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  • gregory.a.benjamin2 replied to the topic Common mistakes for PT? in the forum Junior Officer 7 years, 7 months ago

    I absolutely agree about empowering your NCOs and getting their buy-in.  Before you start developing your platoon’s PT with your PSG, make sure you look at your platoon’s physical stats (latest APFT scores, road march stats, company/battalion physical assessments/competition stats, etc.).  Those stats will show you your platoon’s strengths and weaknesses.  From there, develop an approach aimed at improving the weak areas and maintaining the strong areas.  Make sure to include benchmarks and assessments that Scott mentioned above.  Also make sure to give your subordinates enough freedom to develop their personal PT plans so that they don’t feel like they are being micro-managed….but don’t give them absolute freedom because some of your subordinates will only do workouts that THEY are good at (despite if its whats their subordinates need or not).  To assist you with developing a platoon PT plan, I have attached a document that illustrates how we run our ROTC PT program.  It was developed with the assistance of our university strength and conditioning program and it is aimed at increasing APFT, OPAT, and RAW scores for our cadets. My MS 3 cadets (juniors) plan/prepare/execute PT 3 days a week, and a university strength coach has them do weight training the other 2 days.  For our 3x cadet-run PT days, our cadets are given broad PT guidance (slide 3) and they have a workout menu (not all inclusive) to choose from (slide 4).  We implemented our new PT program (slide 2) in January and we have seen huge improvements across the formation.  In just a few weeks time, we had individuals increase their pushups/situps by almost 20 repetitions, and others shaved their 2-mile times by almost 2 minutes.  Also, our MS 3 cadets appreciate the fact that they are given broad guidance for their prescribed PT day, but they really enjoy having the freedom run it their way.  Simple way of looking at it is…we tell them what needs to occur during their PT session (based on previous stats), but its on them to figure out how to execute it.  Hope this helps.