Don’t you have another thread going over in the conditioning forum about running issues and wanting to post your best military PFT score?
Assuming maxing your score (what, push ups, pull ups, sit ups for max reps and 1.5 mile run for time I assume?) is an important goal for you, that’s the type of information I would want to include when people ask you why you are training.
As you have probably already noticed, getting bigger and stronger doesn’t necessarily help you out in this area, especially if you are already having pain 100m into a mile run. From what I can understand, at basic training you will run. A lot. You will do high rep calisthenics. A lot. You will do these things day in and day out. This will generally be easier at 180-190# than it will be at 210-220#.
Don’t get me wrong, I think getting bigger and stronger is a worthwhile goal on it’s own. It might even make you a better war fighter than a fast 1.5 mile time. Some guys (see Alpha’s log) can do both at once. They are generally a bit freakish (see Alpha).
Lift big, eat big, get big if you want to. You just might find that it may or may not support your other more immediate goals goals (i.e. strong PFT score/durability at basic training).
All the best.
[quote]batman730 wrote:
Don’t you have another thread going over in the conditioning forum about running issues and wanting to post your best military PFT score? [/quote]
That is me, yes.
[quote] Don’t get me wrong, I think getting bigger and stronger is a worthwhile goal on it’s own. It might even make you a better war fighter than a fast 1.5 mile time. Some guys (see Alpha’s log) can do both at once. They are generally a bit freakish (see Alpha).
Lift big, eat big, get big if you want to. You just might find that it may or may not support your other more immediate goals goals (i.e. strong PFT score/durability at basic training).
All the best.[/quote]
Therein lies my problem. I’d like to be able to continue to get stronger, because my main goal for lifting weights in life is to get as big and strong as possible. But that isn’t the best route when trying to get in shape for the military, as you’ve pointed out, and I have been struggling to try and find the best way to combine the two. I’m not necessarily trying to get bigger, but if I could still get stronger while improving in all the areas that I need to, that would be great. It will just take some thought, and maybe a little trial and error with some research to try and find the best route. It’s one reason I made this post. I appreciate the input.
In my experience, being big is not a very desirable trait in the military. If you can be big and maintain a fast run time then it isn’t an issue, however, a lot of guys sacrifice that run time for size and it can negatively impact their career.
One of the biggest impacts to your run time is going to be recovering from lower body lifts so the way I deal with that is running+conditioning multiple days a week but I have only 1 lower body day with minimal volume. I work up to 1 heavy set of squats, 1 heavy set of deadlifts, and some assistance work.