It's not hard to pass the swim qual. We had one person in my OCS class not pass. They walk you through exactly what to do. And it's nice to get away from the DI for a bit. For the "floating," I would come up for a breath, and then go under, count to 5 slowly, come back up- just to make sure I stayed relaxed, so I probably came up every 15 secs. Again, it's really easy. You don't make up the PT later. Believe me, there's no time to make it up. And it's very unlikely that missing 2 PT's a week will get you out of shape. (Although I hear PT isn't what it used to be, even when I was there). Later on, you might have the opportunity to use a small gym, but you also have to be studying/ preparing for inspects. Some people used it, I didn't. Just relax during the swim qual and don't worry about it again.
I tried asking this on another thread but do we need to brush up on our math/sciences before we go or is this mainly learning and memorization on things about the Navy and general navigation?
I should have preempted like I did on the other one. I get the ocs stuff and in shape bit but wasn't sure if being better at physics, algebra and general science impacted ones success at OCS or if that stuff pays it's dividends later on in your respective naval pipeline.
Biggest thing to hit on is incorporating core exercises into different mobility workouts. If your hands aren't connected to your feet through a strong yet flexible core swimming/floating will always be difficult. Yoga is a great way to get a head start on this.
A great way to find efficiency is by like Mike said establishing a powerful kick. The kick is your propulsion just like a submarine and arms are the stabilizers. I found when teaching that a great way to establish a solid kick is to work through a progression to eventually incorporate the arms. Start by pushing off with your head down and arms at your side while kicking; when you need to breath calmly rotate to the side, initiated with the hips, while never stopping your kicking. If you find yourself picking your head up and stopping try a rotating from your stomach to back, then back to your stomach. Once you are stable and find that you dont have to pick up your head to rotate do the same thing for a few laps but starting off with your hands above your head, which is the only change. Once you can rotate comfortably from side to side with your arms above you, push off the wall with arms in front/streamlined and begin to incorporate your freestyle stroke, breathing to the side when needed and not on every stroke. Rather than swinging your arms like windmill make sure thay every time a hand enters the water you reach out with your finger tips toward the wall in front of you. It will slow down your cycle rate while increasing the distance per stoke. For Navy purposes the benefit to having strong legs in the water is that when you get tired you can always turn on to you back and kick while still moving forward.
Just so you know, there's no time limit on the swim
And just to reinforce, there's nothing hard in terms of academics. Most is memorization and three of the 5 tests are completely multiple choice so as long as you have a general idea, you should be good. The other two, you have some multiple choice, some short answer, and a navigation problem (basically). Everyone from my class passed academic (to be fair, we had a lot of nukes).
Only needed for your first 3 inspections. So it's a little different from the academics. You should start to memorize those before getting to OCS. The more you know of those before getting there, the easier your life will be- of course people have memorized it all while there, I'd discourage it though.
Uhhh, other than 80 minutes?