Special Forces Struggle to Keep Up With Texas A&M Workout

Special Forces Struggle to Keep Up With Texas A&M Workout

In a recent blog post 247Sports spotlighted on the notoriously grueling workouts Texas A&M Strength Coach Larry Jackson has been implementing for their SEC football team. 12thMan Magazine even profiled an instance where special forces guest trained with the team during a "sled Friday" training session... and struggled to keep up.

“These elite, trained killers started going through the sleds and they were in the corner (of the practice field) trying to figure out how they were going to make it," said the strength coach.

“The sled workout is an hour and 15 minutes. I saw one of the guys hit himself on the head and was talking to himself, forcing himself to finish. Later on, he said that was one of the worst training sessions he’d ever gone through.

“This is a guy who is my age and who has been trained to trick his mind into doing the things he needs to do to survive in life-or-death warfare. Now you see what we are asking our players to go through. I think that says a lot about what we are putting them through in preparation for the season.”

According to former Aggie linebacker Jonathan Stewart, Jackson's high tempo strength and conditioning training philosophy for the Texas A&M workout was a stark contrast to the previous strength staff, who upheld a more NFL type mentality of working at one's own pace:

“We definitely worked, but it was more leisurely. We’d get a set in, take a couple minutes off, and then get another set going. It wasn’t until coach Sumlin brought in Larry Jackson that we realized what a difference a high-intensity, fast-paced workout could make. Coach Jackson would kill us; I mean it would be pure torture in workouts, but it definitely made a big difference in how we played in the second halves of games. We wore teams out in 2012.”