The Gate.
What it takes to get in — and the training to get through.
The World, Plotted.
Every nation as a single tactical plot, sized by how deep its file runs. Hover a marker for the readout, or open the full map.
Field Dossiers
How you get in, how selection runs, and the standards that get you to the start line.
What this is
The Gate catalogues the threshold you clear to serve — the entry standard of a regular force, or the screening gate onto special-forces selection. It pulls into one place what's usually scattered across dozens of recruiting sites: the age window, the citizenship rule, whether entry is full-time, reserve or conscript, how the officer path differs from the enlisted, and the fitness bar where it's published. Regular forces are split by service branch; the paramilitary, intelligence & cyber units are listed by exact name; and a synthesised three-tier training target is built from those very numbers.
How To Read It
The conventions that keep this honest rather than merely impressive.
Confidence flags
Every card is flagged: high = official or well-documented; medium = published but role-variable; low = secretive unit, indicative only. Much of the global tier sits at medium or low — by design, not by accident.
Depth isn't uniform
Five Eyes and European forces are split branch by branch with sourced fitness numbers. The wider world is one consolidated armed-forces card per nation plus its signature unit — depth where it's verifiable, breadth everywhere else.
Model, track & passport
Each force is tagged full-time / reserve / conscript and, where they diverge, officer / enlisted — plus a citizenship bucket: citizens only, residents, allied schemes, or open to any nationality. All filterable on the Standards page.
Training is synthesised
The three tiers are averages across the dataset's known metrics, normalised to common formats — a direction of travel, not any one nation's official test. Where exact numbers aren't public, the entry model is described rather than invented.
The honest part
These are reference figures, not recruiting orders. Real standards are age- and sex-banded and change often; combat and SF tracks are typically sex-neutral — verify against official recruiting before you rely on anything here. The training plan is general educational programming, not medical advice: build a base before loading the tier above, progress gradually, and never train breath-holds or sub-surface work alone — shallow-water blackout takes strong swimmers without warning.
Who Gets In
And How.
Entry requirements for professional militaries worldwide — by full-time / reserve / conscript model, by officer vs enlisted where they differ, by citizenship, and with named special units kept separate from their parent service. The Five Eyes and European forces carry full branch-by-branch detail; the wider world is one consolidated armed-forces card per nation plus its signature unit — depth where it's verifiable, breadth everywhere else. A second register lists the paramilitary & intelligence hybrids — the CIA-type organisations — by exact unit name.
Train To
The Standard.
Three escalating benchmarks — Entry (clear any regular force's door), Combat Arms (infantry / ground-close-combat ready), and Selection (what gets you onto an SF course — not through it) — built by averaging the known entry and screening metrics from the reference page and normalising them to common formats. Then a per-exercise method to close the gap: run, ruck, strength, water, sub-surface, and land navigation.
Entry
The general-entry floor. Averaged from regular-force intake — AFT general (300), RFT(E) support roles, ADF PFA, FORCE, conscript medicals. Gets you enlisted.
Combat Arms
Combat-arms ready. Averaged from infantry / GCC standards — AFT combat (350), loaded marches, Para & Commando entry. Fights under load.
Selection
The screening gate. Averaged from the SEAL PST, SASR SFET, JTF2, UKSF and KCT. These numbers get you to selection — not through it.
The Benchmark Matrix
Averaged targets by discipline. Direction of travel, not any one nation's official test.
One picture of the gap
Every spoke is a discipline, scaled so the Selection tier rides the outer ring. The step from Entry to Combat Arms is real — but it's the reach to that outer edge, hardest on ruck, swim and pull, that separates clearing a recruiting office from arriving fit for selection.
| Discipline | Entry | Combat | Selection |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aerobic runflat, unloaded | 2.4 km ≈ 12:30 1.5 mi ≈ 13:00 |
2.4 km ≈ 10:30 2 mi ≈ 14:30 |
1.5 mi ≤ 9:30 3.2 km ≈ 13:00 |
| Shuttle / beep20 m MSFT | Level 7.0 | Level 9.0 | Level 10.5+ |
| Push-upsmax in 2 min | 35 | 55 | 75 (≥45 cadence) |
| Pull-ups / heavesmax, strict | 5 | 10 | 16 (≥8 cadence) |
| Coresit-ups 2 min / plank | 45 / 1:45 | 60 / 2:45 | 80 / 3:30+ |
| Lower-body strength3-rep-max deadlift | ≈ 1.0× BW ~75–80 kg |
≈ 1.4× BW ~105–110 kg |
≈ 1.75× BW ~130–140 kg |
| Functional powersprint-drag-carry | ≤ 3:00 | ≤ 2:15 | ≤ 1:45 |
| Loaded marchruck, steady | 6 km @ 15 kg | 12 km @ 25 kg or 4 km @ 40 kg / 50 min |
20+ km @ 25–30 kg build to 40–64 km |
| Swimcombat sidestroke | 50 m + tread 2 min | 200 m in uniform | 500 m ≤ 11:00 400 m in cams + 2-min tread |
| Sub-surfacewater confidence | confident submersion | kit swim, simple tasks | 25 m underwater mask/weight recovery, drown-proofing |
| Land navigationmap & compass | day, roads/tracks pace count |
day + night, with load 5–10 km legs |
long solo, heavy load against the clock, varied terrain |
Synthesis note: values are averaged across the entry/selection standards in Page 01 and normalised to common formats. Real tests band by age & sex; combat and SF tracks are sex-neutral. BW = bodyweight. Cadence reps (one per ~2 s, held at the top) are markedly harder than max-effort reps — SF screens often use them.
By Exercise — Closing The Gap
What each discipline measures, the three tier targets, and the method.
01 Aerobic Run
Run on the 80/20 rule — four-fifths easy conversational mileage, one-fifth hard. Entry: three 30–40 min easy runs a week. Combat: add weekly intervals (6×800 m at goal pace) and a fortnightly time trial. Selection: raise volume and add repeats and hills; the run is the single biggest predictor of getting through the early phases.
02 Loaded March / Ruck
The most injury-prone discipline, so progress distance first, then pace, then weight — never all three at once. Keep training load under roughly one-third of bodyweight. One long ruck a week; build toward selection distances (UK Endurance ~64 km, SASR "stomp" ~11+ km). Good boots, a real load, and gradual mileage beat heroics.
03 Push / Upper Endurance
Grease the groove: spread sub-maximal sets through the day rather than chasing failure once. Add weighted dips and bench press for the strength underneath the endurance. For the Selection tier, practise cadence push-ups (one rep per two seconds, hold at top) — they expose anyone who only trained for max-rep tests.
04 Pull Strength
Build volume with frequent sub-max sets, then add weighted pull-ups to push the ceiling and dead hangs for the grip that rope work and obstacle courses demand. Heaves are the lift most often under-trained by runners — program them at least three times a week.
05 Core & Trunk
The plank has replaced the sit-up in most modern tests because it trains the anti-extension control that carries a rucksack. Train both: timed planks and hanging leg raises for strength, sit-up sets for the services that still test them, plus loaded carries to teach the trunk to brace under weight.
06 Lower-Body Strength
The deadlift and squat build the posterior chain that survives rucking and the lifting tasks in modern entry tests (the AFT's 3-rep-max deadlift, the British mid-thigh pull). Run a simple linear progression with low-rep work, and don't neglect single-leg strength — it protects the knees and hips under load.
07 Functional Power
Replicate the sprint-drag-carry directly: 50 m sprints, sled drags, lateral shuffles, and farmer/kettlebell carries strung back-to-back with little rest. This is the event that punishes pure runners and pure lifters alike — it rewards the athlete who has both engines and can switch between them while gassed.
08 Swim & Combat Water
Technique beats fitness in the water. Learn the combat sidestroke — the long, efficient, low-effort stroke the SEAL PST is built around — then build distance, then add swimming in uniform and boots. Treading water for time and retrieving a mask or weight come next. Most water washouts are panic, not lack of strength.
09 Sub-Surface Confidence
Underwater swims, bobbing, drown-proofing and mask-and-weight recovery (the PJ/SEAL/SASR water phases) are about composure under air hunger, not lung size. Build with progressive breath-hold and finning drills. Only ever in a pool with a dedicated lifeguard or coach watching — see the warning below; this is the one discipline that can kill you in training.
10 Land Navigation
More candidates fail selection on navigation than on fitness. Start with map, compass, pace count and terrain association; progress to night nav, then to navigating cross-country under a heavy pack against the clock. It can't be trained in a gym — it needs real terrain, real weather, and reps of getting lost and self-correcting.
Weekly Programming
Sample weeks. Own the tier below before you load the tier above.
The Minimalist Path
Bodyweight, load, and will — the three tools that travel anywhere. Pick your tier; here's the no-gym way to reach the standard.
No machine ever passed selection. Militaries build operators on bodyweight, a loaded ruck, and the willingness to keep moving when it stops being fun — not a mirror and a leg-press. Minimal kit, maximal carryover: the work that breaks you in is the work that hardens you, body and mind.
Three ways off the machines, each scaled to the tier you choose — the calisthenics that build the test numbers, the rucking that forges the mindset, and the reformer work that quietly makes both bulletproof.
Read This Before You Load Up
These are synthesised averages, not one nation's test. Every real assessment bands by age and sex; combat and SF tracks are sex-neutral. Use the matrix as a direction of travel and check the actual standard for the force you're targeting on Page 01.
Build the tier below before loading the tier above. Most selection failures are over-use injuries from skipping the base. Progress distance, then pace, then load — never all three in the same week — and keep training ruck weight under about one-third of bodyweight.
Never train breath-holds or sub-surface work alone. Shallow-water blackout kills strong, fit swimmers without warning. Static and dynamic apnoea, drown-proofing and underwater swims belong in a pool with a dedicated lifeguard or qualified coach watching every rep — no exceptions, ever.
The minimum is a trap. Across this data, arriving at SF selection with only the screening minimum carries roughly a one-in-twenty chance of passing; arriving well above it flips the odds. Train one tier above your actual target.
Get cleared and get coached. This is general educational programming, not medical or personalised training advice. Clear it with a doctor, scale it honestly to where you are today, and load progressively.
The World,
Plotted.
Every nation in the reference as one tactical plot — positioned by geography, sized by how many forces and named units are on file. Hover a marker for the readout; click to pull a nation's dossier, then jump straight into the Standards. The map is a visual index; the holds the full, searchable detail.
The Dossiers.
Long-form field files on the units everyone asks about — how you get in, how selection runs, and the standards that get you to the start line. Open-source and illustrative; each opens as its own page.
22 SAS
"Who Dares Wins" — the regiment everyone else is measured against, and the selection that runs from the Brecon Beacons to the jungle.
Open dossier →Navy SEALs
The PST that gets you a contract and the BUD/S pipeline — through Hell Week and combat diving — that gets you the Trident.
Open dossier →Légion étrangère
The one major force open to any nationality — enlist under a new identity, earn the white kepi, and a path to French citizenship.
Open dossier →JW GROM
Born from a covert exfiltration, built on a medic-first ethos — Poland's tier-one unit and its mountain selection.
Open dossier →Mossad
Israel's foreign-intelligence service — the combatant and case-officer paths, the Caesarea/Kidon arm, and a selection that prizes nerve over PT.
Open dossier →FSB Alpha / Vympel
The FSB's counter-terror and strategic-protection units — KGB origins, a brutal secretive selection, and the gravest hostage crises.
Open dossier →GRU Spetsnaz
Russia's military-intelligence special forces — deep reconnaissance and sabotage behind the line, and the field ordeal that selects them.
Open dossier →