3912DCO
New Member
Boom,
I'll address my response more to the NPS people and hopefully you'll find a tid-bit or two that would be of value to you too.
My first piece of advice is to focus on maxing-out your push-ups and sit-ups. This is NOT an unreasonable goal for anyone. If you get 100% on those two and score the minimum on the run, your overall score will still be in the 85% range.
Here are some of the workouts that I really found helped me as I prepared for Navy Ground Intel School (3912NEC) which, many of the intel-types will learn, is physically demanding.
The PT Pyramid, which is really great because it encourages you to push yourself to failure, which means you push your body to its limits and thus, as you do that, you begin to push your body to NEW limits and increase the number of reps you can do during your test.
The Supersets Workout is nice because it gets you to work the muscles "around" the ones you want to focus on for your PRT. I was told this is a great workout to incorporate because it focuses, first, on the complete athlete (as opposed to just becoming a push-up and sit-up machine). Secondly it can really help you to achieve the goal of maxing-out push-ups and sit-ups because, as you reach a higher number of reps, the main muscles you use will begin to fatigue and you will rely on these other muscles a lot more.
Here is a great plan to take some time off of your PRT run. The great thing about this article is it has tracks for beginners and advanced runners. We did the 1/4 mile speed training workouts on Fridays at Ground School and my 1 1/2 mile PRT time went from (when I arrived) my fastest time ever of 10:28 down to 9:53, 8-weeks later, just before graduation. Some people took as much as 3:00 minutes off of their times by the end of the school.
The Push-up Push Workout is a workout you will do a month or so (a little less) before you are suppose to take a PRT and you will find it really gives you a nice jump in the total number of push-ups you can do. Be very careful with this workout. Listen to your body. Your muscles will ache and burn but you can really stress your tendons. If you feel pain other than the usual tough-workout-muscle-pain, stop immediately. I have had really great luck with this workout. You will feel amazing during the 10-days of doing it and it really will improve your push-ups.
There's my 2-cents. I would love to hear some suggestions as I would love to incorporate some new things into my work-outs; it can be tough to keep it interesting.
Oh yeah, last piece of advice, get an MP3 player or iPod. Working out can be really boring and having your favorite tunes or a good audio book can really help the time pass.
