Combat PT: Fitness form fits function in the Corps’ unit-specific new concept

[Vulture6]

December 18, 2006

Combat PT: Fitness form fits function in the Corps’ unit-specific new concept

By John Hoellwarth
Staff writer
www.marinecorpstimes.com


Doing a set of pull-ups doesn’t put rounds in the Howitzer. There are no improvised explosive devices on the three-mile run.

And crunches can’t kill.

Sure, spending three hours a week doing crunches, runs and pull-ups will get you a high score on the physical-fitness test, but it doesn’t quite prepare you for your job or put you in complete fighting shape.

That’s why fitness experts with Marine Corps Combat Development Command are in the opening stages of a massive overhaul of the way every Marine does physical training, in which commanders will tailor their unit’s PT to the mission at hand.

It’s called functional fitness, and it means exercise regimens will vary from unit to unit based on that unit’s job or what those Marines are expected to do in combat.

“The infantry would be doing a lot more walking and carrying weight, whereas the logistical support Marine might be lifting more above their heads,” said Lt. Col. Lance McDaniel, branch head for service concepts at the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab in Quantico, Va.

It doesn’t mean that come PFT time, you’ll be hauling sandbags around instead of making friends with the pull-up bar. The test will stay intact. However, it does mean that shorter runs and a variety of exercises performed during PT should translate to fewer muscle injuries while raising PFT scores across the board, Corps planners say.

The proposal for functional fitness, endorsed Nov. 9 by Lt. Gen. James Amos, deputy commandant for combat development and integration, describes it as “the ability to perform a broad array of natural or realistic physical work.”

“Lifting and carrying ammo cans filled with sand, that’s very functional for combat,” McDaniel said. “Going to the gym and doing curls is not an example of a functional exercise.”

Planners say after gathering data and working out a Corps-wide implementation plan, functional fitness could be changing your life in as soon as six months. And some Marines could start even earlier.

Functional fitness places a premium on exercises that involve whole-body movements. That’s because these exercises increase range of motion, which decreases the chance of injury and bolsters the body’s ability to recover if an injury does happen, McDaniel said.

The Corps is radically shifting gears because unit PT, as it stands now, overemphasizes aerobic training such as long-distance running while placing “very little” emphasis on strength training, the concept states.

“Our physical training was not ‘functional’ in this sense,” Amos wrote in his endorsement.

Central to the concept is a new focus on “general physical preparedness” and mission-specific training “for specific occupational fields,” McDaniel said.

For example, an artillery unit “might go out to the field and move projectiles off a 7-ton truck” instead of dressing in green-on-green PT gear for a formation run, McDaniel said.

But if that same artillery unit receives orders to deploy as a provisional military police unit to the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan, the commander may instead elect to hump his Marines up and down the hills of Camp Pendleton, Calif. After all, functional fitness allows commanders to tailor the workouts to the mission, McDaniel said.

But what about the PFT?

“Although the PFT is an important test, it should not make commanders sacrifice their need to tailor fitness training to their unit,” said Lt. Col. Brian McGuire, an operations officer with Marine Corps Training and Education Command who holds degrees in exercise science and sports medicine with certifications from a lengthy and impressive list of professional associations.

The PFT establishes a base line fitness standard for Marines and allows commanders to gauge their unit’s fitness in relation to the standard.

What it doesn’t do is tell commanders how many windows their Marines can jump through wearing a full combat load or how many doors they can knock down before they need more than one kick.

“You don’t find yourself in combat dropping your gear and going on a three-mile run. You find yourself doing quick bursts of energy, quick bursts of strength,” McDaniel said.

So the PFT stays, at least for now, because the Corps needs a standard way to measure fitness for the sake of competitive promotion.

“We don’t know what the future holds,” McDaniel said. “[Training and Education Command] will have to take a look at the PFT, and if in five years we feel a change is necessary, we don’t feel constrained to stick with the PFT.”

For those who think hauling ammo cans or hoisting sandbags over their heads might actually hurt their PFT score, McDaniel said not to worry.

“I’ve been doing functional fitness since August, and I shaved a minute off my run time and I run less,” McDaniel said. “You don’t have to train for the PFT, you train for functional fitness — you will be in as good or in better shape as you were.”

So if PT changes from unit to unit, how do you gauge Marines’ progress?

“I think what you’ll see is that units will gravitate toward their own tests, one-mile run followed by rope climb, followed by dead lifts,” he said. “There’ll be some competition applied, and you’ll be able to tell right away whether your guys are conditioned for functional fitness instead of saying, ‘Hey guys, go run a PFT.’”

The concept states that commanders still will use the PFT to assess fitness, but a perfect score does not mean a Marine is perfectly fit for fighting.

“A Marine could score well on a PFT and strain his or her back while lifting a pack or carrying a 155mm projectile to the loading tray. The problem here is not with the PFT, but with the training,” the proposal states.

That fits with the Marine Corps order that governs physical training, which discourages PT programs that prepare Marines for the PFT. Instead, it tasks commanders to focus their efforts on “combat conditioning.”

“The current doctrine supports in large part the concept. It’s a matter of ensuring the commanders have the expertise necessary to assist,” McGuire said.

The plan ahead

A Corps-wide message released Dec. 7 announced the functional fitness concept in an effort to “provoke debate within the Marine Corps on the most effective approach for preparing Marines physically and mentally for the demands of combat.”

That’s the first step in the rollout, McGuire said.

“[We’ve been] in the process of assessing the attitudes and perceptions of Marines about physical training since September 2001 to get a sense of how PT helped prepare them for the demands of combat,” he said.

He called it “the gathering data phase” and emphasized that “any changes to the Marine Corps physical-fitness program and testing will be based on empirical evidence” that the changes are for the better.

Policy advisers from Combat Development and Training and Education commands and the Marine Corps Center for Lessons Learned are putting their heads together to come up with a plan on how to get functional fitness from the drawing board to the fleet.

McDaniel said there are issues — such as whether the concept requires the Corps to build new facilities, buy new equipment, or develop new instructional classes or doctrine — that will take time to work out, though “some things will go faster than others.”

“We believe to input the program Corps-wide, we are going to have to have unit coordinators who are training in functional fitness,” he said. “It could be the same guy who teaches [the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program]. We’re looking at combining that.”

Retired Lt. Col. Joseph Shusko, director of the Corps’ Martial Arts Center for Excellence in Quantico, said it is likely that the know-how necessary to bring functional fitness to the fleet is already there at the unit level. He said martial arts instructor-trainers have been learning how to create functional fitness PT programs as part of the center’s curriculum since 2003.

“We labeled it ‘combat conditioning,’ but it incorporates a lot of the functional fitness that the lieutenant colonels are looking at right now,” he said.

Since these Marines already learn the tenets of functional fitness before hitting the fleet to coordinate unit-level martial arts, the plan so far is to let them coordinate PT when they get there too, Shusko said.

“In my heart, I believe these instructor-trainers with this expertise are doing it on their own anyway,” he said.

The Marine Corps hasn’t set a deadline for the end of the implementation planning phase, McDaniel and McGuire said, but both agree a change in the way units do PT is not far off.

McGuire said he expects the concept to become a reality “in the near future,” which McDaniel estimated was six months away.

But that’s not stopping anyone from trying out the concept early, McDaniel said.

“I’ve done this with ammo cans and rocks,” he said.

[SGRock]

General Al Gray was a proponent of this type of PT. He stated one time that he did not care if you could run 3 miles in some pretty little shorts. He cared whether or not you could fireman carry your buddy across a football field or not.
This is a very good idea in making PT a lot more specific. Being an 0341 gave you PLENTY of exercise in walking lots of miles and building upper body strength by carrying all that gear.