
The 40% Rule: A Navy SEAL’s Secret to Mental Toughness - jl87
http://thehustle.co/40-percent-rule-navy-seal-secret-mental-toughness
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Afton
These techniques are useful when you have a large pool of young extremely
healthy men. Then when they blow out knees, shoulders, back, etc you can just
select the ones who didn't break. Claiming that this is a useful and effective
way to train is a terrible idea.

The only reason this kind of article is useful at all is that virtually
everyone who trains a sport _fails to train hard enough_. In other words,
after you remove all the fancy language and rah-rah spirit, you are left with
"You should probably try harder". And that's probably good advice.

My two cents.

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crikli
I regularly participate in events known as GORUCK Challenges. They're 12 hour+
endurance events led by current and former special forces operatives from all
branches of the military.

Yes, there are plenty of young extremely healthy men at these events, but
they're the minority. The majority of participants are over 30 years old, in
good but not great or extreme condition, and tend to be 10-30% female.

These events are _hard_. Hours of PT, carrying of heavy objects for hours at a
time, all while wearing a backpack that weighs at minimum 25#.

Success rate is about 94%. Yes, there is some principle of self-selection at
work whereupon if you're dumb enough to sign up for such a thing you're
predisposed to survival, but the biggest reason that participants finish is
because _we are all capable of so much more than we think_.

That's the point of the article, IMO. Don't try harder, just don't fucking
quit. Hell, try less if that's what it takes to not quit.

Edit: accidentally hit enter too soon. I wanted to say something about "not
training hard enough" not being the issue with most athletes I see, rather
they're training too hard with poorly designed programming.

~~~
Afton
I can do 6 chinups right now (I happen to have tested last night of all
things). If I tried to do 100 chinups, I would certainly be scheduling a
Physical Therapy session tomorrow to deal with the pain in my elbow. Unless I
was having surgery for a tear in my shoulder.

There is lots to recommend "don't give up". But it also has to be tempered
with "Stop if it hurts". You'll get fit/strong/endurancy-faster if you can
keep training tomorrow than if you have to spend three weeks icing your wrists
and gobbling down NSAIDs.

EDIT: Leaving this up for posterity because why not. After re-reading your
comment, I'm not convinced that we disagree. It's just that the whole thing
becomes extremely nuanced once you start talking about things like: "I'm
stopping doing e.g. chinups today so that I can do more tomorrow. I'm not
giving up on my goal, I'm just altering the timeframe". Here it's not clear
how you should interpret the "Don't give up" mantra.

~~~
pc86
There is quite a difference between "this hurts because it is uncomfortable"
and "this hurts because I am damaging my body." Most of the time you can tell
the difference.

I've also heard it put this way: "If it hurts, it means you're doing it right.
If you're in pain, stop."

~~~
gmarx
People assume they can tell the difference but the kind of chronic
inflammation you get from overuse can sneak up on you. I saw a story about a
concert pianist many years ago who was having trouble with his wrists. At the
time his doctor or maybe it was teacher treated it like a muscular problem and
told him to keep training so his wrists would get stronger. Eventually he
built up so much scar tissue on his tendons that he was no longer a concert
pianist...forever. WRT the article, sure you can run a marathon every day of
the week. Impressive. I'd fear what that guy would be like after 40 years

~~~
aws_ls
_> I'd fear what that guy would be like after 40 years_

Curious, what you imply by that. I have read about the skin (mostly the face)
of runners not so great, because of exposure to so much weather. Did you imply
something along these lines or something else?

~~~
gmarx
joints tendons and so forth. Pounding your knees that much without sufficient
recovery could be bad. Not for everyone mind you. I've read that old age
involves much more pain for retired pro athletes, for example

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ErikAugust
"Who is this guy? I’ve never seen anything like it. And during the race, I
kept an eye on him and around mile 70 — he weighed probably 260 pounds, which
is quite large for an ultra runner — he had broken all the small bones in both
of his feet and had kidney damage and he finished the race."

Running 100s at 260 pounds - and continuing through kidney damage and broken
foot bones isn't tough - it's just stupid.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
It's also necessary in some circumstances. Kidney damage and broken foot bones
probably won't kill you. Getting caught will.

~~~
stephencanon
Kidney damage will absolutely kill you if left untreated.

~~~
thescriptkiddie
It can still kill you if treated, too. There's a reason you come from the
factory with two of those - they're fragile.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Seems like all the more reason to avoid damaging them unnecessarily.

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vinceguidry
It's entirely too hard to ascertain whether doing 2.5x more of whatever it is
you're doing right now is really going to get you where you want to go.
Sometimes, probably most of the time, the goal is learning, you want to
immerse yourself into the space of possibility and figure out what's
important.

For a SEAL, someone regularly called on to do the impossible, the 40% rule
makes perfect sense. For most of us, doing 100 pull ups instead of 40 is
mostly missing the point. Spending 2 hours in the gym instead of 30 minutes
for me is actually counter-productive. It's not how many pull ups you do on a
given day, it's how many times in a given year you do pull ups.

~~~
Jtsummers
> Spending 2 hours in the gym instead of 30 minutes for me is actually
> counter-productive.

2 hours doing _what_ in the gym? The balance of activities is the critical
part, IME.

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chadgeidel
Maybe not quite the same thing - but I do something similar. When I'm trying a
new thing that requires physical endurance I set a pace in which I could "do
the thing for many many hours" even though I know it's probably going to be
much less than that.

For example - I recently went on a bike ride with friends where we climbed an
unknown (to me) hill. I slowed down a bit to a pace I could maintain long
term. I was one of the first to the top. :-)

~~~
tonyarkles
When I have the heart-rate monitor with me, it's really easy to stick to that
zone. I shoot for a target heart rate of about 150, and I can go a long time.
Last time I tried it was 7 miles, and I stopped because I'd looped around and
was close to home. I set it up with RunKeeper so that it gives me a heart-rate
report every minute, and I just tweak my effort a little bit to keep in right
around the target.

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ianamartin
What the fuck did I just read? This is (scientifically) proven because of a
non sequitur about placebo effect?

I'd kind of like to have 2 minutes of my life refunded to me. And the pint of
blood I just lost from stabbing myself in the eyeballs when I realized that
some people actually take this spam-subscription bait seriously.

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nostrademons
I'm curious whether this would hold for creative, mentally taxing work like
programming. I'd love to get 2.5x the coding time in, and I've found that I
can often ignore my limits and keep coding long after my brain tells me that
I'm exhausted...but then when I wake up in the morning, I find that I really
should've stopped when I got tired, because it will take me 2.5x the time to
unravel the mess I made the night before. Ignoring your brain doesn't work so
well when you need your brain for what you're doing.

~~~
kamaal
>>I'm curious whether this would hold for creative, mentally taxing work like
programming.

It works when it should. As a teenager from a poor family in India, I would
generally go on 5 hour sleep- My waking live was spent going to college,
studying for long hours in the library and doing late night studies at home.

I used to sleep between 3 AM and 9 AM in the morning.

I didn't even like I was doing anything great at all. It felt more like
'opportunity'. Because frankly my other friends from a similar background
where having it way worse, most had quit studies and were doing small time
jobs to support their families.

I had these kind of episodes in my life quite a few times. Generally something
good comes out of it. And it has always felt like 'opportunity'. Stressful,
tiring, taxing and demanding of course, but I feel blessed to be even given
the opportunity to undergo the struggle.

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beachstartup
recently i hired a barbell / weight coach to train me (he really pushes me
hard, harder than i ever thought i was capable of going), i find that i
usually start wanting to mentally 'give up' at around the halfway mark during
a training session. 40-60%.

but since i'm generally healthy, the trick is to decide to go until i
absolutely can not move anymore, whether it's 2 minutes or another hour. once
you've made that decision in your head (your mental "escape route" having been
established), the rest is easy. when you have a professional watching your
form and supervising you, this is perfectly safe. if i can still move the
weight, i keep going. if i can't move the weight, then it's a good time to
stop.

for me personally, it's much harder to wake up 3x a week at 0530 and go to the
gym than to finish a physical task when you feel like giving up. that's where
the 40% rule doesn't really help me much. once i'm there it's not that hard to
finish.

btw, for those of you thinking of hiring a trainer, don't just walk into a gym
and ask for one on staff, find a reputable barbell coach in your area and work
with them on a long term training plan that suits your budget and goals, then
pay it all up front because otherwise you're not going to get your ass out of
bed at 6am.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
A technique I used was called "20-rep squats." It's been written about in a
few places. Simply put, you choose a weight that you can do 20 squats with
using good form. Next time you add weight to the bar and do 20 again, lather,
rinse, repeat every week or whatever your interval is.

It works well for working out alone because the goal is simple: do 20 reps
with more weight than last time, even if it's just 1 lb more. You simply don't
allow yourself to stop before failure. It's "20 or die." It was the most
productive form of weightlifting I've ever done in terms of increasing
strength and body mass.

Make sure you have a good, stable squat rack :-)

~~~
pc86
20-rep movements are great for hypertrophy/building size, but are not going to
do nearly as much for strength and the 3-8 rep range.

And squatting once a week will do even less than that.

~~~
scott_s
Many of the elite powerlifters of today squat, deadlift and bench multiple
times a week, so we know that doing all multiple times in a week can be great
training. But I think your conclusion is not warranted. A few decades ago, the
elite powerlifters were squatting and deadlifting _once_ a week. And they were
also crazy strong.

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yuvadam
In the early 2000's a short TV series followed a class of SEALs as they go
through basic training. It's a pretty interesting documentary on how they
manage to select only those who have the necessary skills for the job. The
first episode can be found here [1], the other 5 are also all on Youtube.

[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQFRePXMI9M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQFRePXMI9M)

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smileysteve
One reason Navy Seals need to be good at this is that they are swimming 50m
underwater in one breath. When swimming while holding your breath, your brain
is telling you, stop, you're low on air, indeed, you can ignore than and swim
the rest.

~~~
armitron
The urge to breathe doesn't come because one is low on air, but due to CO2
buildup in the blood. Humans have no physiological detectors for blood oxygen
levels, they can only detect CO2.

Normally CO2 buildup response is calibrated to be "early" in terms of oxygen,
but the calibration can change (e.g. through hyperventilation) which can lead
to blackouts and drowning since blood oxygen levels can drop below ones needed
to keep brain "on" before CO2 buildup response even registers.

Ignoring the urge to breathe is definitely not a smart thing to do
unsupervised unless one wants an early, watery grave.

Your response is misleading in that it implies "mental toughness" (utter
bollocks) or a skill that some people have more than others. If Navy Seals (or
anyone else) do this for real, you can bet your ass they do it under strict
supervision, when training/competing (e.g. BUDS).

~~~
jo6gwb
There have been Navy SEALS who have died because of this:
[http://www.13newsnow.com/story/news/military/2015/04/24/inci...](http://www.13newsnow.com/story/news/military/2015/04/24/incident-
involving-special-forces-unit-at-little-creek-fort-story/26322507/)

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No1
Tucked in at the end of the article is this gem:

Before he founded Marquis Jets, the world’s biggest private jet company,
Itzler was known as Jesse Jaymes, a white rapper with the hit single “Shake it
Like a White Girl.”

~~~
CPLX
I'm glad they put that in there, until I read that I figured he was your
typical run of the mill billionaire instead of someone with actual originality
and artistic talent.

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Brainix
Enough with the clickbait. I had to scan the article 3 times before finally
finding what the 40% rule is. And when I did find it, it's just like, your
opinion, man. Seriously, citation needed (and some Navy SEAL's deeply moving
personal anectote is not a citation).

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ThrustVectoring
This seems completely backwards to me. IMO, the way to go is focus on allowing
yourself to do things, not forcing things through. Active willpower and use of
"mental toughness" helps much less than you think it does. Trying as hard as
you can at, say, riding a bike quickly isn't that much more effective, and
burns up much more long-term resources.

Like, how I'd reframe the advice is to pull the "replace trying with
awareness" trick from The Inner Game of Tennis. Take stock of what it feels
like to do the "last" pull-up that you can, and then feel what it's like to do
another afterwards.

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kondor6c
I'm reminded of this comic
[http://i.imgur.com/PuUBaVU.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/PuUBaVU.jpg) There's a
color version of it from "PVT Murphy's comics"

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reitanqild
A more down-to-earth and realistic approach might be "You are your own gym".

As for 40%, keep in mind different people are different: some people have been
beaten into this since they were kids so when they say they are finished they
are way past 40%

