Military Muscle: Ready to pull your own weight? Try these 7 drills - Off Duty, Military Health and Fitness - Air Force Times

Military Muscle: Ready to pull your own weight? Try these 7 drills

Anyone who has spent even a little time around the grunts knows that crawling through the dirt takes strength and stamina.

There are a few ways you can build up the skills necessary to make that all-too-common requirement a little easier.

And yes, all of them involve crawling on the ground — you have to train for the task.

1. You can start by adding more to your load than just your uniform and boots. Put on your whole kit, including your rucksack. Carrying a weapon always adds to the challenge, too.

2. Looking for something more? Add a buddy. Position him across your body while you low-crawl. Experiment with different positions; put him up on your shoulders or over your hips. You also could place him across your back perpendicular to the direction of your crawl.

3. One interesting twist involves pushing something in front of you as you crawl. Try a ruck, a person or some other manageable object. Choose something relatively light to start, since you will not be able to push a seriously heavy weight in front of you without a lot of practice.

4. Another nasty little workout I recommend involves a carabiner and rope attached to a heavy load. Clip the carabiner to your belt and start with something easy like a light ruck or a light dumbbell or kettlebell (if you haven’t seen one, picture a bowling ball with a handle).

This one is especially tough because you will feel your butt wanting to rise up and you have to keep it down — this is what will keep you from getting shot in combat.

You can clip the carabiner to the front or back of your belt; try it both ways, as the pull forces are quite different. As time goes on, you can add more weight.

5. For the ultimate competition, try a tug of war — hook a buddy to the other end of the rope and try to pull him over a line in the dirt as he does the same to you.

These drills are not just for crawling on your belly, either: Flip onto your back and try the same thing.

6. Another favorite of mine is having a buddy hang onto your legs while you crawl. This works his grip and your entire body. If you really want to turn up the heat, have him roll forward and backward as you crawl.

The key to this is to stay loose and relaxed, breathe constantly and flow with it.

Don’t forget to crawl sideways and diagonally while performing these drills. It is very important to mix up your direction to maximize the effect this training will have on your combat performance. You will find that this training eliminates the need to do any sort of abdominal work.

7. And finally, for those who were never satisfied with being normal, crawl uphill and downhill. If you have an object that won’t roll away from or on top of you, you can add weight to this drill as well.

Or, if you are made of steel, you can use stairs. There is plenty of pain to go around.

Nate Morrison is an Air Force pararescueman staff sergeant. He is a military fitness expert and founder of an online fitness magazine.