No pain, no gain appears to be Navy SEAL David Goggins’ mantra, which has left many to wonder about his intense training practices. His brutal workouts recently caught the eye of ATHLEAN-X’s Jeff Cavaliere, who took to a YouTube video on September 2, 2024, to investigate the validity of Goggins’ fitness routine.
“I want to investigate today if there’s validity to the training methods that are borderline psychotic, but again, I say that respectfully.”
David Goggins is a retired Navy SEAL and ultramarathon runner, who has mastered his physical fitness after suffering from obesity. His extreme mental toughness is lauded by massive names online, including Joe Rogan, fellow marathon runner Cameron Hanes, as well as neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman.
Although Goggins is well known for his athletic prowess, his ability to inspire others is second to none. He serves as a motivational speaker in his spare time and continues to challenge himself outside of the gym. Having once held the all-time pull-up record, Goggins is no stranger to adversity, especially when it comes to pushing his body to new limits.
As of late, Goggins has invested time into smoke jumping. He has helped eliminate fires in Canada by flying into dangerous zones with specialized training. Even with these obligations, David Goggins is still getting after it.
Jeff Cavaliere, meanwhile, has extensive experience training athletes. He served as the Head Physical Therapist and Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach for the New York Mets from 2006 to 2009, making his opinions of exercise highly sought after.
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Jeff Cavaliere Analyzes the Workout Routines of Navy SEAL David Goggins
First, Cavaliere looked at the damage that’s been done to Goggins’ legs, indicating that it’s likely a result of overtraining.
“When it comes to overtraining, when you start to have legs that look like this… to me it’s an indicator that maybe you’re doing just a little too much.”
For the first workout, Cavaliere reviews Goggins’ popular ‘nickels and dime’ routine, which is made up of five pull-ups and then 10-push ups. The goal of this exercise regimen is to get two rounds every minute, which equates to 10 pull-ups and 20 push-ups every minute on the minute. This workout typically lasts one to two hours for Goggins.
“The first one here is one called nickels and dimes. What you do here is five pull-ups, that’s the nickels part, and 10 push-ups, that’s the dimes part.
You go back and forth and back and forth. His goal is to get two rounds every minute, so that means 10 pull-ups and 20 push-ups every minute on the minute and he does it for about an hour and a half to two hours. I’m not kidding.”
While Cavaliere gave this workout a try, he only lasted 25 minutes.
“I’ve done this workout and I lasted for 20 minutes, 25 minutes. I was able to keep up the pace but I could imagine at some point very soon I was going to start to tire out and not be able to keep up that pace but he’s able to keep going because he’s build his work capacity up by doing more of that.”
Looking at his 150 push-up routine with a 50-pound vest, Cavaliere highlighted that the goal was for a Navy SEAL to complete the workout in 15 minutes.
“If we look at some more specific workouts, here’s another favorite of his, again, it’s push-up-based, that’s why he’s got that big chest.”
“It’s 150 push-ups with a 50-pound vest. How he does this is 15 sets of 10 push-ups and 30 seconds of rest between sets.”
“The goal of the workout if a Navy SEAL was doing it is to be able to complete it in 15 minutes, sticking to that rest like I said, and be able to perform it.”
In addition, Jeff Cavaliere emphasized that tempo also plays a crucial role in how Goggins approaches his workouts. During the 150 push-up challenge, Goggins has to wait for a specific phrase from a song before he can either go up or down for the exercise.
“He doesn’t just overload his push-ups with weighted vest, he actually can do it with tempo too. I’ve oftentimes told you guys what a great tool that is. Here he does something called the Bring Sally Up Challenge.
The song, he goes down everytime it says Bring Sally Up, he’s up, every time it’s Bring Sally Down, it’s down. But you have to hold it until it starts to get back to Bring Sally Up again, so it increases the time under tension in the bottom position there, which we know is a good position for stretch anyway.”
He also examined Goggins’ intense pull-ups and chin-ups program, mentioning that his practices are great for strengthening the entire energy system. Cavaliere believes this is an effective workout that offers ‘far-reaching benefits.’
“He has something called pull-ups and chin-ups, what does that look like? Again, people give him shit for this, they say his form is bad.”
“But basically, he does 100 pull-ups in under 10 minutes, takes a three-minute rest and then he just does five pull-ups every five seconds. Do five pull-ups, rest for a count of five, do five more, rest for a count of five, see how many he can do until he can’t do five anymore, when he can’t he stops.”
“For chin-ups, he goes back after a 10-minute rest and then 100 chin-ups in under 10 minutes,” he adds. “This is taxing your entire energy system, I do think it’s a good workout. I think it can have far-reaching benefits sometimes beyond what we can accomplish with really focused contractions in the gym.”
Lastly, Jeff Cavaliere scrutinized Goggins’ ‘4/4/48’ cardio routine, which amounts to running four miles, every four hours, for a total of 48 hours. Respectfully, Cavaliere called this routine ‘downright stupid.’
“This is where it just gets downright stupid and when I say stupid I mean that very respectfully, again, because when I look at this workout my knees actually throw up in my mouth. And this is called the 4, 4, 48 and that is run four miles every four hours for 48 hours (total 48 miles in two days),” he shared.
“That’s almost two marathons in two days. But, do you have the mental capacity and toughness to do this?”
Fans and onlookers of David Goggins have long questioned his training practices. While some believe he’s constantly in a state of overtraining, the famous Navy SEAL doesn’t think so. He recently defended why he still trains seven days a week at 49 years old. The short of it? He says “I’m not crazy, I’m just not you.”
With decades of experience lifting weights and tending to his fitness, Jeff Cavaliere expressed deep respect for Goggins’ methods. However, in some instances, he does believe the retired SEAL might be testing his limits with overtraining.
RELATED: David Goggins and Cameron Hanes Join Hands For An Intense Workout
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