How do soldiers fit weight lifting into their schedule?
Not from an overall time perspective. Rather I mean how does it fit in with doing calisthenics so many days a week as well. How are they able to fit in proper rest periods? What would be a somewhat typical workout schedule for a soldier including mandatory PT and their oren weight lifting or other exercise on the side?
Public Comments
1. You build your lifting schedule around the PT, and not the other way around.For example, instead of having a set "Thursday is back day" thing going on, you show up at the gym and ask yourself "What haven't I worked in a while?"
It may not have the organization that some hyper-organized lifters love, but *plenty* of dudes get very cut while on active duty.
Most of the calisthenics are just that - calisthenics. Only once a week or less will you be doing push-ups (or some other exercise) until muscle failure as part of group PT. Most combat-arms units will have one or two days a week of challenging group PT, and the rest as a simple run with some jumping jacks and push ups thrown in - to get the blood flowing first thing in the morning.
Not every day because, as you pointed out, there would be no time for muscle recovery. If you are working out on your own time, the group PT will not seriously be challenging to you after a while except when you work legs on monday and then group PT on tues morning is full of Hello Dolleys or similar.
Group PT exists to establish a baseline physical fitness minimum for those troops that refuse to work out on their own time, and to build unit cohesion. Not to seriously challenge those in good physical condition.
With all of that being said, hopefully your goals are more about tone than bulk. A WWE wrestler with 30 inch upper arms... would not be successful in the military. Same with most professional weight lifters. Look to Bruce Lee and that type of body build for your inspiration.
Being able to bench 150 like nothing is great, but can you put 150 lbs on your back and body and arms (pack + gear + weapon such as heavy machine gun tripod or mortar base) and walk 20 miles with it? Take a look at the calves of any Army or Marine grunt, then take a look at yours.
Cheers and good luck.
2. You don't need weight lifting. The military isn't interested in guys who are buff with muscle but have no endurance behind it and get burned and winded in cardio and calisthenics. Better to stay off the weights for the most part, honestly. Most guys in the Spec Ops Community doing really go the big and buff route.
3. you want to do some weights i was in the marine corps for 8 years and cardio is really the most important part just like the other guy said. endurance is the key you have to have muscle endurance and the will to continue if that makes sense to you. you dont want to have a quitters mentality you want to have a competitive metality and also unless you have a A-hole for a PLT commander you should be out of work by 1630 or 1700 at the latest everyday if your in the U.S. if your over seas the work schedule with vary dramatically especially if your in a combat zone but over all you should have time to go to the gym at least 2 or 3 times a week but weights wouldnt hurt you just dont over do it but you dont want to be a bag of bones either some muscle tone is good.
4. You do not need a rest period from PT
You only need a rest period, if you work muscles to exhaustion.
2. PT is body weight exercises, you can do them every single day, you body will adapt to the demands placed on it
You might need a rest period when starting a pt program
But you can literally do 2,000 push ups, 300 pull ups, 2,000 sit ups, every single day of the week and not need a rest period.
Every seen seal training ? you see them skipping a day ?
3. Even most weight lifting, doesn't really need a rest period, because most people do not work their muscles to exhaustion.
The do like 3 sets of 10 every time , that their body is already adapted to.
Working to exhaustion, is like doing 6 sets of very heavy weight, where your doing like 7,6,5,5,4 and 3 reps, because that's all you can do.
4. if your doing heavy PT, like your getting ready for Bud/s or SFAS and doing multiple sets of calisthenics
IE: 8 to 20 sets of push ups, sit ups, pull ups, burpies
Then you would do the PT on M,W,F and lift weights on T, Th and Sat
5. if your doing rucks, then you really don't wanna run 5 miles and do a 8 mile ruck on the same day
But you can run 5 miles and do 4 or 6 miles rucks on the same day, and you can do a 8 mile or longer ruck, if you can give a day off after, like on a friday or sat.
6. Your body adapts to the load placed on it, you can do hard physical laobor/exercise every single day, you body will adapt to the increased load over time.
The idea of a day of rest after a couple hours of exercise, is based on out of shape civilians, so they do not hurt or strain themselves.
You need the rest, after 6 to 8 hours of hard exercise, that are burning your muscles to exhaustion
5. PT so many days a week? I normally did PT 3 times a week if that. Never did PT on Monday on account of Top being as hung over as the rest of us, PT on Tuesday and Wednesday, Thurdays was CTT training and that meant no PT. PT on Friday but only when we didn't have Fridays off.
