Army physical (un)fitness: A system that promotes injury | ArmyTimes

The military has reached a position where it is trying to undo the cultural problem of children being raised on electronics from essentially three years old and on. Kids are no longer playing outdoors, parents are terrified when kids scrape knees, and children are not emotionally nor physically resilient in America today. It is a wide-spread systemic problem. This is coupled with the military fitness programs that aren't administered based on the individual, but still holding onto that 'formation' mentality and led by NCOs who mean well but who just don't have the background in fitness and kinesiology to assist injury-prone service members. The Master Fitness course is a decent place to start, but there are so few qualified Soldiers in our formation that know what they're doing. One organization that does it better than most is 75th Ranger Regiment. They understand the mentality behind being a Soldier-Athlete, and how training, nutrition, and recovery are the keys to the kind of sustained fitness we should strive for as a force. The problem is, that training, given by professionals, comes at a huge monetary cost, though hiring legitimate professional sports fitness trainers is bound to be less expensive than the cost of paying for these young men and women to get medically fixed and then retired with a check.

Frankly, I'd like to see big Army actually use PRT as rx first. The top performers will always go above unit PRT to reach their specific goals. It's the bottom 1/3 that can't stay injury free.

From reading the article I can't base my opinion off of Army standards but I can say from an AF perspective the many of the types of exercises performed today have limited affect on today's mission. In 2004 the AF started their Physical Fitness Test, now as with any new standard it changed many times, however the injuries associated with the requirement for the test got worse. Most notably, chin, knees, ankles and lower back injuries. Most people have ran before but in reality their is a science to running effectively and safely, that is not something the military teaches. These skills are typically only reserved for those that compete in Track and Field. When I was going through physical therapy my therapist ran a running class at RAF Lakenheath on his own accord, now within this class he taught how to properly run as most people run where their toes are striking the ground ahead of your knee cap, this in his comparison is like sitting and stomping your foot for 1000x that's the same effect of what your doing. Because most people run like this it leads to knee and ankle injuries. The back plays an important part in situps and abdominal exercises and if you again have improper form over years of doing something it's eventually going to wear down faster than your average person. So I think as a whole people need to be taught how to properly execute these exercises just like when doing bench press and it's something that is overlooked because most think everyone know's how run correctly but in actuality have never been taught.