Does your Training Programme Prepare Patients to be Fit Enough To Be Useful?

It is now common to watch from the comfort of our armchairs reality television shows extorting the virtues of sports participation and physical fitness. In the UK at the moment we have the BBC series Special Forces Hell Week. This reality T.V. show takes military wannabes that presumably are among the fittest people in the UK, and pits them against former Special Forces soldiers to see who has what it takes to survive. Many, people watch this programme week after week, with mouths wide open in dis-belief at the physical hardships dished out in the name of entertainment. Contestants are made to run up and down hills, carry boats above their heads, and participate in a multitude of physically demanding activities whilst deprived of sleep and basic sustenance. Many of these training tasks would not look out of place in a second world war movie or Victorian prep school. However, this level of physical exertion is nowadays considered unnecessary by most people, because of the relative comfort we have become accustomed too.

So, are you fit enough to be useful?

So what! Well, I think that we all including our patients should be fit enough to be useful. To put it clearly, do they have enough physical reserve to deal with any emergencies that life might throw at them unexpectedly. For example, how many of you reading this could run 2 miles in under 20 minutes to summon help if someone’s life depended upon it and still have the physical reserve to be useful at the end. Or are you strong enough to prise open the jammed door of a car after a road traffic accident. Or would you have the agility and strength to fend off a mugger intent on stealing your mobile phone? I think for most people, if they were honest, the answer is probably “No” This is because physical training has been relegated from something which was a daily habit in years gone by to something, which is now an occasional chore, and done for vanity if done at all. Although, physical training may not be the most important thing you do in your day, it should be the most important thing you do every day.

“Physical training, it may not be the most important thing we do in a day, but it should be the most important thing we do every day”

So what’s gone wrong?

Over the centuries a far back as the Spartans physical fitness has been critical to the security and survival of civilizations. This notion of being fit enough for the unexpected is not something that we tend to worry about in western countries. Even the modern day military had forgotten the lessons of the past and lost sight of the need for functional or battle readiness training. In line with societies lower physical expectations of its citizens many armies have become concerned with fitness for health and weight control rather than battle fitness. This has been due in large part to the expanding waist lines of new recruits and society in general. Regrettably, this has also been caused historically by false concerns about the strength and endurance of female service woman and their inability to step up to the demands of combat fitness testing. This political correctness and the lowering of physical standards is misguided on several fronts and has lead to a gradual decline in physical robustness in the military.

A gradual decline in physical robustness in society

In the first instance while health related fitness is an important undertaking for all in society to prevent the obvious diseases associated with the excesses of western cultures. Health related fitness is the starting point on the journey and does not provide the physical robustness necessary to deal with unknown emergencies. This applies to military and civilian populations without distinction. Secondly, it helps no one least of all woman to endorse the perception that they are incapable of achieving any degree of functional fitness on a relative scale to men. Research suggests that there is only about a 10-12% difference in aerobic fitness between men and woman for most timed running distances. Also, we can see plenty of examples of strong woman destroying misplaced stereotypes by their participation in Cross Fit type training programmes.

So, is your patient fit enough to be useful?

If they had to step up to the mark, could they ?

References:

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