps and other swimmers in 2009. "I thought about it for about a year. And thought maybe after I was done swimming I would want to do that. I guess what I took away from that was the human body can always achieve more than we believe. And that's controlled purely by our minds."
The fatigue is so consuming the SEALs advise them at certain points to focus only on their next step — to ignore the discomfort of the elements, the aches shooting through their muscles, the doubts plaguing their minds, and to simply put one foot in front of the other.
"You can't buy what they're going to teach them in four hours," says Wendy Borlabi, a sport psychologist with the U.S. Olympic Committee, who adds the training is especially beneficial to athletes who compete in individual sports.
"They're learning what they're doing is bigger than themselves," Borlabi says. "It's different than when they're training for the Olympics, which is all centered on them.
"The growth, I think, is astronomical."
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