Client Success Story - Prepping for Basic Training
Nathan is preparing for US Army Basic Training in the summer. When he approached me about training, he’d been doing a basic lifting and calisthenic routine, and had good push-up and sit-up numbers along with good run times. He’d been in the gym for a while but needed help further improving his performance. As he’s joining the military in his 30’s, he wanted to maximize his physical abilities to help his ranking for OCS and eventually Ranger school.
His program reflects a few unique needs:
More frequent exposure to heavier weights – his calisthenics and running numbers were pretty good (80 push-ups/77 sit-ups/14:40 2 mile), but he didn’t have a lot of experience moving heavy weights in all exercises, which is important for rucking, sprinting under load in a combat situation, rescuing another soldier, and reducing injury risk.
Although the new Army ACFT won’t take effect for a while, he wanted to be prepared for its demands, which is also conveniently a good way to prepare for the general fitness needs of a soldier.
He also had a time-consuming job, nagging injuries, and a growing family, along with all the stress that goes along with those things.
Nathan’s program is based around improving his weaker areas while maximizing his strengths. He’s focusing most of his energy into improving his trap bar deadlift (a tested event on the ACFT and a great indicator of total-body strength) and his overall upper body strength. He’s still running a few days per week and doing calisthenics, as well as participating in weekly recruiter-led workouts.
Here’s his progress so far over about 10 weeks (still going strong):
His previous best trap bar deadlift was 275x1. He has now pulled 270 for 3x5 and WEEKLY pulls 235-265 for 8 total sets of 4-6. Safe to say his deadlift has gone up a little.
Despite his nagging injuries, he’s taken his pull-ups from 3 reps when we started to 8 reps in week 10.
He’s still running and conditioning 3-4x per week with runs and rucks of up to an hour or more (just because you want to get stronger doesn’t mean conditioning has to suffer).
He’s successful because he hasn’t let small injuries or life events derail his progress. He gets the workouts in, even if he has to train very early or shuffle days around to accommodate his work schedule.
Check out this article for some basics on preparing for the Army ACFT, and send me a message if you need help improving your fitness for basic training.
If you’re looking for a fitness trainer in the Mt Juliet/Hermitage/Nashville TN area, online fitness training, or just need some advice to get your fitness program started, contact me