Soldiers amp up training
FORT LEWIS, Wash. – They don’t have anything against a game of volleyball or basketball. Games are good exercise, builds teamwork and camaraderie. But as far as Fort Lewis’ senior commanders are concerned, they’re just not right for “PT.”
The post has gone back to basics for physical fitness training. A bright red line has been drawn around the hour from 6:30 to 7:30 a.m. Monday through Friday and set aside for soldiers to do push-ups and sit-ups, calisthenics, combatives and, of course, running with and without body armor and rucksacks.
And no team sports.
“Softball, flag football, whatever. There is some aerobic activity to that,” acknowledged Command Sgt. Maj. Frank Grippe, the post’s senior enlisted soldier and an architect of the revised PT policy.
“But for that one-hour snapshot, five times a week, and being a nation at war, and the combat-focused installation that we are, we need to get the most bang for the buck out of that hour.”
The changes were published in November in revisions to “The Basic Standards of I Corps and Fort Lewis.”
Mandatory PT went from four days a week to five, and the new rules tightened uniform standards.
Some complained privately about the rule scrapping team sports, including some commanders who felt like it impinged on their discretion to lead their units as they saw fit.
But Grippe said he and the post’s commanding general, Lt. Gen. Charles Jacoby Jr., want soldiers to focus on “the warrior tasks.”
“We’re not being bah humbug, no intramural sports,” Grippe said. “After 7:30, you can do as you please. The commander and I encourage soldiers to do more than that one hour of PT.”
Soldiers working out with their units one recent morning said they hadn’t much noticed the change. At other duty stations they occasionally played team sports during PT, but they don’t miss it here, they said.
“At my last unit, in Korea, we had Fridays where we did sports,” said Sgt. Lisa Riordan, a team leader in the 572nd Military Intelligence Company. “It seemed like it was when people got hurt more. That’s where most of the injuries came out, doing things like football or something like that.”
Her commander, Capt. Eric Haas, said that at captain’s school at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., they would occasionally play soccer for PT. Guys in their 30s trying to play a start-stop-start running game like soccer on wet grass wearing sneakers was a bad mix, he said.
In training on a Thursday at Fort Lewis, Haas, Riordan and the rest of their company went on a 3-mile run wearing their body armor. Along the route, in a predawn mix of snow and rain, they stopped for crunches and leg lifts and other calisthenics. They mix up the routine from day to day. Some days they shed the body armor and go for longer runs. They do strength training. They occasionally work in the pool, Haas said.
His company’s senior enlisted soldier, 1st Sgt. Jeffrey Clyons, said their approach is to make sure their intelligence soldiers are as fit and nimble as the infantry and cavalry scouts they’ll have to accompany into combat.
The 572nd is part of the 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, and some of the company’s troops will be assigned to go out on patrols and missions with other Stryker soldiers.
“We have to be as fit or more fit than the shooters,” Clyons said. “We have to be an asset, not a liability.”