Over the last few weeks, you may have heard that Kyle Shanahan was going to have the San Francisco 49ers train with Navy SEALs. Well, the training happened and wasn’t just the players doing the training. Eli Harold joined 49ers reporter Joe Fann for his podcast and talked about the training, going into detail on who else joined:
“The coaches did it with us! The general manager [John Lynch] was out there! He [Lynch] was out there doing everything. Kyle Shanahan, every coach, every member, everyone who works with John. Everyone was out there.”
Navy SEAL training isn’t a simple set of informercial exercises—it’s probably some of the hardest physical conditioning someone can put themselves through. It’s not current Navy SEALs either, it’s veteran Navy SEALs of APG (Acumen Performance Group). While the training Shanahan had for the organization isn’t what the actual training probably entails, I can’t imagine it being anything short of grueling. Eli Harold described it as “fun” because, “you’ve got to learn how to get comfortable being uncomfortable.”
At first skeptical about the training himself and rather wishing to continue training in the classroom, Shanahan changed his mind after Dan Quinn brought the SEALs to train while Shanahan was with the Atlanta Falcons. The 49ers didn’t train with the SEALs in 2017 due to the work required overhauling the roster and installing Shanahan’s system but 2018 is fair game for the 49ers to invite the Seals.
It certainly goes a long ways when the team is asked to do something so physically demanding as training like this, but the coaching staff and front office is willing to do it themselves. The phrase “don’t ask them to do something you wouldn’t do” probably applies here. Fann probably says it best.
For those of you curious what SEAL training is like , I found a few videos you can watch here and here. It’s doubtful many of these processes were used with the 49ers, but the same mentality could have been.