It’s no secret that the Top Gun graduates want to be the best… and this time, there’s some stiff competition. Miles Teller stars as Rooster, but he’s joined by Glen Powell (Hangman), Lewis Pullman (Bob), Jay Ellis (Payback), Monica Barbaro (Phoenix), Danny Ramirez (Fanboy), and Greg Tarzan Davis (Coyote). Each of these will be vying for the Top Gun Trophy — recognition that they’re the best of the best.

That means hard work and rigorous training … and it wasn’t easy on the actors, either. How do you portray a Top Gun pilot? By getting up in the air yourself, of course.

“They would have me go up in a F-18 for an hour or hour and a half, pulling anywhere around seven-and-a-half Gs,” said Teller in an interview with Men’s Journal. “Getting to fly around with the best naval aviators in the world.”

If that sounds like fun, it wasn’t quite as easy as it sounds. Each of the new actors playing Top Gun graduates had to undergo rigorous training just to fly as passengers alongside real F-18 pilots. Teller explained why it was so tough:

“The F-18 is just a completely different beast. Every element of our training came into play during those sequences, all of the breathing techniques and tolerances. Every single day of the shoot we were really getting after it, up until the very last day people were fainting and puking.”

One of the main problems is presumably keeping your composure and lining up shots correctly while pulling seven-and-a-half Gs. Not easy. And it sounds as though their training program was almost as tough as Top Gun school itself.