In October 2008, I joined the U.S. Army. I’m going to share my story about seven months of Army physical training compared to my experience as a veteran powerlifter. Here are my observations.
Observation #1: Being a middleweight and lover of absolute strength
I entered the Army as a heavy middleweight powerlifter from the Michigan AAPF. Michigan has some damn strong lifters who showed up at the local meets, even though they were clearly national and world caliber. I trained at 225 lbs, but I was 25 lbs overweight according to Army standards for a six foot man. Too fat and too big, even thought I totaled 1454 lbs raw at 220 lbs—518/319/622.
The max Army weight for a six foot man is 200 lbs. At five feet eleven, the max weight is 194 lbs. If you exceed the maximum weight, your body fat is checked. This is called being taped. I am always taped and so are most people who lift weights in the Army.
When I got to Judge Advocate Basic Officer Course (Army lawyer training), I quickly found myself among lightweights who didn’t like to lift weights, and if they did, it was a mixture of dumbbell bench, curls, and triceps kickbacks. Dumbbell delt raises were another favorite. To say the least, absolute strength wasn’t valued, nor was the middleweight. The Army tends to have 160-lb men who can run and do around 70 push-ups in two minutes.
Observation #2: Collective fitness Army style
The Army does an amazing job of training roughly 675,000 soldiers to minimum physical requirements needed to protect the homeland. Possibly college football teams or police academies train collectively on such a grand scale. Army trainers encounter a wide range of new recruits from the fat and lazy to the skinny fat, so physical training is very difficult to individually tailor.
Advanced soldiers who knew how to train athletic qualities found it hard to mix the mandatory morning training with their personal training in the afternoon. Squatting heavy the night before your 12-mile rucksack march really sucks. Basically, I was forced to train collectively in the morning, which screwed up my more important training in the afternoon. Training collectively often forces the group to train at the level of the group’s most unfit person.
One reason why the Army trains collectively is because we are so numerous and new recruits must learn commands and troop movement patterns, which are incorporated into our training sessions. Due to the nature of Army physical fitness (PT, we love acronyms), they can’t give every soldier in formation a barbell and 400 lbs of weight. That would be a whole day to organize the event let alone the cost to buy each soldier the weights. Nor can they really give individual, tailored training like powerlifters feed on. Basically, my lifts went to hell, and I was at one of my weakest times in my eight-year powerlifting career.
Observation #3: Push-ups, sit-ups, and running body weight movements
The Army is stuck with body weight movements. Running is their training centerpiece, but we do plenty of push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups. I was amazed how creative the Army got with body weight movements and partner assisted strength exercises. Have you ever tried the overhead clap for 125 reps? It really sucks when you have big guns (not me). Or try the air push-up for ultra high repetitions. The Army can add your weapon to the body weight equation for extra resistance. It’s called rifle PT. I don’t advocate these movements for the powerlifter, but what else can the Army do when barbells aren’t available, and you’re dealing with soldiers of all different capacities?
Ultra high, not high reps were always the name of the game for the Army and so was training to muscular failure. Never was absolute strength tested or trained. Endurance was always developed. In my eight years of powerlifting, I never went over five repetitions in a power lift, and I always stayed under 15 reps in my assistance work. When I came to the Army, nothing was done under 25 repetitions and was often over 75 repetitions.
Observation #4: New found value in training to failure
Our class trainers loved “smoking” us during PT. Smoking was just going to muscular failure. I have reevaluated the merit of training to failure since being in the Army. My prior stance on training to failure, regardless of the application, was that it should be used sparingly in most programs. This is because it is difficult to recover from. Since my Army PT experience, I have modified my opinion to recognize that an aspect of mental toughness is developed from training to muscular failure. Soldiers and athletes must be physically tough to compete and win. Most athletes already live their daily lives and training sessions with pain (non-injury pain) and this also tends to build mental toughness.
The value in training to failure that I previously did not recognize is that it develops the mental toughness to go on and on, even when you don’t know how many repetitions you’re doing. Or from a soldier’s perspective, you learn to continue to fight in terrible conditions and still accomplish the mission. Learning to control your mind in order to keep physically performing has value in sport. For example, if I knew I had to do 100 total overhead claps, I could do them. But when I don’t know the number of repetitions it makes it difficult to continue forward. A soldier must go forward and accomplish the mission, which could last for days.
In my experience, I have never pushed my body in an endurance event where it actually was physically impossible to go forward. My quitting or stopping the event was always due to my mind making my body stop, not because my body was incapable of another mile or repetition. At moderate to elite levels of sport, the athlete starts to train their mind as well as their body in the pursuit of sport excellence. I believe the ability to fully control your body through your mind during sport performance is developed by training to failure.
By week twenty of training, 23 of 112 people were injured, and one soldier was on crutches with a broken leg. Our 5:45 a.m. formation was like a hospital when all the injured left formation and lined up in the back of the company. In the prior class, there were two people in wheelchairs. Was this because of a lack of mental toughness?
Observation #5: Army group stretching, cadence, and camaraderie (a little sports psychology)
The Army did a great job of collective, detailed stretching before all workouts. We started from the neck and moved to the ankles with loud commands to get us motivated at 5:45 a.m. First in the stretching rotation was slow dynamic stretching followed by traditional static stretching. The colder it was the more jumping jacks and other dynamic stretching we did before static stretching.
Cadence is simply singing during the marching of soldiers. It adds motivation and teaches soldiering skills with the words of the songs that are sung. We did it, and I loved it. Before learning about cadence, I refused to sing any song outside of patriotic songs. I see cadence as a socio-psychological sport performance technique. Its sociological aspect is demonstrated because it is done in a group setting, but it’s psychological because it individually motivates each soldier as the songs ring in one’s ears. Good cadence is like good lifting partners making sure you’re psyched up before a big gym lift.
Cadence is similar to other psychological performance techniques like imagery and mantras. The words to cadence could be patriotic or they could be used to teach new soldiers basic soldier skills. Or, like the cadence I experienced, it could just be describing the daily toils soldiers experience day in and day out. The main reason for noting cadence is because it was done while exercising, which is an aspect of physical training that I have never experienced.
Observation #6: Endurance training versus absolute strength training as needed by a soldier
I don’t think the Army does a good job in developing the strength side of the Army coin. The first side of the coin is endurance and other side is our beloved father and master strength. For example, imagine a straight line continuum with a marathon runner on the far left and a powerlifter/Olympic lifter on the far right. The Army is on the far left of the strength continuum—that being endurance. At times, I thought they completely fell off the continuum.
My beloved Army neglects any real strength training. Heavy squats, benches, or deadlifts do not cross their minds. Real, absolute strength is not on the Army’s agenda. And to make things worse, there is some institutional bias that favors endurance training. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Common advertisements around base promoted 10K races or ultra marathons but never powerlifting activities. All I saw were small, under 165 lbs, weak runners who couldn’t pull a mere 400 lbs or squat 315 lbs. In my warped powerlifting world, it isn’t uncommon to see lightweight or light middleweights squatting 315 lbs and pulling 400 lbs.
I tend to follow the idea that all strength is derivative of absolute strength. This means that endurance strength is derivative of absolute strength, not the other way around. But a criticism of my view is that a soldier will never have to pick up or move a 300-lb object. That is what two soldiers, a helicopter, or a HUUMV are for. Concerning running, I clearly see its importance in being able to run away from a dangerous situation. Remember the old saying, “Those who fight and run away, live to fight another day.” That’s a basic human fight or flight situation. But I can’t see where a soldier would need to do two minutes of any type of strength endurance work.
I can easily imagine a situation where soldiers would need the strength to drag their buddy out of the foxhole, march around with a 70-lb rucksack on, or attempt to move a stuck vehicle. In a perfect world, you would want a soldier who can easily run 20 miles and still not be a weak 150-lb dude. But this is a difficult training task to accomplish. As we all know, developing several strength qualities at one time is difficult to do, and often times, it ends up like Crossfit, resulting in average or slightly better than average at all strength qualities. At least Crossfit attempts to train power, even though they will admit they are just mediocre at everything.
Observation #7. Should soldiers be able to squat twice their body weight, bench 1.5 times their body weight, and pull 2.5 times their body weight?
During my eight-year powerlifting career, I always followed Louie Simmons’ statement that a weak man only squats double body weight. Additionally, I have always judged average male strength levels to mean that an athlete should be able to squat twice his body weight, bench 1.5 times his body weight, and deadlift 2.5 times his body weight. I recognize that it’s harder to obtain these numbers the heavier the athlete’s body weight climbs. I considered athletes who could obtain these basic numbers stronger than the average male but not elite by any means. But does a soldier need to obtain these numbers? I say no, but they sure as hell shouldn’t be weak and feeble at 150 lbs with only the ability to run for hours. Damn, start pulling a little bit.
Observation #8: Army Physical Fitness (PT) standards and our class PT program To give you a taste of Army physical fitness standards, here they are. Notice that there is no such thing as absolute strength being tested. The official Army PT test is taken by all Army compatriots at least twice a year.
It is composed of the following:
- How many push-ups can you do in two minutes?
- How many sit-ups can you do in two minutes?
- How fast can you run two miles?
For the 27 to 31-year-old male, you must do at least 44 sit-ups, 39 push-ups, and run two mile in 20:30 minutes to pass. The 100 percent max categories for the same are 77 push-ups, 82 sit-ups, and two miles in 13:16 minutes. The testing is done in the above order with a 15-minute minimum break between events.
Basic, minimum fitness requirements do not take into consideration weight class or height. So the heavier, taller man, and definitely the middleweight powerlifter is always at a disadvantage. But age, gender, and physical injuries are considered. Because my chosen profession isn’t acclaimed for producing athletes or well-conditioned professionals, my basic JAG class was comprised of light weights. We were a bunch of attorneys with the super majority being under 30 years old. Out of 112 attorneys at my officer basic class, around 22 didn’t pass PT test the first time around. About half of these failures were older (over 30 years old) attorneys. But still plenty of young people failed. At week 20, around 23 people were injured. Seeing these results gave me a better understanding what personal trainers go through on a weekly basis.
The class trained Monday through Friday at 5:50 a.m. The 112 people were split into eight ability running groups that conducted ability group runs on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Friday. Tuesdays and Thursdays were specialized PT for advanced Airborne or Air Assault groups or regular company PT for the rest. The two-mile run times ranged from 11:29 minutes to a few people who had to walk it. The bulk of the class ran it in around 16 minutes. Ability group one ran two miles in under 13 minutes with myself included. The top runners were clearly under 165 lbs and mostly specialists. The class represented almost every state in the union along with Puerto Rico. The Puerto Rican attorney broke his leg in the remedial PT group when doing a fireman’s carry with one of the more overweight soldiers.
Observation #9: Volume, frequency, intensity, and overtraining
Coming into the Army, I was training twice a day, four to five times per week plus dieting down from my lovely middleweight frame—drug free, age 30. My workout routine prior to attending Army training consisted of my usual powerlifting splits in the morning with running, fat loss, or endurance activities in the afternoon. While in Army training, I trained at a slightly higher volume because I still continued to powerlift in the afternoons after class. I just couldn’t give up my deadlift and squat. But the morning running was clearly more running volume than I was accustomed to. What eventually happened is that a few times throughout the class I came close to overtraining. As a result, I started to weekend load my back squatting with my heavy deadlifting occurring during the week. The squatting just messed up my legs too much to do during the week with our running schedule.
The after effect of heavy pulling was bad but not as vicious as the leg soreness that occurred after squatting. Surprisingly, my bench stayed somewhat near my competition best, around 305 lbs or so. I believe this was from the volume of push-ups that we did during the week. Just before I left for Army training, I weighted 210 lbs and I went 405/455/500xm, 300/315/325xm, and 500/550/600 with a belt and knee wraps at Ripped Fitness in Utah. My last Michigan AAPF meet was the 2008 state championships hosted by Detroit Barbell. There I went 518/319/622 at 220 lbs. After 10.5 weeks of JAG school, my squat absolutely sucked, and my pull was down but not as bad. My back squat went from around 500 lbs down to a hard 405 lbs. My pull went from an easy 600 prior to training to a slow and awkward 550 lbs.
What I learned from the Army PT experience was that you can train at a much higher volume than I previously thought was possible or desirable and that running isn’t where you should be putting your limited training volume as a powerlifting, even though it’s cool to run two miles fast and still pull 600 lbs. My experience at the Army schools showed me where I can position my extra workouts for powerlifting (SPF) or place other general physical conditioning work such as stones, farmer’s walks, and throws (GPP). Running is fun but not as fun as a big total with knee wraps and a belt. So in the future, I will be scrapping most of the running in favor of more hamstring and pectoral work. A lifter can only take so much volume during a week, so I have learned a little better how much I can take and where to place it.
Observation #10: New respect for the lightweight man under 165 lbs
During my training, I acquired a new found appreciation for the lightweight. I consider lightweights to be 165 lbs and under. Middleweights range from 181 to 220 lbs. The heavyweight didn’t have a chance at the Army’s normal physical training. He was way too big and most of the time not strong enough. Or, in other words, he had a poor power to weight ratio.
In powerlifting, the lightweight class is often underappreciated. But here at Army training, the lightweight consistency outperformed all other body weights. They could outrun all the rest on average and do many more push-ups and sit-ups than the middleweights. Even when you put a weighted pack on their back, they still had the strength to perform. When comparing the average lightweight and average middleweight, the lightweight tends to outperform.
Observation #11: I couldn’t out train a bad diet
Although my weight did drop down to 204 lbs at one point, I still stayed mostly around 210 to 215 lbs, depending on how much beer I drank and pizza I ate on the weekends. The big point here is that I thought that I would lose a ton of weight and finally drop solidly into the 198-lb weight class. This didn’t happen, and I was still weak in my power lifts. What I learned is even when training twice a day and being on my feet most of the day, I still couldn’t out train a bad diet.
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