Change the PT Program Thread
 

When To Train Like An Athlete
January 17, 2007: Every time there's a war, things happen that, in hindsight, should have been so obvious. Case in point is the load infantry are carrying in Iraq, and subtle changes in tactics because of the introduction of new weapons and equipment. Turns out that the troops are not in the best physical shape for the loads they are carrying, and the work they do. The physical conditioning the troops have been getting for years needs to be changed. It's a different kind of war, and the troops, despite all the running and weight work they do, are not in the best shape for it.

The latest generation of body armor, and the need to carry around lots of ammo and water, means troops are spending many hours running around in hot weather, carrying lots of weight. Moreover, most of the combat is urban, meaning there's a lot of running up stairs, and jumping through windows. What military physical conditioning experts are also noting are the changes in training among professional athletes. The military has long taken their physical training clues from what professional, and college, athletes are doing. And what those well prepared civilians are doing are exercises to make people most ready for exactly what they have to do. This not only makes the troops more capable in combat, but reduces injuries from sprains, pulled muscles and the like.

Thus the interest in developing new physical training programs that will aid guys who have to hump over a hundred pounds of body armor, weapons and equipment up several flights of stairs, dive over furniture, or quickly hit the ground during a firefight. The U.S. Marine Corps, as is their custom, is in the lead with this, but the army and SOCOM are not far behind.

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/hta.../20070117.aspx

I believe that a certain element of SOCOM is well in the lead and it is not the USMC.

I believe you are right. Many of us for years trained as we expected to fight and PT for PT sake was relegated to only those that placed the AFPT as the be all and end all but for the rest of us it was one of those semi-annual events about as important as the annual reading of Standards of Conduct.:D

Sir,
Pardon the question, but what is the "Standards of Conduct"? Reaper was my TL. :)

Standards of Conduct, AR 600-50 IIRC, was required reading for certain levels of commands and organizations. It was read annually, it required a roster of signatories to "prove" that all those concerned read it, and it had to do with ethical behaviour. It was one of those things that if you read it and found something you didn't know about you must have come to earth through the "Stargate". It changed nothing, created nothing, allowed commands to think that they had done their "ethical" behaviour modification for yet another year, and was filed in the appropriate place where the chain of command could get to it to cover their fourth points of contact when there was an "ethical" breach of some kind. It sort of falls in that group of publications of too little too late for those whose professional ethics were sorely lacking. I group it with some other page burners like FM 23-100 where the philosophy and the how toos of Senior Leadership and Command are laid out as if they could give you an innoculation to wipe away all the things you did wrong getting there or unpack and clean all the baggage you carried along the way.

Since we were Sky Gods, we were either given a waiver, or assumed to be incorrigible.

Did you really want another mandatory class?

TR

Mandatory classes have their place.......most are a waste of time.....their only redeeming value is to provide something to bitch about.

Jim

With all due respect, I cannot think of a single mandatory class, be it OPSEC, COO, Sexual Harrassment, Drug and Alcohol Programs, or any of the other annual requirements that were worth the lost training time.

As the Colonel noted, if you are the type to abuse your position, sitting through a class is not going to change the way you think.

They might possibly be of value to a brand new soldier, but I cannot think of too many ODAs that benefitted at all from them, and they wasted valuable time.

TR

What should the PT test be?

I would like to see something like:
1. 12-mile hump
2. Some kind of buddy carry type deal
3. Obstacle course

I think that is a good start, but I also think you need to incorporate environmental aspects that you can expect to face:heat-cold, dry-wet, day-night. Some of it can be addressed in the obstacle course which needs to address both stamina and strength and I don't think you need to do all aspects at the same time. For instance, I gave my teams a requirement ( one among many) to be able to move cross country, with specific equipment for particular events under a variety of weather and light conditions. After what I felt was a suitable time I blew them out in the wee hours during a snow storm and issued the task for a cross country ski movement using the target language for the FRAGO with a link up time for transportation or failing that a long haul home by any other means they could muster. It tested several aspects of my PT program, made believers out of those who thought perhaps I was just issuing a wish list, and I led the first team of those in my C2 element who thought the perhaps this was just a team event. I think any PT program has to be interesting, have a purpose, be tested against actual requirements, and refined to meet unit and individual requirements and incorporate everyone in the organization in one way or another-but tailored to meet unit requirements. There has to be a common core, but one size does not fit all and it requires command presence, participation, and commitment. I think it has to have both and individual and a team component and it has to be part of the entire mission profile of the unit and not just an isolated aspect of meeting some common requirement. Just my way of doing things.

Don't think it will happen. Combat arms personnel who move by shoe power are the minority. The PT test is written for the whole Army, which includes such as clerks, medics, maintenance personnel... even combat support personnel move mostly in vehicles.... However, there is nothing wrong with a combat arms unit coming up with their own standards and test........... I did that prior to taking a platoon of engineers through a French Command Course.............


My .02

Jim

"With all due respect"..... who were you addressing that to?

Jim

NDD,
I can't see them asking that of female soldiers. Are you thinking only for the Infantry soldiers or across the board?

"asking"? LOL. Soldiers protect democracy they don't practice it. ;)

I was just dreaming. It will never happen. We'll never even see the old 5 event test back.

Agree. I was thinking about how females would react when faced with a test that pointed out their physical weaknesses. Ruck up with 30% of your body weight and hump 12 miles in less than 3 hours? Very few will pass, and many men will fail as well.

That was for you, hermano. You were doing this a long time before I was, and have a few years on me to boot.;)

TR

Certainly not Army wide, but SF folks have a lot of latitude to do what is necessary-passing the APFT is just one of those inconvenient blips on the semi-annual training schedule and amounts to an annoying measure of "physical fitness" needed for entries on efficiency reports so there is a common measure for Army wide promotion and evaluation boards in their quest to identify who has demonstrated the potential to move forward. In fact it measures only compliance with regulations and the ability to perform to a common standard under defined conditions and while it is a starting point we all know it is an insufficient measure of an appropriate level of physical fitness for many military functions. In my day, and in yours, there were not only different standards but different events for acceptance in airborne and ranger schools. Even the armor folks back in the late 70s introduced a PT test that involved tasks associated with being a tanker that had nothing to do with any other functions in any other branches, with the exception of perhaps mech infantry. Everyone knew that the PT program was broken then as it is now and while "it won't happen" Army wide it has happened in the past, did happen in my day, and without a doubt is happening today. I guess my point about all of this is that the days of the standardized APFT should be restricted to initial entry evaluations and the basic level requirement that says you are alive and can participate in the real PT programs at unit level. The measure of physical fitness, where the minimum requirement is the APFT, should be set by the unit commanders IAW mission requirements and failure to meet those requirements should be grounds for reclassification/reassignment as has been done in several units for as long as I can remember.