Fitness benchmarks for recruit training?

liamocosno

Well lads I’m going for the cadets next year- I got to the group assessment previously and had to drop out due to injury- and just wondering if people have advice on what standards to set myself to not fail physically in the first phase of becoming a soldier. For example, I know the PDF have the fitness tests and prep advice for the entry portion, but I have a sneaking suspicion actual army training might be just a little bit tougher than a 2km run and some push-ups...

Any training advice for any military I’ve seen has centred totally around just running and doing push-ups, and as someone who plays sport and lifts weights, I’m highly sceptical that’s all there is to it. I know for the ARW there are high standards like a 17km March with 20kg, but that’s a long long way off obviously. Should I be practicing weighted marches as much as running? Should I be lifting much or is it not much about strength? They say preparation removes fears so I just want to be at my physical peak relative to the strains of recruit training to give myself the best chance this time round.

any advice at all would be appreciated. TIA

durfling99

I somehow screwed up posting this the first time.

Don't worry about reaching anything but the standard of the fitness test. If you can reach that you can pass recruit training. It's all about being built up, they don't expect you to walk in a finished product. You'll also be better off going in undertrained and healthy vs close to overtraining. If there's a time to rest and recover, recruit training is NOT it.

That said, if you're looking for specific military programs I can recommend the Tactical Barbell books. Especially book 2, conditioning. I got my run time from 10:15 to 09:30 running the Base Building program in that book.

galwaytt

My son joined in March 22 and he confined his training to weights, push ups & basic cardio - not even doing long runs, only occasional light runs. But he's lean anyway.

He had his Passing Out in June, and 3-Star completed since.

His training as pointed out above brought him from being a good fitness to the Army fitness and had no issue completing the long marches/FTX etc with weight, as the job of Army training is to teach you that. Going in as a hyper-conditioned gym bunny would probably be counter-productive.

Get in good shape, practice the phys ed excersises you'll be tested on, no need to go beyond that tbh.