Personal Defense Network Forum » Topic: Personal Fitness Standards

Personal Defense Network Forum » Topic: Personal Fitness Standards http://www.personaldefensenetwork.com/forum/ en Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:39:10 +0000 johnbrown on "Personal Fitness Standards" http://www.personaldefensenetwork.com/forum/topic/personal-fitness-standards#post-102 Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:53:25 +0000 johnbrown 102@http://www.personaldefensenetwork.com/forum/ I would tend to agree with Doc Smith on a lot of what he said, especially the pieces that suggest testing mental fortitude along with physical capacity; primarily for those in tactical fields but for everyone else as well. I have a couple of additions that I would like to make as well. The first being that in order to test "fitness," you must test more than one aspect of it. In other words, a lot of people would consider long distance athletes "fit." And while they may be fitter than a lot of people, I would suggest that they fall well short of fitness in many areas, such as strength or flexibility. In the CrossFit article that Doc mentions, there is a list of 10 adaptations that you should look to include in a test and the list comes from Jim Cawley from a company called Dynamax, he is a rarity in that he is both scientist and practitioner. He suggests that the list includes "Cardiorespiratory/ cardiovascular endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, speed, power, coordination, balance, accuracy and agility..." So you can see where a simple "do as many push ups as possible in 2 minutes, run a mile..." doesn't really add up. The next point that I would like to add is that you should do it in some sort of contextual relevance. Most PRT/ PFTs include a run, but rarely in military ops did we ever run at a pace slower than "OH MY GOD THEIR SHOOTING AT US." Which was never the case with the PRT. So whatever your test is, make sure that it has some relevance for you. CharlesRives on "Personal Fitness Standards" http://www.personaldefensenetwork.com/forum/topic/personal-fitness-standards#post-101 Tue, 09 Feb 2010 04:18:53 +0000 CharlesRives 101@http://www.personaldefensenetwork.com/forum/ Excellent points, DAMN1. I remember when I was on a committee to select standards for the department that I used to work with, the physician who was consulting us recommended that we make all tested personnel wear some sort of heart rate monitor because there were individuals who could complete the tasks with passing scores even though they really weren't fit enough to do so safely. These would be out-of-shape individuals with a lot of mental drive who could force themselves to perform within standard even though they may be risking their lives and having heart rates at or approaching maximum. DAMN1 on "Personal Fitness Standards" http://www.personaldefensenetwork.com/forum/topic/personal-fitness-standards#post-99 Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:32:22 +0000 DAMN1 99@http://www.personaldefensenetwork.com/forum/ The issue of how to predict job performance/saftey capability comes up in a variety of ways and is one that we deal with on an everyday basis in our medical/surgical practices putting people that have been injured back to work or placing new hires in the appropriate physical job. This challenge can be broken down technicaly into a "Functional Capacity Evaluation" (FCE) or a "Fitness for Duty" (FFD) standard. Just because someone has the Capacity for an activity does not mean they are fit to do it. The FFD takes into account apptitude and drive that many "standards" cant measure. Rob is on track with the obstacle course though and the reasoning is sound. Periodic tests such as multi-day continuous Adventure Races, orineteering races are good self tests to measure the effectiveness of your daily training. These events test not only physical but also mental drive, planning, organization, and fatigue managemnet, none of which can be measured in a simple way. When it comes to Fitness, the best article I have ever read on this was one of the first Crossfit articles that addressed this issue. It is the connerstone of all conversations about fitness and its measurement. I would suggest that you read it for the details to this subject. Other than that, we use kettlebells and Ashtanga yoga combined with disciplined study of the Human Weapon System to ensured the best personal defense. Rob Pincus on "Personal Fitness Standards" http://www.personaldefensenetwork.com/forum/topic/personal-fitness-standards#post-85 Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:51:37 +0000 Rob Pincus 85@http://www.personaldefensenetwork.com/forum/ Charles, I think the issue of "standards" always comes back to lowest common denominators and CYA, especially in large organizations. Firearms, DT, Fitness, IQ... whatever. That said, I think that the right kind of timed obstacle course can be the best measure of overall fitness available, even in those circumstances. It can avoid the issues of sex discrimination (upper vs. lower body strength, etc) and other pitfalls of isolated metrics (how many pull ups, push ups, etc). I've asked a couple of our contributors to chime in, let's see what they have to say.... CharlesRives on "Personal Fitness Standards" http://www.personaldefensenetwork.com/forum/topic/personal-fitness-standards#post-70 Mon, 01 Feb 2010 04:23:14 +0000 CharlesRives 70@http://www.personaldefensenetwork.com/forum/ Do you maintain some sort of personal standard to judge you fitness against? For example, even though I'm not in the military, I like to ensure that I can pass the physical readiness tests for both the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Physical_Fitness_Test">Army's Airborne school admission</a> and the (right age and gender version of the)<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Marine_Corps_Physical_Fitness_Test">United States Marine Corps Physical Fitness Test.</a> These tests are both somewhat arbitrary but have a broad background of experience base behind them. From another phase of my career, I was on a committee to research and select a physical readiness test. We found strength tests, agility tests, health and fitness tests and fitness-related job skills tests. Many organizations are now splitting their fitness test and a job skills test. The fitness test is now (often) becoming a safety and risk management tool. It is intended to answer the question, "is this person likely to become an injury or fatality due to their poor health?" A fitness test may include something like: starting from a resting heart rate, perform X number of repetitions of exercise Y within 2 minutes. Heart rate must not exceed 90% MHR and must return to within 15% of base rate within Y minutes." Job skills testing chooses physically demanding job tasks and assigns standards to those. For example "pick up a 150-lb dummy and move it across a room, up a flight of stairs and across another room to a finish point within X seconds." I've been trying to think of what might be a good set of job skills to test for personal defense. The first and most testable that I've come up with has been sprint for a distance approximating one city block.