News

Test your fitness against Navy standards in Dearborn Saturday

May 5, 2008

Tom Demerly's a fit guy. He's competed in more than 250 triathlons, raced on seven continents, manages the Dearborn Bikesport, and basically looks like a ripped exercise god.

So when he heard about the Navy SEALs Fitness Challenge coming to Dearborn this Saturday, he immediately checked to see what the challenges would be, and what the SEALs standards were. Then he and his wife Sarah, no slouch herself as a former gymnast, gave them a try.
The SEALs competitive standard for pull-ups -- that is, the number they expect their active members to be able to knock off in a single session -- is 11.

Sarah Demerly knocked off 11 without too much trouble. Then it was time for Tom to give it a try.

"I couldn't do one pull-up," he said. "Not one. I'm going to be hearing about that for the rest of my life."

It's been a few months since then, and he's trained to the point where he can do six.

"She's going to be beating me, no problem," he said, laughing.

In his defense, he said, Sarah is almost half his age: he's 46, she's 25. But it illustrates what high standards the SEALs hold for their members -- and their emphasis on fitness in general. That emphasis is what led to the free Fitness Challenges being held in a handful of cities over the course of several years.

"We're using it to motivate Michiganders to get off the couch and get physically fit," said Navy public affairs officer Lt. Dave Hecht. "Of all the SEALs Fitness Challenges we've done, this looks like it will be our biggest turnout.

"Take a look at the exploding waistline we're seeing in this country. There is no community that has higher standards for physical fitness than the Navy SEALs. The SEALs' passion for physical fitness exceeds any and all. It was the SEALs that came up with this idea."

The SEALs' name comes from Sea, Air and Land, the venues where they're expected to excel. Fitness training plays heavily in their preparation, and that focus is clear on their Web site, www.navyseals.com, where you can get daily workout plans, chat or join the Navy SEAL Fit program.

One SEAL fitness guru is 33-year-old Special Warfare Operator First Class David Goggins, who will be in Dearborn. He joined the SEALs at 280 pounds, a "power lifter," he said. "I wasn't a fat guy. But I wasn't in the best shape."

That was then. After he read about some SEALs who died in Afghanistan, he decided to try and raise money for their families by running some races.

"I realized that people are really attracted to people suffering," he said, chuckling. So his races got longer ... and longer ... and longer. Before he knew it, he was running ultramarathons -- and doing very well at them. Last year he took third place at the Badwater Ultramarathon, a grueling 135-mile trudge through Death Valley in the middle of July.

He raised $20,000 in that race alone, and $100,000 since then. And Goggins weighs 180 pounds now, 100 less than where he started. Pictures show solid, determined muscle on legs.

He'll run the Badwater again this summer, but for the last time.

"It takes a lot out of your body," he said. "You've got to have a serious crew. You've got to make sure you've got someone out there who really loves you."

In that case, it was his wife. She took four months off work to help him complete the 16 ultramarathons he ran last year, including Badwater. He'll continue to do one to two ultramarathons a year, he said. But now he's eyeing a bike race next year that will take him from one coast of the country to the other.

Goggins likes the Fitness Challenges because it's a way to help focus the country on being healthy, even if they have no interest in joining the Navy, he said.

"It's about people wanting to push themselves," he said. "I just want to see those obesity percentages drop as much as possible. It's just ridiculous. I could care less whether people want to be Navy SEAL or not. Hopefully, they come in here thinking they're in great shape and realize they're not."

Special Warfare Operator Chief Michael Welvaert, 38, said he hopes that the SEALs get a few recruits from the event here -- mostly out of his hometown pride. Welvaert grew up in Michigan, which despite having thousands of miles of coastline is woefully underrepresented in the SEALs.

He joined the Navy when he realized his civil engineering job was a dead end. After seeing SEALs training at boot camp and seeing a video they produced, he was hooked.

"I saw the video and said, 'I want to do THAT,' " he said. "There was nothing that was going to stop me."

That was a little more than 18 years ago. He was taught Spanish and went on five deployments in Central and South America. He even appeared in a Navy SEALs video. Now he helps teach SEALs the ropes, and wouldn't mind seeing a few more from his home state.

"Not a lot of people from Michigan try out for it," he said. "People just don't know. They see the movies -- there's nothing that glorifies us at all. I think it's the publicity; there's just not enough."

While he's here for the Fitness Challenge, he's going to go to a couple of high schools, including his own, Henry Ford II in Sterling Heights, to show the kids what SEAL training, and the pride of making it through, is like.

That training in a word: brutal. And the Fitness Challenge reflects that.

Lisa McDermott, a 27-year-old English teacher in Northville Public Schools by day and teacher of Krav Maga, the Israeli self-defense system, by night, has no illusions about the challenge.

"I find it very, very difficult," she said. "But the lead instructor at our school is doing very, very well."

The SEAL recruiters came to the Krav Maga school in Troy recently, and they often work out to the Navy SEAL training tapes, she said, so the instructors decided to give it a try as a group.

"The pull-ups are very difficult, and so is meeting the time requirements," McDermott said. "You think 500 yards in 10 minutes isn't such a big deal. But then you get in and start swimming it and realize it's very, very difficult. But even if you don't make it, it's still a lot of fun to try."

Each participant in the Fitness Challenge gets a white T-shirt. Those meeting SEAL entrance requirements get a brown shirt. And those meeting SEAL competitive standards -- what they'd expect of actual members -- get a blue shirt.

The requirements (see accompanying story) are almost identical to the entry tests given to people applying for the SEALs, Hecht said.

"The only difference between this and the real physical screening test is that you'd have to wear boots and camo pants," Hecht said. "We've decided to allow the American public to wear shorts and tennis shoes."

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