The Unique Demands of Military Physical Preparation
The Unique Demands of Military Physical Preparation
Physical training for soldiers is unlike any other training. While civilian fitness often focuses on specific outcomes focused on one physical quality such as speed or endurance. Whereas military training must prepare soldiers for an array of different possibilities.
This means that preparing a soldier physically is not about excelling in one area, it's about being good at everything but also avoiding overuse injuries. These unique demands create a challenging way of programming.
Soldiers Must Be Good At Multiple Qualities
In the civilian sporting world, training is geared toward peak performance in a narrow context. A sprinter trains for maximum speed over a few seconds. A marathon runner builds stamina for 26 miles. A weightlifter seeks explosive power in short lifts.
The soldier is not a specialist. They are a generalist with depth, expected to carry heavy weight over long distances, sprint, lift, crawl, climb, carry, and fight all while making sound decisions under fatigue.
Soldiers also don't have the luxury of peaking for one event; they need to maintain a high baseline across multiple physical domains at all times. The demand is for broad physical competence, not narrow physical excellence.
The Challenge of Balancing Competing Demands
The biggest challenge in training military personnel is balancing conflicting physical demands such as:
Building strength without compromising endurance
Developing aerobic base without losing strength and power
Enhancing mobility without reducing load-bearing capacity
Ensuring specificity (i.e. load carriage) without causing injury
You can’t just train one system in isolation. Soldiers must be conditioned for energy system crossover which is the ability to move between intensity levels, tasks, and energy demands rapidly and effectively.
This is why well-designed programming must integrate all these factors and not be random or one-dimensional.
Unpredictable Training Schedule
Unlike civilians, soldiers experience very unpredictable training schedules which can involve deployments and arduous exercises, all of which make planning and periodising training difficult.
This means it's extremely important for a soldier to remain flexible in their training and often do the best they can with the resources and time they have available. Periodisation is great but often impossible for a soldier to stick to 100% due to their work schedule. So remain flexible.
Conclusion:
Military training is varied and can be unpredictable. It is important to understand the unique physical demands placed on soldiers and the nuances required to train them effectively. Remembering soldiers need to have broad physical competency as opposed to excelling in one area.
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