Military vs. Sport Athletes - What's the Difference in Training?

Whether or not the military should consider themselves athletes or train like them depends on what your definition of an athlete is. Since the strength and conditioning field has yet to really define what it means, I doubt we’ll solve that problem today. In my opinion, the largest discriminating factor between military and sport athletes is the competitive season. Strength and conditioning professionals train athletes based on which season they are in and structure the training plan to provide the best opportunity for athletes to peak in-season.

If you opened a copy of the National Strength & Conditioning Association’s Essentials of Strength Training & Conditioning, you would see a periodization model that flows from high volume and low intensity in the off-season to a reduction of volume and increase in intensity as the athlete enters the pre-season and competitive season and finishes with an active recovery post-season period. For obvious reasons, this isn’t applicable to members of the military (or law enforcement, fire, or any first responders). An argument could be made that deployment is similar to the competitive season, however, that’s not really accurate as it doesn’t account for all of the TDY (Temporary Duty), field training exercises, and “hey you” taskings that occur outside of deployment.

I think a better question to ask is, “should they train athletically.” My answer to this is, absolutely yes. The presence of a competitive season has no bearing on if they should be developing qualities such as strength, power, speed, quickness, change of direction ability, etc.

While I don’t intend to dive into our entire training methodology in this post (possibly in a future one), I believe that conditioning is the foundation for all tactical professionals, whether that’s military, fire, or law enforcement. It’s great to be strong and athletic, but if it’s not repeatable because you’re not well-conditioned, then it doesn’t mean much. A shot-putter completes one extremely powerful action and then recovers. A military, fire, or law enforcement member may be required to express strength and power, and then do it again, and again, and again, with no clear end in sight. This is why if you’re a member of Warfighter, you’ll see that we have equal strength training days and conditioning days. You’ll also see that we use Joe Kenn’s Tier System template, because it also allows us to train power while fatigued.

Another difference to keep in mind is that sport athletes receive the maximum number of resources in-season. This is when they are peaking, and all efforts are put towards ensuring their performance is optimized when it’s game time. This may not be the case for somebody in a deployed environment. I’ve been to places where there were super nice facilities and also to places where we made it happen with some TRX bands and minimal equipment. In both cases, sleep was limited, and nutrition was questionable, at best. For the military professional, you probably have less human performance resources while deployed than at home - the inverse of the sport athlete. This is why our thought process on Warfighter isn’t training to peak at specific times but equipping our athletes to achieve the highest sustainable level of physical readiness so they can perform at anytime.

In summary, the principles of athletic movement aren’t limited to those playing a game. They should be trained by military personnel. However, keep in mind that all the power, strength, and dynamic movement capability we develop, must be accessible when you’re dog-tired. It’s not about rising to the occasion on game day…it’s about ensuring you’re physically capable of handling it when your normal day turns into the worst one you can imagine.