Interviews

Q&A with John MacLaren, fitness guru and former SEAL - Part I

John MacLaren is a personal trainer and coach based in Los Angeles, California who has developed a reputation for working the asses off of his clients and helping them get the results they want. He is perhaps most well known for his work with the actor Thomas Jane, helping him lose fat while simultaneously bulking up for his lead role in the 2005 film “The Punisher.”

So what does physique transformation have to do with endurance athletes? Well, MacLaren is also a former U.S. Navy SEAL.

Got your attention now?

For those who don’t know, SEALs are those amphibious special warfare operators who are put through what is considered the most grueling military training in the world. Attrition rate through their Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL program is often near 80 percent. They do a lot of swimming, running and calisthenics as part of their conditioning…which leads to many a male triathlete fantasizing that he has what it takes to be a SEAL.

I talked to John to find out what it does truly take to be a SEAL as well as his work with triathletes and how his unique background influences his coaching philosophy.

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Question: Let’s go back to the beginning to set the stage. What was your athletic background growing up?

MacLaren: As a kid I was so skinny that I could watch my heart beat! I spent most of my time in sports running 5K and 10K races and cross country skiing in the winter in New Hampshire. I remember my dad buying me a shirt when I was 12 or so and on the back it said, “I may be slow but I’m ahead of you.” It was a joke of course but I never could wear it in a race for fear that someone would run on by me out of pure motivation and annoyance brought on by reading my shirt!

I loved running and if I even had a spare 25 minutes I would throw on some shoes and run for 20 minutes. In high school I spent my time in track and cross country and I was pretty fast but even in those days you had to break a 4-minute mile if you were going to be anyone in high school or college. I just could never get past that 4:03 and 4:04 barrier. I ran 10Ks for one of the Navy Teams when I first went into the Navy but very rapidly I found out about SEAL Training and couldn’t resist heading in that direction.

Question: Since you were a track and cross country runner, and admittedly skinny, how did you go about developing the strength you needed to make it through BUD/S?

MacLaren: When I first began working out I don’t think I could have put 10 pounds on the bar to do a bench press. I was at my first duty station in the Navy and I had a good friend who was a competitive bodybuilder down there and one day I confided in him how sick and tired I was of being so skinny. He said very simply, “I’ll bet you have never worked out before.”

I said, “Yes I have. It just sucks!”

But his response was that if I worked out for more than 30 days in the gym I wouldn’t ever stop and he was right. Thirty days later I was hooked and running my fastest 10K times ever for the Navy team. What I didn’t realize at that time was how much my lack of strength and upper body conditioning was slowing me down. By the time I got to BUD/S a year later, I had a great strength foundation for that age and it made all the difference in training.

Question: How would you compare the physical training you did in the SEALs to that of an age group triathlete?

MacLaren: BUD/s training and triathlon training, hmmmm this is an interesting question. SEAL Team training is more about the individual than it is about the training itself. I have known a ton of pretty tough and endurable guys in my life and it often surprises me how many of them drop out of BUD/s training in the first several weeks. Certainly they were physically capable as they often were your football stars, triathletes or a variety of other assorted sports fiends. But still they bail because it is just not them and if you ask them, which I have, they will give you a variety of reasons as to why they found it too difficult. So it would appear that they have many reasons, but in the end I wrap it all up under the umbrella of lack of desire for that type of lifestyle. In a nutshell a body can do amazing things and our mind has to constantly decide what it will allow it to do. The body will last far longer than the mind will allow itself to go in most cases and when it doesn’t, the body just cramps up or passes out and that is that.

To speak to triathletes specifically in relationship to their training and BUD/S training, there are some major differences. First off, BUD/S has an underlying mission of keeping you cold, wet and miserable as long as it can and as often as it can. Whenever I have trained for triathlons I was typically riding my really sexy bike, or spending an hour or two in the water at a time or off on a run staring at smoking hot chicks on the Strand, so overall it was just more fun to train for triathlons. Not to say that triathlon training is easy because as you all know, it isn’t. It’s just that the objectives and the whole theme of BUD/s training are different than the objective and theme of training for tri sport races.

I will say that, in my opinion, being a good runner can make BUD/S training so much more livable and that is great news for the triathletes who might consider BUD/S. BUD/S training is just a lesson in pain for the guys out there who would rather have bamboo shoots driven under their nails than go for a 5-mile run. You never have to run fast for more than 4 or 5 miles in BUD/S and although we did it in jungle boots, if you like running races then most of your group training runs are cake for you while they are misery for those low V02 max non-runners around you.

Many triathletes in days of old had a tendency to be notoriously weak in the upper body area (and lower actually) and while that trend seems to be shifting since some triathletes have discovered the wonders of weight training. It takes a fair amount of pull-up and upper body strength to make it through BUD/S. You will tend to carry up to 80 pounds or so on your back and be out there blazing trails all day or night until your shoulders bleed or somebody quits and after a while in training nobody quits anymore so you just bleed.

So, that being said, do I think most triathletes could make it through BUD/S?

Hell no! Most everyone wouldn’t make it through the program and that’s just plain old statistical data based on years of watching every kind of individual go through the program. Most people quit, simple as that. It’s not that I think BUD/S is hard, and in fact I don’t think anything you are in the mood to train for or accomplish is hard, but that’s just the way I think and not everyone would agree with me. I have to imagine that training for and winning the Ironman is hard but yet people do it every year and a lot of other people finish well so it’s obviously not too hard for them in their minds. I have a general belief that anything a few thousand people on the planet can do, I should be able to do if I am interested in it. I was interested in BUD/S training so I did it.

As far as me competing in an Ironman? I am only interested in watching the race and am truly an almost professional level spectator. So watch for me cheering you on out there!

To be continued on Wednesday…

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