Several people really nailed the issue. I have been frustrated over the Army PT for a long time. The program as it is written is ok for combat fitness, relatively. The problem is that most people don’t understand the whole fitness arena. When people are leading the PT, they aren’t understanding WHY things are done the way that they are. Many people will just go through the motions, cutting shit out in the process.
When I lead the morning PT, which I do most days, the spend a good deal of time in the warming up and really lay on the effort afterward which earned me the nickname “bad man”. Most, if not all, of my morning PT comes from what I learned here and it really makes the soldiers work hard. No injuries this far, but I have noticed that the newer guys break much more easily. Must be all of those video games. I’ve seen people pull muscles doing push-ups(or they faked it). I recently had a guy sprain a knee just running a moderate pace. Scary. Imagine if he had been running under fire!!
I believe that KBs and DBs would be a valuable addition to a unit PT program. I think every unit should have a stockpile of these for use during morning PT, and extend the PT hours too. I used a KB in Iraq. A lot of people thought I was crazy and talked a lot of shit, even though I was WAY above their conditioning level by doing that. Not a damn one would touch that KB though. Those are the people who are leading the PT in our units, and those are the people who are teaching the younger troops about Army fitness. Scary, huh?