Ranger School: How to Prepare for Success

Graduation December 2018

Introduction

Ranger School is different for every person who goes through it and is constantly changing. Combine these factors with the fact that the people who attend Ranger School are very different, and there is a lot of variance. I graduated relatively recently in December 2018 and believe I prepared a bit differently than most of my other buddies I met there. After a year to gain some space from the pain of the experience and to reflect, I thought I might be able to add some value to those currently training for Ranger School, given my relatively recent experiences and unique training regimen. So here is my attempt to help you thrive in the worst of times through a holistic approach to training.

Some disclaimers

I have not put nearly as much time into writing this article as those who have written books on the subject. However, I think that the most valuable tips that will provide consistent benefit across many differing experiences are those that come to mind immediately upon reflection of one’s experiences. In short, the most important advice doesn’t take endless reflection to get down onto the page.

I focus on those areas of training that are more individual — for the most part all you need is yourself to accomplish. This is because I was training in an area where not too many other people were going to Ranger School, and I was not connected to the few among the crowd that may have also been training.

My advice and tips are meant to be taken in conjunction with the advice of all the other people who you talk to about Ranger School, all the other books and articles you read about Ranger School, and, most of all, your self-awareness and past experience. Just as the Buddha said, don’t believe anything unless it matches up to your own experience.

Background

During the time I was training for Ranger School, I was an Armor Second Lieutenant in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard. I already attended ABOLC and ARC. In order to earn a slot for RTAC, I had to attend my state’s 3-day Pre-Pre-Ranger course RSAP (Ranger Selection and Assessment Program). I attended RSAP in late September of 2017; however, I was starting a new role at my civilian job, and could not leave quickly from that role. I delayed my slot for RTAC until August 2018. So I had a solid 10+ months to train. However, that training was concurrent with a full-time job at a tech start-up in downtown Manhattan. Finding time and space to landnav wasn’t too easy, but living in the city that never sleeps (especially on the Brooklyn side) gave some solid motivation to push harder in my training than I would have otherwise.

In Ranger School, I passed Darby without recycling, and everyone else in my squad passed with the exception of the two guys we peered out. The cadre were testing out a new strategy where they broke up squads after each phase though, so my squad got completely dismantled — there was one other guy from my Darby squad in my platoon in Mountains, and none in my squad. I recycled Mountains — mainly due to inefficient use of my time — on 3 spot reports and low peers (although still passing). All three spot reports and my low peers were fatigue/sleep-related. That recycle was a 0-day recycle (i.e. no downtime to recover/eat) and the next Mountains I passed. In Florida my platoon was terrible — I didn’t help the cause with my major droning (falling asleep while walking, standing, kneeling, etc.) — and only 17/42 of us passed (the pass rate is usually a lot higher — more like >80%). We didn’t have a good patrol base the entire 10-day FTX, and we slept on average ~45 minutes a night with 2 nights of no sleep. Most of us, including myself, didn’t get a GO in patrols. My second Florida was a lot easier — it was November by then and pretty cold, so we didn’t do either swamp crossing like the last phase and slept ~3 hours per night. Additionally, 16 hours of sleep per day and a ton of food during my 12-day recycle did wonders. I passed, and the rest is history.

With that, I’ll get down to it. To clarify, all of the examples I use below to demonstrate my points are either things that happened to me or my Ranger buddies.

General Advice

Don’t overtrain: Mainly, do not injure yourself in your training. Make a realistic training plan, execute that training plan, and adjust that training plan as necessary as life hits you. Remember the ‘A’ in SMART goals — you want your goals to push you further than you would go otherwise, but you don’t want them to knock you down. No matter how intensely you train physically — whether that is 4-a-days or going out and landnav’ing for days on your own — if you get injured, your preparation for, and consequently your performance in Ranger School will suffer. Adjusting your plan because you gave yourself a little extra time to recover and didn’t quite finish the plan is a much better alternative than pushing yourself to injury and being in worse shape (due to injury or slow recovery from injury) than you were when you started training. In short, if you get injured during training, your odds of passing go down significantly — even if you have a similarly long time frame to train as I did (10 months).

Incorporate chaos and false peaks: These tools will help simulate the major stressors of Ranger School.

Chaos: When it is pouring rain, foggy, and 40 degrees, your patrol base is under attack, you need to plan a raid on a compound, your weapons squad leader sucks and has been cleaning 2 240Bs at the same time and now can’t return fire, and an RI comes up to you and asks a question he knows you don’t know the answer to, how will you react? This is a pretty chaotic situation, and if you don’t know how to stay calm, focus, and take one thing at a time it will only get worse. But one of my buddies had this occur on his first look in Mountains, and he dealt with it and got his GO. How will you deal with it?

If you have previously incorporated chaos into your training, you will likely respond much better. I personally recommend GoRuck events like the Tough, Heavy, or HTL which create this chaos for you. Additionally, using what I call “real-time cross training,” will prepare you similarly, although without the element of uncertainty. All you need to do is combine your physical training with your non-physical training. For example, you could do sprints, drop into an immediate plank, and practice your knots. Or do a pyramid pushup workout while saying the Ranger Creed repeatedly. Instead of cross training at different times, you are training yourself all at the same time. And here 1+1 does equal 2 — the combination of the training forces you to grow in new ways. Additionally, if you are Active Duty or close to an installation, you could very likely reach out to a couple of tabbed individuals, and they would be more than happy to create a chaotic environment for your training — especially if you offer some material or financial incentive.

False peaks: There were very few times in both of my Florida phases where we only walked the distance the original FRAGO said we would walk. Almost always, the patrol base would be further than expected, with us going on a 2 AM joy-walk following the RI to another dark, cold, wet place. When we didn’t actually walk to a different patrol base than listed, we set up a hasty ambush along the way or took indirect fire and had to do a MEDEVAC or CASEVAC. Nothing will be as easy as it is initially supposed to be — even if it’s not initially easy. The job of the RIs is to push you past your limits — and those limits don’t come from a couple of missions and a ruck. They come from telling you that you are going to do a couple of missions and a ruck, and then making you do three missions and two rucks — each of a longer distance than the original one.

False peaks are pretty difficult to imitate on your own — i.e. you can’t tell yourself you are going to do one thing while you are actually planning to do a lot more. You would know. My solution was again — do GoRuck events, or work out with a buddy where I would tell them to plan the workout, but give me a couple of extra rotations or exercises when I would least expect it and was most drained. Finally, if you are really isolated, just train harder than you think they could possibly push you — even at your worst — and even the false peaks won’t be as bad as the training you put yourself through. This leads me into my next piece of advice.

Credit for formalizing these methods goes to Mark Divine and his book Unbeatable Mind (recommended in the next section).

Overprepare: Prepare to the point that you have ‘been there before,’ even when something you are not prepared for occurs.

It may seem a bit contradictory to not overtraining, but a great training plan will enable you to do both. No matter how much chaos and how many false peaks you throw into your training, you will see something new once you get on ground. There will be new uncertainties and stress: being on your third look in a do-or-die situation, having an RI who makes it his job to see you fail (there was a recycle in my first Mountains platoon who received 13 spot reports in his first Mountains from one RI, and he was a squared away dude and easily passed the next phase), the physical beat-down of 4 phases back-to-back with no recycle period, or to any of the many other stressors that make Ranger School challenging.

In situations like these, it won’t be a matter of knowing the right information or making the right decision — it will be a matter of knowing how to not react when you don’t know what to do. The RIs always tell you ‘any decision is better than no decision.’ But in reality that is only true for people who have become confident in their decisions. And that confidence comes from experiences of either personally making decisions that worked and didn’t work in stressful situations — and then being able to identify the characteristics of good decisions and the characteristics of bad decisions, and respectively apply and mitigate those characteristics in your own decision-making.

If you are like me and feel that your decision-making could be improved, overpreparation serves that purpose. Ideally, you would be able to feel the exact same stressors of Ranger School in your training, and that is why courses like RSAP and RTAC exist. However, if you are training on your own in Brooklyn and working a full-time job, creating environments very similar to those courses is not an option.

My solution was to identify the most consistent stressors of Ranger School — physical training (primarily rucking), lack of food, the temperature, and sleep — and overprepare for all of them that I could. I would ruck more than just the 12 miles in 3 hours and expose myself to fasting to imitate Ranger School starvation and extreme temperatures to imitate the heat of Benning in the summer and the cold of Dahlonega in the winter. I will get into my preparation in the specific sections on each of these.

Most notably, I did not overprepare for the sleep deprivation of Ranger School because I thought that would have a net negative effect on the other areas of my training, and it was the most difficult aspect of training to incorporate with my job. Additionally, in college, BOLC, and ARC I was very sleep-deprived, but not to the same extent and combined with the same physical exertion. Due to this lack of overpreparation, I believe I paid the price — I was a sleepy Ranger who constantly droned. This weakness directly caused both of my recycles as well as feeling constant stress about peer reviews (which likely lowered my overall performance).

Overall, in even the craziest situations which not even the RIs have ever encountered before, overpreparation will give you the confidence to make good decisions and perform at your peak. Although in those moments you have not been exactly where you are before, you have ‘been there before’ through similarly challenging situations in your training.

Utilize all the resources you can find, and actually do the training they recommend:

Getting advice from resources is amazing and will enable you to best prioritize your training. Specifically, I recommend:

• Reading all the files on the Ranger School Support Group Facebook page
• Reading all the files on the Ranger School Prep — Gear — Tips — Training Facebook page
• Spending $10 to buy the Ranger School Professional HC App and making the most of all the resources included with it
• Spending $8 to buy and follow the Special Forces Fitness Training: Gym-Free Workouts to Build Muscle and Get in Elite Shape by Augusta DeJuan Hathaway
• Identifying people who were coming from a similar background, have similar traits and characteristics to you, and, most importantly, passed Ranger School on their first attempt (as in they didn’t fail and need to repeat RAP Week), and reaching out to them to get their advice
• If you are unfamiliar with infantry operations, spending $11 to buy and read Infantry Attacks by Erwin Rommel — specifically the illustrations of the attacks were very helpful for me
• If you want to really deep dive into self-mastery, Unbeatable Mind: Forge Resiliency and Mental Toughness to Succeed at an Elite Level by Mark Divine has been my main inspiration and is a great framework ($22).

Then comes the creation of your training plan. What worked for me was to:

1. Based on all of the tasks and objectives you have identified from all the resources you have read, make a giant checklist of all the training that you need to do. Mine is Appendix A of this document (some tasks I had already completed by the time I made this, so they are not included).
2. Identify the priority of the different tasks and objectives you need to complete.
3. Identify the timelines necessary to complete each of the tasks and objectives.
4. Create a realistic and flexible training plan to accomplish all the highest priority tasks you can, given the time available to you before leaving for Ranger School or RTAC.

• This plan should be realistic in that you give yourself some wiggle room on the back-end in case something comes up in your life before you leave — depending on the time you have to train, the wiggle room should grow or shrink (i.e. longer total training time, longer wiggle room; shorter total training time, shorter wiggle room).
• The plan should be flexible in that you only schedule major objectives for the whole plan. Your life will change and things will come up every week, but if you have the major objectives scheduled then you will be able to adjust each week to meet the needs of your life and still accomplish your big-picture tasks and objectives. I planned each week very concretely every Sunday night using Google Calendar (down to the hour) with a couple of hours of wiggle room each week in case something came up during the week. Make sure you include this time to plan (i.e. my Sunday nights) so that you can fit your big-picture plan to the upcoming week based on reflections from the previous week, your upcoming week, and the training objectives you need to knock out.
• If possible, taper your training (both physical and mental) and rest and charge up 5–10 days before you start. Ensure that you are getting as much sleep per night as you possibly can. There is scientific evidence (although disputed) that sleep banking ahead of time works, and from anecdotal experience, it works. Perhaps it is just the placebo of knowing you are ready to be sleep deprived (if that is possible) and not already sleep deprived, but it definitely helped me mentally and likely physically in RAP Week (tapering) and my second Florida (after a 12-day recycle period).

Finally and most importantly is following through on the training plan that you have determined will best prepare you for Ranger School. If you have done a good job in analyzing all your resources and creating a realistic and flexible training plan to meet your individual needs, then executing the plan should be easy. Stick to your weekly schedule, and you will make it happen even if it seems a bit crazy:

“Most people overestimate what they can do in a day, and underestimate what they can do in a month. We overestimate what we can do in a year, and underestimate what we can accomplish in a decade.” — The Long View, Matthew Kelly

Specific Advice — Intellectual Preparation

The Ranger Creed: Very simple, know it before you go to Ranger School or any pre-Ranger school. If you know it, you will get hazed marginally less, and will get props from your peers for not being the cause of their misery like everyone else who doesn’t know the creed. ‘Knowing the Ranger Creed’ implies being able to scream it, without hesitation, at this tempo, in front of 100+ people, and while you are being smoked and out of breath. If you can do that confidently, it will make everything significantly easier. In terms of Return on Investment in your training time, this should be a major focus until you have met the standard I mentioned.

RTTs: Make your training environment of the Ranger Tactical Tasks as similar as possible to the test environment. This advice is primarily directed towards the claymore and the weapons, as the radios are simple and there is not much that you specifically need to simulate (other than the radios themselves). For the weapons, train in the prone and, if possible, with real blanks at least once before you go. Dummy rounds are more challenging than blanks, unless it is your very first time using blanks on test day. For the claymore, I would advise getting someone who has recently graduated or at least passed the claymore to go over the things that the RIs are looking for, as it changes often.

One thing that doesn’t change with the claymore is how painful the rocks you have to high crawl across are. I had ACUs so could use foam kneepads made from my sleep mat. Since you can’t use ACUs anymore, I would at least tape up your knees with duct tape so that they don’t get any cuts. It won’t help the bruising, but it will help with potential infections. I am sure that someone has already come up with a creative alternative. These knee pads were also helpful during the class and PE days in Darby when you would be on rock/gravel roads and do a decent amount of kneeling.

Landnav: When I say landnav, I mean it more in terms of being a great Alpha Team Leader than passing landnav. If you can’t find 4 points on the Ranger School course, you either let your nerves get to you or completely undertrained. However, in the theme of overtraining, landnav is one of the skillsets that has potential to be your niche value-add as a member of your squad (and to get awesome peers). If you can consistently get your squad to where they need to be — day or night — your buddies will get you to pass despite almost any other flaw you may have. Additionally, if you have a solid Bravo Team Leader and you are good at LandNav, an Alpha Team Leader look can be a very easy GO in Darby. So how do you get comfortable leading your squad in landnav?

Again, simple — do it. You don’t need a landnav course to get good at landnav — just get an old Garmin GPS or your phone with some GPS and grid coordinate app, find a park with a lot of woods, and get a topographic map of the woods using a website like USGS and make sure you include the gridlines on the map (USGS has latitude/longitude Decimal Degrees (DD) and Degrees Minutes Seconds (DMS), or US National Grid (USNG)). USNG is most similar to MGRS (what the military uses) in terms of readability and your GPS should have USNG as an option, so I recommend using it. Just take a screenshot of USGS open in your browser wherever you are going to do land-nav. Then pick a start point and a bunch of points to find, and go out and find the points — using your GPS to confirm you actually found the right point. To reiterate, ensure that your GPS is on the same gridline setting as your map’s gridlines.

One added note, if you are comfortable in your landnav abilities, become a sleepy Ranger, and are in your last mission of Mountains or Florida as 1st Squad, volunteering for Alpha Team Leader is a great way to stay awake. Normally, the problem with volunteering for a Team Leader position is the fallout on the next mission (i.e. you will be completely drained from the Team Leader position). But there is no next mission on the last mission, and if you do a solid job this will be top-of-mind in peer reviews. However, this can backfire in a big way if you get everyone lost on the last mission.

Knots: An easier but less valuable alternative for being an asset to your squad (than landnav) — knots are very important to all phases of Ranger School because of tie-downs. They are especially important for Mountains because you do some different types of knots there than just securing your basic load. If you are the go-to individual for tie-downs when you first get your stuff issued (especially if you are not a recycle), you will win some big points with your squad. Additionally, of all the tasks to be the go-to guy for, knots are definitely on the less stressful side. More individually, tying down your stuff well — even when it isn’t triple-checked by the cadre — will save you when you are at you lowest (i.e. so stressed that you are unaware of the stuff you are dropping from your FLC or ruck). Again, ‘knowing your knots’ does not just mean being able to pass the knot test in Mountains. It means being able to tie down a radio, in the radio assault pack, without looking at the radio, when your fingers are melting from the 20 degree temperature and 10 mph wind, it’s 3:30 AM, and the angriest cadre member of your company is one person away from checking your equipment during an SI check (Sensitive Items).

Establishing a Patrol Base: This one is challenging to do on your own. One clear task to learn is to make a solid range card. Another is to create good squad and platoon sector sketches based on range cards. These tasks are lower down on the priority list for things to learn, but are your life in Florida and some Mountains (depending on your experience). I mention them because if your platoon can consistently get GOs on Patrol Base Operations (i.e. create good patrol bases), >95% of those people in the platoon who deserve to get GOs will get GOs. Unfortunately, during my first Florida no one received a GO for Patrol Base Operations, and as a result only 17/42 people got tabs. Your Patrol Base sets the tone for the rest of the day (and night), and will be the most important factor for your platoon’s identity in Florida with your cadre. If there is any way you can get experience in patrol base ops with your unit or a neighboring unit, take advantage of that opportunity.

Specific Advice — Physical Preparation

My Physical Training Timeline:

October — January: 2 8-week cycles of powerlifting focusing on bench, OHP, DL, and squat; boxing training

February — mid-May: ruck and bodyweight training

By week, the main training objective:

1. 55-lbs dry, 10-mile ruck
2. 120-lbs, .5-mile ruck
3. 55-lbs dry, 15-mile ruck
4. 120-lbs, 1.5-mile ruck
5. 55-lbs dry, 20-mile ruck
6. 150-lbs, 1-mile ruck
7. 55-lbs dry, 30-mile ruck
8. 150-lbs dry, 3-mile ruck
9. 55-lbs dry, 40-mile ruck
10. 150-lbs dry, 5-mile ruck
11. 55-lbs dry, 20-mile ruck with 3 ~40-minute body-weight workouts incorporated every ~6 miles
12. Stability and Maintenance

May 28: GoRuck HTL weekend

Early June: Recovery and flexibility work

June 5 — July: Pavel’s push-ups focus, stability/rucking and body-weight maintenance work

Early August: Hot-weather training focus and stability/ruck and body-weight maintenance work

August 15: Report to RTAC

Additionally, during this timeline I was consistently exercising through my commute to and from work (about 4 miles). Usually I would citibike both ways, but at least once per week both run and ruck to or from work.

Injury Prevention: Before you dive into intense ruck and muscular endurance training, you will need a solid foundation. That foundation will serve you throughout the rest of your training and throughout Ranger School itself. I recommend doing at least one 8-week cycle of powerlifting to build this foundation. If you don’t have knowledge of lifting, don’t start counting the 8 weeks until you feel comfortable in your lifts (mainly, your form and your stability throughout the exercises). Also don’t start lifting remotely challenging weights until you feel comfortable in your lifts. There are endless programs out there about how frequent to lift and the repetitions, etc. Do your research, and pick one that best accomplishes your main objective — injury prevention in training and Ranger School itself — given your timeline and other training limitations.

I personally found my elbows would get sore if I squatted and did an upper body exercise the same day (due to my low-bar squat preference), so I ended up doing one major lift Monday-Thursday with supplemental lifts and core work each day plus boxing endurance and sparring workouts 2–3 times a week. It is key to remember to not overtrain here though. There were times I took a couple of days off when I was really sore — you need to get in touch with your body and lean towards recovery if you are unsure of your training tempo.

Rucking: For me, rucking was my best example of overtraining which added intangible value, as in not just improving my ruck but giving me the confidence to handle anything Ranger School would throw at me. The choice to focus on rucking served me well throughout my 120 days of RTAC in-processing to Ranger School Graduation and 96 days of being in-phase during Ranger School. The main goal is to be able to not get injured and to feel the suck marginally less than your buddies because you have ‘been there before.’ The two main avenues from which I approached rucking were long rucks and heavy rucks. You will have to do both in Ranger School, but more of the latter. In addition to the major objectives listed on my training timeline (Appendix B), I would do at least one ruck during the week of 55-lbs and lesser distance. For me, this often consisted of a 4-mile ruck to or from work — a solid distance to train my feet in wet boots, carry a 50-lbs sandbag in my arms, or any number of other creative ruck adaptations. If you have done your injury prevention back-work, ruck training will just be a matter of getting out there and doing it. And you will be able to make progress a lot more quickly in a month or two than you would expect, especially given how you might feel after your first long or heavy ruck.

Push-ups: If you are not 100% certain your push-ups will pass, I recommend doing at least a month of Pavel’s push-ups. In general, the advice to only do passing push-ups is great. Do hand-release push-ups to improve your form with a focus on your core not moving, even when you are coming off of the ground.

In my case, I was doing consistent body weight workouts which were push-up based at least twice a week and had plateaued in my testing at ~45 perfect push-ups and eking out 5–7 more that I was not very confident in. Then I did Pavel’s push-ups religiously for ~6 weeks and averaged 55–60 every test. That gave me the confidence to focus on RTAC and not my push-ups while there, and to be 100% confident that I would pass push-ups in RAP Week — 2 weeks after stopping consistent push-up training.

Feet: Train in the rain, the sand, any body of water near you, the mountains — throw everything you can at your feet while they are wet — in the same boots, socks, and insoles that you are going to wear. If you live in a California during a drought, use your only water available to soak your boots before a ruck.

In Florida and any other phase where it rains during your FTX, things will always be wet. However, it won’t be a huge issue for you if you are consistent with taking out your insoles to have them dry even if the rest of the boot is still wet. Sleep with your insoles, secure them to the outside of your ruck if it’s not raining during the next day (so they get some sun). For me, if my insoles were dry and my boots were not dripping, completely soaked, I would not get blisters. Part of this was a result of my training in wet boots and hardening of my feet (FYI, not during my longest rucks), and part of this is just my gait when rucking.

I cannot recommend enough figuring out your feet before you go and overpreparing for having constantly wet feet. One of my buddies who was an 18D could not walk by the midway point of my first Florida because of his feet. By the end of the FTX, he had to peel off his socks. The tops of his feet were not blistered — they were bleeding. The bottoms of his feet were beyond raw. The medics said it was the worst they had ever seen and took pictures of his feet to put in their books of what could happen. For our entire 12-day recycle he had a tennis shoe profile.

The Cold: Preparing for the cold is simple — do things in the cold. If you will be or have potential to be (within 2 recycles of a winter phase) a winter Ranger, prepare for the cold. Exercising outside and in the elements is a good start if you are in a cold location, but there are two other specific tasks I would do which don’t depend on the weather:

• Take cold showers: Turning the water all the way to the cold side for the whole shower will train your body to adapt to the cold and specifically the shock of cold water. Minimizing your adaptation time from that shock to being able to function will make adapting to constant cold seem easy (until you get really cold). Forcing your body to warm itself up again after your shower (i.e. not turning the warm water on at the end) will allow you to survive during those times where it is really cold for a long period of time. Personally with the help of cold showers, the cold was almost never a problem for me.
• Another technique a friend of mine used (who was from the Northeast) was to drive around with his windows down in the middle of winter — also a good option if available to you. If you are interested in overpreparing by focusing on the cold, I recommend looking up Wim Hof and his books and videos.
• Get used to sleeping outside in the really cold: The only time that the cold was a problem for me was the first night in my second Florida when it got down into the low 20’s at night. Although we had at least 3 hours of time to sleep (due to the cold), I barely got an hour because most of the time my body was hyperventilating to keep itself warm. By the end of that first cold night, I had figured out how to make my sleeping bag live up to its full potential. However, the first several hours were a major missed sleeping opportunity. If you live in a colder climate, sleep outside with only the gear you will have at Ranger School and determine what works best for you. If you don’t, it might be worth taking a camping trip to a colder geography where you can practice landnav and get used to sleeping in the cold.

The Heat: Preparing for the heat is equally simple to the cold — do things in the heat. Being outside in the heat all the time is different from doing a quick workout outside and returning to the cool AC. Similar to taking cold showers, it is important to allow your body to recover on its own from temperature-induced stress (without the help of AC).

The biggest tip for the heat though — if you are likely to face it in your time in Ranger School — is to get down to Georgia early and train in it. I did this, and although it was a comfortable temperature and rainy for half of the time I was there, it was very helpful. Just sitting outside will help your body adjust.

If you want your body to adjust even more quickly, going to a sauna is very helpful. My tech company had team-sponsored trips to the Russian Baths in the Lower East Side which were great for this purpose; however, once I left New York and spent all my money on the packing list gear I needed an alternative. The poor man’s sauna is to go into your car on a hot, sunny day, and just crack the windows (so you don’t suffocate). It is equally, if not more effective. If you get too hot, just open the car door for a couple of seconds to let some cooler air in. Either type of sauna is great for off-days or days where you have already done a workout but want to adjust to the heat a bit more.

Hunger: Do intermittent fasting at a minimum — i.e. having an eating period of only 6 hours. This will give you experience with the initial feeling of hunger that comes when you don’t follow your typical schedule and will help your metabolism adapt more quickly to changes in eating habits (which will occur during Ranger School). To better prepare, do intermittent fasting with an eating window of 4, 2, or 1 hours. This is much more similar to what it will be like in school. You typically have 2 eating periods of 10 minutes — one when you wake up and one after your first mission or before you go to bed. Although those windows can be further than 4 hours apart, the evening meal serves more as a solution to starvation than nourishment to your body, and often your evening meal will be closer to your morning meal than you would expect (within 2 hours of each other).

Routine caloric restriction is not net helpful in training though — it will affect the progress of your training. When you are fasting, do not eat significantly less than you would have when not fasting. The exception to this is longer fasts. I did a couple of 3-day fasts to know I had ‘been there before’ in terms of hunger and found them very valuable. However, consult with a doctor with experience in fasting before beginning a fast longer than 1 day.

During Ranger School, I was really hungry, but it never affected my performance. Conversely, after practicing intermittent fasting you may find — like I have — that fasting enables you to better focus for long periods of time. This is because your body is not wasting energy processing food — it can all be used to focus on your current activity. However, there is a limit to this logic: You need fuel to have energy in the first place. Experimenting with fasting in your training will help you find your optimal strategy for managing your hunger in Ranger School. Additionally, continuing to train in an intermittently fasted state (not a longer fast, which may increase your chances of injury doing intense exercise) will help prepare you for the physical challenges of Ranger School under similar mental conditions.

Sleep: As mentioned before, sleep was my biggest challenge during Ranger School. I was a sleepy Ranger. From that unpleasant experience, I have two main pieces of advice:

• Take care of your squad and, for the most part, only your squad. I didn’t do this my first mountains and paid the price — I was always helping out with planning for the Platoon in the middle of the patrol base. Granted, my class was a test class where we changed squads and platoons after Darby — so if your squad knew you as the planner who made the group better, then there might be some more flexibility here. But my squad didn’t know me as the planner even though I was that in Darby — they just knew me as the guy who went to the middle a lot and neglected the squad’s duties. Then came the friction between my squad and me, so I helped out more with my squad. But I was already very necessary for my platoon’s success in planning and did not stop helping there either, so that meant less and less sleep. As a result, on our missions I was the sleepy Ranger who droned every night and caused a break in contact. If you say ‘no’ to your platoon because you have squad duties, it is ok. If you say ‘no’ to your squad because you have platoon duties (unless you are in a leadership position formally), it is ok once or twice. But you can’t say ‘no’ to both your squad and platoon when you are on a mission with both of them (i.e. falling asleep on a mission). Know how to say ‘no’ and where to say it — especially in regards to your sleep.
• If you are not going to get a spot report for it, and your buddy in leadership is not going to get knocked for it, then sleep whenever you can. You gradually learn that there are times to get over your stress of being caught sleeping and to take advantage of. If you had taken advantage of those times from the beginning of Ranger School however, you would have been much more successful — lightning lockdown being the most notable I can remember. Just get out your poncho, spread out from the cadre, and go sit up against an inconspicuous tree with a buddy or two under the poncho.

Rope Climbing: Simple — know how to do it before you go. It is only important for the two obstacle courses, but is key to know how to do confidently. Speed is not that relevant as long as you aren’t taking breaks while on the rope.

Specific Advice — Equipment Preparation

Packing List: If you have the luxury, get at least 2x of everything suggested that you think you will actually use. All the other stuff that you know you won’t use, just get the required amount (for example, I didn’t use moleskin, so I just got one role and gave it to a buddy, but I still had it even though it wasn’t on the no-drop list). Do you want a tab more than you want $1000? Then go buy all the extra gear you may need. I was pissed off about what I spent and didn’t do it efficiently, but it is worth the extra money — and to compensate for that you will be rich when you finish and pass, especially if you recycle. Also, you can write off all that money on your tax return as work expenses.

Feet: In terms of specific recommendations, I have several — but the big takeaway is to get comfortable with whatever boot/insole/sock combo you choose for long periods of time while wet.

SuperFeet insoles: This is my primary recommendation. SuperFeet insoles make you a better rucker, keep you healthy, and dry very quickly. It is worth going to a running store and asking them to tell you which type of SuperFeet insoles is best for your specific gait and foot shape. I had four pairs of SuperFeet Carbon’s and still use the ones that survived Ranger School today. I actually just bought another pair last week.

FoxRiver Fatigue Fighter socks: These socks were great for me for a couple reasons:

• My feet did not blister in them even if soaking wet for miles. I tried all the other brands — notably several models each of DarnTough and Thorlo, and other FoxRiver models — and these worked best.
• They are relatively cheap compared to other comparable models.
• They are easy to put on. Putting on socks in the morning is challenging for me every day because of my flexibility. I throw away socks that are too difficult to put on due to their tightness. That difficulty was magnified exponentially during Ranger School. Of all the things to struggle with in the morning after sleeping 45 minutes, changing into dry socks was one that I wanted to actually enjoy.

One disclaimer — these socks do not dry particularly fast and will not dry until you take them off and wring them out. If the socks’ ability to dry while wearing is your primary decision factor, then they may not be for you.

Rocky S2V boots — These are the best boots for Mountains phase. Your odds of a sprained or broken ankle will go down significantly if you wear these boots.

Additionally, for Benning and Florida I wore Garmont T8 NFS’s. I had a good time in these — they felt like tennis shoes with more support and were really light even when wet. The major letdown is that they take a long time to dry relative to some other boots. In Florida, a lot of my buddies bought Danner’s during the recycle period and swore by them because of how fast they dried. I didn’t have a big enough issue to buy them because my boots didn’t need to be 100% for me to be ok — I just needed my insoles to dry and my boots to not be soaking wet. However, if you are looking for a boot that dries quickly, the NFS’s may not be your best bet.

Ruck Packing: Learn how to do it well. Perhaps partially as a result of my overpreparation in ruck physical training, I did not learn how to optimally pack my ruck until my recycle period before my first and second Florida’s. I was taught how to pack my ruck, but not by people who had been to Ranger School or rucked a significant amount. One of my buddies who went straight through taught me the right way after my Floriday recycle. There are two main pieces of advice, the first of which I already knew, the second of which changed my life:

• Put the heavy stuff as close to your back and the ruck’s frame as possible and towards the mid-level of the ruck (in terms of height). This will lower the weight (closeness to your back), avoid unnecessary weight on your shoulders (not too low height), and keep you balanced (not too high height).
• Shove everything in your ruck so that it is as small as possible. This is contrary to advice others had told me about rolling up your clothes or packing your ruck like an optimization algorithm would pack all the random stuff you bought from Amazon into a cardboard box. Magically, more space will appear if you just keep shoving and pushing your stuff deeper and deeper. It helps to start with the items that are less shoveable (like an extra pair of boots) and to end with those that are very shoveable (a poncho, or, the most shoveable item of all time, your woobie). This practice will make your ruck significantly lighter because its center of mass will move closer to your body. Additionally, it will make packing all the extra squad equipment into your ruck significantly easier (you need to carry platoon and squad equipment like ammo every mission). You will be the one with the squared away ruck, always having extra room, as opposed to the guy who takes forever to pack his ruck and doesn’t have enough room for all of his items (me most of my time). During my first Florida, I distinctly remember having to carry a canteen in my hand an entire mission because I packed my ruck terribly and we had our NVGs in one canteen pouch. Not the look you want the cadre to see you with.

Sewing: Know how to sew at a very basic level. It doesn’t have to be pretty, but you need to be able, at a minimum, to sew your pants if your crotch blows out (to the point that they will survive another 2 missions and movement before you can change pants) and to sew on your cateyes — to a ruck and assault pack. My pants don’t wrip like everyone else’s in the crotch — I am blessed to not have my legs touch when I walk, but I still needed to know how to sew for my cateyes. I personally experienced one of the problems bad sewing will result in as a team leader — it will cause a break-in-contact at the worst possible time because the guy walking behind you in a file won’t be able to see where you walk once it gets dark. His NVGs are probably either broken or fogged up, or there simply is no illumination. So get proficient at sewing.

Waterproofing: Balance between accessibility and dryness — you will be able to gauge when you need to get into your ruck and when you need your ruck to be secured so it won’t get wet in a river. I found the best balance of accessibility vs. dryness to be two 4mm contractor bags. All of your stuff that you won’t need to access often will be in the inner contractor bag with some very secure goose-necking. The rest of your stuff which you may need to access will be outside of that inner bag, but still in the outer bag (on top of that inner bag). Depending on the likelihood of you needing your stuff in there and of your ruck getting wet, you have a couple options:

• Have the outer contractor bag just rolled up and tucked between itself and the ruck.
• Have the outer contractor bag insecurely goose-necked (i.e. with just one rubber band or a slip-knotted piece of 550 cord)
• Have the outer contractor bag securely goose-necked like your inner bag.

I tended to default toward the ‘insecure goose-neck for the outer bag’ method during my first Florida when I didn’t have as solid a gauge for when it would need to be secured, and then towards that cycle’s end and through my second Florida defaulted more often to the roll and tuck method. Generally, the less waterproofed your ruck can be, the more time and effort you save when you need to access things in it.

Specific Advice — Mental/Emotional/Spiritual Preparation

Self-Awareness Work with a Coach: Work with a mentor or coach to become more self-aware. There are numerous programs and opportunities to do this, but basically you want to figure out where you will break at Ranger School before you break at Ranger School, what will piss off your peers at Ranger School before you actually piss them off at Ranger School, and how you can best help your squad and platoon be successful at Ranger School so that you can do exactly that at Ranger School. I worked with my life coach and would highly recommend having someone with an outside perspective help you. However, you know yourself best, and it is up to you to decide the best way to develop the self-awareness and resulting emotional maturity necessary to push through the difficult times and thrive, not just survive, in Ranger School.

Breathwork: Watch this video: “When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful.” Breathing can serve many purposes. The most important for Ranger School is motivation. When you hold your breath and feel the pain creeping and then barging in, do you really want your tab that much? If so and you have the time available to create a great training plan and execute on it, odds are high that you will get your tab. Other than motivation, there are several purposes breathwork can serve in Ranger School:

• Recentering: In any of the many environments created with the sole purpose of stressing you and your buddies, it will be difficult to focus on the task at hand. Returning to your breath will enable you to focus on the one thing that matters at that present moment. Most things in Ranger School are simple, but difficult. Simple and challenging tasks require undivided focus — that is where an awareness of your breath comes in. Returning to your breath will return you to the present task, and that focus will serve to mitigate your stress and worries. You will better accomplish the task. Breath-counting meditation is a great practice to train recentering. If meditation is not your thing, there are other ways to focus on your breath — for me the best is during physical activity. Match your breath to your activity: For example, breathe in through your nose for 2 steps while running and then breathe out for 5 steps, or every Russian twist turn you do, exhale. Every form of physical activity can turn into an active mental exercise by focusing on your breath, and you might be surprised to find that with increased awareness comes increased performance.
• Awareness and Intuition: In preparation for and during missions or other events in Ranger School, there are two breathing practices particularly useful touted by Mark Divine — box breathing and relaxation breathing. Box breathing is great for settling your mind before a mission to be aware during the mission, while relaxation breathing enables constant awareness and intuition of your surroundings during a mission. Combined, these exercises will improve your awareness, intuition, and consequently your performance.

Spiritual Preparation: At Ranger School, there will be times that you reach somewhere you have not been before. Whatever you feel connected to — whether that is Jesus, Satan (there was a real-life Satanist in my squad in Darby), Maradona, the Flying Spaghetti Monster or something else, it is worth getting in touch with that connection before you go. There will likely be times where it might be easier to hold your breath for 20 minutes than not quit. Your spiritual connection will help you keep pushing through 21 minutes.

In Conclusion

Training for Ranger School is a great opportunity to grow and can be fun, even if you are training on your own. It’s also one of the most simple and rewarding things I have ever done in my life, although Ranger School itself was more rewarding. Go get your tab!

Appendix A — Training Task List

This is the checklist I used primarily in the creation of my training plan for non-physical training. There are parts of it that are incomplete for various reasons — I had a different document for a specific section (like the packing list), I already was proficient in a certain task and didn’t need to train it, I didn’t think it was worth training in the limited time I had (prioritization), etc. This appendix is not meant to be used as a checklist for you, but as an inspiration for your own checklist based on your individual training needs, your Ranger School research, and your training plan limitations. You may not have access to some of the links because they were individual Google Drive documents I created — I included these links so that you were aware of the different documents I created or worked from.

• Learn Ranger Creed
• Learn to sew
• Learn to fill out a standard range card
• Practice range card
• Practice Call for Fire Grid
• Learn Call for Fire Polar
• MASCAL Plan
• Establish a patrol base/conduct patrol base operations/priorities of work
• Packing list — finalize
• Riverine section in Ranger Handbook
• Movement formations
• Basic hand and arm signals
• Rucking — Packing stuff as it will be
• Rucking — Waterproof X2 at least
• Get good foot powder and check what is legal
• Read through all of the app
• Stay up-to-date on the Friends Facebook page
• Stay up-to-date on the training Facebook page
• Read documents on Ranger School Facebook page
• 26 basic infantry tasks:

Maintain a M240B MG

Load, Fire, Reduce Stoppage, unload, and clear a M240B MG

Maintain a M249 MG

Load, Fire, Reduce Stoppage, unload, and clear a M249 MG

Prepare a Range Card, M240B MG

Employ a M18A1 Claymore Mine

Place into Operation and Troubleshoot AN/PRC-119/119A Radio

Send Radio Message (Operate SINCGARS Single-Channel)

Use Night Vision Device AN/PVS 14’s

Call For and Adjust Fire

Camouflage yourself and your Individual Equipment

Navigate from One Point on the Ground to Another Point While Dismounted

Determine Grid Coordinates of a Point on a Military Map

Determine a Magnetic Azimuth Using a Lensatic Compass

Determine the Elevation of a Point on the Ground Using a Map

Determine a Location on the Ground by Terrain Association

Measure Distance on a Map

Convert Azimuths

Determine Azimuth Using a Protractor

Orient a Map Using a Lensatic Compass

Orient a Map to the Ground by Map-Terrain Association

Locate an Unknown Point on a Map and on the Ground by Intersection

Locate an Unknown Point on the Map and on the Ground by Resection

Prepare an M136 Launcher for Firing

Navigate Using the Defense Advanced Global Positioning System (GPS) Receiver (DAGR)

Operate Multi-Band Inter/Intra Team Radio (MBITR)

• Read documents on official Ranger School page
• haircut
• drop off cell phone and resupply pack at Commando’s
• get ACUs ready
• Get boots ready
• Report at 1045 on Zero Day — Sunday, 26AUG
• Get personal/financial issues square away
• Medical

Ranger approved physical examination (DD 2807–1, DD 2808), and copies of all laboratory or specialized consultations, dated within 18 MONTHS of course start date. Physical examination standards are IAW AR 40–501, Chapter 2, and 5–3. Examination performed as per Chapter 8. Below is the link to the examination checklist.

Medical Records: With the advent of ALTHA the computer based record keeping system; medical records will no longer be brought to Ranger school by students. Ranger students will only bring a copy of their current physical, and a MEDPROS print out that includes a routine immunization summary.

A complete physical includes: completed DD Form 2807/2808 with a doctor and dentist signature; current DD Form 2216E (audiogram); a printed copy of all required labs, radiology reports, and EKG as applicable.

Appropriate waivers: Waivers will be attached to the Ranger Physical or inserted into the Medical Records. See Waiver section below for more detailed information.

Soldiers attending a winter class (any class that has any training conducted between 1 OCT — 30 APR of any given year) must have documentation showing they have received their H1N1 vaccine and their yearly flu shot. Soldiers that do not have the documentation will not be enrolled into the class.

• Company Commander’s Validation — on Commander’s Welcome Letter
• Mail http://www.benning.army.mil/infantry/ARTB/StudentInformation/StudentMail.html
• make a list of key phone numbers on a laminated card to take with them and to leave with parents — Commando’s — (706) 689–0110
• Packing list excel doc + knee and elbow pads, suspenders, insect repellent, foot powder, lotion, chapstick variant, permethrin on ACUs, camelbak cleaner, water repellent for ACUs, boots, socks, duffel bags, gloves, indestructible ziplock bags — annotate with list of brand preferences and sizes
• Make sure the vehicle is ready for a long wait. Disconnect battery, put in fuel additives. You will likely have to jump the vehicle at the end of Ranger School. They may want to suspend the vehicle liability insurance with the carrier, like for a deployment.
• Set up GO code/ATM code- code set up with your Ranger Student to indicate if they are a go at the end of phase. For instance student can withdraw $20 from ATM to indicate a go, must have access to the RS online checking account to check for withdrawl amounts.
• Get a Power Of Attorney for NY/PA
• Make sure all vehicle info, registration, inspection, & insurance
• Make sure you have arrangements to get rent paid for the 6 months
• Make a plan for Cash/Credit/DebitCards.
• RTTs — USAIC Pamphlet 350–6 and FM 3–21.8 subject area 10 — standards in Commander’s Welcome Letter

Maintain M249

Fire M249

Maintain 240B

Fire 240B

Employ M18A1 Claymore

Sincgars

AN/PRC-148 — MBITR

DAGR

• Darby Classes — Copy of RI Narrative Book.pdf — 112 Pages

FOOM

React to Contact

Squad Attack

Break Contact

React to Ambush

React to Indirect

Cross Small Open Danger Area

Cross Large Open Danger Area

Cross LDA

Squad LU

SQD Recon

SQD Ambush

SQD PB

• Knots — animatedknots.com

Bowline

Clove Hitch

Double Figure Eight

Rerouted Figure Eight

Figure Eight Slip

Munter Hitch

Prusik

Rappel Seat

• Mountains Classes

TLPs

OPORD

Platoon Raid — in Powerpoint

Platoon Ambush

Platoon Patrol Base

• Florida Classes — check app for updates