Your First Answer
Frank Borelli
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com
Just recently on our forums someone posted a video of an event that happened in the course of a law enforcement officer’s duties. The event itself was interesting but the person posting it saw fit ONLY to comment on the physical condition of the officer. It was interesting how many forum members reported the post as “insulting to LE” because the original poster commented that the officer was over-weight (I think the term was “sloppy fat”). Yeah, that’s insulting. But is it the truth?
I’m retired now so I have a ready excuse for not needing to be in shape to work the street. But I KNOW it’s nothing more than an excuse. Given that I still carry a gun and THINK I see a warrior when I look in the mirror, there is NO excuse for being 10% over-weight. In my case, 10% is 20 pounds.
Sure, my best friend tells me I can lose 20 pounds of ugly fat by simply cutting my head off, but I think that might be counter-productive to future performance. My wife can’t complain about my weight because we are equally comfortable in our marriage (how careful was THAT said). But just two short weeks ago I found myself at a conference discussing defensive tactics over adult beverages late in the evening (thank goodness there were no guns involved in the talk), and I realized that I was presenting the point of view of a guy who believes in physical fitness for police officers, but quite obviously wasn’t practicing what I was preaching. Hypocrisy sucks…
SO, I entered into another one of those conversations and it was brought to my attention that a great many law enforcement agencies don’t maintain fitness standards for their officers past rookie level. Others mandate a fitness test with minimum passing levels to attain promotions.
Some of those fitness tests require officers or deputies to perform tasks that have little to nothing to do with the job they perform on the street. After all, the next time you have to aprpehend a suspect I don’t think you’ll be doing as many push-ups as you can in two minutes, or as many sit-ups as you can in two minutes, or seeing how many pull-ups you can do before you’re allowed in the chow hall (military police thing).
What you may find yourself doing is running after someone, hopping a fence, rolling down a hill, jumping over a lawn chair, climbing over a taller fence, tackling someone and then fighting to get them handcuffed. How do we prepare for that?
In my world the first answer is simple: I start out by losing the 20 pounds of excess weight I don’t need to carry into a fight. In the process I probably will increase my strength, flexibility and cardio-vascular fitness. I KNOW my first and most valuable weapon is ME. I KNOW that I have nine personal weapons (two feet, two knees, two hands, two elbows and my head) but I have to be in sufficient physical condition to use them.
What’s YOUR first answer?
Breaking free of inertia!
I find it exceedingly easy to SIT… sit in my squad, sit and write reports, sit in front of the TV. Somehow over the years I went from a 4-season competitive athlete to a Grand Champion Sofa Spud. I once could leave a three hour football practice, eat dinner, and then go to a buddies house to play pickup B-ball until dark and feel great afterward!
Now I need to work at breaking the inertia that keeps me glued to the seat and get the muscles moving on a regular basis. The more I sit the harder it is to move. I think this is probably the case for most people whose job and lifestyles are predominantly sedentary, but for those of us in LE the need to be able to respond physically is critical. Fights and foot pursuits explode out of the mundane. Training for technique is important so we know what to do. Training to go from 0 to 60 on a moments notice is just as important, and entirely up to us. All the technique in the world is of no value unless we can engage and effectively move.
Very sadly, we have had some LOD deaths this year that have come not from assaults but rather from officers’ hearts failng them after sudden, unexpected, high-stress exertion. Pretty sobering.
I developed a great program for my kids and I. Watch as much TV as you want, but during commercials do 2 minutes of situps or pushups or jog in place. You can get creative with the excercises, as long as you are doing something.
I have been a cop for 27 years. When we do our physical proficiencies once a year, I beat guys 20 years younger. Now I know that that speaks volumes for me but that is not the point. The point is that an almost 50 year old man should not be able to beat a 25 year old man. That is the point. How then do we get these new and veteran officers to understand the need to be physically fit?
For conditioning, the Tabata protocol seems hard to beat (4 minutes of 20 second sprints with 10 second breaks in between). You can also substitute calisthenics for running or biking hard. Hard to find an excuse to not work out for 4 minutes, no? For raw strength, I can recommend either Power to the People or The Naked Warrior, both by Pavel Tsatsouline through dragondoor.com. I recently started with a kettlebell, same author for technique, so far so good. And as cops, don’t neglect grip strength–helps with shooting as well as glomming onto somebody. Bottom line, whatever program you pick, at least do something, and frequently.
I just returned from a three day instructor level seminar. One evolution involved CQC (hand to hand). There was one on one elimination rounds. No pads, no mats. A few things I observed; most participants were not physically well conditioned. Most had a VERY low threshold to pain. Most were not aggresive and definetly not ruthless. The shooting skills of many (not all) were not all that good. This is not the first time I noticed a lack of critical skills. I think law enforcement is going to have some serious problems in the near future. Actually it’s already happening. And nobody gives a sh#t. God willing two more years and I’m history.