I’m currently in ‘‘A’’ School in the Navy and have to run a mock PFA every other week which involves a 1.5 mile run. I have to complete this run in under 13:30 minutes in order to pass, however, that’s not the issue, I’ve been able to complete the past 4 runs between 11:30 and 12:30 minutes. I need to shave maybe a minute or more off the time to have a half way decent score, though the more I run the more my squat suffers and the more I squat, the tighter my hips are, and my run time suffer. A lot. If any one has experience with lifting and running pt tests in the military, any kind of advice would be excellent. Thank you!
Look up Alex Viada, he has a book on training for endurance and strength. He has run marathons and deadlifted 700+.
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How many time a week do you lift and run? What’re your lifts at right now? How much mobility work are you doing for your hips? Training age?
I’m running Candito’s 6-Week, so I lift 4 days a week an run two or threes times a week. I don’t know my maxes right now, though my best lifts from these past few weeks are 185x11 on bench, 275x2 on squat and 290x3 on dl. Before basic my lifts were at 470/285/505. I do mobility work before every workout. More on lower body days than upper. Usually involves stretches for hammies, quads, hip flexors, calves, lunges, and holding a bodyweight squat in the hole for a few minutes as well as foam rolling. Rest days, I’ll just drop into a squat multiple times throughout the day and hold it for a minute or two. Training age? I’m assuming that means how long I’ve been lifting. Training specifically for Powerlifting for about 2 or 3 years now, a few gaps in those years for high school sports. Been lifting for sports in generalfor 6 or 7 years.
You need to work on mobility then. You’re talking about hitting a 7-minute mile, which shouldn’t be that hard.
My best PFT run times where when I did:
2-3 longish jogs (4-6 miles)/week
2-3 timed miles/week
2-3 sprint sessions/week
I did the longer runs in the morning and the timed miles/sprints in the evenings.
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How did you drop this much strength? It sounds like you aren’t eating enough either. Also, I would focus on running since it is mandatory, and shift to a 3 day lifting split. You could keep it at 4 days, but I would progress to that.
My last PRT before retiring, I ran a 9:30 mile-and-a-half. My squat was around 500, dead was just shy of that, bench around 330 (always been my weak spot). Conditioning consisted of:
progressive warm-up (walk, to jog, to run, faster, etc - total about 5 minutes)
12 mph on a treadmill, run 1/4 mile
rest 90 seconds, repeat
4 rounds
Did this twice weekly while training either 5/3/1 or Juggernaut (forget which I was doing at the time, that was right about when I switched over). This has been my go-to (still is) conditioning tool whenever I need to get a good run time for some reason. You may have to start with a longer rest period and work your way down to it.
And losing that much strength doesn’t surprise me: 8 weeks of boot (no lifting), however many weeks on hold and then starting A school - I am guessing you are doing class PT in addition to your lifting? Not to mention classes and homework. What school are you in?
Yup, 2 months of no lifting. No working out either. Just 3 PFA’s and 2 other 2 mile runs we did. That’s it.
I was lucky though, went to school right after basic and classed up the same week. Class 3pm till 1am. Currently in IT school, so its a ton of studying. I still find time to workout though, usually just study while I’m lifting. And we have yet to PT as a class since it’s constantly storming haha. I don’t complain though, more time to study or sleep. I’ll definitly give that a try though, I just watched an Alan Thrall video where he suggested something similar to that. Sounds a lot more fun than just running 3 miles to improve on a mile and a half.
Yeah, I never made a lot of progress that way (running longer distance to improve 1.5). It was slow and incremental, and never got me near as far as this did. It’s pretty brutal, but if you really want to roll in the suck, do it on a track. Definitely harder - you also have to be careful to pace yourself to a certain extent or you’ll burn out before the lap is up.
honestly, what I do is ill jog either the night after of or morning after leg day, then rest my legs(do upper body) and the next day or 2 ill run alternating short intervals and long intervals. so it’ll look like this
leg day/ slow 1 mile jog that night
chest day
back day/ 10 x 100m sprints with 2 x 400m sprints(circle a softball field twice)
shoulder day
arm day/ 4 x 800m (cft course for usmc) and 2 x 1 mile runs
rest about a minute in-between each 100m sprints maybe 3-4 between the 800mand 400m, and ill probably take more like 7-8 minutes in between the 1 miles.
-the running program is credited to someone else, I don’t have his name or the link but honestly it works pretty descent. the guy that developed it went from like 23 minute 3 mile to like 16 minute 3 mile in 8 weeks or something like that. its sprints and intervals so it won’t kill your muscles but its also not enough to hurt you in other ways. having navy regs compared to ssmc regs you should smoke your prt standards with this because your training for twice the goal. good luck