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Title (Dublin Core)
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Development of a physical-training program to strengthen soldiers
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Article Title and/or Image Caption (Dublin Core)
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Can we make our soldiers tough enough?
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extracted text (Extract Text)
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WORLD WAR II demands physical
stamina far greater that that pos-
sessed by the average American boy. Our
young men are a sad commentary on the
machine age, easy schooling, and easy living.
They're softies, compared with their fathers
of a generation ago. They look all right;
they're taller, heavier, better nourished, and
freer from disease. But they haven't ex-
ercised as much as their fathers used to,
and they're physical weaklings by present-
day military standards.
That's the conviction of the three men
largely responsible for the U.S. Army's
toughening program. These men, now as-
signed to the Special Service Forces, are
Col. Theodore P.
Bank, formerly athletic coach at Tulane and
Idaho universities; Capt. A. A. Eslinger,
director of physical education at Leland
Stanford University, and C. H. McCloy,
director of physical education at the Uni-
versity of Towa. Much of the new training
system was worked out by this trio just
before Pearl Harbor.
At the school in Washington and Lee
University, Lexington, Va., where Special
Service officers are trained in the new
hardening program, Captain Eslinger gave
me some data on the physical unfitness of
average American college boys, as of 1940
and 1941.
“In a physical-fitness test of 1,000 men
at the University of Illinois in 1940,” he
said, “the following facts were revealed:
13 percent of them couldn't swim a stroke
and 36 percent couldn't swim 50 yards. Over
three percent couldn't chin themselves even
once, and more than 25 percent couldn't
chin’ themselves five times. About 24 per-
cent couldn't vault an obstacle waist high;
more than 40 percent couldn't ‘skin the cat,’
an easy stunt for their fathers.”
Captain Eslinger had examples—taken
from battle reports—to illustrate how dis-
astrous it may be to a soldier in wartime
to lack strength in his arms and shoulders.
“The crew of an American bomber,” he
said, “made a forced landing at sea off the
Aleutians. A small naval vessel sped to
their rescue. With high seas running, ropes
were lowered to the airmen floating aboard
their collapsible raft. All but one were
saved. That man couldn't climb the rope.”
A similar fatality occurred, he said,
aboard a U.S. Army transport sunk off-
shore in operations near Guadalcanal. An
enlisted man was caught below decks with
no means of escape except through a hatch-
way only 20 feet above his head. A comrade
tossed him a rope. But the man was unable
to climb it, and his comrade was unable
to pull him up.
As for strength and agility needed in
hand-to-hand combat against such tough-
ened troops as the Nazis, no powers are too
great. It was with such situations in mind
that the three university athletic directors
went over scores of standard drills in calis-
thenics to develop the single set of 12 that
is now working miracles for the Army.
They packed into a dozen basic exercises,
which can be run through in 20 minutes,
more strenuous physical drill than was
contained in the 60-minute system used
before the war. Then they added “guerrilla”
exercises and combative drills, and topped
their new system with rough-and-tumble
games to built competitive spirit among
our troops.
Under the new program, recently com-
piled in a manual known as Training Circu-
lar 87, every soldier in our Army must be
tested individually
at regular intervals. This determines his
muscular strength, agility, endurance, and
co-ordination. It's also a sure way to find
out the extent of his improvement under
training.
Creators of the program simplified the
routines to make every movement an effec-
tive training device. They gave each ex-
ercise in the now famous dozen a name
that soldiers can easily remember; they
stipulated an exact number of counts, so
that motions can be made in cadence and
whole drills run off with a minimum of
commands.
They named their 12 the high jumper,
burpee, squat bender, rowing exercise, push-
ups, sit-ups, side bender, bank twist, squat
jump, trunk twister, stationary rum, and
eight-count push-ups. Later, they adopted
some alternative exercises, known as the
mountain climber, the wood-chopper, and
the bridge. Most of these names are
descriptive of the motions.
In the high jumper, for instance, the men
swing their arms from their sides to above
their heads and jump straight up, at least a
foot into the air. Then they swing their
arms forward and jump in that position,
then backward and jump. This is done in
rapid cadence, from 12 to 25 times before the
‘men pass on to another exercise at a single
command, and without any intervening rest.
Besides the calisthenics, there are drills
in which men of approximately the same
weight and height may be pitted against
each other, individually or in teams. The
very names of these describe what they do.
They are the hand wrestle, the pull-hands,
the wrist bend (or make-'em-beg), the head
push, the shoulder push, the back-to-back
push, the knock-em-down, and others.
In the knock-"em-down, for instance, each
of two men tries to knock his opponent off
his feet in any way possible. Each con-
testant may tackle, push, pull, lift, or
wrestle. The first man who has any part
of his body except his feet touching the
ground loses.
In developing these exercises, the authors
of T.C. 87 did not forget that marching
under full field equipment and playing such
games as soccer, baseball, pushball, and
volleyball are valuable aids to training.
They set up some rigorous standards for
‘marching under full pack. Here are some
of them: 4
“March four miles in 45 minutes; march
five miles in an hour; march 16 miles in
four hours; march 25 miles in eight hours;
march and double-time for seven miles with-
out halt.”
Once they were convinced they had
worked out an improvement on old Army
methods, the physical-education experts
made a demonstration test at a camp in
California. They took two companies of
250 men each, so equated that each had
the same number of men from various sec-
tions of the country, from various walks of
life, and of various ages. As nearly as
possible, these two companies started equal
in physical condition. Each underwent a
six weeks’ training course, under constant
observation; the experimental group with
the new system of physical toughening, and
the control group with the traditional.
At the start and at the close of this
period, every man in both companies re-
ceived a test in eight exercises. There were
pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups, and three suc-
cessive standing broad jumps to test their
strength. There was the 20-second burpee
to test their agility. To test their endurance,
each was required to run 75 yards with a
man of equal weight on his back, and 300
yards as a sprint. To test their co-ordina-
tion, each was put through a dodging run
about obstacles. The improvement of each
company was measured on a point system.
It showed that the experimental group had
gained by 23.5 percent, while the control
group, under former Army methods, had
improved only 35 percent.
The average man in the experimental
company increased the number of times he
could chin himself from 8.3 to 10.8 times.
His push-ups increased from 20.4 to 32.2
times. He cut his time for running 300
yards from 51.2 to 47.5 seconds.
Since that test, the Special Service Forces
have been gradually installing their system
of physical drill and periodic testing through-
out the Army, as officers are trained to con-
duct it. They have worked out some average
physical-capacity standards for soldiers ac-
cording to seven tests, and a point system
whereby every soldier can see where he
stands in comparison with his fellows. The
job of the athletic officers includes stimulat-
ing individual soldiers to improve their
ratings.
Three periods of training change the raw
recruit into a toughened soldier. The first,
of six weeks, emphasizes calisthenics. These
gradually give way during the second period
—from six to 10 weeks—to competitive
games. Thereafter is a period of “mainte-
nance of condition.” *
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Contributor (Dublin Core)
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Allen Raymond (article writer)
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William W. Morris (photographer)
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Language (Dublin Core)
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eng
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Date Issued (Dublin Core)
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1944-02
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pages (Bibliographic Ontology)
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57-60, 203
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Rights (Dublin Core)
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Public Domain (Google digitized)
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Archived by (Dublin Core)
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Lorenzo Chinellato
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Marco Bortolami (editor)
Popular Science Monthly, v. 144, n. 2, 1944
