How to actually be “Army Strong”

In the words of Mat Best, it’s scientifically proven that beards help you lift more weight. However, since the vast majority of you won’t be allowed to grow beards, I guess you’ll have to settle for this article.

If you were to watch any AFN commercial, you might think the Army exists for safety, SHARP, and PT belts… WRONG! The army exists for one reason and one reason only…to defeat the enemies of our nation and destroy those who wish to do us harm. You (a soldier) are an integral part of that mission. You are either a) shooting some bad guy in the face or b) enabling the guy who shoots the bad guy in the face. If you aren’t comfortable with that, join the Peace Corps.

BLUF:

Your “sport” is combat
Combat requires power, speed, and endurance. Power allows you to move heavy things, speed determines how quickly you can do it, and endurance determines how long you can sustain it.

Your body is your primary weapon.
If you are unfit or injured, you are a liability to your unit, not an asset.

You are a professional athlete.
Professional athletes use their bodies to earn a living. Active duty Soldiers are professional military athletes. You are paid to work out for at least 1.5 hours every day. Your paycheck not only depends upon your fitness, but so does your combat performance and survivability.

Run less, but faster!
If you are still running the same pace you ran 4 years ago, it’s time to drastically cut the mileage and increase your speed, effort, and recovery.

FITNESS ATTRIBUTES OF A MILITARY/TACTICAL ATHLETE.

1) High Relative Strength
2) High Work Capacity for Short/Intense Events
3) Stamina for multiple events over a long duration. Also, stamina for a single long event.
4) Mental Toughness
5) Durability for a long career.

AMPLIFYING INFORMATION.

If you cannot close with the enemy, you cannot destroy him. You are a professional soldier. The goal of PT is to foster the idea that fitness for the soldier should be a professional habit. You aim for job appropriate fitness not so you can max the APFT or another fitness evaluation, but because you’re a professional athlete. Fitness is safety, mission accomplishment, and respect to your team. Your PT Program should be combat focused.

But what does that actually “mean?” The army pays lip service to that bolded line all the time but is terrible at actually defining the endstate and how to get there physically. We have been at war for 17 damn years and we are still assessing our physical readiness off a physical fitness test that was created in 1980! Coincidentally, the 80’s were the time where cardio-respiratory endurance  dominated the health and fitness discussion in the civilian world. Long, slow distance running/jogging rose to prominence, and the military began to see aerobic health as the end-all-be-all of overall military fitness.

However, the APFT has little connection to the physical tasks actually required in combat. In fact the Army openly admits it! But in the words of some wise staff officer, “You get what you measure.”

Because APFT scores are kept as part of soldiers’ official files and repeated failures can result in a soldier being separated from the service, PT invariably focuses on preparing soldiers to pass the APFT, instead of preparing for combat. Why would I go drag a skedco in full-kit when I’m going to get promoted based off my ability to run a sub-13 minute 2-mile?

VIGNETTE.

When I was a brand new 2nd Lieutenant in “The Division” aka the 82nd Airborne, we did Company 5-mile run Mondays, push-up/sit-up improvement Tuesdays, practice APFT Wednesdays, Ruck-marches Thursdays, and Battalion 5-mile run Fridays. We did this every week for my entire first year. Oh by the way, we had a million dollar world-class gym that we weren’t allowed to use during PT hours because PT had to be conducted outside. We were a bunch of skinny, weak, man-boys who couldn’t dead-lift our own body weights. And you know what, we never really got any faster. We just kept pounding the pavement at an 8 minute-per-mile pace while fighting off shin splints, plantar fasciitis, or some other nagging overuse injury.

Fast forward 10 years and five deployments later. Never once did I run towards the enemy on a paved road wearing PT shorts, running shoes, and a PT belt. I did walk really slowly up big ass mountains followed by climbing walls, sprinting between buildings, vaulting through windows, crawling through ditches, carrying litters, and dragging a casualty all while wearing 60 to 70 lbs of bullshit.

The APFT doesn’t train for any of that. Instead the test emphasizes low intensity, cardio-respiratory exercise, whereas combat is most likely to tax a soldier’s anaerobic rather than aerobic capacity. In battle, soldiers are far more likely to have to sprint… pause… sprint than run for 2 miles non-stop. Watch 30 seconds of this video from my first deployment to Afghanistan in Ghazni province (video starts at 4:38).

When those men were engaged in the open between cover, I guarantee you no-one gave two shits about their 2-mile run time. What mattered was how fast could they get down, get back up, and sprint to the next piece of cover…all while wearing 60 lbs of bullshit. Good thing they had an amazing company commander that made them do burpees and windsprints in full kit :-).

Additionally, There is zero assessment of a soldier’s ability to lift, carry, pull, and climb, even though studies have shown that these are the most common physical tasks required of soldiers. Instead our solution to everything is simply to run more or run further. Aerobic running is simply a single component of a combat focused PT plan. All components are as follows:

via GIPHY

Just kidding (or am I …)

ACTUAL FITNESS ATTRIBUTES OF A MILITARY/TACTICAL ATHLETE.

1) High Relative Strength (You must be strong to carry heavy shit)
2) High Work Capacity for Short/Intense Events (You need to be able to move fast repeatedly when contact is made)
3) Stamina for multiple events over a long duration. Also, stamina for a single long event. (You need to be able to fight for days)
4) Mental Toughness (Get used to being uncomfortable; NEVER give up)
5) Durability for a long career. (Mobility and recovery so that you don’t burn-out)

There are many other types of athletes:

Out of all of them, which one looks the most prepared to do any of this…

I would argue that the sprinter comes the closest (definitely not the last guy), but the truth is all the athletes pictured above are imbalanced. You don’t have that luxury, you have to be good at all of it.

When you are wearing fifty pounds of “light-weight” gear, plus a rifle and a rucksack you need a strong posterior chain. This means your hamstrings, glutes, and your entire back need to be as strong as possible. How do you fix that? This means dropping the “Long Slow Distance Runs” and the round-robin “pushup/situp improvement” PT plans and picking up your man card.  Being a military athlete requires real functional strength building. A military athlete must be able to walk long distances, sprint short distances, jump, drag, pull, push, carry, throw… all while under load over rough terrain at high elevation and able to put rounds on target at the same time. Deadlifts, weighted pull-ups, deep squats, box jumps, rope climbs, skedco drags, ammo can carries, sandbag getups, tire flips, sled pulls, log presses, etc. are going to be things you had better start taking very seriously.

This requires prior planning; also called programming. This means workouts are planned and posted ahead of time, not randomly thought up the morning of. Figure out what goals you want your squad or platoon to achieve and program out how you plan on getting there. Smart programming prevents overuse injuries, allows the programmer to see gaps that appear in the training, as well as establish benchmarks by which military athletes can measure their progress.

• BUT WHAT ABOUT THE APFT!?

The APFT is the Army’s required measure of physical fitness and will remain so for the foreseeable future. That being said; excel at the APFT. However, the APFT should not be the focus of your training. Again, maxing the APFT does not translate into functional combat fitness. Conversely, the opposite is true. If you are a functionally fit military athlete, you will do well at the APFT. The APFT should be one of your easiest workout days you have scheduled. Therefore, there is no excuse for poor APFT scores. By focusing on preparing your bodies for the rigors of combat, your APFT scores will raise by default.

• BUT I’M NOT INFANTRY!?

I don’t care what your MOS is. You never know when you are going to be forced by circumstances outside of your control to step up and defend yourself and your team, so you better be physically ready.  I offer to you the story of SFC William Lacey, a 63X (mechanic) attached to 3rd Special Forces Group. On Jan 3, 2014, insurgents attempted to overwhelm COP Shinwar in Nangarhar Province with a VBIED and follow-on direct fire attack. SFC Lacey, once again a mechanic, rushed to the nearest guard tower, and began to engage the attackers with a M240 machine gun, killing three suicide bombers who were attempting to rush through the breach. He died on a mountain of 7.62 brass when an insurgent scored a direct hit with an RPG on his guard tower. As a mechanic, he could have easily stayed in the TOC and no-one would have blinked an eye. Instead he rushed to the sound of the guns and gave his life for his comrades. He was awarded the Bronze Star with “V” Device for his actions.

SFC William Lacey

PROGRAMMING.

There is so much pre-existing knowledge out there for workout programmers to use to create a successful functional fitness strength building plan. Sealfit, Crossfit, Military Athlete, Gym Jones, Crossfit Endurance, Ranger Athlete Warrior, Lift Big Eat Big…this list goes on and on and they are all excellent tools. There is no one size fits all answer and I will not dictate what program to follow. However, I will give you some good guidelines.

1. PT should be conducted at the Squad Level or lower.
2. If you have 1.5 hours for PT; allocate 15 minutes to movement prep, 45-60 minutes to training, and 15 minutes to recovery.
3. Runs and Rucks should have a time standard but conducted “release” 75% of the time. This prevents training to the lowest common denominator and and allows individuals to train pacing.
4. If you can sing cadence, you aren’t running hard enough.
5. PT plans should be created 4 weeks out and posted outside each platoon CP.
6. The gym is authorized and encourage its use.
7. Each week, aim to conduct conduct 2-3 strength workouts, 1 short interval run workout (100-400 meter/15 sec-1:30 range), 1 long interval run workout (600 meter-1 mile/2-7 minute range), 1 ruck march or combat focused work out, and 1 long distance run (3-5 miles/21-40 minute range). (See Example 4 week PT Plan below)
8. Do not use “lack of equipment” as an excuse. If the company’s weight equipment is in-use or the gym is always crowded, start making your own equipment. Fill up sandbags, dufflebags, and ammo cans with rocks and sand. Create your own medicine balls out of 100-mile-an-hour tape. Do air squats and step ups with your body armor and rucksacks. Flip some LMTV tires. There is no excuse. Pick up your man card and get creative.

Example 4-Week Squad PT plan

THAT’S IT.

The real science and mental shift behind all of this is applying the “minimum effective dose” to your training. We do this essentially by decreasing needless, repetitive volume while ramping up the intensity, in order to induce the minimum amount of stress on your body to achieve the desired output. If you are interested in learning more about this concept, I HIGHLY encourage you to read the Four-Hour Body by Tim Ferris. Additionally, I can not stress enough how important recovery is. If you try to be a “Strong Ranger” and ignore recovery, you WILL injure yourself or burn out. I’ve recommended some essential tools for recovery below. If you found this information helpful, please share/like/tweet/follow and all that other good social media stuff.

You’re Welcome