Comfort, speed, and efficiency in the water are all hallmarks of a successful NSW recruit. Aquatics expert Dan Kish talks with us about developing confidence in the water. For more information visit www.sealswcc.com.

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DF: Welcome to, "The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday," the official Navy SEAL podcast.

DF: Comfort, speed, and efficiency in the water are all hallmarks of a successful NSW recruit. Today at NSW Preparatory School we continue our discussion with aquatics expert, Dan Kish, to speak specifically about safely developing confidence in the water.

00:45
DF: This will be a popular episode because there are so many people that are not comfortable in the water and even before that flat out can't swim or have had very little exposure to the types of swimming that you're talking about. For people who are in that camp, what is your recommendation for them in terms of kind of introducing water sports initially into their training regimen? Do you recommend people kind of start with the real basics like modified freestyle just to kind of learning to at least kind of start the crawl, walk, run kind of part of this swim process? I can't help but think that there's going to be a lot of people that tune into this episode to learn like, "Hey, I'm a bad, I know I'm a bad swimmer," or, "I think I'm a bad swimmer. Where do I even start? This combat sidestroke, I can barely even get in the water without feeling like I'm going to drown, you know what I mean?

1:29
DK: That's common. A lot of friends that joined, you know, higher military branches and very weak and deficient in the water, and they knew it, and they asked me like, "Hey, I know you can swim. Can you help me out here?" and I would drag them to the pool with me. Water polo is another great way to become comfortable and confident and with team building going on. It's the most calories you'll ever burn in a match or game, you know, one game of polo. There is no rest cause you're treading no matter what you are doing. You're in the pool. You are sprinting. And great ways to become, you know, a little bit more comfortable and confident. You don't have to be the fastest swimmer. We just want you to have a good foundation or base that we can build on and make you, you know, get dialed in and tuned in to become much, you know, more efficient in the water, and it should be the last of your worries once you get out, you know, two mile swims in the bay, water rescues, pool comp, knot-tying should be flawless once you get out there I hope.

2:30
DF: So, you just mentioned a comfortable or confident base. Can you maybe give me your definition of that? It doesn't have to be precise, but I'm sure people will, set that as a benchmark for where they want to get at a bare minimum. And so, kind of maybe give me a picture of what that means to you.

2:43
DK: It's very easy to identify who is scared or uncomfortable in the water from day one. If you're swimming with big eyes, panic mode, just trying to find the wall as fast as you can, that's wrong. You know, slow things down. You should be able to swim, you know, longer distances. You don't need to have a ton of speed, but your 500-yard times should hopefully be under that ten minute, you know, nine minute base to be good and comfortable in the water. If you're over eleven, twelve minutes, you're going to struggle significantly in the pool evolutions that take place here.

3:24
DF: So, that's a pretty good number then. People can actually kind of have a metric for themself to say, you know, "Where I'm at in this spectrum in terms of comfortability." Obviously, I think with the type of instruction you can provide in your other teammates, obviously people can get much better and much more comfortable, especially with additional exposure, but that's a good place for them to start is that what you're sa(continued)