G.7: Gains With Friends
Post 9 of 11 in a series on the intersection of data and fitness.
Click here for the rest of the series.
Officers need the self-motivation to be fit and ready on their own. Privates can rely on a team or squad leader to get them off their ass. But all the way going back to my first assignment, fitness has always been my own responsibility. That doesn’t change the fact that sweating is always easier when done with friends.
For most of my career, finding a good group gym was one of the first boxes to check on each PCS. However, since 2019 my default has been working out alone. But just because I'm used to doing my own thing in a gym, doesn't mean I wouldn't rather do a partnered or group workout. I typically try to find a fellow orphan that will join me at least once a week and these are without a doubt some of my best gains.
The only drawback to well-run partnered and group workouts is they require more kit. When there’s only so much equipment to go around, this can make running seem like the default alternative. But I’ve already argued running won't get you ready. So how can you rely on using weights and rowers as part of your regimen instead?
The Power of ‘My Squad’
Well, the first thing you can do is stop making everyone try to use all the equipment at the same time. Out in Oki, we took the paradigm breaking decision to stop letting the battalion headquarters dictate when everyone would work out.
We had an incredible THOR3 facility, one I wanted all the soldiers to use because I wanted a ready battalion.1 That meant more than just the Special Forces soldiers, but the support soldiers too. Only the Green Berets were THOR3’s priority and so the facility was theirs from 0630 until 0830 each morning. Showing a new support soldier the incredible THOR3 facility only to tell them they couldn’t use it wasn’t speaking in stereo. So instead, we greenlit every section and team to get their gains whenever it made sense in their schedule. Fitness wasn’t negotiable, but the time was.
And the sections embraced it. My intel shop noticed 1500 wasn’t the busiest part of their day, which was when THOR3 was all but empty. My personnel section found an afternoon session fit their schedules well too. Meanwhile, my signal detachment opted to start even earlier. When I slipped into the gym at 0545, they were already going hard in their workout.
Contrast this with too many units in the army where some officer far removed from soldiers prescribes not just when but often how a unit gets their fitness. I’ve seen memos from three-star general officers dictating the entire organization would work out during the same single hour. How can a soldier really say ‘This is my squad’ when they aren’t given ownership of it?
If you’re a brigade / installation commander or above and you’re dictating fitness hours, you need to get back in your lane and focus on the things only you can do. While I’m sure the policy’s intent is well meaning, you’re actually inhibiting the readiness of your organization. The malingerers will still malinger, it’s what they do. But you’re holding back real fitness gains, all while starving your youngest generation of leaders of the freedom, responsibility, and experience they need to grow.
Squad and section leaders should be running their teams' fitness. I’m willing to debate this with anyone who disagrees, but you need to bring data. We had a battalion that was 99.61% qualified on the ACFT. What do you have?
Shared Misery, Shared Gains
Sweat together. Bleed together. That’s the formula for building teams. It’s really that simple. But just because it’s a simple formula doesn’t mean we don’t find lots of ways to mess it up.
Together is the key but tricky part. It means not just catering to the top or bottom performer. And every team is going to have a top and bottom performer, even if there’s just two of you. We too often pick events and exercises that cater to one of these end points. Set the pace to the bottom and everyone else spends too much time standing around waiting. Set your workout for the best and everyone else gets left in the dust. Remember, you’re supposed to be building a team, not a solo act. In rugby, there’s a term for a person who outruns their support: turnover.
Ruck marches are things that sometimes just have to be done, but they often devolve into a line of individuals strewn out over miles. We don’t often test the team at the end, particularly on something a squad needs to do together. So, rucks just become individual events.
Alternatively, I’ve found water polo to be a great group smoker.2 Everyone has different abilities, but no one is particularly good. You just go until you need a reprieve and then you tag out with someone else while you rest on the wall. Everyone sweats together and everyone sees each other doing it. You’ll see the difference in the office after, when despite everyone getting their butt kicked, they’re all in good spirits.
If you don’t have any kit, start with hard workouts that keep everyone within eye and ear shot of each other. Death by 10 meters, It’s Just a Mile, and Earn the Turkey (see G.8 next week) can all be done on a track or a pitch, which helps keep everyone close enough to reinforce the team. Tabatas are also a great option.
Army equipment is also a great form of kit. Filled ammo and water cans typically weigh about as much as the kettle bells do in the ACFT. Sandbags and duffel bags are tried and true ways to add weight to any workout. I’ve done plenty of rucksack thrusters. You can weight down a stretcher with all of the above or put a person on it as well.
That said, I haven’t been on a base in the last five years that didn’t have a neglected BeaverFit or similar connex full of kit. In early 2020, when we got blown out of Iraq and down to Kuwait, one of the first things we did was sign over one of their three ignored BeaverFits from the garrison headquarters. When COVID shut down the gyms, this became our fitness — and mental health — lifeline. Get with your local H2F if you are struggling to find equipment.3
Failure-based fitness actually helps mitigate the equipment challenge. If everyone is only pushing themselves a little bit, everyone needs their own weight / erg. But if each person is going all out to reach their own individual pain point, then you only need half as much. As one person ‘counts coup’ and hits their anaerobic wall, the next person steps up for their turn. I-Go-You-Go partner sets like this are a simple way to spread the kit demand out. They’re also a deceptive way to make you work harder, because while you both want to slow down, you both also don’t want the other person waiting on you.
One particularly spicy twist we stumbled upon was setting people into trios where one person works, one person holds, and one person rests. Work can be anything: row, run, lift, jump, pull-up. Holds are stress positions. Chin over bar, handstands, wall sits, or overheads are all simple to start but tough to keep doing. I’m particularly fond of chest-racked kettle bells. They engage the arms and the core, all while the weight just sits right on top of your lungs, restricting your ability to breathe, bringing on that anaerobic zone.
The secret sauce to the trio is at some point, you have to switch. Either the person doing the work needs a break, or the person doing the hold can’t anymore. Regardless of who it is, only one of those two gets to rest. Unlike the I-Go-You-Go above, somebody always has to suck it up and keep going, moving from work to hold or hold to work. You’ll find the person doing the rest actually clamoring to get back into the set, because they’re watching their buddies struggle while they aren’t.
Group gains can get even trickier when you’re not down at the small unit level. The band of fitness across a squad can actually be pretty narrow compared to a staff section. We ran group gains once a month out at Oki, which meant we could see over fifty soldiers showing up, each with a different fitness level and different skill familiarity. Find the movements that require the least work to teach. Highly technical lifts like snatches aren’t good here, nor anything that requires a coach's oversight like heavy deadlifts.
There are also workouts that, while they require a lot of kit, distribute it well across a bunch of people. For each person, Fight Gone Bad uses a rower, a box, two barbells, and a wall ball (and a wall) — I usually sub in a kettlebell for the second bar. But you’re only using each piece of kit for a minute each and only one piece at a time. You can run five people through a single lane all at once; everyone just moves one spot at the end of each minute. Fight Gone Bad is also a beast of a workout, which puts you on the floor after just 17 minutes. Pair everyone off, with one partner counting reps while the other does their three rounds. Then, when the first person can breathe and count again, you switch. We’ve easily run 60 people through six lanes of Fight Gone Bad in less than 40 minutes.
Lifting Your Bottom Up
Where does competition help you? Where does it hurt you? It’s not always straight forward. Your goal is to build cohesive teams while always lifting the bottom up. I told my company sergeants major I wasn’t interested in their top ACFT scores or even their averages. If they wanted to compete over stats, it would be over who had the highest bottom score.
I stole the idea of regular squad competitions from that early infantry commander I had. They’re a great way to drive your teams to aspire for more and to assess their combat skills. Just insert basic combat tasks throughout the workout.
But winning the competition isn’t the goal, readiness is. Out in Oki, they have a glorious annual team competition: Beasting. When I arrived, the chow hall had placards showing every team’s time, from best to worst, going back years. This seemed cool until I got word several teams didn’t want to even compete. After all, who wants their last place time recorded forever? If you have to task teams to participate in your squad / team competition, that’s a sign you’re not doing something right.
The straw that broke the camel’s back came when I found out a team sergeant had held an NCO back from a school just so they could be on-hand for the Beasting. When winning becomes its own end state, you’re off azimuth and need a recalibration. We sat down with the leadership and made some changes, starting with taking down the placards.4
You need to build a team competition that allows your best to demonstrate what they can do, while encouraging the maximum number of teams to want to participate. Devising a Beasting that strikes that balance is the job of the headquarter's first sergeant out in Oki. It’s no easy task, but then neither is being a first sergeant. If they can’t rise to the challenge, then we picked the wrong NCO.
But leadership matters here too. If the commander or the CSM puts themselves on a super team drafted to win, everyone sees that. They see winning is what matters to you and your unit. Find a team that’s one soldier short and join that one, so more soldiers can join in the challenge.
Group gains don’t have to be just for soldiers. The spouses out in Oki did a ‘Bee Sting’, running their own team competition complete with pull ups, weighted squats, sprints, and a vehicle push. The spouses left with the same sense of earned accomplishment we all get from these events and more than a few of their soldiers left surprised at what their partners were able to do.
For Valentine's Day, we did a couple's workout where one partner had to hold a weight while the other sprinted to the end of the beach and did a series of different movements before coming back to switch roles. The setup was to remind the soldiers that while we deploy and go do hard things, someone back home is holding the rest of our lives together. Spouses whose soldiers were deployed were encouraged to bring a fellow spouse, because the way families survive these deployments is by leaning on each other.
Sweat together and bleed together. Those are two tried and proven ways to build teams. Do more of the former and with a little luck you’ll do less of the latter. But there’s one other great way to build a team: eat together. Next week, we’ll look at that.
The Viking WOD
The Viking WoD is one of those great trio workouts I described above. Throughout the whole thing, one person has to chest rack a decently heavy kettle bell. So while someone’s rowing, someone else is holding. If the kettlebell gets put down at any point, stop rowing / running / hammering until it’s back up in a chest rack position or being swung during the pillage phase. You don’t have to break up the rows or the hammer and kettlebell swings evenly though. Everyone gets a good workout if everyone keeps moving / holding.
This WoD can get a little kit demanding, but you can launch the teams in waves as each group starts out on the run. Just make sure you get a picture of your raiding party when you’re done.
Tactical Human Optimization Rapid Rehabilitation and Reconditioning. A SOF program focused on improving the mental and physical health of soldiers which includes nutritionists, mental and physical strength coaches, and robust PT resources.
Water polo is also the best way I’ve found to build confidence in the water, which for airborne units can be a necessity. After fighting off another human in the water, a parachute doesn’t seem nearly as intimidating.
H2F is the regular army’s attempt to catch up to SOF’s THOR3.
There was already a separate trophy that tracked which team won the competition each year.