Thoughts on Military-Civilian Transitions
On my latest podcast with Starting Strength Radio, Mark Rippetoe and I scratched the surface of life in the military for young service members. While it was a great conversation, there wasn’t time to cover everything. I believe some of the ideas we touched on, like rigid institutions and how the military reflects society, are complex and worth exploring in greater detail here, where I intend to frame ideas that I believe could lead to a new paradigm for the military with respect to pre and post transition to civilian life.
A wide view:
How would daily life in the military change if its leaders decoupled what is hard from what is effective? In other words, how would things be different if the military treated ‘toughness’ and ‘individual performance’ as separate, but related training outcomes? To be fair, this already occurs in certain schools: in SERE, learning and stress events are clearly separate; in Ranger School, toughness is itself a measure of individual performance. Despite these existing models, their design doesn’t bleed into the conventional military’s culture.
Let’s consider physical training (PT) as an example. Unless things have changed since my time in the Army—and I acknowledge most of what I write doesn’t apply, or at least not to the same extent, in the special operations community—unit commanders exist in a sea of contradiction with respect to PT.
PT plans should be delegated down the chain of command | PT should build cohesive and resilient units.
PT needs to be tough and functional | No individual PT allowed.
Competition is a good way to increase motivation during PT | Organized sports are prohibited.
PT is free | You can’t go to the gym during PT hours.
PT is critical to unit success | We don’t want to waste unit funds on extra PT equipment.
PT should progress and be part of a broader plan | Don’t expect to have your whole formation at PT every day.
Results may vary when commanders navigate this terrain, but at best, PT can be a crucible where reputations are made and unit cultures solidified. At worst, PT is an afterthought. What’s missing from both possibilities is a concerted effort to develop individuals. If, on the other hand, toughness and efficacy were separate, PT would fall under two distinct categories: the process of driving physiological adaptations and team- or character-building. The former would be characterized by planned, predictable events in a controlled environment with the ultimate goal of delivering the minimum effective dose of training stress. The latter would be actual performance events designed to replicate the chaos and intensity of combat.
For commanders, what would it take to implement such a design? To start, it would require enforced recovery in the form of non-training days, scheduled breaks for meals, and regular sleep schedules. Additionally, it would require a full-throated embrace of simplicity; designing training programs that minimize variables while maximizing consistency. Finally, such a design would demand quantitative accountability measures, e.g., average increase in soldier strength, changes to fitness test scores, injury rates, etc.
But is this realistic? If the the answer is “no,” and the primary reason is related to convention, tradition, or feasibility, instead of an argument about efficacy, then I believe we have uncovered something profound.
To be continued.
