Preparing for the Special Forces Assessment and Selection (SFAS) course used to be a straightforward affair with the Special Forces recruiters giving candidates a little pamphlet with some advice about ruck marching and taking the PT test.
Today, a slew of online influencers produce countless YouTube videos, Instagram stories, and more building a cottage industry around preparing young people for selection. One prep course even charges four thousand dollars!
"Assessment and Selection is clouded in mystery," Dr. David Walton told Connecting Vets. "And that is on purpose. We don't necessarily like to talk about it, because we're afraid to give away the standards but there is a shocking amount that's already out there and it just it's all without context."
Walton has authored a new book called Ruck Up or Shut Up: a comprehensive guide to the Special Forces Assessment and Selection, offering an insider's view of SFAS, Special Forces culture, and what candidates can do to prepare. And it won't cost anyone four thousand dollars.
Walton is uniquely placed to write such a book as a former Special Forces officer who went through the course himself, later helped supervise it as an officer, and then after retirement he studied SFAS for his PhD dissertation making him perhaps one of a dozen or so true subject matter experts on the topic.
Seeing the massive amount of information online about SFAS, much of it misleading, Walton set out to write something more authoritative because the information overload available on the internet was confusing candidates. "That confusion, I think is bad for the Special Forces regiment," Walton explained. "So as a researcher, I want to research it, but as a Green Beret, I want the regiment to tell its great story. So that's kind of what I did with this book."
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Chapters include Special Forces history and culture, preparing to go to selection, land navigation techniques, ruck marching advice (down to how to tie your boots), knot tying, and mental management to help deal with the psychological stress one experiences in SFAS.
Walton was careful not to give away any of SFAS's actual training standards, as specific metrics students are expected to meet are closely guarded secrets, but he does lay out everything a Special Forces candidate can possibly do to prepare.
"One of the things that plague us is that our young men lack good guidance for whatever reason, call it the plight of the fatherless home or just the misinformation or whatever it is but there is very clearly a need for mentorship and preparation," Walton said.
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Reach Jack Murphy: jack@connectingvets.com or @JackMurphyRGR.
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