The workouts in this book are designed as part of a weight lifting maintenance plan to be used for 3–4 months of the year. Before you begin this workout plan, I recommend you start with a challenging spring/summer routine of high-rep calisthenics and many miles of swimming and running, all of which can be found in the original Complete Guide to Navy SEAL Fitness. During your transition from the spring/summer plan, you should slowly integrate weight training into your training plan and slowly decrease calisthenics and impact aerobic activity. This helps your muscles to rebuild, allows your joints to recover, and reduces pains from high mileage and high repetition calisthenics. This program allows you to maintain growth and strength gains while avoiding over-training to the point of negative results. It also works to help avoid a range of other common issues often seen in year-round high repetition and high running mileage routines.
The program is designed for those who have a solid foundation of training under their belts and are looking for new ideas to add to or replace elements of their existing programs. The programs in this manual are difficult, and require some time investment to complete effectively. Exercises involving weights, running, biking, or swimming, as well as moderate repetitions of calisthenics are all incorporated in such a way that recovery is possible and progress is optimal.
These workouts are developed and tested daily by the free training groups of Heroes of Tomorrow that I hold in Maryland. They are difficult but doable, and are easy to scale back if you have issues with the intensity or time investment.
For example: when runs are prescribed and your knees are not up to it, skip the runs and replace them with some form of non-impact aerobic exercise like biking, swimming, rowing, or elliptical gliding to finish off the fat burning stage of your workouts.
For more information about my background or to contact me with questions/concerns about your training, please visit www.stewsmith.com.
And, if you are ever in the Annapolis, MD area, please join one of the workouts for our nonprofit program—HeroesofTomorrow.org.
Enjoy the workouts and the other information in this fitness manual.
—Stew Smith