Training the next generation: how parks and recreation can help anyone get in military shape

Parks & Recreation, Dec, 2004 by Pat O'Dell

As the U.S. armed forces look to train the next generation of soldiers, they're finding more and more candidates are out of shape. Studies show that today's youth are less active than previous generations. Television, video games and the Internet are increasingly pulling kids away from team sports and other physical activities, and the American Heart Association says children are less fit today than they were 10 years ago.

These are daunting trends for the U.S. military; which is currently undergoing a transformation to modernize its forces to fight enemies who are ever more skilled, determined and elusive.

Tomorrow's battlefields will be faster and more lethal than ever before, says Dr. Ed Thomas, an Army infantry veteran and a pioneer in military physical readiness training, who now serves as the health and physical education consultant to the Iowa Department of Education.

So are today's kids prepared for 21st century warfare? Several experts answer "no." Basic training standards for each branch of the armed forces are evolving into more tactical, situation-based programs, each of which has an essential baseline for physical fitness. Military fitness and readiness authorities worry that these baselines are unachievable for a growing population of children who lead sedentary lifestyles. Experts feel that kids need to be exposed to tougher physical education programs, but worry that schools are unable to do an adequate job due to budget cuts and limited resources.

They also say that park and recreation departments are in a unique position to help remedy the problem.

Couch-potato Warriors?

A recent study conducted by the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement found that more than 38 percent of the state's public school students are over-weight or at risk of becoming over-weight, while 32 percent of children entering kindergarten fall into the same categories.

According to the National Institute on Media and the Family, 92 percent of children between ages 2 and 17 play video games regularly. And a 2003 study by the University of Texas at Austin found that video game playing contributed to sedentary lifestyles and weight gain in children up to age 12.

Last year the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, a division of the National Institutes of Health, found that America's children are not getting the necessary amount of physical activity. The study revealed that third graders received an average of 25 minutes of "moderate to rigorous" activity per week. Experts say 30 to 60 minutes of activity per day is the minimum amount required for kids to be physically fit.

These statistics are disturbing to military readiness experts and explain why candidates are in poor physical shape upon joining the military.

Thomas, a former doctrine writer/ instructor at the U.S. Army Physical Fitness School at Fort Benning, Ga., says far too many young men and women are physically unprepared for military training. Parents, schools and entire communities should help mold children into fit young adults.

"The physical demands of sustained combat operations far exceed those of our daily lives," Thomas says. "Every soldier must be prepared to fight in tomorrow's fluid battlefield environments."

Candidates for basic training need to understand the physical requirements of their branch of the military before they begin, says Jeremy Levine, a former Marine and the thunder of Virginia Beach, Va.-based Functional Fitness, which provides specialized training services to military special operations and conventional forces, as well as government agencies, and police and fire departments.

The Army, Nays, Air Force and Marines all have different fitness requirements for their personnel. In recent decades, Levine and Thomas have seen the armed threes change their philosophies of what elements are most essential to creating the best-prepared fighting forces.

Today, each branch maintains its own standards for candidates to achieve a prescribed level of fitness to prepare them for combat and tactical situations including a specific numbers of push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups within a given time, along with timed runs. All four branches also test body composition.

Training requirements are drastically different, however, during basic training. Each branch focuses on different physical requirements, ranging from sprinting, individual movement techniques and obstacles to foot marching, cross-country movement and water survival.

History's Lessons

Thomas witnessed the demilitarization of Army physical readiness training in the mid-1970s, and led the way as the paradigm began shifting toward battle-focused physical training in the late 1990s. The shift began in 1994 when Thomas and a team of military and civilian fitness experts developed an off-duty education college degree program in fitness leadership offered by Upper Iowa University at Fort Benning in Georgia.

"We attracted some of the brightest warriors at Fort Benning," Thomas says. "They studied the best of past military physical training doctrine and connected it to current training innovations in the civilian sector. We made some improvements, but further progress will depend as much on the civilian sector as the military."