Inside the SAS: The Real Reason Only 5% Make It

About this video

Ritland’s guest, a former Royal Marines commando and diving instructor, recounts his journey through UK Special Forces selection for the Special Boat Service (SBS). He describes the six-month process with its 95% attrition rate, the navigation-heavy hills phase, and how he used humor to handle instructor pressure. The guest also explains how SBS selection opened from Royal Marines-only to tri-service recruitment and shares his reasons for choosing SBS over SAS.

Key takeaways

• The guest attributes his SBS selection success partly to staying self-motivated and using humor under pressure, recalling how he defused instructor hazing by showing them a photo of a beach
• According to the guest, UK Special Forces selection is a six-month process with approximately 95% attrition, involving navigation-intensive phases where candidates must maintain four kilometers per hour over mountainous terrain
• The guest explains that SBS opened recruitment beyond Royal Marines to include other service branches, partly due to operational demands during the War on Terror when SBS focused on Afghanistan and SAS on Iraq

Episode details: published October 19, 2025 · 573.5K views · 11:00 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Stories told by Mike Ritland’s podcast guests are the guests’ own accounts, attributed to them — not independently verified. Commentary is Ritland’s, presented as his analysis.

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