Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 19 is my conversation with former Navy SEAL Brad McLeod, the founder of SealGrinderPT and a lead instructor at SealFit Kokoro. Brad attended BUD/S, completed Hell Week, then failed a math test that rolled him back into the fleet. Instead of quitting, he started over from Day 1, made it through the whole pipeline a second time, and built a Never Quit mindset he now teaches to athletes chasing everything from SEAL selection to their first 5K. Brad has been my own coach, so this one is personal.
▶ Watch on YouTube · 🎧 Listen now
Brad McLeod is a former Navy SEAL and the founder of SealGrinderPT, an online coaching platform that helps athletes of all levels reach their goals, from completing BUD/S and becoming an active-duty SEAL to finishing a first 5K. He is also a lead instructor at SealFit Kokoro and is widely known for teaching a Never Quit mindset built on discipline, gratitude, and daily improvement.
Brad attended BUD/S and made it all the way through Hell Week, but he then failed a math test that rolled him back into the regular fleet. Rather than give up on the goal, he doubled down on his studies and his physical preparation while chipping paint on Navy ships, then earned another chance and went through the entire BUD/S pipeline again from Day 1 — this time finishing successfully.
SealGrinderPT is the online coaching platform Brad McLeod built to prepare athletes for hard things. Through it he coaches people training for BUD/S, GORUCK events, obstacle races, and general fitness goals. The program centers on mindset and consistent preparation as much as physical conditioning.
The Never Quit mindset is Brad's framework for pushing through adversity by focusing on small, repeatable wins instead of the whole mountain. He emphasizes improving roughly one percent every day, controlling the monkey mind, leaning on gratitude and morning rituals, and refusing to let a single setback define the outcome. He learned it the hard way by failing out of BUD/S and coming back.
SealFit Kokoro is a roughly 50-hour crucible camp created by Mark Divine to give civilians a small snapshot of what real BUD/S candidates experience. Brad serves as a lead instructor at Kokoro, helping participants who choose to step up to one of the hardest endurance challenges available to non-military athletes.
I signed up for SealFit Kokoro and used Brad as my coach to prepare for the camp, and his coaching is what got me ready to complete it. I later used him again to train for GORUCK Selection, and my son Turner went through a SealFit 20X program where Brad was the lead instructor. We have stayed close friends ever since, which is part of why I wanted him on the podcast.
Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 19 with Brad McLeod is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. The video version is embedded at the top of this page.
Most of the guests I bring on the podcast are people I admire from a distance. Brad is different. He is my coach. When I decided to do SealFit Kokoro, I went to Brad to get ready, and his preparation is the reason I finished. I went back to him again before GORUCK Selection, and my son Turner trained under him too. So when I finally got him across the table, I was not interviewing a stranger — I was getting a friend to tell the story I had only heard in pieces. The part that always gets me is that he failed BUD/S over a math test, watched a platoon of active SEALs prep for a mission while he chipped paint, and decided to start the whole thing over.
Press play in the YouTube player at the top of this page to hear how he did it.
Brad had already done the single hardest thing most people will ever attempt — he finished Hell Week — and then a math test took it all away. He describes standing on a Navy ship, chipping paint, watching a platoon of active-duty SEALs get ready to deploy, and feeling the full weight of how close he had come. What he did with that feeling is the whole episode. He turned the disgust into fuel. Listen to how he describes that moment in his own words.
Brad calls it the monkey mind — the voice that shows up at mile twelve or hour forty and starts negotiating for you to stop. He has a system for it, and it is not motivational-poster stuff. It is small, mechanical, and repeatable, built around getting one percent better every day and stacking tiny wins until the big thing becomes possible. He walks through exactly how he coaches it. Hear that section of the episode.
For a guy whose whole brand is grinding through pain, Brad spends a surprising amount of time on gratitude and morning rituals. He explained to me why the mindset work is not separate from the physical work — it is the foundation under it. The way he connects gratitude to performance changed how I think about my own mornings. Press play to hear it.
Brad coaches active-duty candidates, but most of his clients are everyday people chasing a first 5K or a GORUCK patch. He makes the case that the lessons from the Teams — preparation, accountability, never quitting — translate to any field, any goal, any age. I have seen it work in my own life, and Brad lays out how to import that culture without ever putting on a uniform. Listen to the full breakdown.
Listen to the full conversation: ▶ Watch on YouTube · 🎧 Listen now
The day after talking with Brad, the thing I kept coming back to was the math test. Not the SEAL stuff — the math test. He had survived the part that breaks almost everyone, and then he lost it over something that had nothing to do with toughness. Most people would have called that a sign and walked away. Brad treated it as a delay.
That is the lesson I take from him over and over, in training and in business. The setback is rarely the end of the story unless you decide it is. Brad decided it was not, started over from Day 1, and built a whole second life out of that decision. Press play and let him tell you the rest.
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Brad McLeod is a former Navy SEAL and the founder of SealGrinderPT, an online coaching platform that prepares athletes of every level for hard goals — from BUD/S and GORUCK events to a first 5K. His own path to the Teams ran through failure: he completed Hell Week, was rolled back after failing a math test, and then went through the entire BUD/S pipeline a second time to earn his Trident. He is a lead instructor at SealFit Kokoro and is known for teaching a Never Quit mindset grounded in daily improvement, gratitude, and disciplined preparation.
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