Combat Capacity
Part 1 - Considerations
Written by Nate Palin
A few years ago I presented, “Road to Nowhere: The Military’s Dangerous Obsession with Distance Running.” I ran (pun intended) a little too long on communicating strong evidence for how and why the military’s universal reliance on long (and middle) distance running causes issues while failing to achieve its intent to build capacity.
This article does not aim to qualify the systemic issues but here’s a brief recap:
Most physical training leaders lack the ability to safely and effectively manage volume and intensity.
High injury and attrition rates are associated with inappropriate application of running (too much too soon).
Injuries compromise combat readiness.
Treating injuries and medically discharging soldiers cost a lot of time and money.
Professional coaches are an investment that save more money than they cost because they can assign safer and more effective physical training.
Professional coaches can assign safer and more effective variables (exercise, volume, intensity, rest, etc.) to guide a progressive approach to running AND assign alternative options that achieve similar (and sometimes superior) outcomes.
Sidenote: If you are a coach in the military space, you should be savvy on both running and general conditioning best practices.
Conditioning Competency
We implemented several alternative conditioning strategies as a coaching team at 1st Special Forces Group and consistently observed objectively positive outcomes. I would attribute our many approaches to three places:
One, Coach Rob Hartman dove DEEP into all things conditioning by reading countless books and articles, connecting with and interviewing elite level subject matter experts, and refusing to be satisfied with generally accepted concepts until he diffused and reconstructed them into more logical, applicable, and defensible tools that we could use to build better conditioned operators. I cannot stress enough how influential Rob was as a catalyst to our crew upgrading our practices.
Two, I conducted my own exploration into coaching amateur endurance athletes and consumed resources that supported that journey. I was also fortunate to take a grad school class taught by Jack Daniels, famous exercise physiologist and one of the world’s best running coaches.
Three, I credit the simplicity, accessibility, and applicability of Joel Jameison’s Ultimate MMA Conditioning and other public videos and articles he shares. We did not need advanced periodization for triathletes, we needed practical strategies to enhance the array of capacity needs possessed by professionals whose job is as much cerebral as it is physical.
Warfighters too often follow modality centric programming and overlook the inherent disadvantages of a singular, linear solution with limited transferability to the demands of combat.
While our process boasts x’s and o’s, our success toasts to transferability. Operators need to sustain both continuous and repeated intermittent efforts at a variety of intensities, ranging from brief and highly explosive to grueling and extremely taxing to long and light winded. The context of their efforts typically involves heavy load carriage, battle drills like react to contact, and less physically but more mentally demanding tasks like navigation, high risk decision making, and marksmanship.
“While a high efficiency of intake, distribution, and utilization of oxygen makes continuous bouts less tiring and enhances recoverability between intermittent bouts of work, cyclically linear modalities like running possess limited transferability.
Trust me, I ran considerably faster 2 and 5 miles than plenty of Rangers who could smoke me on a 12-mile ruck - even when I got my ruck time down to about 2 hours. ”
Still, running is the military’s preferred way to train capacity because it’s easy to test and easy to execute without equipment and expertise. Not to mention, it is a traditional form of physical training. However, it’s also easy to overlook the importance of programming with informed nuance instead of the proverbial hammer of “this worked for me so it’ll work for you.” An informed approach includes an understanding of progressing variables like volume and intensity, and individual contributions like skill, strength, power, anthropometrics, body composition, stiffness, experience, competing demands, and several more.
I did not use an informed approach when I woke up my squadmate to run the airfield every night so he’d stop falling out of squad leader led runs - Guess who had to carry him…
Training Transferability
Capacity is relative to the task at hand. It is not an absolute.
My professional opinion is that we need to focus less on developing distance runners within the armed forces and focus more on being just good enough at running to pass mandatory tests while increasing capacity more relevant to the demands of warfighting.
To increase transferability to the battlefield, consider at least a few of the following factors when building your conditioning program (meant to be informative and extensive but not exhaustive):
Central Contributions
Movements
Local Contributions
Mindset
Distance & Duration
Intermittent vs Continuous
Output
Load
Personal Preference
Cognitive Demands
Fatigue
Nutrition & Hydration Status
Environment
Central Contributions
If someone is severely deconditioned or even has a resting heart rate of 65+, I’m honestly less worried about vocational specificity and more concerned with his or her general cardiovascular and respiratory health (and maybe their stress and body composition plus other contributing factors). I’ll promote the mode of conditioning with the highest likelihood of being performed consistently, aiming for longer bouts at lower intensities but accepting anything that elevates the heart rate enough to move the needle. Advanced considerations that identify and target limiting factors are beyond the scope of this article, in part because they are beyond what is needed by the vast majority of military personnel.
Movement(s)
Running is a specific modality within a collection of patterns that I label locomotion. Warfighters need capacity to support other forms of locomotion (climbing, crawling, swimming, shuffling, stepping - all typically performed under load) and other patterns like rotating, pushing/pulling, hinging, and squatting. Some of their capacity training should include these patterns.
Local Contributions
Movements don’t occur without a supporting cast where the work is being done. Develop contributors like muscles, bones/joints, and tendons in a way that prepares them for the capacity demands that will be placed on them. This might include more isometric holds, eccentric time under tension, or higher repetitions than you are used to for certain movements. It might also include more extensive and less intensive plyometrics. Oh, and don’t forget grip!
Mindset
When I use the term “mindset” here, I’m really referring to your relationship with certain capacity demands and how your body responds to an impending performance. For example, PFC Palin might have sprung out of bed for a timed 2-mile run but lose sleep the night before a heavy 10-mile ruck. However, SGT Palin was larger, stronger, and more experienced so he was considerably more comfortable with rucking.
Distance & Duration
This one should be obvious! Instead of arbitrarily assigned distance or duration, consider the length of what you’re training to accomplish. One major caveat here is that there is value is training both comparatively longer and shorter lengths than your “event.” This is one reason most coaches are fans of polarized training that includes longer and lower intensity sessions plus shorter and higher intensity sessions, with fewer medium length and intensity sessions. Running slower 5-miles and faster ¼ miles definitely improved my 2-mile run time.
Intermittent vs Continuous
Do capacity needs include any recovery between bouts? Are they a combination of continuous and intermittent? How intense are the rest periods? Do you lack the ability to repeat an effort or do you lack sufficient output within each effort? Does training one way enhance the other way?
Be careful not to only train as you fight.
If you always got better at “the thing” by doing “the thing” then we wouldn’t need to diversify training. Heck, we wouldn’t even need to allocate time to physical training because we could just do the job and call it good. Developing continuous capacity aids in sustaining repeated efforts and developing intermittent capacity aids in performing continuous bouts that touch higher intensities.
Output (Intensity)
Capacity is always connected to output (speed, strength, power, heart rate, etc.) and they have an inverse relationship. You typically train capacity with the intent to either hold a given output for longer bouts (ex. Running 3 miles at the same pace you used to run 2 miles), perform a given bout at a higher output (ex. Running a 2-mile faster than you used to run it), or perform a given output for a given duration with higher efficiency (ex. Running your 2-mile at the same pace but with a lower heart rate). You could also run given distance under load that you used to only run at body weight.
Much like we toggle work and rest periods when considering continuous and intermittent needs, we simultaneously adjust how hard and fast we execute conditioning.
The intensity you need most is likely the one you train least.
Load
Load is included within intensity but I’d like to address a couple of additional considerations. How is the load carried? Is it on your back or are you dragging/pushing it? Is it restrictive like body armor or asymmetrically applied like your weapon system? Does it influence your posture in a way that negatively affects your ability to take in oxygen? And the obvious, how heavy is it?
Training under load is not always the best way to develop the capacity needed to perform in loaded conditions but it should be one of the ways you approach capacity development. Undersized or weaker warfighters likely benefit more from traditional resistance training while larger or stronger warfighters likely benefit more from deloaded conditioning. However, at some point they should both include loaded conditions that are similar to those anticipated in combat.
Personal Preference
I believe in establishing a positive relationship with physical activity. Coaches love to say that working out is doing what you want while training is doing what you should; however, I promote aiming to align the should and the want to increase likelihood of execution. I also think it’s okay to sacrifice a little transferability to appease personal preferences. Check as many boxes as possible while respecting the value of enjoyment.
Cognitive Demands
I won’t even scratch the surface, and rather outsource to a cognitive performance specialist to deep dive in the future, but want to at least suggest we keep in mind that combat capacity is almost always performed with simultaneous cognitive demands. I prefer to develop both the skill and the capacity separately before combining them but I do recognize the mutual effects of each on the other. The battlefield should not be the first place that cognitive and capacity demands collide. You’d be amazed at how much slower a fit Ranger’s RPAT time is when he has to shoot or navigate in the middle of it. You’d be just as amazed at how poorly a marksman shoots or a leader makes decisions when he’s fatigued from physical exertion.
Fatigue
I trust Rangers and Marines to demonstrate considerably higher capacity after a weekend of adult beverages and little sleep. There is something to be said for performing well when we are not at our best. While none of my deployments involved late nights at the bar, they did include slugfests of missions carried out in a severely under recovered state. I’m not promoting poor lifestyle choices that culminate in slamming a Monster on Monday morning in between puffing a Marlboro Red before your 7-mile squad run but I am suggesting you conduct some of your capacity training in a prefatigued condition. You need to be prepared for high op tempo deployments when follow on missions are the norm than the exception.
Nutrition & Hydration Status
Practice your fueling strategy in training. Just because my good buddy Will could perform long ops under arduous conditions like altitude and heat on nothing but Copenhagen and the warm post mission Coke in his cargo pocket, doesn’t mean we all should. Incorporate intentional nutrition and hydration practices in training to see how your body responds. Similar to fatigue, you should also sometimes train under insufficiently fueled/hydrated conditions to both build a tolerance and a relationship with the discomfort.
Environment
Green Berets from the Pacific Northwest run significantly (probably even statistically) slower 5-miles at dive school in Key West because it’s hot, humid, windy, and the terrain is different. The weather (temperature, precipitation, humidity) and the terrain (altitude, surface, incline) undoubtedly affect your capacity. For example, I found preparing soldiers for high level selections was less effective when that preparation did not include off road movements. Their lower legs were not conditioned for uneven terrain even though they consistently posted impressive ruck times on the road.
You also want to gain familiarity with gear. Cold weather garments should be worn strategically (this is a future blog post) and you should also have a strategy for dealing with heat when you don’t have the option of silkies and sandals. Maybe most importantly, you want to put your footwear to the test. I got lucky when I took a fresh pair of Solomon’s literally out of the box and wore them for a long night of walking up and down a mountain in everything from sleet and gravelly mud to thigh high snow for a nasty training mission.
Recap
I set out to write an article where I shared some of my recipes for satisfying the warfighter’s appetite for capacity. Instead, I’ve served up food for thought when cooking up conditioning sessions that target increasing your capacity in a manner that is relevant and transferable to your profession.
Running is not a bad approach, it’s just a limited approach. This reality becomes more evident when you keep in mind the 13 considerations I shared with you above. I share this sentiment as someone who enjoys running and usually maxed the run on my PT test. As a private, I maxed the run but went down for the count on an 8-mile movement to the range because I was small, weak, underprepared for the heat, dehydrated, and insufficiently fueled. I learned from that experience. I became a better warfighter and am now a better coach because of it.
