Long Term Planning For Strength and Conditioning: The Next Requirement To Meet the Demands 21st Century Policing
How to “block” your physical training goals and why it should be symbiotic with standard law enforcement training and lifestyle.
Law enforcement and military have a unique challenge when trying to maintain their fitness. The professions have demanding schedules, no off season, and usually a family life to balance. With the exception of building up to a physically demanding school or selection, you are stuck in a perpetual demand of readiness. How do you progress for months or years on end without eating into your job performance? This article will focus on the long term training for the “Day to Day” progression for a fit police officer. The kind of training and planning that I believe needs to be the next step in 21st century policing.
Let’s briefly look at collegiate American football. The cycle is always the same:
Players train up for and then compete in spring ball.
Short break before summer train up, then summer strength and conditioning.
Summer training camp.
Fall season hits.
That is a long time requiring skilled coaching and planning; millions of dollars are at stake and surely if you don’t get it done they will find someone else who will.
That same mindset should be applied for a police officer training for a SWAT selection or a soldier heading to Ranger School. A few weeks of general training that builds on itself, then as the event gets closer we get more specific, then you ship off to your adventure.
When we don’t have specific event, the biggest mistake people make is they often chase too many goals at once. Everything comes at a cost; if you concurrently train multiple competing facets of fitness you will often fail to make any meaningful progress in anything. The book, Science And Practice Of Strength Training, written by Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky, William J. Kraemer, and Andrew C. Fry, goes into detail on periodization. I think this quote on page 89 of the third edition sums it up best:
“A good periodization plan is a subtle trade-off between conflicting demands.”
All three of these authors are world renown coaches and researchers. If they haven’t figured out how to train everything at once, I don’t know who will. That doesn’t mean you can’t train different qualities, it just means that one should prioritize certain goals while maintaining others. Training all at once for a marathon, powerlifting meet, and MMA fight probably won’t lead to an ideal outcome.
I cannot recommend enough Joel Jamieson’s book, The Ultimate Guide to MMA Conditioning. Although the primary audience is for fighters/coaches of fighters, the concepts are universal. Joel explains the importance of focusing on training goals that do not interfere with each other. I illustrate this concept for Law Enforcement, Tactical, and Outdoor Adventure preparation below:
This is the philosophy I use when training clients. Now does everyone make it through each step of the Preparation to Performance Pyramid? No, because lactic power/capacity isn’t needed for some to reach the performance level they need.
For people just getting back into shape, only going up to the second level of that pyramid will usually suffice. We could spend months training those qualities, with variation of modalities, rep ranges, layouts, etc. The options are endless.
The key here is we avoid the more intense methods until the other methods stop working. We also focus our efforts in each phase to achieve a training objective. If we jump right into lactic power/capacity what’s next? The first and second phase focuses on the aerobic system and basic strength training. We start with the “easier” methods for the energy system development to build the engine before moving to the higher end work. If put percents on the load for the strength training the main lifts will probably be between 60-80%. This is long term planning.
How does this look for a hypothetical cop who needs to maintain performance and nudge their fitness to higher levels?
Explanations for the above methods can be found at: HICT, Zone 2, HRI, Strength Training methods, Anaerobic Threshold, VO2 Max Intervals, and dietary habits. This is just an example. For custom programming please inquire here.
As we climb to the top we build off of each training block. This officer isn’t preparing for anything specific. That is why preparation was replaced with foundation and the overall goal is maintaining performance. The pattern is still the same for specific preparation. However, without a cooper standard or other specific metric we have to excel at we purposefully stay with broader concepts and use variation. We are building the engine right now. We can always get more specific later.
In this example we identified through initial consultation the Officer only sleeps 5 hours a night. This is obviously not ideal for long term health. He works nights and during the day attempts to sleep with regular curtains in his bedroom. Per our consultation he bought black out curtains, and set a goal of increasing his sleep by two hours.
Now we move onto training. We use foundational methods and build a solid base of strength. We aren’t maxing out every day. We are keeping the volume reasonable and repeatable. Most of our sessions are circuit based, but done slow enough to allow for recovery between exercises. A time saver and also another opportunity to build his aerobic capacity.
Next month we spend some time on the edges of aerobic capacity. Our fictional officer doesn’t need to move on to the VO2 Max intervals yet as the threshold method will suffice. Maybe next phase he will need it to make progress, but no reason to force it.
Then the last 3 weeks, if needed, we sprinkle in some vomit inducing lactic work. Maybe this is a twice a year block. Much like truly maxing out on a lift, these are often just displaying the level of fitness you worked to build...not necessarily building your fitness. The ability to train this system is a bit more finite.
This article just outlined roughly a third of the training year. In previous articles I have laid out in detail how these blocks can look. This is the mindset of where law enforcement needs to be. Some hobbyist fitness enthusiasts train more for their activities than some cops do. This needs to change.
Your strength and conditioning should be symbiotic with your tactical and educational training. Everything I outlined could be accomplished in around 30-45 minutes, 5 times a week. Not all of this needs to be in the gym. BJJ, boxing, or even drills on the range could accomplish some of this. None of this has to be complicated either, it just requires a little foresight, planning, and the realization your job is incredibly serious. Your physical training needs to reflect that.
Start thinking like an athlete. An under appreciated…horribly underpaid...athlete. Look at the lifestyles of athletes. We know you don’t making millions being a cop, nor did you sign up for that, however your lack of fitness and preparation could result in an even bigger catastrophic failure. Athletes who fail to prepare will typically just lose in their competition or fail to get a contract renewed.
What happens if you lose?
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Great article. Very useful. At some point we are not in our twenties and cannot get away with smashing ourselves in a CrossFit gym three times a week and after a street fight realize the Arnold workouts aren’t that useful. Your resume shows you know what you’re talking about and this is solid information for anyone looking to survive street work and combat and stay healthy long term. Thanks for posting sir.