Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there
Eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters,
And we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle
Ah, but the one, one is a warrior and he will bring the others back
-Heraclitus
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Not going to argue with you. Our expireinces are separated by different times and service cultures.Originally Posted by Sean Herbison
✓ Member
Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there
Eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters,
And we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle
Ah, but the one, one is a warrior and he will bring the others back
-Heraclitus
Member
It's been said that BMI (which is what this stuff is based on) is only a problem for unusually strong people. I've even said it. But in the last 6 months or a year since Medicare implemented it's MIPS program, which requires a structured documentation of various "quality measures" (you have to get the verbiage right or it doesn't count), I'm not so sure anymore. We now document a BMI on everyone and state how we counseled them in relation to this number. And if it's "abnormal," you have to document that they've been counseled. I no longer think that BMI is only off base for healthy and strong people. It seems to be a misleading guide in virtually everyone. Little old ladies often classify as "overweight," and so should be counseled to lose weight. But in reality this is terrible advice, since in the absence of strength training they will just become frail. But this is what they are being told. Or you have frail old people with "normal" BMIs who just look emaciated and about to break. But apparently they're perfectly healthy. They should be told to gain a few pounds, but they're told to "keep up the good work."
I think my revised opinion of BMI thanks to the MIPs experiment of forced documentation of inappropriate counseling is not that it's OK except in the strong and healthy population, but that it's dangerously misleading in all but the extreme ends of the measure, for all populations. It fails to measure the most important factor - strength - and in most cases, if you were to counsel people based on this (which Medicare requires) then you are often counseling people to do the exact opposite of what would be best for their health.
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Maybe we can go with Nerf grenades with little pockets on them for notes.
You toss them at the enemy. After it doesn't explode and he gathers the nerve to look at it, he finds a note that says "Please just surrender. We serve cookies to our POWs"
Both worth reposting.
I was set to go career military, but the "company" heads and their ideas about how to spend young men's lives bothered me to much to have mine spent on such things.
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During my time in the Army, I referred to myself as a corporate soldier. I was trading 6 years of my life for a lifetime of jobskill. To me the agreement was simple. I get job skills and they can send me any damned place they want to do whatever they need me to do. Don't get me wrong, I love my country and was proud to serve. But I joined because it would benefit me.
I turned 31 within weeks of joining the Army, after having spent most of the previous decade in law enforcement. I joined specifically to get job experience in IT. I had a wife and child. I knew that I could get a paycheck, housing or housing allowance and seprats. Being able to get a VA loan also appealed to us. My wife had a degree and was able to get a good job that was double my income. And we were stationed in Germany so we got to do some traveling. There were plenty of times, during my service that we were being prepped for a conflict. That never bothered me. It was all the other bullshit that drove me crazy.
I didn't like throwing handgrenades. But you damned sure never forget it.
As for the BMI thing and the obsession with running, When I was in Basic, we had a guy who came in who was an absolute beast. Had been a college football player. He was strong as hell. all muscle, I actually heard the drill Sgt.s talking about him at the beginning. They planned to PT at least 15 lbs of muscle off of him. I got the feeling that some of their motivation was jealousy and some was just the enjoyment they got by fucking with somebody. Here you have a kid who is already Beastmode strong and well muscled. Low body fat and you decide to try to turn him into a distance runner.
When I was in Germany, my unit had two Sgt Mjr's. One was super fit and pretty muscular guy who wanted to put a team together for the Army 10 miler. So I was able to get out of organized PT if I would go run., So I did. I would go run 5-10 miles, then go across to the gym and lift weights, then shower and eat my body weight in Schnitzel and brotchen. Once the 10 miler was over, it was back to the retarded shit they do for PT. There wasn't much I hated more than standing around with a group of 100 other people doing side stradle hops, Pea pickers, or bends and thrusts. And there was always some NCO who wanted to make you do high volume ab work and 10 different types of pushups and wind sprints until you broke. Every damned day. , Thankfully, my other Sgt Mjr decided he needed my expertise on a project and instead of PT I was usually working with him in the morning and he would cut me loose to lift or mountain bike a couple times a week in the afternoon.
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This is the kind of stuff that gets me. You hear a lot about shared suffering and how it makes you better. In medical school, they don't really want to get rid of the scutt work because it's supposed to be character building, and older docs say stuff like, "there should be no such thing as a happy resident." I suppose that's fine as long as the focus in on training. The problem arises when you get some sadistic tool who just enjoys torturing people, or you have a system basically designed to be hard just to be hard, and is a total waste of training time. Unfortunately, this basically describes most post graduate medical training. Apparently, educators over the entire spectrum are unable to figure out how to make something usefully hard, and think that just because you're suffering it's character building. So, ultimately I don't disagree. Med school and residency should be hard. Army boot camp should be hard. But at least make it purposefully hard.
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My father, born in 1919, usmc vet, silver Star on iwo Jima, reminded me often that I didn't remember the Great Depression. As in "oh I forgot you don't remember those hard times".
Any institution will say that the old school had it harder. Shit, the first Marine who signed up at Tun Tavern turned to the second and said "let me tell you about the Old Corps".
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Oh look, it's the entirety of Basic Cadet Training.
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...And then called him a "boot". :P
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After being on this board a few years, I was not surprised when my secretary told me about her son who had just joined the Navy 5-6 months ago being told he needed to slim down. Kid was an excellent HS football and baseball player, benched over 300 and deadlifted over 500 (no idea what his squat was, this was all she knew), 6'2 and maybe 230 or so. His recruiter told him up front that he needed to lose "all that muscle." Kid could still run pretty well, but the number on the scale could not be argued, even though his body fat was low just from looking at him.
Sad, yes, but not surprised.
I dunno, maybe there's some obscure reason this might apply better for someone likely to stay on a boat instead of the front line, so I defer to actual vets here...
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