Physical Training
Wow. Three years ago I was a couple weeks into my transition from civilian to Soldier. Drill sergeants purposely induced stress in every thing we did from making your bed, organizing your locker, eating your breakfast, but one of the most important parts was our physical training, but even they couldn't help us reach our full potential. Only we could as brothers and sisters in arms.
Day Zero begins with the infamous Shark Attack. For those that aren't familiar, you arrive at a reception battalion where you get processed into the Army. You don't really begin your physical training until you class up into a company. Day Zero is when you arrive at said company. Mine was Echo Company 2-10 Infantry Regiment. Drill sergeants run onto the bus yelling and screaming to get off their bus and grab your gear. You are then required to military press your full duffle bags over your heads and do all number of ridiculous workouts while rolling in the red clay/mud of the Ozarks. A tiny blonde girl not even half my size was struggling mightily with her duffle when it fell, caught her ear, and almost tore it off. She still pushed on and graduated with us. We had just begun.
Every morning during the week began with Physical Readiness Training or PRT, the Army's newest method of doing physical training. All the Soldiers in a precise formation doing the same exercises in cadence together. Each exercise had a different name like "THE SWIMMER!" (you had to belt each one out), a correct way to do it and if you said the wrong name or made a wrong movement, screaming and berating by drill sergeants soon followed with more repetitions until it was done correctly. Some of the exercises look and feel a little ridiculous but someone high up the chain of command thought they were a great idea. And this is all before you even shower and eat breakfast.
Every day is a physical trial and there were seldom moments where you weren't active. For instance, before you could ever enter the chow hall and when you left it there would be pull-ups, push-ups, body dips, and sit-ups, no matter the weather conditions which ranged from blisteringly hot, storming, a blizzard, and subzero temperatures. The only times they said we could skip prior/after meal workouts was when the surfaces were cased in ice and it was a safety hazard. This doesn't even include the half mile march in formation to the chow hall carrying your rifle or wearing your loaded ruck sack to every single thing you do.
Working together with the guys that I met from day one to physically become America's warriors is a trial that I looked forward to and was rewarded with. When the drill sergeants weren't pushing us in physical training each morning or
The camaraderie you get when you're working together to a) achieve goals, b) get one past the drill sergeants, c) avoid getting smoked by drill sergeants, and d) suffering in the same circumstances is talked about quite a bit. One aspect I don't think gets talked about a lot is the physical training part. A lot of folks need help when physically working out. But imagine your battle buddy and you are doing it so you can be ready to deploy to a hostile country where most of the populace would rather blow you up than shake your hand.
That requires another level of physical readiness that can only be reached when someone is right next to you going repetition for repetition. If he/she is going to do one more, you sure as hell aren't going to do one less than them. It is a team effort and the guys I trained with were intense. A couple were former college athletes or fitness buffs. I was just a farm boy who played high school sports and was relatively strong. If it weren't for some of those guys, I wouldn't have reached the level of fitness that I did in training.
That band of brothers feeling helped a lot in the running portions of our training. Whether in Basic Combat Training, Officer Candidate School, or Advanced Individual Training, going on long runs is part of the Army culture. They even split groups up into the average pace of those running in the formation. I was always in A Train, the fastest group. Believe me I know how funny that is. Coaches in high school constantly told me to "unhook the plow". I never was the fastest but over longer distances, you don't have to be; just have to keep going.
When everyone is sucking wind, their knees are hurting, and just want to quit, they keep pushing and try to go even farther and faster. And when you have someone that seemingly is a plow horse that keeps going on, guys that are better runners will pick up the pace to try to test the guys' limits that are struggling the most. I was the proverbial plow horse running with the Thoroughbreds, but I became a better runner and Soldier because of it. I have this weird competitive thing where I hate to be passed and falling behind or out of a run is never an option in my mind.
This was part of the military that I enjoyed most when it was done right with Soldiers beside me that could push me and thought like I did. Testing ourselves against and with each to reach our physical limits. I wasn't the fastest, strongest, most agile, coordinated, or skilled warrior but I sure as hell was up there in will to continue on in the suck as they say. I'll leave you with a verse that I used as a mantra a lot of times when I thought I wanted to quit and let someone pass me.
"As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another."- Proverbs 27:17
