Physical Training in the Part-Time Military
Outside of annual training, part-time soldiers typically attend drill two days a month. Some units do longer quarterly drills, meaning even longer periods between training. There is no physical training program that will produce any results if you only do it one or two days a month. With that in mind, leaders in Reserve and National Guard units need to think differently about what they’re trying to achieve with physical training. Knowing that even the best possible physical training sessions are not going to make people fitter on their own, I would argue that the primary goal should be teaching them how to maintain their own fitness. The most important part of this process is teaching them to care about it.
Before diving into what should be taught, it is important to discuss the different types of learning, since health and fitness behaviors are complicated enough that they span multiple types.
The generally accepted domains of learning are Cognitive, Psychomotor, and Affective. These come from Bloom’s Taxonomy, which is commonly used in higher education, and these domains are sometimes referred to as knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSA).
Cognitive learning includes memorizing facts, recognizing patterns, and other mental skills. In the world of fitness, this might involve anatomy, energy systems, and planes of movement. Psychomotor learning involves both the use of tools and the skilled movement of our own bodies. The application of this to fitness is obvious, as it includes all movement skills. Affective learning relates to interests, attitudes, and values. For our purposes, it is teaching people to intrinsically value fitness and incorporate it into their lifestyle. The challenge of teaching fitness is that we must address all three.
In my experience, classes on these subjects tend to include a lot of cognitive (it’s easy to make slides for and the instructors get to show off their knowledge), a little psychomotor (classics include demonstrating barbell lifts and “practical exercise” workouts), and not nearly enough affective instruction. It is very difficult to write a lesson plan for passion, and teaching this domain is only possible if students believe that the instructor practices what they preach.
It’s easy to illustrate the importance of affective learning to health and fitness with an example: There are plenty of highly qualified exercise scientists, physical therapists, and coaches who are not physically fit. They have vast cognitive knowledge and (often) psychomotor skill, but for whatever reason they have not embraced the lifestyle habits required to apply that knowledge. On the other end of the spectrum, there are countless people who have no formal knowledge of evidence-based training but are still extremely fit. It does not matter how much you know about squatting or how skilled you are at the movement if you don’t care enough to actually do it regularly. The same applies to just about every aspect of fitness.
I’ve spent the last year teaching classes on health and fitness to Reserve battalions across the country, and in the process, I’ve refined my balance of the three domains. If I had more time, I’d likely include more psychomotor instruction (like example workouts to get the most out of little to no equipment), but as it is I present a minimal amount of cognitive material (policy updates, foundational principles, and correcting a few common misperceptions) but I focus the vast majority of the time on discussion-based affective content. Here are a couple of examples of topics I discuss:
The sickness–wellness–fitness continuum (which I admittedly borrowed from CrossFit, but they took it from Dr. John Travis anyway) is a great way to facilitate a conversation about how pursuing fitness gives us a buffer against injury, illness, and death. I usually use the example of two soldiers experiencing the birth of their first child, one who just barely meets the minimums for fitness and body composition, and the other who strives a bit higher. In both cases, they’ll experience higher stress, less sleep, and almost certainly disruptions to their normal exercise and nutrition habits. The fitter soldier has enough of a buffer that they can afford to lose a little. Unfortunately, the other soldier will quickly be at risk for adverse administrative actions (and the stress that comes with that), and even more importantly they also increase their risk for injuries, high blood pressure, and plenty more conditions.
This buffer becomes even more acutely important when we consider service members’ exposure to combat. The greater their buffer, the less likely they are to get injured simply by maneuvering. In the case of injuries inflicted through direct contact with the enemy, the buffer also increases their chances of survival.
Social Determinants of Health is an entire field of public health research and specific numbers certainly vary between sources, but these results from the County Health Rankings study show that our long-term health outcomes actually have relatively little to do with our actual healthcare. Things like healthy eating, regular exercise, and minimizing alcohol and tobacco use have nearly double the impact on our health. This can also continue into a conversation about the role that military units, installations, and policies play in the health of service members.
Leaders should absolutely incorporate physical training during drill, but they should reframe the objectives of this training. The most important outcome is that the participants leave with some new ideas for how to do enjoyable, effective physical training on their own. In fact, unnecessarily harsh or miserable physical training during drill is likely to have the opposite effect – it could make the soldiers dread exercise to the point that they avoid it outside of the rare occasions when they’re forced to participate.
If your unit is interested in training on these topics, please contact us!