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The Army Lessons Learned Centre Dispatches: Physical Fitness
Training (Vol 6 No 1 May 1999 Dispatch 31)

Soldiers must be physically fit to meet military operational requirements, to perform under a wide range of geographical and environmental conditions, to cope with the stresses of sustained operations, and to be ready to respond on short notice. While this goal may be well understood and accepted by the majority of soldiers, there is a clear lack of unity in the manner in which the various components of the army are attempting to achieve it. It is not enough for leaders to simply state, "we must be fit", when we are all approaching this goal from a different understanding of the overall strategy. The army accepts that there must be one clearly understood strategy for Physical Fitness Training (PFT), and that this must be consistently applied. This strategy is under development and it will clearly outline key points such as:

• The levels of physical fitness that are required and how they relate to our various levels of operational readiness.

• The relation of physical fitness training to our other tasks in terms of priority.

• The types of PFT that the army wants to use in order to achieve and maintain physical fitness both during courses and at units.

• The training and education that is required by leaders in order for them to be deemed capable of safely and effectively organizing, conducting and supervising PFT.

Once a clear training strategy for physical fitness has been developed, the army must ensure that leaders at all levels understand it and consistently supervise its implementation. There will continue to be room for initiative and imagination within our physical fitness training, however, initiative and imagination must be focussed within well identified "arc markers."

Changes to the army's approach to the training and education of soldiers in the organization, conduct, and supervision of physical fitness training are already underway. In some cases they will begin to take effect this year. In other cases it will take one to two years to begin to see results. In the interim, leaders at all levels need to do what they can to ensure that their troops undergo physical fitness training in the most professional, effective, and safe manner possible.