Military Fitness 2011 - An overview of the year that was and some cold hard data.

Well another year has come to a close. Next year approaches, I have been posted to a new unit and with that a new group of soldiers to train. New base levels of fitness, different strengths, weaknesses, attitudes and medical restrictions. But enough of that, lets look at some cold hard data from 2011.

As a group, there has been an improvement in fitness of 20.3% collectively. This data was drawn from periodic fitness assessments which covered VO2Maximal testing, posterior, anterior and core strength assessments. Additionally data was drawn from additional VO2Max and VO2Avg results ascertained during cardiovascular sessions. Furthermore, data was also drawn from load bearing exercises ascertained during strength, power and other weight orientated sessions.

Individually though, is really where some of these guys and girls shined. Most of them had never really trained in this manner before, all but one of them had no idea what a metcon was. Some people had quite high levels of fitness, some were just waiting for the right kind of push to change their training program for the better. Never the less, there was a wide level of improvement across the group, from 100% down to 5% improvements. The level of improvements though are not indicative of base levels of fitness in the beginning, naturally you would expect a person of above standard fitness to improve in regards to percentages less than a person of standard or less than standard fitness. This was strangely not the case in this situation.

There were admittedly four people who actually decreased in fitness, one of which I can say with absolute confidence did actually improve, but due to injury and circumstances outside of his control resulted in data showing a negative figure. The other three though, well let me just say that you reap what you sow. Be it just plain laziness, borderline malingering or exaggeration of injuries, then you reap the results of that. You know who you are, names need not be mentioned. If you are still thinking that there has been a mistake, that surely I did not mean you with the others, well your wrong.

Below is a list of members in descending order of fitness improvement:

1. DC - 100.3%
2. UA - 37.31%
3. DD - 35.88% - outstanding improvements from the oldest member in the troop at 47.
4. AS - 31.41% 
5. MP - 22.70% - the numbers do not lie mate, you improved that much.
6. ST - 17.75%
7. MO - 12.61%
8. DM - 10.06%
9. JL - 9.85%
10. TT - 9.34% - phenomenally fit to begin with, 3.30min the first time he did Fran and this was after he learnt how to do kipping pull ups and thrusters by watching the guys before his turn. Outstanding effort all year mate. 
11. ND - 7.00%
12. JK - 7.00%
13. EM - 5.22% - another very fit lad to start with, great effort this year mate.
14. BF - -0.74% - unfortunately you received some badly timed injuries mate, good luck next year.
15. LA - -0.88%
16. AI - -3.23%
17. SL - -8.19%

Not all members are mentioned above, I did not have enough data on some due to deployments etc to include them without feeling less than 100% confident that it was a true representation of their efforts throughout 2011. For this reason they have been excluded from both individual and group statistics.

Looking forward to next year, hopefully I will have improved the fitness tracking spreadsheet/database to point the point where I can utilise anthropometric data to better calculate power output, and find some formulas for calculating VO2Max and VOAvg for cycling machines and rowers. If anyone has these formulas, you would be saving me hours of scrawling the internet searching for them if you email sydneystrengthand conditioning@live.com.au with the appropriate formulas.

As far as Military Fitness sessions are concerned, they will return mid to late January 2012. Until then though, I will continue to post my personal training sessions I will be conducting after I complete this week of active recovery.

Watch out for an article really soon which reveals how I convinced my hieracy to adopt my proposed training program at the beginning of the year. Some of you may not agree with the programming, cyclic conditioning, 'randomly' varied intensities or even the psychological stimuli and responses proposed, others may. Never the less, the cold hard data reflects the hypothesis proposed via the training method instigated. And it worked.