Caffeinated Beef Jerky

Yes, please.

According to The Week, a U.S. Army lab is "infusing beef jerky with a coffee cup's worth of caffeine to give soldiers a jolt with their protein."

Why? To "make portable meals more appealing and nutritious" for soldiers.

And, I suppose, to keep 'em awake.

[Source]

Your Grandfather Was Tougher Than You

Earlier this month, the Art of Manliness published an article about the Army Ground Forces Test -- the formal fitness test used by the U.S. Army during World War II. To whip soldiers into shape for combat, the Army had incorporated a physical development program into its basic training course, and beginning in 1942, participants were tested to determine the program's effectiveness.

The test included squat jumps, sit-ups, pull-ups, push-ups, and a 300 yard run. The emphasis was on functional fitness and giving American GI’s the strength, mobility, and endurance they would need to tackle real tasks on the battlefield.

In 1946, a Physical Training School was created at Fort Bragg with the mission of exploring how to take the goal of functional fitness farther. The training program developed at the school and the fitness test were codified in the 1946 edition of FM 21-20, the Army’s physical training manual.

Basically, Grandpa was doing CrossFit before it was cool.

Visit the Art of Manliness for details about the test's standards and scoring, and see how you match up. But one thing's for sure: The Army's current physical fitness standards aren't what they used to be.

[Previously: Too Fat For Fighting?]

Monday's Workout: Daniel

Five years ago, while serving in Iraq, Sergeant First Class Daniel B. Crabtree of the U.S. Army was in his armored Humvee when it was struck by an improvised explosive device. Although he was evacuated by air, he died en route to a Baghdad hospital. He was 32 years old.



We were both born in the same year. If he was still alive today, we'd be the same age.

As we celebrate the 235th birthday of our nation, it's fitting that we reflect on the sacrifices that folks like Daniel have made -- and continue to make.

At CrossFit Palo Alto this morning, we did the "Daniel" Hero WOD in memory of Sergeant Crabtree:

• 50 pull-ups
• 400-meter run
• 21 thrusters (95 pounds)
• 800-meter run
• 21 thrusters (95 pounds)
• 400-meter run
• 50 pull-ups

Result: 20:22 as RXed.

Yes, my thrusters were awkward and slow. Yes, the same could be said about my running. Yes, LaHo smoked me by three full minutes. Yes, I'm going to be wrecked for the next day or so. But you won't hear me whining tonight. After all, I got to sleep in late this morning, exercise side-by-side with friends at a gym I love, play Legos with my kids all afternoon, and grill burgers in the backyard for our Fourth of July dinner.

Daniel Crabtree did not.

This Little Piggy Got Kicked Out of the Army

If you're a Vibram FiveFingers enthusiast and you're in the U.S. Army, it looks like you'll have to find something else to wear on your feet. Earlier this month, military brass issued the following All Army Activities ("ALARACT") release:

ALARACT 239/2011

DTG: R 231424Z JUN 11

UNCLASSIFIED//

THIS MESSAGE HAS BEEN SENT BY THE PENTAGON TELECOMMUNICATIONS CENTER ON BEHALF OF DA WASHINGTON DC//DAPE-HRI//

SUBJECT: REQUEST FOR EXCEPTION TO POLICY TO PUBLISH ALARACT MODIFYING WEAR OF IMPROVED PHYSICAL FITNESS UNIFORM (IPFU)

THE PURPOSE OF THIS MESSAGE IS TO MODIFY THE EXISTING WEAR POLICY FOR THE (IPFU).

THERE ARE A VARIETY OF MINIMALIST RUNNING SHOES AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE AND WEAR. EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, ONLY THOSE SHOES THAT ACCOMMODATE ALL FIVE TOES IN ONE COMPARTMENT ARE AUTHORIZED FOR WEAR. THOSE SHOES THAT FEATURE FIVE SEPARATE, INDIVIDUAL COMPARTMENTS FOR THE TOES, DETRACT FROM A PROFESSIONAL MILITARY IMAGE AND ARE PROHIBITED FOR WEAR WITH THE IPFU OR WHEN CONDUCTING PHYSICAL TRAINING IN MILITARY FORMATION.

Interesting. Sounds like the Army thinks that splay-toed footwear is so ugly that it can't be worn even for PT.

Okay -- I'll admit that certain models of Vibram FiveFingers are ridiculously garish, and I can see why the Army (which has a pretty tight dress code as it is) would barf all over have an issue with soldiers who look like they dipped their feet in fluorescent paint.



But on the flip side, FiveFingers are a helluva lot better for our soldiers' feet than stiff, thick-heeled combat boots. The Army, I think, gets this -- after all, they've seen the benefits of proper running mechanics, and in the ALARACT itself, they explicitly call out the "variety of minimalist running shoes" available to soldiers and civilians alike.

This makes me wonder if the Army would've been more tolerant of toe-shoes if more of them looked like this:

rather than this:

[Source]

MREs Aren't Very Paleo

Don't think your lifestyle can accommodate Paleo eating? Think again. If our troops can manage to stay Paleo while deployed in Afghanistan, you sure as hell can find something to eat at the Piggly Wiggly other than Pop-Tarts and three-bean dip.

From The Year of the Caveman Facebook page:

Just some quick tips for those of you that feel the pain of trying to maintain a Paleo lifestyle while undergoing military deployments, opertions, training, etc. The staple of food rations in the U.S. military are the ever popular MREs. Unfortunately, they are not very Paleo friendly. Here are some tips on what I and others in the military do to substitute MREs with Paleo friendly meals.

Make Paleo kits. Some jerky, various nuts, and dried fruit make great meals. Pack them in small Ziplock bags for easy access to portions, and keep a larger stock in larger bags for quick refills during longers ops/training. You can fit about half a dozen Paleo kits in the space it takes to fit one MRE. So pack space shouldnt be a problem.

If you are forward deployed (as I am now in Afghanistan), you can find local vendors that sell many fruits, nuts, and veggies. You will find alot of the local food diet is largely Paleo based, minus the flat bread and other grain based foods. I can also buy chickens already prepped for the grill for proteins when my beef jerky supply runs low. I have a local Aghan vendor who comes by my combat outpost weekly to see if I need anything re-stocked. Its been a lifesaver and I haven't touched an MRE since I got here. He also has a KICK ASS beard.

 Read the rest here.

Saturday's Workout

Here's how I know I'm addicted to this stuff: I woke up this morning at 6, and my first thought of 2011 was "I can't wait to do Murph."

"Murph," by the way, is a CrossFit workout named in honor of twenty-nine-year-old Navy Lieutenant Michael Murphy of Patchogue, New York, who was killed in Afghanistan five years ago.

His story is an incredibly harrowing and tragic one. In the summer of 2005, Murphy led a SEAL team on Operation Redwing, a mission to kill or capture Ahmad Shah, a Taliban leader. While on the mission, the four men on the team -- Murphy, Marcus Luttrell, Danny Dietz and Matthew Axelson -- were discovered in their hiding spot by local goat herders. The team initially detained the herders, but after some debate about whether the herders might betray their location, let them go. But within the hour, the four SEALs were pinned down in a fierce firefight against upwards of 150 Taliban fighters. The herders, it appears, betrayed their location.

During the firefight, Murphy exposed himself to enemy fire to reach higher ground to call for backup with his cell phone; he was successful, but was shot in the abdomen during the conversation. He returned to the fight, but did not survive the night. Dietz and Axelson were also eventually killed in the course of the next two hours. Luttrell was the sole survivor. Despite severe injuries, he managed to evade capture and crawl and walk seven miles until he was taken in by Pashtun tribesmen who protected him from Taliban forces until he was rescued by U.S. forces a week later. (Luttrell later wrote a book, "Lone Survivor," recounting the battle and its aftermath.)

Murphy was the first person to be awarded a Medal of Honor (posthumously) for actions in Afghanistan, and the first member of the Navy to receive the award since Vietnam.

According to the CrossFit main site, "[t]his workout was one of Mike's favorites." It's now one of mine, too.

For time:

• 1 mile run
• 100 pull-ups
• 200 push-ups
• 300 squats
• 1 mile run

You have to start and finish with the running, but you're allowed to partition the pull-ups, push-ups and squats however way you want. (Optional: Wear a weight vest or body armor -- Mike Murphy-style.)

I decided to break up the 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, and 300 squats into 20 rounds of Cindy -- which, as you may remember, is a 20-minute AMRAP of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, and 15 squats. Although I've not yet encountered a full 20 minutes of Cindy, we've done a 1/2 Cindy (10 minutes) and a 3/4 Cindy (15 minutes) in class. Each time, I'd managed to crank out about one round per minute.

Figuring I'd lose a little steam as the workout progressed, I estimated that 20 rounds would take me approximately 22 minutes to complete. I'm not a speedy runner, so I assumed my two mile-long runs would take 8 minutes each. And 22 + 8 + 8 = 38 minutes.

So how close was I to my guesstimate? Ten seconds off. I finished in 37:50. (Or thereabouts. The clock actually said 38:05, but I'm subtracting the roughly 15 seconds it took me to haul myself up off the floor, stagger over to my stopwatch, fumble with its buttons and finally stop the time.)

Nothing like a long metcon to kick off a brand new year, right?

The Perfect Push-Up?

What's a "military push-up"? Depends on who you ask.

According to Tony Horton in P90X Chest & Back, military push-ups are performed with your elbows tucked in close against your sides, so that you end up targeting your triceps and shoulders.

But folks who've spent time in the military will tell you that Tony's version is foreign to them. (If anything, they call 'em "triceps push-ups.")

In fact, it appears that each branch of the U.S. armed forces uses different standards for push-ups. And they're pretty darn particular. Here's what the Air Force Times has to say on the subject:

[E]ach service can get a little pushy when it comes to what makes for a perfect push-up. Drop a soldier, sailor, airman and Marine for 20 and you’ll likely see four very different versions. True, the essentials are the same: Legs, back and head straight; arms bending to at least a 90-degree angle; body moving up and down as a single unit. But that’s about where the similarities end.

A Marine, for example, will always start his push-ups by lying flat on his stomach, pushing up into the starting position with a hearty shout of “Marine Corps.” Soldiers, sailors and airmen, however, will drop straight into the “front-leaning rest” position, with the body up and arms fully extended. Ever predisposed to making things more challenging, the Marines must also double dip, doing two push-ups for every one rep counted.

The Army and Air Force say feet can be up to 12 inches apart. Sailors, on the other hand, must keep them together. Soldiers must wear shoes; sailors can take them off. Soldiers can put their hands where they’re comfortable. Marines must put them directly under the shoulders. Airmen must put them out slightly wider. Sailors can place their hands anywhere between the two...

Meanwhile, the Army’s new regs for its PT test say soldiers can do push-ups on their fists (the other services can’t), but soldiers are not allowed to wear glasses (the others don’t say).

For the push-up to count, Marines must briefly touch their chests to the floor. Soldiers and airmen can if they want, but never to rest or bounce to build momentum. Again, the Navy is the strictest — a sailor’s PRT is over if his chest touches the deck.

Yes, but which service allows you to do push-ups from your knees?

(Source: Air Force Times)

In Defense of CrossFit

Last week, Wired published a piece about the military's review of whether CrossFit, P90X and Insanity are -- as some believe -- too tough for our troops. Well, it looks like our CrossFitting peers in the armed services have something to say about that.

“I wish that the Army would come and study me,” a servicemember posts on CrossFit’s message forum. “At my current base, the fitness center is starting to push back against the many crossfitters…I find this attitude infuriating. Our Base has a 25% PT [physical training] fail rate. I wonder how many crossfitters are failing.”

...

“Every Soldier does Crossfit or they get their nuts smashed,” reads another comment on CrossFit’s forum from a company commander at Schofield Barracks, who cops to “puk[ing] my guts out” doing their first-ever CrossFit workout in Iraq heat. “I’ve noticed marked improvements in their performance, a lower injury rate, and an increased ability to perform at a higher level of physical intensity in full kit.”

“For those of you that are in the military,” the commenter adds, “stand up and help revolutionize the way we conduct physical training.”

Lesson: Push-ups and sit-ups won't cut it any more. (Unless you want your nuts smashed.)

(Source: Wired)

The Big 3: Too Much For Our Troops?

The U.S. military's concerned that our soldiers aren't physically prepared for CrossFit, P90X and Insanity workouts:

More troops than ever are flipping tractor tires, lobbing 50-pound kettle bells and conquering the Three Bars of Death in an effort to become “tougher, faster, hard-bodied freedom fighter[s].” But some of them are also working out until they puke, faint or suffer permanent organ damage. Now, a team of medical researchers have a message for recruits: you’re probably not fit enough for CrossFit.

Ditto for P90X and Insanity. Together, the brutally intense fitness regimes are “the big three” being studied and evaluated in a review of high-intensity fitness programs by the Consortium for Health and Military Performance (CHAMP) at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

CHAMP's examination of "the big three" workout programs is just beginning, but researchers are hoping to publish results and recommendations in the next few years. Already, there are signs that fitness is on the decline in the military, which doesn't bode well for the formal incorporation of CrossFit, P90X or Insanity into our uniformed services' PT programs.

Thirty-five percent of American youth are unfit to serve because of health problems. Compared to the Army’s new new training regime, which wants troops to embrace yoga and calisthenics, start slow to avoid injury and sweat their way to basic fitness levels, CrossFit’s standards seem all the more extreme.

“Certainly, we are addressing a perceived lack of fitness among recruits,” [CHAMP medical director Col. Francis] O’Connor says. “People are doing too much, too soon, too fast. Participants [in high-intensity programs] need baseline strength and flexibility, and they simply aren’t prepared.”

But from my (admittedly limited) vantage point, all the CrossFitters with military backgrounds I've come across are insanely fit. I work out twice a week with a fortysomething Lieutenant Colonel in the Marines, and he routinely shreds our WODs. I've got to think that kids half his age are able to kick butt, too.

(Source: Wired)

Too Fat for Fighting?

The U.S. Army's physical training (PT) program's been revamped: "That familiar standby, the situp, is gone, or almost gone. Exercises that look like pilates or yoga routines are in. And the traditional bane of the new private, the long run, has been downgraded." The new PT regimen incorporates "more stretching, more exercises for the abdomen and lower back," and "more agility and balance training."

Why the change?

[T]he program was created to help address one of the most pressing issues facing the military today: overweight and unfit recruits.

“What we were finding was that the soldiers we’re getting in today’s Army are not in as good shape as they used to be,” said Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, who oversees basic training for the Army. “This is not just an Army issue. This is a national issue.”

Excess weight is the leading reason the Army rejects potential recruits. And while that has been true for years, the problem has worsened as the waistlines of America’s youth have expanded. This year, a group of retired generals and admirals released a report titled “Too Fat to Fight.”
“Between 1995 and 2008, the proportion of potential recruits who failed their physicals each year because they were overweight rose nearly 70 percent,” the report concluded.

Though the Army screens out the seriously obese and completely unfit, it is still finding that many of the recruits who reach basic training have less strength and endurance than privates past. It is the legacy of junk food and video games, compounded by a reduction in gym classes in many high schools, Army officials assert.

As a result, it is harder for recruits to reach Army fitness standards, and more are getting injured along the way. General Hertling said that the percentage of male recruits who failed the most basic fitness test at one training center rose to more than one in five in 2006, up from just 4 percent in 2000. The percentages were higher for women.

Military recruiters are already stuggling with the fact that "up to 9 million Americans ages 17 to 24 -- or nearly 27 percent of the prime military recruiting age demographic -- are 'too fat to serve in the military,'" so I suppose it stands to reason that the Army feels that it's necessary to soften up its PT requirements. But are stretching and yoga sufficient to get our soldiers ready for combat?

(By the way, in case you're interested, here's a description of the Army's current fitness test, and a calculator that scores your results.)

(Source: NYT)