Originally Posted by rickair7777

I was involved peripherally in an early 2000's naval special warfare initiative to increase training throughput, in a program with a notorious washout rate (even a class or two washed 100% back in the day).

This was necessitated by the ramp up of GWOT and manpower demands, and the entry argument was to not reduce standards one iota.

The solution was two-phase... an enhanced, target recruiting program to identify and recruit mostly direct-accessions, often standout HS and college athletes, and bring them in directly without doing the typical fleet tour(s) first. That opened up a pool of candidates who might be interested in SPECWAR, but might not be interested in rank and file fleet duty in hopes of having a shot at it years later.

Second phase was close (mandatory IIRC) PT mentoring in the months leading up to reporting for training, to build up the candidates physically for the specific demands of the program. Upon reporting they the participate in a weeks-long pre-class training program to futher get their minds and bodies into the right place to perform in the real deal (those standards were not modified).

Worked wonders, pretty much inverted the old 70/30% wash/pass rate. Sometimes you can work smarter.