Oh, and I made you a gift…
A couple of exercises that would probably make your service a bit easier; (this is all based on my service, but I doubt that your combat training is drastically different.
Reverse lunges. Preferably with a weight vest, as that would basically be what you’re doing in the army. You see, during combat you may need to spend excessive amount of time on one knee. Getting up quickly and having the endurance and strength to do so without stumbling for dozens of times will be nice. Also I’d train just being on one knee on the worst surfaces possible, it’ll be hard at first but you get used to it. Doing that on grainy concrete for half an hour is one of the things I’d never want to do again, hurt like a motherfucker. Also I’d practice going into a sprint straight from the kneeling position, as it is a bit fucky if you’ve been down there for a longer time.
Cheating dumbbell rows and Jefferson deadlifts. I was the fastest guy our trainers had ever seen when it came to evacuating soldiers by dragging them. Like, I was twice ad fast as our best medics were. What was my secret? Well, when you’re dragging someone on the ground with one hand, (which is what I always did, the two arm version sucks) you’re basically doing a single-arm row. Really, I was pretty much exactly in the same position when evacuating as I am when I row. Now why Jeffersons in addition to rows? Because you’ll have to kick yourself back after each pull, and your legs are pretty much in a Jefferson stance there. Although here you don’t have to move all that much weight so this isn’t that important.
Front DB laterals with a hold around chin level. You’ll want to be a tad bent over when doing these and get a slight split stance. You know, how you’d stand if you were shooting a gun. And that’s what this is all about. You’ll be holding a gun up, a lot, or at least you should be. Now I didn’t actually do these, and I was undefeated in our max time gun hold competitions. (Held my assault rifle up for 20 minutes straight at one point) But I feel that these would’ve been beneficial. You don’t really need a whole lot of weight here, as a assaut rifle weight around 4.5-5 kilos. (I’d say you dont necessarily have to go over 5 kilos per hand with these. Now how long pause, 2, 3 seconds? I’d say go over 10 seconds, 20 is even better do that every rep for 15 reps and you’ve already accumulated 5 minutes of holding it up. Sometimes you may want to try and hold for as long as possible.
Farmers walks and bear hug walks.
You’ll be carrying stuff around, that’s a fact. I once carried a humongous tent for two kilometers straight. You need some conditioning and strength to pull it off. Farmers walks are great because they get your grip up without taxing your biceps so much, and bear hug walks don the opposite. (If you don’t know bear hug walks it’s basically just grabbing some plates/a sandbag/etc. Into a hugging position and carrying it) you could combine the two into a conditioning medley; in 20 minutes carry, in both styles for as long of a distance as you can. When the time is up, carry them back to where you started. You’ll probably need an hour or so to do this.
Burpees, planks, pushups with a pause at bottom, sit ups, chin/pull ups vertical jumping, sprinting in general - you’ll probably be doing all of these, a lot. (apart from vertical jump, for us at least it was merely a testing movement) so practice them beforehand.
You’ll also want to have a strong neck (train every part of it to avoid imbalances) and traps. The combat vest and helmet may feel a bit heavy at times otherwise.
There are probably a ton more, those are just the first ones that came to my mind.
) work to go! So bloody ready for this! I’ll probably get down there and realise how so not ready I am, but I’ll deal with that if it comes haha
