Combat Athleticism
Written by Nate Palin
Neither underestimate nor overestimate the value of athleticism for combat professionals.
In this article, I am referring less to those who possess the warfighter mentality and more to those who perform the warfighting profession in a manner that requires them to possess the physicality needed to maneuver on the literal battlefield.
“Combat athleticism” refers to the physicality needed to move multi-directionally across diverse terrain, under load, at varying speeds, while employing cognitively dominant skills within VUCA conditions.
Tactical Athlete
The term “tactical athlete” can be a contentious one.
Personally, I’ve shifted to using the “tactical professional” descriptor but I also try not to get overly wrapped up in semantics. In reality, viewing military professionals as a type of athlete has been beneficial, even if their job is primarily riding a desk, because it starts to connect physical fitness to job demands. The performance of mentally demanding tasks that are minimally physical is still enhanced by good health and well rounded fitness.
I argue that all humans, whether they are a weapon system or not, benefit from an athletic approach to training their physicality.
While many military professionals struggle to relate to the “athlete” moniker. It’s much easier to relate to if you conduct actions anywhere between the “Y” and the target because those actions start to resemble sport (with considerably higher stakes).
Athleticism for the Battlefield
I think of athleticism in five layers.
Positions
Coordination
Output
Capacity
Reality
While I prefer to prioritize and develop these layers sequentially, I have to coach what’s in front of me while recognizing that reality always wins. “Ideal” does not exist so maximizing preparation sometimes means shoring up a weakness or doubling down on a strength because an operator’s time, energy, and focus are primarily dedicated to competing demands.
When the enemy is casting its vote, warfighters need to display output (strength and power) and capacity (continuous and intermittent effort) regardless of whether or not their positions (mobility and stability) and coordination (patterns and rhythm) are developed enough to do so safely and efficiently.
Positions
In my opinion, the most beneficial physical attribute that coaches influenced within the military community is movement competency.
Operators conduct tasks that are three dimensional and imbalanced but their training was dominated by linear, bilateral exercises, in part thanks to the Army Physical Fitness Test of old (Push-ups, Sit-ups, 2-mile Run). Coaches came from the athletic world where there’s an emphasis on multiplanar movement proficiency.
The ability to achieve positions that support essential movements like rotating, squatting, hinging, lunging/stepping, pushing, pulling, and various forms of locomotion (running, crawling, climbing, shuffling, etc.) without compromising structural integrity of the body is paramount to the safety and efficiency of more dynamic athletic demands.
Enhancing positional integrity typically involves targeting mobility and stability. I think of these in tandem as the ability to get into position and maintain it, comfortably, without compensatory contribution from uninvolved parts of the body. I’m certain some textbooks disagree with my definition but good luck finding congruent definitions throughout exercise physiology literature.
Verbiage aside, ask yourself these three questions:
Can you get into position?
Can you hold an intelligent conversation while in position?
Can you get out of position?
A deep dive is beyond the scope of this broad but shallow blog; however, I do want to highlight that operators often struggle with the following:
Ankle Dorsiflexion (Foot Off the Gas Pedal)
Shoulder Flexion (Arms Overhead)
Hip Internal Rotation
Thoracic (Upper Back) Extension & Rotation
Cervical (Neck) Movement
Breathing
Teaching diaphragmatic breathing and pelvic positioning can both go a long way toward improving some of the positional limitations listed above, especially if increased self awareness is then applied within resistance training that includes primary movement patterns. Sometimes more aggressive interventions and specialists like physical therapists and athletic trainers are needed to unlock positions - particularly if pain is present.
Coordination
Coordination is nothing more than rhythmically piecing together different positions… That sounds easy until you watch a group of operators learning to skip (IYKYK).
Ignoring external forces, for the time being, I think of coordination as dynamically transitioning from one position to another while touching about a million positions along the way. Imagine the collection of frames you would amass if you took a photo every tenth of a second as somebody descended into the bottom of a squat and ascended back to a standing position.
The seamless accumulation of those positions also occurs with a component of timing.
Timing is not synonymous with speed because timing often involves various speeds. Teaching how to perform a movement with various speeds is a great technique for enhancing coordination. For example, slowing down the descent of a Squat can facilitate a more rapid change of direction that also influences a more explosive ascent because too rapid a descent might compromise positional integrity.
The squat is a very linear, bilateral, and singular example. As a more relevantly complex example, imagine an operator transitioning from a kneeling firing position behind the corner of a building to sprint across the street to enter a doorway and clear a room. There are micro and macro coordinative elements to a battlefield task that amounts to maybe ten seconds of movement.
Most importantly, those ten seconds of movement must be subconscious because they’re supporting marksmanship, decision making, communication, and other life or death determining executive functions.
Output
Output is adding strength, speed, and power to positions and coordination.
Output is not arbitrary and absolute. It is contextual and relative to the task at hand. If you can pick up a 405 pound barbell but you can’t pickup a casualty, then your output requires more relevant development to make it applicable and adequate. Typically, this simply requires including some training that is less ergonomically friendly and places you in less mechanically advantageous positions.
“Pallet jacks are strong as an ox but they can’t roll over a pencil.”
Beware your weakness. I’ve seen springy operators who can hit their heads on the ceiling but crumple upon landing - I call them “Tigger turned Piglet.” But I’ve also witnessed plenty of “Eeyores” who have great strength but minimal power or movement competency. Strength, speed, and mobility are not competitive components of physicality when trained properly. They only become mutually invasive when training is too one dimensional for too long.
An operator should be able to move himself, move his shit, and move his buddy in a variety of ways at a variety of speeds. To achieve this, ensure your training includes adding resistance and velocity to ALL the movement patterns (including rotation), applied with a vector of force that relates to the demands of combat. Oh, and don’t forget about grip!
Capacity
Capacity determines the sustainability of output.
There will always be a tradeoff between output and capacity but you can train to increase your ability to stave off the fatigue (since it “makes cowards of us all”). I think of capacity as a continuous effort or a repeated, intermittent effort.
Combat athleticism involves both longer outputs at lower intensities and short outputs at higher intensities, and your capacity serves as a modifier of those intensity levels.
Just like output, capacity is relative to task. An hour of downhill skiing and an hour of cross country skiing each place different demands on the body. There is a central element from the heart, lungs, and brain, and more local factors from countless contributors down to the cellular level. Training should reflect an appreciation for central AND peripheral (local) contributors, meaning there eventually needs to be some degree of specificity in movement, resistance, and velocity.
I like to divide and conquer first by initially developing central components of capacity while separately developing output of the local workforce. In other words, if your resting heart rate is 70 beats per minute and/or your deadlift is less than 1.5x your bodyweight, or you can’t step up onto a 12” box without compensating for inadequate hip mobility, I’m not going to throw a ruck on your back and ask you to hike a mountain. Similarly, I’d prefer to teach you how to sprint in the absence of fatigue and then have you condition with a safer modality like an Assault Bike, before I use sprinting as a way to develop your capacity - let alone sprinting under load from various start positions like prone and half kneeling.
Reality
Just like the enemy, reality gets a vote.
Combat reality is V.U.C.A.
Volatile
Uncertain
Complex
Ambiguous
It is, therefore, impossible to fully prepare for the reality of war.
In my experience, including realistic elements of combat scenarios is best reserved for after a baseline of physicality has been achieved. Adding skill demands to physical training too soon muddies the developmental waters and can create cross cannibalization instead of cross pollination. However, we don’t always have the time or the buy-in needed to be patient and methodical in adding layers of athleticism so sometimes it beneficial to conduct “combat focused” PT sooner rather than later.
I played my own devil’s advocate and made a case for it within my 3rd podcast episode, “A Case for ‘Combat’ PT.”
There are less extreme doses of reality that can be sprinkled in to season physical training without spoiling it. Here are some examples of “seasoning” that I’m not afraid to incorporate fairly early on:
Footwear
Gloves
Tools of the Trade (litter, skedco, dummy, ropes, chains, rucks, kit, ladders, etc.)
Terrain
Weather
Under Fueled State (not extreme)
The next level of reality I’d include involves more cognitive and fine motor skills. Here is a far from exhaustive list of some examples:
Decision Making
Communication
Reaction to Stimuli
Knot Tying
Weapon Manipulation
Navigation
Marksmanship
Realistic scenarios that, in my opinion, are better left for true combat preparation include sleep and caloric deprivation, livefire with separate maneuvering entities, anything involving vehicles and explosives, and other high risk operational tasks.
Truth told, I have walked into a gym filled with half awake operators at 6am, turned the lights off and told them, “Sleep,” because it was better for their athleticism than any training I had concocted that morning.
Realistic training should start with developing the foundational positions, coordination, output, and capacity needed to support combat relevant athleticism versus immersing unathletic operators into an extremely realistic environment.
Endex
Physicality plays a part in combat effectiveness. Its role cannot be ignored but be careful not to overemphasize it because, in reality, nobody is faster than bullets.
Physical fitness is an easy way to provide an operator the best possible platform from which he or she can display the skills that most influence the outcome of a mission. Strategy, tactics, skills, and techniques can all benefit from elevating physicality but oftentimes they’re better enhanced independently, and sometimes prioritizing cognitive function and fine motor skills in place of general physicality is what’s best for the warfighter.
The weight room is not the battlefield. The battlefield is not a field of play. Athleticism is not the star - It is, at most, the supporting cast.
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