Fitness and Philosophy

confronting ideological barriers to contextual excellence

Alexander Redl

Since this entire blog started as my way of sorting out the complexities of optimizing health and fitness in the context of the U.S. Army, it is time I dedicated some attention to the fitness part. This is no small task. Unlike health, which I have previously argued has an outsized subjective component, fitness is entirely objective. This very fact makes the subject of fitness inherently political in the current age. The postmodern denial of objective reality has been used to capture our once prestigious institutions like a virus that inserts its genetic information into the nucleus of a healthy cell. The new machinery has taken over. Assumptions that objective truth and reality exists never go unchallenged these days by the towering spires of the Cathedral. No matter, my mind has yet to be infected by this increasingly pervasive disease so that I may share my ratiocinations with you. It is my hope that they may bring a clarity that can help inoculate against the madness.

What is Fitness?

Put simply fitness is suitability to fulfill a particular purpose in a given environment. This is what makes it objective and possible to measure. Many characteristics converge to determine overall fitness. These characteristics change with experience and time. The environment is also constantly changing. These constantly evolving factors ensure that, though surely objective and measurable, fitness is not necessarily easy to measure. When we talk about evolutionary fitness the purpose we are looking at is the production of viable offspring. When we talk about military fitness we don’t have anything as cut and dry, but lethality works well enough conceptually, and has been relied upon traditionally. We can also break down fitness into however many constituent components we want. As clarified earlier, overall fitness is determined by many characteristics. What people typically think of when they consider military fitness, though, is physical fitness.

Military Physical Fitness

Assuming the purpose of the military is lethality (an assumption we’ll examine later), and constraining our examination to the physical aspects of fitness, the best place to focus in order to determine the optimal characteristics to target with respect to things like recruitment and training is the environment. Since the environments service members might face when contributing to the overall lethality of the organization vary wildly, it makes sense to refrain from making any sort of physical fitness recommendations until we differentiate further. First by service branch, then by Military Occupational Specialty (MOS), then finally by unit of assignment. Only then will we be able to begin to determine what characteristics are consistent with optimal physical fitness. This, of course, is never done. Regulations are written from the highest echelons with heavy influence from very opinionated individuals who are typically very confident they know exactly what physical fitness is and how best to achieve it. There is no incentive to understand underlying reality so that we may best adapt to it in order to achieve an advantage in lethality over adversaries. It is much easier to pretend, so that is what our leaders do. This has always been the case, but recently it has gotten much worse than ever before…

The Military’s True Purpose

The military is a political tool. In times past, to be an effective tool, lethality was desirable and/or necessary. This is no longer the case. Currently this political tool simply provides a predicate for laundering money out of the tax bases of Western nations into the hands of a pathocracy with no long term strategic concerns for the outcomes that will inevitably follow in the wake of their plundering. This will continue unabated in the absence of any reality testing (e.g. combat), and as it continues, the fitness of the individuals that comprise the organization will continue to plummet accordingly. The dynamics of this situation ensure that, as

John Carter

put it, America can’t win WWIII. If we ever face such a reality test, it will result in the immediate end of GAE hegemony. I suspect our ruling elite senses this at some level, and that this inspires the increasingly brazen graft on full display to those who peer behind the Cathedral’s cracking façade. Since the military is a political tool and its current purpose is to facilitate the fleecing of the American people in service of an unaccountable pathocracy, what does this mean for Army Physical Fitness? The implications are troubling, but also satisfying in their ability to explain the otherwise perplexing status quo.

Fitness Equity

The idea of fitness equity is transparently oxymoronic. Since there is tremendous variability between individuals, groups, characteristics, and environments, there is variability in fitness. With respect to fitness though, there is an unacceptable truth embedded within this basic acknowledgment of reality: Some are fitter than others. As

Kulak

persuasively argues in this short article, this speaks to the most fundamental of political divides. The modern left demands equity as the ultimate goal of Progress. If some are fitter than others, this speaks to a hierarchy embedded within nature itself, a notion antithetical to their religion. This is why MSNBC and Time Magazine articles have described fitness as “far-right” and rooted in “white supremacy.” When these types speak of fitness, they’re always quick to assure their audience that interventions to improve fitness should be targeted at only those “historically disadvantaged” or “underserved.” To improve the fitness of an individual or group already well suited for a particular purpose in a given environment is reflexively decried as unacceptable. It would necessarily contribute to inequality, you see. If you think this ideology isn’t having an impact on Soldiers then you haven’t been to a gym on an Army installation recently. Overall fitness levels are abysmal, and excellence in physical fitness (in terms of lethality) is neither appreciated nor rewarded. If senior leaders are able to inject their opinions into an event such as a “Best Squad” competition, they admonish planners to not design it in such a way that less physically fit Soldiers will underperform. Why? Well, we need to make it inclusive.¹

Progressivism & Tradition vs. Reality

While the DEIA agenda advanced by the current administration within the military exerts a powerful effect, there are still many “old school” Soldiers and NCOs at the level of reality who don’t buy into this bullshit. Unfortunately, these types tend to gravitate towards tradition or their own biases grounded in ego when determining what their unit will do for physical training (PT). If a platoon leader is a marathon runner, can you guess what that platoon is doing for PT? That’s right! Preparing for a marathon. Whether running, yoga, powerlifting, or combatives, most leaders given the opportunity will force their unit to do what they’re best at. This satisfies the ego like nothing else, and there is some justification for leaders to do this. I’ve always been amazed at how impressed Soldiers are with leaders who break them off on long runs while being physically pitiful in every other conceivable way. So this is what a move towards true fitness has to contend with. Not only an emerging culture that abhors excellence, most especially highly conspicuous physical excellence, but a tradition of doing a bunch of random shit that satisfies the egos of leaders at the expense of all else.

Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic

The idea of training of any kind is to improve fitness. You provide a stimulus that causes an adaptation. If your training is to be considered effective, these adaptations must change the characteristics of an individual or group such that fitness is enhanced. Getting this right for an individual is a challenge, and for a group even more so. Doing it optimally given constrained resources is something that takes a high degree of professional skill and knowledge. Without reality testing, the chances that we’ll ever be able to move in the right direction are nil. Fortunately the Army Combat Fitness Test is a decent, if flawed, indirect measure of lethality. No, it doesn’t account for different environments so it really won’t work for everyone, or maybe even most Soldiers, but it is all we have. Improvement in ACFT scores can serve as a rough proxy for increased lethality in a variety of environments. In other words, they can serve as a means of coordinating training towards improving combat fitness. Just don’t expect anyone to care or incentivize such improvements. In fact, don’t be surprised if individual excellence with respect to ACFT performance is met with apathy or even derision by the weak and/or woke.²

On Second Thought…

Maybe it is time to let go of trying to win brownie points from an organization that spends 100% of its time pretending that its People come First. Maybe we need to take a hard look in the mirror and determine what our purpose is. Perhaps instead of focusing on physically preparing to face a near peer enemy abroad in a hypothetical future conflict that nobody is even remotely serious about, we focus on enhancing our fitness in our current environment. Even if nobody else cares about your physical fitness, you can. There is a rapidly accelerating trend of junior Soldiers allowing themselves to become disabled and medically retire within a year or two of enlisting. Do you really expect Uncle Sugar to foot your bills forever? I wouldn’t. There may come a time when nature reasserts itself upon this holographic hall of mirrors we find ourselves in. If that time comes, it will benefit you to have made invested the time in the type of training that produces the type of characteristics that enhance fitness in a broad range of environments. I see H2F as being able to help with this, but you’ll need to seek it out. Your leaders clamoring for their next promotion can’t afford true investment into enhancing fitness. True investment has true costs, and the investment doesn’t even pay off until after their change of command for crying out loud! No, I would not wait for your leaders to carve out time for you to truly enhance yourself. You’ll need to Be All You Can Be [in spite of] the Army. Or don’t. Rack up medical encounters and get your medical retirement. If our political leadership isn’t any more honorable than that, why should you be? At least you made it through basic training.

1. Understanding that this is quite abstract I’ll expand a little further on Progressivism and fitness in this footnote. As I indicated before, fitness can apply to individuals or groups. It is objective, meaning it can be externally measured and validated. It is proof of natural hierarchy within any given context. For people so transfixed by race and gender ideology this goes in an unacceptable direction fast. The solution that has been shown to be effective is to simply not focus on race and gender. This “color-blindness” is the only way to satisfy the egalitarian demands of the Longhouse Den Mothers who have achieved cultural hegemony. Knowing this, “color-blindness” is decried as the ultimate expression of white supremacy by the race grifters. Their solution is to deny there are any true differences between individuals or groups beyond what is socialized. What follows for them, is that with the right social engineering we can all be made equal. In their minds, this is the perfection nature intended that we must all strive for to achieve absolution. In practice it is used by the vulnerable type of narcissists to achieve social dominance, but that is another story for another time.

2. There are many leaders still on board with the “lethality” narrative. Unfortunately, they are also required to endorse the “DEIA” narrative, which is mutually exclusive. It is sad to see career military officers fail to make sense of the underlying contradictions. Many truly believe these narratives can be reconciled. The inevitable result is mixed messaging and pitiful organizational performance. They want to have their cake and eat it to. Build a lethal and capable force, but also get promoted. Sad to see apparently strong and tough military leaders prostrate themselves before DEIA apparatchiks, not fully understanding exactly what their doing. Conforming to unseen social pressure while convincing themselves that they are still in control. That we still have a military that can function against a true adversary if it ever comes to that. These leaders will approve of a focus on ACFT scores, but if those scores ever start to translate to better job opportunities or career advancement, this will be immediately squelched. The regime cannot tolerate rewarding true physical fitness excellence in any meaningful, material way, not only because this would disadvantage a certain favored group, but also because service members who are truly tough and capable are seen as a threat to their power.