Don't Get Left Behind: Military Fitness is evolving, are you?

"Pain is weakness leaving the body."

 

If you served in the U.S. Armed Forces, you have probably heard Chesty Puller's famous words at various uncomfortable points in your term of service. For better or worse, this has been the driving attitude behind different institutionally accepted approaches as far back as I can remember. There isn't a more representative object lesson of this than that of tactical fitness in the military. Here's the thing: It's a wildly counterproductive attitude regarding how we approach combat readiness and long-term care for service members. The winds are changing, but what does that mean for tactical professionals, and how do they make the most of the fitness knowledge that is slowly changing these antiquated tropes? 

 

For decades, fitness "experts" have looked at tactical fitness as something they know how to produce with systems borrowed from other athletic populations. Historically, fitness in the military has two routes: a bodybuilding gym rat afraid of height and weight regulations (NCO) or a pencil-necked endurance athlete who could run long distances but suffered under load (Officer). The idea of what exactly constituted balance in tactical athletes, much less how to build a population of these ideal service members institutionally, was something no one could agree on. As services, this problem left Service Members doing things the way they had always done and enduring the traditions that had won two world wars, or assuming professional alpinists had the key to preparing Special Operations hopefuls for elite units' selection processes. 

 

In the middle of all this training, one truth ruled all others: The mind will quit long before the body does, so ignore your weakness, and you will be stronger. The last twenty years of high operational tempo have demonstrated that one template doesn't fit all. While mental toughness is essential, it shouldn't be the driving factor behind building better fitness in the military and first responder community. 

 

I'll kill the first sacred cow here: Tactical Athletes are not professional athletes. They are professional soldiers/sailors/Marines/airmen/first responders. The needs of a tactical athlete are broader and less specific than any other athletic population on the planet. As professionals with a schedule dictated to them by geopolitical conditions, command requirements, and the ever-present "will of the enemy," there is no way to "peak" for the big day. An unpredictable demand for maximum output changes how we look at building top-end performance in service members. Suddenly, durability is a significant training concern, and maximizing available time, flexibility, and recovery are key limiting factors if we want to field healthy individuals capable of physical performance and mature decision-making under duress.

I know what you're thinking: "Master Fitness Trainer (or your equivalent fitness instructor course) sets service members up for success!". Right? My sarcasm font might not work, but it doesn't have to be. I won't lie; many of these are excellent programs run by intelligent trainers. However, the reality is that they are pushing information through a fire hose with very little expectation that their target audience will be able to carry this information back to their parent unit and implement impactful changes. After the rise in popularity of commercial options like Crossfit that promote overly intense metabolic conditioning with almost no periodization or focus, the MFT program looks great! We must remember that the carcasses of bad ideas litter the path to a real solution, and there is a Cambodian graveyard of failed solutions to the tactical fitness dilemma across all our formations. 

 

Luckily, there has been real progress in how parent organizations look at training and maintaining cutting-edge fitness in tactical athletes. Development of programs like Ranger Athlete Warrior (RAW), Tactical Human Optimization Rapid Rehabilitation and Reconditioning (THOR3), and the Army-wide Human Performance and Wellness (HPW) initiative show that we are genuinely applying lessons learned in how to optimize the performance and longevity of our service members. Within these programs exist many tools necessary to address tactical athletes' constantly evolving fitness requirements. At this point, I'll caveat this by noting that the finest instruments are useless if the end user doesn't know how to use them.

 

To benefit from these advances in tactical fitness, we should first understand the domains that affect our performance. Heretofore, we have mostly viewed fitness in terms of exercise and nutrition, which are vital pillars, but they don't stand alone. Psychological Status, cognitive performance, environmental factors, and sleep are essential in structuring our approach to tactical athletics. 

 

Overall, all the previously mentioned domains influence physical fitness. Still, it is also essential to understand that focusing on general physical preparedness for tactical athletes is a balancing act of periodized volume and intensity that elicits growth without leaving tactical athletes too depleted to perform their required work tasks. Tactical athletes must ensure that they aren't training to failure when they need gas in their tank for the tasks that matter.

 

Nutrition is the area most people THINK is slowing down their gains, but in a strength-biased world, it's much more important to fuel adequately and feed our muscles than to be focused on counting calories. Due to our culture's vanity, many people desire better body aesthetics to drive unhealthy relationships with food. Consult with a professional dietitian for better guidance, or subscribe to a training program that offers direct meal plans that address your nutritional needs in a physically demanding job. Remember that a bit of body fat carries you a long way when you have extended operations that don't allow time to eat. Ideal body fat for tactical athletes is between 8-15%. Being a Greek god doesn't necessarily help you be a more helpful team member in tactical professions.

Psychological Status plays a considerable role in our ability to perform our jobs as tactical professionals. While most of us are mentally trained to endure various stressors, those stressors still affect how we perform. Just because we can endure more than most doesn't mean these factors do not affect us. Home life conflict, professional pressure, internal anxieties, and insecurities are all detrimental to our overall performance. Identifying and addressing those factors will help reduce tactical athletes' prevalent stressors. We all must develop mature coping strategies to mitigate these factors, whether it be talk therapy, meditation, planned quality time with loved ones, yoga, journaling, or simply just time in nature to disconnect from stress and reconnect with ourselves or our closest support network.

 

Tactical professionals do not focus enough on the benefits of cognitive training and managing the cognitive load on overall athletic performance. The brain struggles to retain meaningful information when we bog down the working memory with unnecessary information. For instance, if two people talk to you simultaneously, it's hard to process what either person is saying. In a tactical profession, it is vital that we dismiss extraneous information and quickly process relevant data, often while under physical and mental stress. Just like training your biceps, you must practice processing data and retaining vital information to do it under pressure. The best programs for tactical professionals will have mental exercises programmed with physical ones to help mitigate cognitive overload. 

 

The environment we train in is as important as the one we operate in. Air quality, toxic exposures, heat/cold, and altitude dramatically affect acute and long-term athletic performance. Be smart about training and maximizing your longevity and performance by mitigating exposure to environmental dangers and not putting yourself or your peers in situations harmful to your health before the shooting even starts.

 

Sleep/Rest. Military and First responders have a 34% higher prevalence of nightly sleep deficiency than the general population. Unfortunately, popularized attitudes towards sleep as a sign of weakness are wildly unproductive for mental and physical performance. The stressors and exposures present in our particular careers don't make sleep an option; they make it a requirement. If the gym and kitchen are where you build gains, sleep is where you cement the gains. Without adequate sleep, your body CANNOT rebuild. Studies show that sleep restricted to 5 hours a night in healthy and active males reduces testosterone levels by 10-15%. When "experts" talk about sleep being a crutch, their advice applies to less than 1% of the population with a particular genetic mutation. If you're in the other 99% (Spoiler alert, you probably are), focus on changing nighttime patterns to get 7+ hours of quality sleep a night. 

How do those currently in the game make the most of this knowledge when formal programs aren't fully developed, funded, or universally available to the population?

 

The answer is personal accountability (And a subscription to SOFLETE). Prioritize training for the evolving threat, address general physical preparedness, introduce relevant skills training into your physical regimen, monitor your stressors, prioritize quality rest, and be your own master. Take time to understand your limitations and find a solid program that offers periodized training focusing on recovery and durability. Whether fighting a counterinsurgency, great power conflict, or just doing a job on the mean streets, the path to long-term performance and health lies within us, not in the hands of an institutional bureaucracy that will always be fighting its last battle. 

 

As the current wars wind down and retention and health of the force become the focus, can we finally focus on intelligent programming that scales to meet the end user's needs without wallowing in pre-conceived and debunked ideas about what tactical athletes need? While our parent organizations may never be able to offer us a perfect answer, the honest answer lies in our ability to find our solution. Seek qualified experts with operational experience in your career field. Educate yourself on the "why" behind your fitness regimen, or pick a product that educates you as you progress. Mercilessly and systematically identify your own needs and the gaps that present themselves in your efforts to address those needs. Preparing for a lifetime of performance isn't a linear or quick solution; it's a journey. Enjoy the ride! 

 

This article was previously published in Forward Observations Group's Fourth edition. We are honored to have been featured in print, but want to bring further attention to this subject for the homies.