Puttering out during IT
 

So this thought came to me randomly in the middle of the night the other day. What happens if a division is getting ITed (Or PTing in general) and one of the recruits hits his/her max, in let's say push ups for example, and can't do any more, even though there's still more to do. What happens? lol

Don't stop. You have a mental limit and a physical limit. People are inclined to stop when they hit their mental limit, when really they can physically do more.
The RDCs are good at knowing when someone has given up and when they really can't do any more.

What happens when they physically can't do any more?

It depends on the RDC. But generally, they'll know when to stop or switch to a different activity (arms burnt our from pushups? ok, run in place)

With my RDC, RPT/IT was more mental/psychological than physical. With my DI it was more physical, but as long as you didn't give up, he wouldn't do anything to single you out.

IT isn't about numbers or form, it's about effort.

Eventually most people will get fatigued and start feeling like they can't do any more. If your arms give out for a second but you pull yourself back up and keep trying (even if you can't move very much anymore) the RDCs won't fault you for it.

If you lay on the ground and insist you can't . . . bootcamp might not go so well for you.

You can do a lot of things in terms of fitness if you have someone pushing you. For example, when I bring my friend to the gym with me, we push each other and I feel my workouts are much easier to get through. It's not so much I can do more reps or whatever but having someone there to push you will make it easier to get through reps.


And DIs have a ton of experience; I'm sure you won't die so relax.

There's a Training Time-Out (TTO) one can call when at their "limits" but it is extremely frowned upon by RDCs and recruits alike. If it happens during a PFA, for some reason the whole division has to do the PFA over again...and/or that whole PFA that just happened doesn't count.

Like Guppy said the RDCs know the limits of the recruits pretty well...and I noticed this more and more the further in boot camp we were....I remember a few males (myself included) were getting dropped along with pretty much the whole female compartment--the specific exercise was only a few pushups but we had to hold it in the down position between every pushup for good bit of time...the females had a really tough time with that...the guys were doing real well with it until the end and the RDC doing the beating stopped after the guys looked like we were pretty tired from it (the females being very tired from it).

When people start to falter, the RDCs will either ignore them because they're still trying, or they'll come over and start asking you if you need to tap out and go to medical. As long as you keep pushing, even if you don't accomplish much, you'll be fine.

During my time at RTC it was made perfectly clear to everyone that if you called a TTO, you would leave the building in an ambulance, end of story. It is not to be used for wimping out. If you try to call one and you're not in actual life-threatening danger, you're going to get a lot of embarrassing personal attention. And yes, if you call one during a PFA, even the people who've already finished running get screwed: The whole event is invalidated.

Summary: Unless someone is literally about to DIE, do NOT call TTO. That's what it's for.

Actually, I believe that a few years ago a recruit did die during PT. Then again I believe the article I read said that he had undiagnosed diabetes.

The ambulance thing sounds familiar but it never happened to us....During our first beating session on 1-1 day, a female called a TTO because she was having a hard time breathing (asthma or something) and the only other time it was called was during our final pfa...a female was coughing up blood but it happened after everyone was finished with the run so we didn't have to run the pfa over again.

Unfortunately there have been 3 or 4 people who have died during initial training in the last 5 years. In each case the cause of death was an undiagnosed medical condition.

I was actually in Army ROTC for a while in college, we would get "smoked" (their version of beat) and usually when everyone was burnt out on the pushing they would have us go on our backs to flutter kicks. Stuff like that. But when I say burnt out on pushing I mean DEAD.

If you hit muscle failure during a divisional beatdown, you'll probably be ignored as long as you're still trying. If, however, you're a mouthy little jackass like this one kid in my division and you're getting personal attention, you might be doing flutter kicks through at least 3 complete collapses. Don't think that orange card will protect you. RDCs can get real creative about skirting what's printed on 'em. Like, ten-counts that go 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-7-8-7-8-7-8.....etc.

I remember when we were getting IT'd I was literally on the floor, dripping sweat forming a puddle below me. I could not actually perform a pushup, but I was like yelling motivation while getting myself off the ground like ONE inch before I would collapse down again. It was clear I hit my limit, and physically could not get myself back off the ground but because I was still giving the effort to lift myself even for just one or two inches, they didn't say anything. They know you will hit a limit, like others say, just don't lay there whining claiming you can't do anymore.

For those who don't know, the Card has a list of MAX workouts the RDC's can make you perform, and they are supposed to go in the order of workouts on the card...there is like 11 workouts, and if they make you do whatever exercise number 5 is, they are not allowed to switch to an earlier workout and then continue up the line.

With that said, your supposed to do like a max of 30 pushups....so what they will do is get you up to lets say 20, then start you back at zero. Then work you back up to 20 and whoops someones knees are on the ground and they are not trying! HOOYAH ZERO! Back to zero again...so you can actually be doing around 60 pushups when you are only supposed to do 30.

They did that with jumping jacks ALL the time lol. Bring you to like 40 jumping jacks ( max 50 4 count ) and claim your not doing them in snych and bring you back to zero and make you do them all over again.

Talk about brilliant lol