Marine's advice to someone who wants to pass his PFT test. (strong language!!)

!!WARNING: Strong language... proceed at your own risk!!

Thank you R. Welles for sending me this!

 

Run man, there's literally no secret to this. Just fucking run.

I hate running more than anything. I have never been much of a runner at all. As an officer candidate, my initial PFT run (3 miles) was like 30 minutes and dying. What did I do? I just ran my nutsack into the ground. It sucks, but the more you do, the less it starts to suck. Rather quickly, I could run 3 miles in 21 minutes and feel pretty good.

30 days is a decent amount of time to at least get that score to where it needs to be to pass (you minimalist lazy shithead). Focus purely on endurance right now, not speed. In your initial training, speed will come naturally with endurance. Here's what I recommend -

Run every other day, for the next 4 weeks.

Week 1 - Run 1 mile, every other day, at a comfortable pace (for you, that's probably 10 minute miles)

Week 2 - Run 1.5 miles, every other day, at a decent pace (for you, that's probably 9 minute miles)

Week 3 - Run 2 miles, every other day, at a comfortable pace (again, 10 minute miles)

Week 4 - Run 2.5 miles, every other day, at a decent pace (9 minute miles)

This is a really basic plan, but it's designed to slowly build up your weekly mileage and endurance(with the 1.5 miler goal in mind). Once you're done with week 4, and you pass your IST (and you will if you follow this plan), keep doing this by upping your next week by half a mile. Do this until you reach 4 miles. At this point, you should be running 12-16 miles a week, with a decent base amount of endurance in you. Then you can start doing some speed work and really training for your actual PFT.

DON'T GO TO FUCKING BOOT CAMP WITH THE MENTALITY THAT IT WILL GET YOU IN SHAPE. YOU WILL SUFFER WAY MORE THAN YOU HAVE TO.

Don't miss a run, just go out and do it. Don't think about it while you're running. I find for me, that after 1-1.5 miles in, my body sort of goes on auto pilot and running becomes easy. At that point, I can run miles on end and it just feels the same.

While you're running, focus on controlling your breathing. Take nice deep breaths the moment you start running. It's called "pre-oxygenating", and it will allow your cardiovascular system to start delivering optimal amounts of oxygen to all muscles involved in your movements. This allows your body to sort of get ahead of the impeding shitsuck, and keeps you a hell of a lot less winded as you run.

As far as form goes, keep your head up at all times, even when you're tired. Try to relax your upper body as much as you can, and focus on just moving your legs. When you feel yourself really slowing down, and you want to maintain a fast pace, start pumping your arms a little bit because your legs will follow.

Nutrition is important, stop stuffing your cockhole with bacon cheeseburgers and lonely ass tv dinners. Eat a little cleaner. You can still indulge yourself, but within moderation. Drink less, and if you're a smoker, smoke less (or really just stop smoking or switch to chew).

Drink water, all day. Keeping yourself hydrated is so goddamn important that I want to punch you in the face just thinking about it.

Stretch lightly before your run if you want. Look up dynamic stretches in google, and do that. Definitely spend some time stretching AFTER your run. This is important, don't neglect this.

Now go out there, starting fucking today, and run. Keep in mind, the 1.5 mile IST run is fucking ten gallons of gayness. That's the same distance as the air force run. If you can't pass that, then that means you can't pass the easiest run requirements that the entire United States Military demands from it's recruits.

So knowing that you fucking suck right now, use that motivation to get out there and run. Marines didn't come out of the womb ready to bust out 300 PFTs (although some of them like to think they did), they worked at it. Put in your share.