I Survived 30 Days of David Goggins’ Insane Military Workout: Experience

My First Day

The first challenge for me was getting up at 4:30 a.m., two hours earlier than my usual routine. I adjusted by getting to bed by 9:30 each night to ensure I got six to seven hours of sleep.

Still, it was a struggle to adjust. During that first week, I really had to push myself mentally to overcome the ‘mind over mattress’ syndrome.

After downing a banana, I was off to the gym for a 60-minute session on the exercise bike. I knew that keeping my mind engaged during these cardio sessions would be a big challenge, so I took my earbuds to listen to my favorite motivational podcasts while on the bike.

I set the bike tension at a moderate pace and maintained a speed of 20 mph. Over that sixty minutes, I burned 637 calories and walked away feeling refreshed.

Next up was a two-mile swim. This is the part of the program I was dreading the most. While I wouldn’t say I’ve got a fear of the water, it is definitely not one of my favorite places to be. I got some motivation from Goggins himself, who did have a fear of the water. He overcame it by forcing himself to complete these daily two-mile swims.

I headed to the local pools with a sense of foreboding but didn’t put pressure on myself. I would stay in the water for two hours, and it was okay if I didn’t make it to the two-mile mark.

I focused on counting lengths. After every ten, I’d take a break for a couple of minutes and then plow into the next set of 10. By ten o’clock, I’d knocked off 53 lengths, which was about a mile and a half.

When I dragged myself out of the pool, I was utterly spent. Every muscle was aching, and my heart and lungs were on fire. I’d just put my body through a type of stress entirely foreign to it.

And there was plenty more to come.

By 10:50 a.m., I was back at the gym for the first resistance training session of the day. This was an upper-body calisthenics and weights-based session.

First up was pull-ups. Goggins is a pull-up legend. He holds the Guinness World Record of 4,030 pull-ups in 17 hours. All I had to do was a hundred.

I divided my hundred reps into ten sets of ten. My form on those last few sets was pretty sloppy, but I managed to squeeze them out.

Next was a tri-set consisting of the barbell bench press, dumbbell bicep curls,  and dumbbell shoulder press. Each exercise was to be done for a crazy four hundred reps. That meant four tri-sets of a hundred reps on each exercise.

I had never trained with such high reps before. Not knowing what I was in for, I used only an empty Olympic bar on the bench press and 10-pound dumbbells. Even with those light weights, it was challenging work.

I completed the first set of 100 on each movement without rest. But on the following sets, I paused several times as the burn in my pecs, biceps, and delts became too intense.

Goggins only allows you to rest in the fully extended position, which doesn’t give you much relief at all. And you’re not allowed to rest longer than 10 seconds!

I’ve been working out with weights for decades, but this 1,300-rep workout (100 reps on pull-ups and 400 reps each on the bench, curl, and overhead press) was more brutal than anything I’ve done before!

I now had until 3:00 p.m. before the next phase of this crazy training program. I headed home for food and rest. I actually managed to get about 45 minutes of much-needed sleep before it was time to head back to the gym.

By now, the psychological challenge was starting to dominate. I knew the Goggins workout was intense, but experiencing it was next level. Could I really handle 30 days of this type of torture? I seriously doubted it.

Still, I soldiered on. At 3:00 p.m., I was back on the exercise bike, this time for a solid two hours. I’m not ashamed to say that I didn’t set a blistering pace — in fact, the 75-year-old lady alongside me would have quickly lapped me in a race. But, at this stage, it was all I could do to stay upright on the bike!

I overcame the mental challenge of two hours on the bike by listening to Goggins’s podcast with Joe Rogan.

At 5:30 p.m., it was time for the run portion of the workout. I set a very moderate pace for myself and knocked out two miles.

After dinner, it was back on the bike for a final 60-minute session.

When I hit the sack at 9:30 p.m., I felt like I’d been through 15 rounds with Mike Tyson.

The Next 23 Days

When I woke up the following day, I felt a gentle ache through my entire body. The prospect of repeating the previous day’s routine hung over me like a dark cloud. Still, I was determined. With the Nike motto ‘Just do it’ sounding in my head, I was up and into it.

The first bike ride felt good. I had a target calorie burn: I was determined to beat the 637 from the day before. And I did — by 15 calories.

Then, it was back to the pool. Again, I had a target to beat. This time, I made it to 58 lengths.

The rest of the day — the massive reps in the gym, two more stints on the bike, and a run — were mentally and physically draining. By Day Two’s end, I knew this was not sustainable, no matter how much I wanted to prove to myself that I was Navy SEAL material.

So, I compromised. My 50-something body needed more than 24 hours to recuperate from all that muscular stress. I decided to do the full program every second day. On the days in between, I’d follow Goggins’ military calisthenics program, which he published online just before the COVID lockdowns. This workout was no walk in the park, but it gave my body and mind the break they needed to survive the main course.

Here’s what the Calisthenics program involves: