"Nobody jogs for five miles in Iraq. Why should I make you run a long distance at a slow pace? I should be making sure you can race as fast as you can to a place down the street, sprinting like you're terrified." Lt. Col. Randall Wickman, quoted in the Kansas City Star.
Army Basic training is finally catching up with the reality of combat and modern exercise physiology.
The article in KC Star notes the Army took an incredibly logical approach in "assessing the skills that are most needed on the modern battlefield and matching them to the muscle groups that are most in need of conditioning."
As a person who has seen a little combat and knows a little bit about physical fitness, I concluded long ago that military fitness training bears little rational relationship to the type of fitness needed in combat.
A staple of military fitness is the two or three mile run.
In combat operations distance is either covered quickly, as in a sprint to a covered or flanking position, or slowly as in a long patrol lasting all day. Both are done with 50 to 80 pounds of gear on.
The steady pace run does not build the explosiveness needed for quick action in a fire-fight or gritty endurance to walk for eight hours through the mountains of Afghanistan.
It also does nothing for the upper body strength needed to climb walls and the explosiveness needed to traverse terrain and jump obstacles.
"We've been training the same way for 30 years and in Iraq or Afghanistan the last eight and a half, but we just did things as we'd always done them," the Star quotes Wickman as saying.
The changes in physical fitness training in boot camp are a good start, but they need to be carried over into active duty assignments as well.
The next change that needs to be made is in nutrition.
Military rations, MREs and UGR-As, are loaded with sugars and high glycemic carbohydrates and not nearly enough protein to sustain the muscle mass needed for explosive speed.
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