Fitness Beyond Limits: A Navy SEAL's Guide to Overcoming Disability and Pain

Welcome to the Navy SEAL Mindset, episode 020. In this episode, I share insights into my personal fitness journey, overcoming physical limitations, and the importance of exercise and nutrition. I discuss the challenges of staying fit while managing disabilities and pain, and how I adapt my workout routines to maintain physical and mental well-being.

Key Takeaways

1. Overcoming Physical Limitations: Despite being rated over 250 percent disabled by Veteran Affairs, I emphasize the significance of pushing through pain and limitations to stay active and healthy.
2. Importance of Exercise and Nutrition: I advocate for a balanced approach to fitness, focusing on higher protein and fat intake, and lower carbs, while stressing the necessity of weightlifting and physical activity for combating age-related muscle degradation.
3. Early Athletic Experiences to SEAL Training: Reflecting on my early sports involvement and the journey towards becoming a Navy SEAL, I highlight the evolution of my fitness regimen and the rigorous training involved in SEAL preparation.
4. Workout Routine in the SEAL Teams: Detailing the typical SEAL team workouts, I describe the balance of calisthenics, weightlifting, and cardio, and how this regimen shaped my approach to fitness.
5. Transition to Civilian Life and Current Workout Routine: Post-retirement, I delve into how I built my home gym during COVID-19, and outline my current workout routine, adapting to injuries and focusing on full-body workouts for overall fitness.

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Transcript

William Branum: 0:00

Welcome to the Navy SEAL Mindset. I am your host, William Branham. And this is episode zero two zero. And in this episode, I'm going to talk to you about my workout. I've had many of you reach out to me on Instagram through direct message, sometimes in the comments, sometimes, in emails asking me what. What's my workout routine? What do I do to keep in shape? I'm 50 years old, and I do alright. but let me start this, start off by saying that I am 100 percent disabled through the VA, through the Veteran Affairs, and if you add everything up that the VA says is wrong with me, and actually I don't, they don't even have everything that's wrong with me, I did not submit everything. Because I let someone else submit the paperwork for me because they're professionals in that realm. It was enough for me to become, you know, be rated at a hundred percent. But if you add everything up that's wrong with me, and according to the VA ratings, I'm over 250 percent disabled. Which comes out to about 96 percent with VA math, and then they round up to a hundred percent. There are some things that, injuries that I sustained While in service that weren't put in for whatever reason. It is in my medical record, but whatever. So I can't do everything that maybe you can do. I am limited in a lot of the things that I can do. I wake up every day with pain and that's okay. that's my life and that's how I roll. But I wanted to start off and just talk about There are two things, the two most important things that you can do for your mind and for your body. And those are, number one, work out, move your body around, and number two, eat clean, healthy food. I subscribe to more of a higher fat, higher protein, lower carb, not keto, not low carb specifically. I don't avoid carbs. I still eat them, but I do limit them. I focus more on protein and fat, and if I can get as much protein as possible in my body, To recover from the damage that I do from lifting weights and running and the other activities that I do, maybe grappling. Then my body can sustain the weight, sustain the muscle that I, muscle mass that I have and hopefully put on some more. Because I'd like to have some more muscle mass. Because as we age, our muscles start to disintegrate. sarcopenia, where our muscles start to just disintegrate as we, or degrade as we get older. And really that start, that's, you know, hormone health, that's all sorts of other things, health that's being lazy, that's eating crap food, and one of the best things you can do to fight against sarcopenia and for men and women, and for bone health is to lift weights, lift heavy weights. Put your body under strain. Best thing you could do for your body and for your mind. So eat clean food, move your body around. I don't really care how you do it, but lifting weights is part of it. I will start off by saying I've been pretty actively working out most of my life. I played baseball. When I say played baseball, I showed up for baseball games. I was on the baseball team. I was not a good athlete. So I rode the bench 98 percent of the time. And occasionally they let me play left field because no one ever hit the ball to left field. I played basketball or I was on a basketball team and pretty much the same. Actually, I don't think I ever, I was on the court a handful of times. It mostly just like passing the ball to the guy who knew how to shoot. That was my basketball career, football career, a little better. Although my dad did not approve of me playing football, my grades weren't good enough. But, as I got older, I think into 7th, 8th grade, I could play local games, but my parents didn't want to take me and pick me up from school late at night for away games. And also I was in Boy Scouts, so the games were on Tuesday nights, so it did interfere with my Boy Scout career as well. But the summer between my, I don't know, 8th and 9th grade of high school, I rode my old rickety 10 speed bike from my house. It was eight miles to the high school. I would work out. I didn't do much upper body. Actually, I did a lot of lat pull downs cause I was pretty good at that. I did, some squats. I did leg presses, things like that because I was pretty good at those things. And then I would ride my bike back home. And one of the things I learned was there are a lot of hills between my house and school. And then those same hills are still there when I want to ride back home. And so it was way harder than I ever thought possible. So if you, if you're not used to being out on the road on a bicycle or running. And you're just used to driving, I encourage you to just go for a walk and take a three to five mile walk around your neighborhood or where you normally would drive. You're going to see things very differently. You're going to see a whole lot of hills that you never knew were there because you're so busy driving. And I, even today. I'm still surprised at how big and long some of the hills are that I, run up now. But, so anyway, I would ride my bike to school, I'd work out, and then my grades weren't good enough, so my dad would not let me play high school football, nor did he want to take me to the games. So there was that. So that ended that part of my workout career, but I was in the Boy Scouts. I taught summer camp and so I was active there. I did lots of running and swimming, not really in a competitive nature, but just because I liked doing it and it made me feel good. then fast forward, I joined the Navy in the delayed entry program. I took the PT test that they gave us, which is the Navy PT test, and I, blew that away. It was like a, some push ups, some sit ups, and a mile and a half run. And, I thought I was in really good shape, because I beat everyone that was joining the Navy the same time I did. And then, fast forward to boot camp, and I went and took the SEAL screening test, and I failed it. I failed the push ups. I thought I was pretty good at push ups, I would do these incline push ups as a kid, put my feet on the bathtub, and then do knockout like 20 push ups, and I thought that was pretty good. Well, I should have been doing like a hundred. So, that was a mistake there. I eventually, went to an A school, which is a technical school that the Navy made me go to, and There were a bunch of other guys that wanted to go to Bud's. They wanted to become Navy SEALs. And so we would skip lunch every day, and we would go to someone's room who had a pull up bar that we made and put over, I think it was probably some broom handles, we put over like the closet doors, and we did pull ups there. And so we did like, I don't know, it was 30 push ups, 30 sit ups, 30, crunches, 10 front, 10, left, and 10 right, and then 5 pull ups. And we would do 3 to 5 rounds of that. I got in pretty good shape there. I got good at pull ups, I got good at push ups, I got good at sit ups. And I was good enough at running. And good enough at swimming. So I could have passed the SEAL screening test. Although I still didn't take it until later. Then I Eventually pass a SEAL test, screening test. I went to BUDS. In BUDS, it's all calisthenics. Push ups, pull ups, sit ups, flutter kicks, carrying heavy things like logs and boats, obstacle course, and swimming. That's everything you do at BUDS. Push ups, pull ups, sit ups, flutter kicks. Maybe some burpee like things, eight count bodybuilders, but they're still just, push ups and there's just calisthenics. And then I got to the SEAL teams. In the SEAL teams, it didn't matter what team I was on, actually the last team didn't really enforce this because the leadership wasn't really into working out. I don't know why, they just weren't. But especially at SEAL Team 10, every Monday was a two mile ocean swim. Tuesday was an obstacle course and a run. So you would run the obstacle course, sometimes multiple times. We had big obstacle course and a little obstacle course on the East Coast. And then we'd do, maybe a, three mile run after that. And then on Wednesday we would do calisthenics, where someone would, would get in a big circle and someone would lead the PT. Push ups, sit ups, flutter kicks, whatever it was, kind of Bud style. there might be a run in there, there might be something else in there. Thursday might be individual PT, so you could go lift if you wanted to. You could go do jujitsu or screw around in the mat room or something else. And then Friday was a long run, usually five to seven miles. Or 10. Actually, when I, the first run I did at the SEAL team, the SEAL teams was 9 miles, 9 and a half miles, and I got lost. It was in the state park of, in, in Virginia Beach, and I did not know where the hell I was going, and I ran around, and I eventually found the bus. They were about to send some people out looking for me. New guy. New guy issues right there. Anyway, in the SEAL teams, that was pretty much the way we worked out. If you wanted to, lift weights or do your own thing, you had to do it on your own time. And generally, I was in leadership positions, or I was tired, or, maybe as a new guy, I would, in the evenings when I was home, I would go out and take Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and so I got a great workout there. Not a lot of lifting. As I got older, later on in the SEAL teams, on deployments, I would You know, have some goals that I wanted to do. Maybe I wanted to deadlift X amount of weight or bench press a certain amount of weight or, something along those lines. And so those are the things that I would focus on or want to do a certain number of pull ups, 30 at a time, something like that. Dependent on the deployment, dependent on what we were doing, dependent on what my goal was on that deployment. But when I. I left deployment and came back home. I just went back to, the regular workouts in the SEAL team, so I didn't, although I may have got some pretty significant gains on deployment, I did not maintain those gains when I got home. I just went back to the regular at home lifestyle, and then I retired, and in my retirement, the first thing I don't know, year or two, I think I had a couple of 35 pound kettlebells. I still have them. I would swing them around. Maybe I would go for like a one to three mile run. I thought was a like a long run, and I was just not, I wasn't really getting after it. I lied to myself plenty to say that I was getting after it, when I really, really wasn't. and then fast forward to 2020. The world shuts down and I'm doing some, you know, maybe a run here or there, but you know, my body is pretty broken from my time in the military. And, and I'm like, I really want to, I think what I want to do, I just made up a goal, I want to start lifting weights again. I want to lift weights like I did on deployment. And so, I created a workout. but I didn't have any weights. All I had were those kettlebells. So I got on Facebook Marketplace and I started shopping around for a home, home gym equipment. Everything I have is just piecemealed. I also had some tenants that, during that same time, they owned a CrossFit in Florida. They decided to sell the CrossFit in Florida because they didn't like living in Florida and moved to Hawaii and took the money From the gym that they sold in Florida, the CrossFit gym in Florida. And they ended up buying two CrossFit gyms here in Hawaii. And actually what they did is they bought one gym, Consolidated it, got rid of all the crap equipment. So I bought a lot of their old beat up equipment from them. weights, bumper plates, things like that. They're kind of falling apart and they're kind of rusty, but I don't really care cause it's a home prison gym, if you will. And and then I would like, I would find stuff on Facebook marketplace, maybe some more weights, a weight bench, a barbell, some sandbags. And I built my home gym. And one of the cool things that I, on the business side of it is I ended up meeting a couple of army dudes who I don't know when they really decided to do this, but what they did is they ordered a, like a full container of bumper plates from China. I think they dropped like 85, 000, filled it up, brought it over to Hawaii, and they started selling these bumper plates during COVID, probably before COVID, I don't actually know. And when I talked to one of these, one of these gentlemen, he's the E5 in the Army, he makes about 50, 000 a year as an E5, maybe less, and he was doing an extra, two, just one of them was doing about an extra 200, 000 a year selling bumper plates to people on Facebook Marketplace during COVID, crushing it. I think they're still doing it today. They're still selling equipment like you wouldn't believe here in Hawaii. And just like, and the way you would do it, and the way they did it is, they would post a picture of the bumper plate on Facebook Marketplace. You place the order, and then you go and pick it up at their storage facility. Brilliant. Brilliant. and they were undercutting, the name brands here in Hawaii. So anyway, got a bunch of bumper plates. I got barbells. I got a rack that I bought from some guy on the West side of the island. a weight bench, that has a leg curl, leg extension attachment to it. And I started working out, so I made up a workout, and so the plan was to lift, I had a goal, I wanted to work up to bench press 5 sets of 5 at 225, bench press, the same squatting, deadlifting 315, what I eventually ended up doing, and so what I would do is I would do, I lifted 3 days a week, and I did cardio 3 days a week, and I had 1 day off, The full body workouts, they were muscle group focused, like I would focus heavily on back on Monday, cardio, heavy on chest Tuesday, cardio, heavy on legs Friday. And. And I probably said those names days of the week wrong, but I think you got it. But I was still working every muscle part every day I lifted. Just not as heavy, just not as intense. And so, just from that alone, and it was, you know, I was doing everything between, depending if I was lifting heavy, I would do four to six reps and do Usually four rounds of each one of those and, and so I would do, let's say bench press I did, not 225 yet when I first started, And then. I might be able to do it, all four rounds, only four times. Or maybe I could do six, and then five, and four, and four. And that's okay for that, for that weight. And then the next time I would add a little weight to it. But I wrote down everything that I did, everything I lifted. at the end of a year, I got a physique that I had never had before. And I still have that physique today. I'm trying to make that physique better. But something happened along the way there, I had some shoulder issues, like I said, I'm 100 percent disabled, and when I would lift, I actually exceeded my goal. At some point, I was able to do 5 rounds of 10 reps at 225. So I believe I probably could have lifted 315 relatively easy. I didn't have a spotter around me to do that. Another thing that I realized is I'm one of those guys in the gym that everyone hates. I'm one of those guys that makes a lot of noise when he lifts, but my gym was outside in my driveway. And so everyone knew when I was working out in the afternoon because they're walking their dogs and they, maybe dogs hear me or I'm dropping weights and I'm that kind of obnoxious guy in the, you know, in my gym, my home gym, but I don't care because I'm at home and I'm outside and people can hear me, but I have music in my ear so I can't really hear myself. Something for people to talk about. But most of what I do is pretty basic. Basic push, pull, squat sort of exercises. Outside of these kind of weird things that I do. Like I have a tire that I found on the side of the road that I drag around my neighborhood. And it's a great way to meet people. Meet new people and get people to talk about you. Whether you like it or not. And, because I just like to do different things or, carry, my kettlebells for a mile or two around the neighborhood. And people are just like, what are you training for? And I'm like, life, man. I just want to be hard to kill. Something along those lines. But, I have a shoulder injury from that. I don't know if it's overuse. There's something going on with my right shoulder that doesn't allow me to lift heavy bench press anymore. I thought maybe it was just flat bench incline. I started doing more barbell incline work and the same injury or, thing would flare up. So I'm hoping to maybe get some peptides at some point to hopefully heal that. We'll see. Maybe BPC 157. I don't know if it works for me or not. If it doesn't, well, it's just Um, but because of that injury, I had to modify my workout. And what I've found is, this new workout that I do, it's been, it's super effective, and it doesn't matter where I am in the world, I can do this workout. And it is with weights, and it's very small weights, it doesn't matter how crappy the hotel gym is, anywhere in the world, they 30 pound dumbbells. That I can use. And oftentimes in, in hotel gyms, I'll up the weight just because I can, because I have the capacity there. But here's what I do. Very simple exercise, very simple workout for maintaining muscle and strength in, in what I'm currently doing. So I'll set the bench at an incline. And I started doing Three rounds of 20 reps each exercise. So there's three exercise and I would use my 35 pound kettlebells. And so at an incline, I would do 20 reps of incline bench press with the kettlebells and I would set the kettlebells down and I would lay my chest on that incline bench and I would do 20 rows, pull the dumbbells or kettlebells up, flexing my back. And then I would stand up and I would do 20 squats sometimes with the kettlebells, sometimes without. And then I would just do 3 rounds of that. And then I would do 4 and then 5 rounds. And then I decided to do 30 reps. So I'm getting lots of volume in, but I'm not lifting heavy weight. Then I started doing the swim across the Hudson River. So that forced me to do more long distance cardio work. The best way to train for swimming is swimming, and I hate swimming. So about a month out from, a few months out from the swim, I would start running. And then a month out, maybe a month and a half out, I would start swimming every other day. A mile, mile and a half, two miles. last year, it was late 2022. My friends over at Man Made, we started, we were going to hike the Grand Canyon. And I didn't really understand how hard that was going to be. I had no real concept of how hard, I was like, how hard can it be? It was pretty frickin hard. for that you need to get a lot of miles on your legs. And so I started running and generally my runs were a long run was a three mile run. That was a long run for me. I hate running. Yeah, I hate swimming. I hate lifting. Yeah, I hate being uncomfortable. But it's okay because I like being uncomfortable. And so I started doing 3 mile runs and then I would do 5 mile runs and then 7 mile runs. So now my cardio today, my average is a 5 mile run. If I'm on the road, it varies depending on where I can find a run if I do actually run on the road. I always lift when I'm on the road. I don't run that much on the road because I don't know the area or I'm not there for very long. But I will definitely get out and I'll walk. So, my workouts today I wake up in the morning, I drink about 16 ounces of water, because that's how big my coffee cup is, and I go for a walk. And I walk a mile and a half, and I only know it's a mile and a half because there's this very specific loop that I do in my neighborhood. I put an audiobook in, and I listen to an audiobook during that walk. And I come home, maybe help the kid get ready for school or something like that. I get ready for calls or podcasts or whatever I'm doing that day. And in between calls that day, my gym is right outside my back door now. It used to be in my driveway, I moved it to the backyard. And so I'll, you know, in between calls I'll go out, or before my first call I'll go out and I'll do a set of 30, presses, 30 rows, and 30 squats. Since then, I've started to add a new thing because my lower back is jacked six ways to Sunday. I fell out of an airplane once upon a time, actually it was a helicopter, and I jumped out of it. But I had a hard landing, hard parachute landing, and my back has been messed up ever since. And I was in California a couple of years ago at a speaking event. And the gentleman who brought me out to speak took me to get a massage, but it wasn't like your traditional massage. This was a, this was a gentleman who, he actually works on, he started, I think he was a roofer once upon a time and he wanted to get into healing. And so he's very, very good at what he does. And he, one of the things he told me was, Hey, man, your glutes aren't firing at all, when they should be firing when you do these motions. I'm like, oh, okay, maybe that's a problem. I came home, and I, you know, googled, like, what's the best glute exercise? Well, it turns out, if you look at any girl on Instagram that's in the fitness space, She's going to tell you what the best glute exercises are because that's what they're doing. So I started doing very simple laying on the ground and I was shocked at how quickly I would wear out. these, you know, basically hip thrusters. Lay on my back, put my hands on my glutes to make sure that they were engaging and then lift my hips up off the floor. Leaving my shoulders on the floor and then I would lift one leg up and the other leg and so now my workouts Started a month ago are I do I don't know if you know what good mornings are but good mornings They're you put a barbell across your shoulders, and I'm only using just the barbell with no weight on I'm just bending my my torso in half, engaging my glutes and squeezing all the way up. And I'll do 20 of those, then I'll do 20 leg curls, then I'll do 30 presses, actually I do 30 leg curls, 30 presses, and then I do 30 each leg, leg extensions. And then I roll over and I do 30 rows, and then I put the 80 pound kettlebell that I have on my lap and I do And I'll do three to five sets of those, but I'll go and do a set of that. So it, it makes my workout a little bit longer, more full body. And then every other day I'll go for a run at least. Two days a week, I'll go do a longer run. Around five miles. So anyway, that's my workout. That's my workout today. That's how I'm maintaining my fitness. But depending on what fitness goal I have, and I don't mean like, I want to walk on a stage, or I want to lift a certain amount of weight, I want to go do some epic things. so when I hiked the Grand Canyon in 23, That was an epic thing that I had to train for very specifically. So I'm looking for what to do, what to train for in 24. Maybe a Spartan race, maybe something like that. Maybe a DECA race, maybe something that's just gonna make me change my workouts for that specific event. And I think changing your workouts up is really good because it shocks the body into doing something different, which helps it grow and repair muscle and prepare you for life and preparing you to be hard to kill. Anyway, hope you guys enjoyed this episode. That's my workout. That's what I do. If you guys have any questions, if you want to know what If you want a written document, for what I've given to many of my clients who want to lose weight, what they, if they want to get in better shape, if they're trying to just live a better life, I'm happy to share that with you. Just reach out to me. The best thing to do is go to 5sealssecrets. com. Go there. hit me up on Instagram, william. r. brannum and just say, Hey, I heard your podcast. Would you please share, your workout with me, and I will share, it's an Excel spreadsheet. I'm creating a planner right now, and these workouts will be in the planner as well, because, you know what? You should be as fit as you possibly can to live the best life that you can possibly live. Anyway, and you know what? You should just look good naked. You should know, you should love how you look when you look at yourself in the mirror naked. And I think if you can't do that Then that's, that should be your goal for 24. Anyway, hope you guys, you guys stay awesome. Don't forget to get naked. Don't forget to like, and subscribe, and all that good stuff to these podcasts. And, have an awesome 24, 25, or whenever you're listening to this and, have a happy new year and don't forget to get naked. Talk to you soon.