In determining your unit's level of fitness which components of fitness would have the best level of train-up on your platoon and what activities would place an extra demand on your cardiovascular?

Answer 1

This question is based on your individual unit...Here is a couple of different ones.

**My unit's level of fitness would be considered average. All of our sections minus headquarters has a 24/7 work schedule. Needless to say PT sometimes falls by the side. We don't have many APFT failures, but our PT scores aren't soaring off of the charts. I believe that good cardio endurance is the key to all APFT events! If you can control your breathing, then your muscles will be able to process oxygen better! Next, I would work on muscular strength and endurance Last I would focus on flexibility. For cardio, we would run 3-5 miles at a moderate pace. On Fridays I would do release runs to increase unit morale. Also, last man up running events would help with cardio endurance. Honestly ability group runs would be the best exercise to help improve the 2 mile run. I would conduct circuit training with a variety of upper and lower body exercises to increase muscular strength and endurance. Before and after each exercise, I would implement intense stretching so that their muscles are fully stretched to increase their flexibility for better run results and to become stronger as a unit.

**The two best components or physical fitness for my unit to work on would be cardio respiratory endurance and muscular endurance. We have just switched from a heavy armored battalion to a light/medium Stryker battalion. The result of this is that we have big strong soldiers that used to being in vehicles that are now going to have to conduct dismounted operations in the mountains. In order to fix this I would put the major emphasis on cardio respiratory endurance with lesser emphasis on muscular endurance. I would conduct cardio respiratory endurance three times a week with activities such as running, swimming, road marching, and hiking up some of our local mountains. I would then conduct muscular endurance activities twice week with activities such as push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, crunches, and lunges with a focus on high repetitions. I would include stretching and exercises from both the old army PT system and the new PRT system.