need some help

[CuongNhuka]

This question has a little back story that I think I need to tell. I'm in JROTC (if you don't know what that is, think the movie Major Pain). My schools JROTC program has a team called Raider. I went to the last Raider Challenge, and we did over all not so bad (fourth overall). What we need to work on is PT (which is about 85% of Raider Team).
So my question is what conditioing advice/drills could you give us. I post this here because it could be useful to other Martial Artist. The only requirements are no weights. Because of what we have to train with, we cann't use weights.
Thanks in advance!

 

[bushidomartialarts]

depends on your goal. is your goal to simply score well on PT tests? or is your goal overall fitness?

if the former, make a list of the PT exercises you need to improve them. then take the test one every other day or so. you'll improve significantly in a short time. when training for performance, do the thing you'll perform later.

if the latter, go to a local gym and sign up for a free intro from one of the personal trainers (most of the gyms seem to have that deal). tell them what you want, take careful notes, then go home and do it in your garage.

or buy the lessons, if you have that kind of cash to throw around.

 

[MJS]

What does the challenge consist of?

 

[CuongNhuka]

I should have listed what all is in the course, and there fore what we need. we do:
2 minutes of pushups
2 minutes of sit ups
2 mile run
10k road march (about 6.2 miles)
an endurance obsticle course (that has a lot of it's own)
orienteering
first aid
marksmanship
we have to know 8 knotts
make and cross a rope bridge

The obsticle course includes the first aid, orienteering, and knotts. As well as climbing a 20 ft rope, low crawl, verticle wall climb, doing a minute of push ups/sit ups with a 90lb pvc pipe (it's filled with sand), and pulling a hummvee 20 meters. All while carrying a 30lb strecher.

So alot of this is an enudrance test, and it uses every muscle in your body, and even some you didn't know existed. Some of which may not exist, but were created simply to make you more tired, stiff, and to provide something else to cramp up. Yes, I'm kidding about that last part.

any ideas people?

 

[bushidomartialarts]

do the test. every other day. with intent. as close as you can to exactly as it will be done at go time.

about once a week, push harder. do four minutes of pushups and situps and run four miles. alternately, give yourself 1:45 to do as many pushups as you normally do in two minutes and run two miles in the time you usually run one and a quarter.

if your intent is to blow through this test like sherman through georgia, practice the test. if you want to ace a kata for a belt grade, you practice the kata. same thing applies here.

 

[jks9199]

You need to stick to the basic calisthenics... Push ups, sit ups, side-straddle-hops (aka jumping jacks), mountain climbers, windmills, pull ups, running, etc. Dig around for the "Daily Dozen" exercises, and similar items.

Also -- for that obstacle course -- you need to make yourself the same obstacles (as much as you can), like that 90 lb PVC pipe or rope climb.

Good luck!

 

[MJS]

I should have listed what all is in the course, and there fore what we need. we do:
2 minutes of pushups
2 minutes of sit ups
2 mile run
10k road march (about 6.2 miles)
an endurance obsticle course (that has a lot of it's own)
orienteering
first aid
marksmanship
we have to know 8 knotts
make and cross a rope bridge

The obsticle course includes the first aid, orienteering, and knotts. As well as climbing a 20 ft rope, low crawl, verticle wall climb, doing a minute of push ups/sit ups with a 90lb pvc pipe (it's filled with sand), and pulling a hummvee 20 meters. All while carrying a 30lb strecher.

So alot of this is an enudrance test, and it uses every muscle in your body, and even some you didn't know existed. Some of which may not exist, but were created simply to make you more tired, stiff, and to provide something else to cramp up. Yes, I'm kidding about that last part.

any ideas people?

Looks like you already received some great advice, so I can only echo what they've said. You already know what you have to do, so I'd just keep working hard on the pushups, sit ups, etc.

 

[kidswarrior]

do the test. every other day. with intent. as close as you can to exactly as it will be done at go time.

about once a week, push harder. do four minutes of pushups and situps and run four miles. alternately, give yourself 1:45 to do as many pushups as you normally do in two minutes and run two miles in the time you usually run one and a quarter.

if your intent is to blow through this test like sherman through georgia, practice the test. if you want to ace a kata for a belt grade, you practice the kata. same thing applies here.

Have to go with bushidoMA on this. Sounds a lot like boot camp as I remember it, and the way we got through the 'tests' (the whole thing was a test, really) was just doing what we did every day.

Be sure to let us know how you do!!

 

[LuzRD]

push harder. do four minutes of pushups and situps and run four miles. alternately, give yourself 1:45 to do as many pushups as you normally do in two minutes and run two miles in the time you usually run one and a quarter.

practice the test.

running! lots and lots of running! as well as the push ups, sit ups, and such of course.
to stomp all over this test you need to attack it, not just participate! that means when you practice your run, you run 4 miles and strive for better time/mile ratio than you did the previous time. and strive for that much better time on your 2 mile run (think sprint the last 1/2 mile, yes that takes hard work).

running IMO helps everything else that youll be doing, it improves breathing, increases your energy, and basically once you dont care about running till it hurts and then running through the pain (and liking it) youll see that you can push yourself beyond what you thought you could ever do.

as for the no weights available, thats fine. you wont NEED weights. actually IMO your better off without weights when you start working out. by that i mean that body weight is more than enough to make substantial improvements to your physical abilities to a certain point (in a short period of time). of course a buddy sitting on your back while your doing pushups takes the place of free weights (but thats tough stuff, and i wouldnt suggest it. just showing you that there are ways around "challenges")

ok so, wake up. go for a run. go to school/do your thing. go work out with your JROTC team (this is the push ups, sit ups, pull ups, anything you can think of that hurts your muscles due to strenuous activity. i suggest finding a website that targets calisthenic type workouts. i know theyre out there, i just forgot to bookmark them). go home. go for a walk before bed. wake up the next day and repeat until your team wins. (oh and dont forget the healthy eating, it shouldnt need to be said but basic rule of thumb is if it tastes good, and all your friends like it, dont eat it!)

 

[MBuzzy]

Again - a lot of GREAT advice. For the PT portion of the test, nothing helps you do running, push ups and sit ups better than doing push ups, sit ups, and running. Do A LOT of them. You can never run too much and you can never do too many push ups and sit ups. Some of the biggest meanest Marines I've ever met never touched a weight to get that way. Want to add some variety - I suggest flutter kicks, bicycle sit ups, reverse push ups, diamond push ups, squats, walking lunges, sprint drills (sprint XX seconds, run XX seconds...REALLY helps distance running), etc.

Next thing - if you don't have one....go buy the Ranger Handbook. If you can't find it in a regular book store or don't have access to a military bookstore, there are a few other great survival handbooks out there. The SAS (British special forces) has a great one that is available at most book stores. This will help you with first aid, knots, orienteering and most will tell you how to make a good rope bridge (mine does).

Orienteering (Land Nav) - get yourself a good Lensatic compass and go practice. Do you know if you will have a map or not? If so, is it a contour map? With a good contour map, you don't even need a compass. Dead Reckoning is the best way to navigate, just use the contours. If you have no map or are in a heavily wooded area, compasses work GREAT. Just be sure to not rely solely on a compass, have another form of verification - ESPECIALLY if you are in a flat area with few contours or land marks.

Marksmanship.....gotta shoot. That's it.

Road march - BUILD UP. Best way to train is to take them on increasingly longer marches with increasing loads. You're ready once you can do at least your objective plus 2-3 klicks with 10-15 extra lbs.

O course......good luck. These are REAL hard to train for. Best way is to just go use the environment or attempt to build your own. BE CAREFUL - you can get yourself or others hurt if you don't do it right. The other stuff here will help out a lot. Specifically for O courses though, pull ups help a GREAT deal. Almost all obstacle courses require you to pull your own weight around a great deal.

Please feel free to PM me about this, I've done a LOT of challenges like this and run through a lot of the stuff you're dealing with.

 

[Shaderon]

I'm in Bushido's camp, do the test, but I'd agree, get to the stage where you are doing double what you need to on the excercises, then when you actually Do the test you can go all out and still have some left at the end.

Leg strength excercises will help with the running, squats for instance, but make sure you do them right, a wrongly performed excercise can not only be near useless, it can do damage too.

 

[kingkong89]

congrats, i myself am in jrootc, the best place to find exercises is to ask your instructors if they know anu or check on the web under rotck exercises. hope that helps

 

[Ninjamom]

Bushido's right- do the test. To build endurance, you might try a "tabata" version of the exercise:

1. 30 sec as many pushups as you can do as fast as you can do them
2. 15 sec. rest
3. Immediately start over with step1, rinse and repeat.
4. Do this for 8 reps.

Do the same with situps.

Do the same with wind sprints, only sprint 30 sec., /jog 15 sec.

Get creative with a mix-and-match:
1. 30 sec. pushups.
2. Sprint 50 yards
3. 30 seconds pushups
4. Sprint back
5. Repeat 5 or 6 or 7 times.

This will help your endurance on the specific exercies/motions/muscles that you need. Do these things twice a week; practice the whole obstacle course at least twice a week.

 

[CuongNhuka]

Wow, this is more replys then I thought I'd get. Atleast in one day, so were to start...

To every one who said we need to actuly do the test, theres a few problems with that. To start, it takes 10 hours to do the full course. Next, we don't have a hummvee to use, or alot of the equipment/space needed. We do have the 90lb pvc pipe. But useing it requires atleast 6 people, and we normally get 4 to practice. The rest are involved with other things, but train on there own.

LuzRD and Mbuzzy got the idea.

LuzRD: Some good ideas, I'll talk to the team captian and see if he'll make it a point to inculde that stuff, or atleast suggest it's done at home.

MBuzzy: Good tips. We practice the none-pt stuff as much as we can, which isn't much to do training schedules. But we do it well, all things considered. We actully have a Raider Hand Book that covers everything we need and more. It lists (as an example) the 12 we need (8 at the test and four for the rope bridge) plus anouther couple dozen. And I get the feeling that it's just the Ranger Handbook with some of the SEALS training manuel spliced into it.

Ninjamom and Kingkong, the training schedule idea you suggested is a great idea. So great, that we already do something like it. Same with getting training exercieses from the instructor.

So there we go. Great tips, good ideas, and looking forward to more!