Future Navy SEALs and SWCC must make it through one important course before they attend training in San Diego: the NSW Prep School. In this episode, the director of Prep discusses how his staff physically and mentally prepares the students with running, swimming, strength and conditioning, exercise science, and kinesiology. For more info check out www.sealswcc.com.

DF: Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School, otherwise known as NSW Prep, occurs in Great Lakes, Illinois over two months. There is one goal of NSW Prep: to improve SEAL and SWCC candidates' mental and physical readiness to prepare them for the challenges of BUD/S and BCS. Cordy Pearson, who you'll hear from today, is the Program Manager for NSW Prep and speaks about expectations for this major milestone in the process.

00:00:39:26
DF: Cordy, thank you for taking the time to sit down with us. Obviously, you have a really unique perspective. We're hoping that we can transfer that to as many people as possible that want to find out more about what you do here. If you want to start a little bit about your career and how kind of what led you here. We can start there, or if you just want to jump right into what you do right now, we can do that.

00:00:56:04
CP: Came in right out of high school. I was a state champion boxer before that, not much pool work or swim work, came straight into the Navy. September 11th happened when I was in first phase, changed the course of how things I thought (DF: Right) were going to happen, and I ended up doing two platoons with SEAL Team One. I was a lead breacher and lead vehicle driver for both those deployments, ended up getting out I was looking to start my own business, got a call to come up here. This place had just started, then they offered me a lead instructor position, then over the course of four years, worked myself into the program manager position, I've been the program manager for six years.

00:01:34:16
DF: In an overarching way, what is the Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School, and what is its kind of mission and goals?

00:01:40:18
CP: The mission of the NSW Preparatory School is to train, mentor and coach perspective NSW SEAL and SWCC candidates and NSW-centric specific core physical and mental skills.

00:01:54:17
DF: Unpack that a little bit. What does that kind of mean in say real world terms, on a day-to-day basis for you? What types of things do you try to do?

00:02:00:09
CP: We try to prepare the students as best we can for the rigors that they're going to face out at BUD/S (DF: Okay) and BCS. We basically want to help them get through the next major crucible, which would be Hell Week or The Tour. That's how we gauge our success. We do that by running, swimming, strength and conditioning. We have professional staff that does that, and we help them with their mental toughness, their military bearing. We also talk to them about ethos, core values, and some nutrition and injury prevention as well.

00:02:31:29
DF: Is everyone that's working at Prep here Navy staff?

00:02:34:24
CP: So, we have a mix of Navy and civilian staff here. Civilian staff consists of coaches, so they're subject matter experts in running, swimming, strength, conditioning, they have educations in kinesiology, exercise science. We have two former SEALs that are working in tandem with those coaches to help deliver the NSW message and the way the students should be acting (DF: Right, part of that ethos you spoke about)…and those evolutions, explaining to them why we do some of the things that we do.

00:03:02:00
DF: Okay, so how does this tie into the boot camp piece that they're all going through at the same time? Is this after, is this before, is this during? For the layman, can you kind of paint that picture for us a little bit?

00:03:11:23
CP: So, yes, for how this is structured, going from boot camp, all enlisted people come from boot camp, and anybody who's from the fleet would come here, (continued)