“Bootcamps” and the Military Mystique
Key Point: I’m not a fan of “military style training” or “bootcamps”.
I have friends who assumed I’d train them as if they were in the military if they worked with me. The simple answer is “No,” but I want to explain why. I feel it is important to say because, when people find out my background, they often think I’m going to put them through some grueling spartan style Agoge. The truth is that I don’t believe this kind of training is healthy or anywhere near as effective as the legends state. I’m a Marine. But unless you are going to war, there’s no reason to train like you are. Most of our training is geared towards mental toughness, not physical performance. Can you keep going even when it hurts? Can you fight through pain and even injury? Because you may have to. But 99% of you reading this won’t have to, and fighting through pain is why my shoulders, left hip, and feet hurt most of the time. Don’t do it.
As for the training itself, does it even really make you better? I suppose if you start in less than ideal shape (and you at least have to be at a minimum to ship to USMC Boot Camp), the exercise you do will improve you, but nowhere near as much as a focused, individualized, progressive program. Enlisted Marine Corps Bootcamp is certainly unpleasant, but it is intended to get you through (“The easiest way out is to graduate”). It makes you sweat and hurt, but it does not do much to improve your physical abilities.
Marine Corps Officer Candidate School (officer boot camp) takes a platoon of 60 guys who are already running sub 20min 3-miles, doing 23 pullups, and are often gym rats with strength and speed the Marine Corps doesn’t test. Then it physically breaks ⅓ of them. This is not training. It’s testing. They wanted to see whether we were tough enough (or lucky enough in most cases) to not suffer any major injuries while they gave us low protein meals, 3-5 hours of sleep a night, and grueling workouts. In my platoon, I do not believe a single person graduated in better physical shape than when they entered (maybe they got a little faster at the expense of their strength). The training we did made us mentally tough, but there are much better and easier ways to accomplish your physical goals. I want to build you, slowly, into the shape and fitness level you desire.
Once you get to the fleet and actually have some (not much) free time, the Marines, generally, who are in incredible shape compared to their peers are that way because they train on their own. They don’t get faster and stronger doing Unit Runs or Unit Physical Training consisting of various basic calisthenics. They run on their own and go to the gym to do their own, personalized workouts (which, of course, usually include those calisthenics as a part of their workout).
There’s no magical secret that the military keeps from the rest of the population. What it does do is instill into us a sense that our physical performance is a matter of life or death. This means we tend to work harder in our traditional workouts. But you can’t fake that. So, no, I don’t do bootcamps and I don’t train people “like the military.”