It's well known that the police basic fitness test is laughably easy to pass. Any recruit with four limbs and a pulse who fails to reach 5-4 on the bleep test and to push/pull the required force should be ashamed of themselves. Most keen new recruits start out in good shape, but once in the job, there is no requirement to keep fit.
My own personal fitness goes in peaks and troughs. I am currently in the deepest trough in living memory. I have been a bit busy with day job stuff lately and so I have had the double whammy of no policing and no fitness regime for several weeks. So although I was raring to go on Friday night I was more than a bit concerned that my lack of physical prowess would let me down.
My team was assigned to patrol the town square, focussing on a particular corner where alcohol-fuelled mayhem ensues pretty much every night of the week. One particular chap came to notice as he was turned away from Air Bar (a bar which in my old age I would regard as my worst drinking nightmare, I think I might have been there once as a naive eighteen year-old). The way he stormed off from the bar made me think he was developing the kind of mood which leads to a spoiled night. Sure enough a while later my skipper decided he needed to be arrested. Not wanting to wait for a van, this lad made a run for it. I've never seen a drunk person move so fast. From where I was standing - quite a distance away from the scene - I thought I should be able to head him off before he got up to full speed. How wrong I was.
I've never run so hard in my life. I didn't know I could move so fast while fully kitted up. But our would-be prisoner was faster. Much faster. As I tilted my way around the first corner, he was already a long way ahead. It didn't take him long to lose us in the narrow streets. The chase was eventually called off and I headed back to the square. From then until the end of the shift I seemed to be literally running from one ridiculous scuffle to the next with barely time to catch my breath.
It's now late on Monday and my legs still hurt. New, punishing fitness regime required...
3 comments:
Adrenalin is a wonderful chemical and it can help you do a number of things even when fully kitted up an regardless of your size. The parasympathetic backlash however when it wears off is an absolute bitch if you're not prepared for it. There is a sound school of thought in the military that the bast time to send an attack is directly after a big battle when everyone is coming off adrenalin and their bodies are close to shut down as they recover. That's why they always prepare for it and keep reserves, the only way you can fight the physiology is to increase your fitness levels to lessen the effects of adrenalin. In our job you need a certain degree of fitness just to remain effective while working shifts, more to handle the 12 plus hours, more to keep your mental stamina up so you don't make job ending or life threatening mistakes, more to not suffer physical fatigue from wearing restrictive armour and kit, and then even more to not be a gibbering knackered mess after anything resembling a physically demanding and potentially or injury threatening violent confrontation. The fitness and entry tests are shocking at best. Personally I think the bleep test should be at least 9.0 and we should have to retest every 6 months at OST. Whilst I'm on the subject our traing should be much more realistic, you don't train for public order in a track suit, you're in full kit, out basic ost should also be in our proper operational uniform and not comfortable shorts and t-shirt. Just as the instrucors always say "train hard, fight easy"
iPhone key pad + rcovering from nights = spelling, grammar and word order mistakes!! Hurrah!!
MCM - I agree that some of the training should be much more physical in nature. And I need to be a lot fitter :-)
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