20 Minutes a Day: Starter Program for Law Enforcement Officers to Get Moving
Future staffing issues combined with rising violent crime. Why is physical fitness and training reform crucial for law enforcement now and especially in the near future?
Health Standards- Why do they matter?
Due to request from some readers this article is going to outline a one month program for a police officer (or really anyone) that may have neglected their fitness for some time, and is looking for a simple plan to get back on track. This program is designed to be done at home and take 20 minutes a day, maybe 30 if you walk a little farther on some of the “walk” days.
Before I get into the program, I think it is important to talk about why this should be important for you if you are in law enforcement; regardless of career progression or age. This includes you insane people who managed to make it 20+ years and are literally walking out the door after filing your retirement paperwork. Longevity might be a concept actually in your forefront at this stage of life; looking forward to enjoying family time and your much earned retirement.
The Texas Highway Patrol over these past few years implemented some very basic physical standards that seemed to upset some people in law enforcement. The standard that pissed everyone off was a pretty simple one, and actually backed by data. Take a measuring tape, and measure the waistline at the navel (Dallas Morning News 2022).
The Texas Highway Patrol implemented a maximum waist size for male troopers to be 40 inches and for women 35 inches. This may have actually increased to 43 and 38, I am not totally sure as this Texas HP website has these numbers listed. Regardless, I think most would agree this is a more than reasonable standard. A standard to not only hold yourself to, especially if you are in a job that may require you to save a life or take a life, but really for any citizen. Regardless of age, athletic background, genetics, etc…this is truly a doable number. This standard isn’t some kind of unreachable cover or fitness model look. Take a measuring tape and measure out 35 or 40 inches and really look at it.
Are there possible exceptions to this in very unique circumstances? Maybe. I am not trying to say this is the end all be all standard that will cure all physical fitness and training issues in law enforcement. However, it is certainly a start and backed by data; which is an important requirement when you start telling people you are going to fire them if they don’t do something. Using some other metric such as a bod pod or the like to measure body composition might work as well for these unique individuals (or even just use body fat percentage as the standard itself), and a doctor could rule on a holistic approach that the officer is fit for duty. This would be the exception. I think if we are honest we all know what this standard was trying to achieve.
I am also not saying that as soon as this standard is put into effect, anyone outside of it should be immediately shown the door. Quite the opposite. Work with these officers and give them a reasonable amount of time to get down to a healthy weight or body fat percentage. To do this safely and for the results to “stick” it should take some time. The bigger the person, the longer this should take. This isn’t a weight loss TV show. This is real life and someone’s livelihood we are talking about.
It would also be reasonable if the officers aren’t quite there yet but are making progress and showing effort, to keep them on but put them on light duty until they are fit for duty. For the cops reading this we all know several calls for service do not require an in-person response and will often just be a phone call ending with a simple report. Those struggling officers can handle those calls until they can work the street, which would free up the other officers to run to more pressing matters or even...do some proactive policing. I will get to this later but with the staffing issues already plaguing departments I think a change like this would be welcome.
Dan John, Future coauthor with me for the book, Answering the Call: Proper Physical Training for Police and Military in the 21st Century, has spoke of his own standard: Don’t be wider than you are tall. Dan has been featured in Men’s Health, been a successful elite collegiate thrower himself, and is now in his 60s. He openly talks about his goal of dancing at his grand daughter's wedding. He is not some juiced up youtuber trying to sell you snake oil. He is in this for the long haul, and others like him have similar standards that are very often simple and correlated with disease risk.
Why is this important? This number obviously correlates with obesity, which will not help you do your job if you are a first responder. On a more global scale this number correlates with general health markers, cited by the doctors and leadership who instilled and defended this standard at the Texas HP. Waist measurement correlates with risk factors for hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease.
Bringing this home for cops, the doctors also cited that average officers between the ages of 55-59 already has a 56% chance of having a heart attack just because of the stress of being a cop. (The Dallas Morning News 2019). They also compared that number to the general public, that only has a 1.5% chance if you work a more “normal” job. If you are sick of seeing bold letters I would stop reading, but those doctors also cited a Harvard Study that found cops are 30 to 70 times at higher risk for sudden cardiac death when involved in stressful situations, with 10% of those deaths occurring while on duty (Press of Atlantic City 2015).
This is real. This should be just as much of a concern for the public and the police alike. You cannot reliably protect the public and be grossly overweight or out of shape. You owe this not only to the public you protect, but also your fellow officers, yourself, and lets not forget your family. They worry about you enough, don’t add risk factors like this that are generally controllable.
It is also worth noting the study above was only taking into consideration the acute stress on the officer during fighting someone or getting into a pursuit. I wouldn’t even know how to measure it, but if you were an officer knee deep in nonstop rioting a few years ago for months at a time...where do you think you might fall on the stress bell curve? Even outside of true periods of unrest the job itself is naturally stressful. If you work a 12 hour shift, that is half a day where you are essentially at low level of stress and alertness the entire time. How does that not take a toll on you in the long run? To handle that properly, you need be in shape.
Now, lets look at officers who are either entering law enforcement or still have 5-10 years left. Why will your personal fitness be important if you stay in this profession? Why will the health of the force be important and why should departments also view this as a dire concern?
Lets take a look at the trajectory for staffing for police in several major cities. We can start with Philadelphia simply because this city has been in the news a lot recently. Short 1300 officers already, philly has around 800 city employees and officers already starting their “drop” retirement program where they can start collecting their retirement for typically 5 years and then officially retire. Philly is already 20% under staffed, and over the next 5 years this number will drastically increase as people retire as they complete their drop period. This of course is in the face of the city having its most violent year on record in 2021, with 561 homicides. In 2022 there has already been 350 homicides (Fox News 2022).
New York City Police department recently had nearly 2,000 officers quit before getting a full pension. The total number so far for this year of officers leaving NYPD tallying 2,465 officers. As of July of 2021 compared to July of 2022 murder was up more than 34%. (New York Post 2022)
Lets go to the west coast, where LAPD is down 650 officers from pre-pandemic numbers (New York Post 2022). These numbers aren’t being replaced, with police leadership concerned with recruiting efforts (Los Angeles Daily News 2022). California as a state has seen an increase of 150 deaths from 2020, totaling 2,361 homicides for 2021.
That is a glance at some major departments in the United States. I know at the medium size cities that typically don’t come up in this kind of coverage you are having similar issues, even if the homicides aren’t quite at the numbers I stated above. I didn’t take the time to talk about some of the Pacific Northwest cities like Seattle and Portland that have lost absurd levels of staffing, have a massive homeless problem, and in the case of Portland they have seen a 4 fold increase in homicides. I also left out some other large cities in the Midwest or South, like Chicago, St. Louis, Houston, etc…the trends are similar even if in some of the cities like Chicago the crime is very concentrated to certain areas and has been relativley consistent for several years. Many are getting numb to the headlines.
It should be noted these numbers aren’t as high as some of the crime surges this country has seen in prior decades like in the 80s and early 90s. However, one thing that more casual observers constantly miss is that modern trauma care has made incredible strides since those time periods. I focus on homicides when I talk about the crime spike simply because it is very hard to juke that statistic. A dead person is a dead person.
LTC Dave Grossman, a retired Army LTC, former West Point Professor and Psychologist, has talked about this phenomenon since the early 2000s in several of his speeches and writing. The only thing keeping the murder statistic at this perceived lower level is the fact that if someone isn’t shot in the brain, heart, spine, major artery, etc. in the United States; if they are loaded into an Ambulance in a somewhat timely manner they are more than likely going to survive. Any cop can anecdotally tell you this because they are the ones who respond to the shootings and see this reality constantly.
Why did I just ramble about all of that above and not just get to the program? It is simple. Anyone who is going to be in this profession for the next 5-10 years, you are going to be dealing with worse staffing issues, more violence, and...
YOU WILL NEED TO BE PHYSICALLY PREPARED AND TRAINED TO DEAL WITH IT.
Sorry, I just blacked out, what did I say? It doesn’t matter. Lets get to the program:
As stated earlier, this is a basic plan to get back to moving. Every workout can be done probably within 20 minutes, with the obvious exception being the “long” walk or hike day. Just get the work in, no overthinking. I also challenge you, do one thing per day that helps you with your diet and habits. I don’t care if that is having an extra glass of water, eating one serving of vegetables, forgoing fries for a side salad, praying or meditation, just ONE thing. When you can do one thing every day for 4 weeks, we can move on to more fancier stuff. Just one thing, that is all I ask.
The program it is pretty straight forward. You will do two “strength” days and the rest will either be recovery or walking. All of these strength moves are mostly body weight movements, however they can be loaded with kettebells, dumbbells, a loaded back pack, a rock (for some moves, be careful with the rock), a gallon of milk, a sandbag, whatever.
If these are the first workouts you have done for sometime, I suggest just starting with body weight. Move as fast as you can through the workouts, but not so fast that you hit a wall and can’t keep going a decent pace. Think of this magical pace is one that you can keep moving and talking, but your conversational tone is slightly labored. You’ll find it. If you can sing your favorite Taylor Swift song without having to pause, just go a little faster. Same for your walks. Some of the fancier types will refer to this aerobic zone as “Zone 2.”
If you don’t want to walk, or if weather is not permitting, anything low impact works. Stationary bike, stair climber, step-ups, dance off, whatever. Just get it in. I do recommend for mental health reasons to get outside if possible. Especially if you are one of the vampires that work nights. Get some sun. At least for the longer walk day. Let “long” be whatever that is for you. Just go longer than you do on your other walk days. I suggest doing this event with family or friends.
For the warm ups. One movement for each workout. You can certainly do more but I am trying to be respectful of your time. This workouts aren’t terribly demanding, so you should be fine. The first on Day 1 is the worlds greatest stretch. Just google it. The second is the push-up position plank. Hold the top of a push up and while you are up there maintain a flat back, push against the ground with your hands to engage the shoulder stabilizers. We are trying to activate the abs for your workout and also keep our shoulders healthy.
Strength 1
Think quality movement done in a slow circuit fashion. Move through each exercise with a pace that is challenging but not so hard that you’re barely making it through the sets as you go. A little out of breath, sweating, but you can keep going. Try the talk test I already described. Each Block is a circuit done on it’s own. Week 1 as outlined for day 1 should be read as 3 sets of 5 repetitions per movement. That means you will do each exercise in each circuit, in a row, 3 times each, for 5 reps per exercise.
BLOCK A: Body weight squat to parallel. If that is too challenging hold on to a door handle or wall to get you down there. If possible, put a band or belt around your knees and push out against it to really engage your glutes. You sit too much as it is. This will help. Move on to a push up to single arm support. If you need to, push a chair against a wall and do it from an incline position. Do a push-up, get to the top and lift one hand and touch your opposite shoulder. Really push with that hand that is down to engage the stabilizers in your shoulder. Then do another push-up and repeat the other side. Bulgarian Goat Bag Swing- Outstanding demo here from the creator:
Key here, flex your abs into the weight on your stomach, or your hands if it is unloaded. Initiate by pushing your glutes back first while hinging at the hips.
BLOCK B: Move right into a doorway row. This could be single Arm, double, whatever works for you. Describing the single arm, stand in a door way, step close to the edge and grab the wall. Slowly let yourself back into an inverted row, squeeze your abs and glutes the entire time, then bring yourself back up. Try not to let your shoulder shrug up. For the elevated mountain climber: hands on a chair or bench, back Flat. While not letting the rest of your body move, bring your knee to your chest, hold and own the position for a moment on one leg. Then return and repeat with the other side. It’s OK if you lose your balance at first. Glute Bridge: Lay on your back, knees bent, push your heels into the floor as you initiate bringing your hips up. Try not to use your lower back. Squeeze and hold the top position for a moment before returning to the ground. Feel free to place a band or belt around the knees here as well as you push out against it while raising the hips up.
Strength 2
Strength 2 will be a bit different. The resistance is lighter but you will do each movement in a very slow and controlled tempo. As an example with the push-up off the chair, you would slowly press up for a count of one-thousand, two-thousand, three-thousand, and the same on the lowering portion- one-thousand, two-thousand, three-thousand….and complete for 8-10 reps. This will be challenging, keep breathing, and don’t hold your breath or lock out each rep. Basically slow constant motion for the entire set. Then immediately begin the next exercise and complete in the same fashion. There is no rest between exercises, and rest as little as possible between circuits, maybe 30-40 seconds. Longer if you need to at first, but push yourself a bit. Do this for the entirety of Block A and then do a normal tempo for Block B.
BLOCK A: Push-Up, we know this one by now. Towel bent over row: Take a towel, and it could just be an unloaded towel at first or you could loop it through a kettlebell, Shoulders down, abs tight, hinge back the hips until your chest is close to parallel to the floor. With your hands gripping the towel (knuckles up), Actively pull the towel apart like you are trying to rip it in half as you row the towel towards your stomach and squeeze your shoulder blades together for each rep. Damn near your whole upper body should be under tension during this. Wide stance body weight Squat: Same as before, except this time turn your toes out a bit a widen your stance, not quite sumo stance but just wider than day 1.
BLOCK B: Reminder: Normal Tempo Now
Bird Dog: While on all fours, with a flat back and tight abs initiate the movement by reaching forward with one hand and simultaneously with the opposite leg push straight back into full extension leading with the heal of the working leg. Flex the glute on the working leg and try and pull yourself apart. The rest of the body should be like a statue. Side plank off knees- You will just hold this for 20 seconds. Bridge up into a side plank on your elbow and knees for now, we can move to feet later. Hold the position while squeezing your glutes and abs. Be sure you are in a straight line, not sagging backwards or towards the floor. Glute March: Flip over to your back and hold the “up” position of a glute bridge. Alternate bringing one leg up at a time and holding the top of a single leg glute bridge. Hold the position for a moment before returning the working leg. Don’t let your hips sag when you move your working leg.
That is it. No excuses. Fit this to your schedule however you can, get it in whenever. Break up the work out if you have to.
Any questions please feel free to reach out: