ARMY has too many fat bodies.

[Danno 1,228]

FORT JACKSON, S.C. — Dawn breaks at this, the Army’s largest training post, with the reliable sound of fresh recruits marching to their morning exercise. But these days, something looks different.

That familiar standby, the situp, is gone, or almost gone. Exercises that look like pilates or yoga routines are in. And the traditional bane of the new private, the long run, has been downgraded.

This is the Army’s new physical-training program, which has been rolled out this year at its five basic training posts that handle 145,000 recruits a year. Nearly a decade in the making, its official goal is to reduce injuries and better prepare soldiers for the rigors of combat in rough terrain like Afghanistan.

But as much as anything, the program was created to help address one of the most pressing issues facing the military today: overweight and unfit recruits.

“What we were finding was that the soldiers we’re getting in today’s Army are not in as good shape as they used to be,” said Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, who oversees basic training for the Army. “This is not just an Army issue. This is a national issue.”

Excess weight is the leading reason the Army rejects potential recruits. And while that has been true for years, the problem has worsened as the waistlines of America’s youth have expanded. This year, a group of retired generals and admirals released a report titled “Too Fat to Fight.”

“Between 1995 and 2008, the proportion of potential recruits who failed their physicals each year because they were overweight rose nearly 70 percent,” the report concluded.

Though the Army screens out the seriously obese and completely unfit, it is still finding that many of the recruits who reach basic training have less strength and endurance than privates past. It is the legacy of junk food and video games, compounded by a reduction in gym classes in many high schools, Army officials assert.

As a result, it is harder for recruits to reach Army fitness standards, and more are getting injured along the way. General Hertling said that the percentage of male recruits who failed the most basic fitness test at one training center rose to more than one in five in 2006, up from just 4 percent in 2000. The percentages were higher for women.

Another study found that at one training center in 2002, 3 recruits suffered stress fractures of the pubic bone, but last year the number rose to 39. The reason, General Hertling said: not enough weight-bearing exercise and a diet heavy on sugared sodas and energy drinks but light in calcium and iron.

The new fitness regime tries to deal with all these problems by incorporating more stretching, more exercises for the abdomen and lower back, instead of the traditional situps, and more agility and balance training. It increases in difficulty more gradually. And it sets up a multiweek course of linked exercises, rather than offering discrete drills.

There are fewer situps, different kinds of push-ups and fewer long runs, which Army officials say are good for building strength and endurance but often lead to injuries. They also do not necessarily prepare soldiers for carrying heavy packs or sprinting short distances.

“We haven’t eliminated running,” General Hertling said. “But it’s trying to get away from that being the only thing we do.” (The new system does include plenty of sprinting.)

Some of the new routines would look familiar to a devotee of pilates, yoga or even the latest home workout regimens on DVD, with a variety of side twists, back bridges and rowinglike exercises. “It’s more whole body,” said First Lt. Tameeka Hayes, a platoon leader for a class of new privates at Fort Jackson. “No one who has done this routine says we’ve made it easier.”

The program was largely the brainchild of two former gym teachers who now run the Army Physical Fitness School based here. They are a military version of Click and Clack, finishing each other’s sentences and wisecracking with the alternating beat of gas-fired pistons.

One, Stephen Van Camp, is a former professional kick-boxer who unwittingly ran a marathon with a fractured ankle. “That’s not tough. That’s stupid,” he now says. The other, Frank Palkoska, is a former Army officer and West Point fitness instructor who adorns his office here with black-and-white photographs of 19th-century exercise classes and an assortment of retrograde equipment like medicine balls and wooden dumbbells.

“It’s back to the future,” Mr. Palkoska says before starting into a lament about the Xbox generation. “Technology is great, but it’s killing us.”

<SNIP>

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/us/31soldier.html?src=me&ref=general

[Obama 2012 1,714]

Pilate routines?

WEAK!

[HannahP 119]

Umm...pilates is actually kinda hard.

[Ban Hammer 13,427]

Umm...pilates is actually kinda hard.

so is running 5 miles in combat boots, as is a forced march with a ruck.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Good side: Less shin splints and messed up knees for the new recruits

Bad side: The kids can't hang when they need to look inside themselves, and find the intestinal fortitude to go the next meter, and the next 10 meters, and the next, whatever it takes, to complete the mission and bring everybody home.

[marklovetina 52]

so is running 5 miles in combat boots, as is a forced march with a ruck.

honey is walking/ running every sat. for 5-9 miles... that coz lots and big blisters on his feet... army is though...

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

honey is walking/ running every sat. for 5-9 miles... that coz lots and big blisters on his feet... army is though...

Put new socks, foot powder, and mole skin on the shopping list.

[marklovetina 52]

Put new socks, foot powder, and mole skin on the shopping list.

yep tnx.. sometimes honey feels lazy to wake up in the morning to do PT hehehe.. but of course army is the army he needs to do it,

[SuperDuper! 230]

[Amby 490]

awwww look at that poor kid with those inverted nipples

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

My name is Eric and Im packin some FAT!

[Fandango 1,439]

I remember back in high school, my dad kept complaining to my mom about her paying a personal trainer to train the both of us. We were in pretty good shape, went to the gym 3x a week at least.

So he (USMC) offered to train us himself. We were like 'oh we can do this in our sleep'

Wake up before the buttcrack of dawn to a whistle and yelling and being made to do a million squat thrusts and all kinda of other things, until every muscle in my body was crying. We did get in much better shape though, hahahah.

[Danno 1,228]

I remember back in high school, my dad kept complaining to my mom about her paying a personal trainer to train the both of us. We were in pretty good shape, went to the gym 3x a week at least.

So he (USMC) offered to train us himself. We were like 'oh we can do this in our sleep'

Wake up before the buttcrack of dawn to a whistle and yelling and being made to do a million squat thrusts and all kinda of other things, until every muscle in my body was crying. We did get in much better shape though, hahahah.

"Good Father stories" are heart warming for me.

[Nagishkaw 510]

awwww look at that poor kid with those inverted nipples

[fozzie 41]

You are a disgusting Fat Body

Edited September 3, 2010 by fozzie