When it comes to evaluating fitness trends, I tend to value direct experience. So when a hot new diet, boutique gym, supplement or lifestyle tweak comes around, I spend some time reading through the related research, then jump in as a human guinea pig.

Over the past year, I’d been hearing a lot about SEALFIT, a CrossFit variant developed by a retired SEAL commander for “first responders, industrial athletes and military special forces.”

I don’t fall into any of those categories. But I was curious nonetheless. So a few months back, I decided to hop in and give the program a try.

To give you a sense of SEALFIT’s approach, consider this trio, pulled from my workout for tomorrow:

1. 10 Turkish get-ups on each side;
2. Five rounds of 10 pull-ups, 15 push-ups and 20 sit-ups, for time;
3. Two mile run.

Which seems like a reasonable CrossFit workout.

In SEALFIT, however, that’s literally just my warm-up.

After that, I still need to do a heavy weightlifting session, and then a crazy hour-long conditioning workout involving a mile of swimming broken up by climbing out of the pool to do sets of squats, push-ups and burpees.

CrossFitters like to boast that “your workout is our warmup.” Apparently, SEALFIT is the literal next step up that workout=warmup chain.

In the long-haul, I’m unclear how I could keep this up without verging deep into overtraining territory. But, in the short term, I’m getting great results, and enjoying myself in a “it doesn’t have to be fun to be fun” kind of way.

If nothing else, each day I make it through a workout without quitting halfway to curl up in the fetal position seems like a real victory. Hooyah.