Load Management

Many occupations require heavy load carriage such as manual labor, military, police, and firefighters. Weight of physical load has been increasing due to increasing body size and equipment variety. For example, American soldiers now carry almost 6x the combat load that they did during the civil war (B.C. Nindl et al., 2013). @realmattwenning often talks about the injury rate of the shoulders, knees, and back – all of which are beaten down by extra weight. Whether you are overweight or carry heavy loads for extended periods of time, I know that your feet, knees, or back are beaten down at the end of the day.

Carrying increased load increases metabolic demand, stress on musculoskeletal system, and risk for injury. In military and firefighting scenarios, the bodies stores of energy and hydration will be zapped much more quickly due to increased load. Make no mistake, dealing with extra load will break an unprepared body. What can you do? You must get out of your normal routine and (safely) overload structures and systems and force them to adapt.

Strength – strength is technically defined by maximal force of a muscle or muscle group. This definition is useful, but may be too specific for the task demands of load carriage. Maximal strength should not be ignored, but more specificity can be applied to this concept

Lets instead use strength endurance – not to be confused with muscular endurance (simply think higher intensity). Strong predictors of overall strength are the 1RM deadlift or squat. Our favorite way to build strength endurance is prolonged sets under heavy load. In the real world, we will likely need to reproduce high levels of force many times. We have effectively combined strength, strength endurance, anaerobic fitness, and work capacity to prepare the body for many hours of labor under heavy load. We see great value in aerobic endurance, hypertrophy, and flexibility, but they are less important for most tactical athletes. With that being said, athlete history and fitness level will determine the primary focus of his or her training.

More to come on specific training for different athletes.