Preparing For The Academy (Or Any Line Of Duty Occupation)
I was digging through a pile of junk in my closet and stumbled on a yearbook from my alma mater.
This thing is heavy. Heavy enough to be thrown in a backpack and used for weighted calisthenics or weighted hill sprints now that I think about it.
I didn’t have the normal college experience for I attended the US Naval Academy or known as the, “Boat School” by those who didn’t go there and wished to poke fun at us. I kinda like the term so I use it still when talking to any of my peers who went there or know that I went there. The military here in the US has several routes one can take in getting their commission or going into the armed services as an officer. The Naval Academy was one of the more prestigious options. Due to the influence of my parents, I was already living and enjoyed living an active lifestyle.
The Application Process
When I was applying to The Boat School I went to a school conference meeting with a bunch of Instructors and Admission Officers from various military schools and those, like myself, who were trying to get in. I recall one of them looking me up and down and telling me that I should be lifting more weights. The funny thing was that I had been lifting consistently while in my high school weightlifting class. I’m glad I didn’t listen to that dude because that was horrible advice.
Intense runs, plenty of push-ups, and plenty of pull-ups would have been more sound advice. But this dude’s solutions would have resulted in failure which is a key indicator that his worldview was broken.
What I Was Doing
At the time I made the decision to apply I was
Lifting weights in high school
Involved in Martial Arts (Both grappling and striking)
Performing Pull-ups till the cows came home
And Running Two - Three miles every Saturday with a 20 Pound Weight Vest.
The most beneficial I believe were the bottom three. I didn’t do much swimming though I should have. When I was little my mother ensured that I knew how to swim and that I didn’t become a stereotype.
So I would participate in swimming lessons and whenever we went to the water park or the ocean I kept that muscle memory.
What Would I Improve?
The Running
The running I was doing was just steady-state running. I would go at a pace that wasn’t leisurely and wasn’t balls to the wall. Near the end of my run as I got close to my house approaching from the south there was somewhat of a hill. At this point, I will increase my speed almost to a sprint and finish it out. Additionally, my mp3 was going, and if timed correctly a really motivating song came on…
My running, when I applied for the NROTC scholarship(In addition to the boat school) and had to run a Marine Corps fitness test got me a 22-minute 3-mile time. Basically a little over 7 minutes a mile. Not great by officer standards but better than nothing.
It was only later that I found out about the concept of interval training or, “Fartleks.” Instead of steady-state running one’s run will be intermixed with periods of jogging/catching your breath with periods of going all out. Now how this is chopped up is up to the individual. I find a great way of doing this to decide to jog for the length of one pole to another and then sprint, passing a total of 4 polls.
If you have a watch then you have another way of dividing up your sprint and jog times. Whatever it is make it progressive and rest thoroughly. Either improve the distance over time or try to improve your speed. Have a workout log(which I didn’t think about at the time) to map the trends in your performance.
This type of training can increase your overall speed and endurance in a time-efficient manner. I say, “Time efficient” because there is another way to stimulate improvement.
I was training for a marathon with a friend years later while at the boat school and it improved my 1.5-mile runs by 45s seconds. However, this was while running up to 16 miles in one sitting and 6 to 7 miles on most days. I’m all about saving time. If we’re gonna try to strengthen our bodies let's do so in a time-efficient manner.
Bodyweight Exercises
I was pretty proficient with pull-ups by the time I was 18 thanks to my parents. They bought me a pull-up bar while I was in middle school so by the time I was ready to sign up I could crank out 20 in one set. But pull-ups at the time were the only bodyweight exercise I engaged in. Being involved in a weightlifting class I thought my arms and legs were taken care of.
Looking back I would have done more push-ups as well as walking lunges. Push-ups in bootcamp are used consistently as a form of punishment so getting good at these will ease the pain for when one of your battle buddies screws up…
Walking lunges are a wonderful exercise to build up leg endurance. I recall while I was in the school I did these for a few weeks and found that I could perform buddy carries(carrying people over my shoulders) with improved efficiency. You won’t truly see the magic of bodyweight exercises till you’ve experienced how they carry over to other areas of life/training, even weightlifting. Create a workout by picking out a distance of say half a football field or a football field and keep lunging till you get to the end. I’ve had friends who’ve done up to a mile of these and they had great endurance for other tasks. Make sure to keep your upper body erect and don’t let your knees go too far over your toes but only in the beginning. The stronger your knees become the more you can start performing leg movements where your knees go over your toes and they become even stronger after that.
If it gets too easy throw on a weight vest or backpack with weights.
Overcoming Isometrics
You knew this was coming…
But I’ll keep this short and simple. The strength and endurance of the legs for your average soldier are more emphasized now than in previous centuries and millennia. All you do is march or take a Humvee, or Osprey to whatever location and pull the trigger while looking down the sights at your enemy. Or press a button.
Although I would have still done overcoming isometrics for my upper body I would focus more of my effort on the lower body. Just one eight to twelve-seconds of force-generation a day is all you need for strength which will also translate into endurance.
Treading Water
Throwing us in a pool and making us tread water for extended periods of time is also a form of punishment. Using all four limbs I could tread decently for a while but at the moment I was ordered to tread with just my legs I became a stereotype. Therefore, I would have trained more at the pool and become proficient with treading water with just my legs. If you have to choose between time and intensity, the latter is often the best option depending on your conditioning.
Wrap Up
For those trying to get into the line of duty whether it's military, police, or fighting fires we can save time and energy by ensuring our workouts better target the right stimulus.
To a degree…
Strength can be improved without heavy lifting
Speed can be improved without moving
Endurance can be enhanced without long hours on the pavement
Find the noise through the signal and make your training more efficient.
Thank you for making it to the end and comments are below.
Until next time…