Continued from Academy Life Part I
“Is it physically difficult?”
Actually, no. And that’s not just the athlete in me talking. We had to meet physical fitness standards to get here in the first place, and we’re not training for the Olympics. Accordingly, what little physical training (“PT”) we get is designed to keep us in shape, not get us in shape. To some extent it is also integrated into our practical exercises. The catch is that we must still pass fitness tests throughout the training pipeline. Therefore, the majority of students utilize sparse free time before or after class to stay at peak performance. Predictably, running (weather permitting) and weightlifting are the most common forms of achieving this goal.
The big fear, be it during formal instruction or our personal workout time, is injury. The last thing anybody wants to do after years of testing for this elusive career is get released or recycled for something as silly as pushing oneself too hard. People who excel in this line of work tend to be far more competitive than average, which is not an ideal trait when practicing unfamiliar somatic skills in dynamic scenarios. Learning to titrate the physiological response to a danger stimulus is exceptionally more difficult than perfecting an offensive or defensive maneuver. Virtually anyone can throw a jab or block a punch; but try doing it effectively and with control when the lights suddenly go dark, gunshots are heard in the hallway, people are screaming, and three adversaries are attacking at once. Mastering these sequences helps us build muscle memory for challenges we never hope to face. The obvious catch is that if we truly fight for our life in a training environment with actors and coworkers, people are going to get severely injured or killed. Even backing it down to fifty percent can still result in musculoskeletal injury. It is a constant struggle to find the optimum and safe reaction for a practice exercise while still keeping things realistic.
At the end of the day it is the general fatigue we dread, not the all-out physical exertion. Despite the immense stresses that come with this career, our training lacks an ethos of avoiding mental overexertion and poor nutrition. Every once in a while we are reminded that a healthy lifestyle is what we are expected to maintain, on our own, during the years to come. Yet the priority here is a mastery of the curriculum. The concepts of work-life balance, nutrition, sleep, stress management (including after critical incidents), and family integration are mentioned once or twice for good measure and then forgotten just as quickly. We are given access to a range of mental health resources and medical providers with virtually no time to utilize them. In acknowledgement of the scientifically proven physiological effects of stress, the most “physically difficult” aspect of this career is arguably that which will catch up with us on the backend if we don’t advocate for our own mental and emotional health early on.
The Dark Passport 