I remember hating other jrotc cadets for their weakness.
Freshman year I’d went from 212 to 178.
I scored high on the PT test, aceing all the events sans the run, got the PT medal, when at the start of the semester I hadn’t been able to run a mile without passing out.
I pushed to nearly going down each and every PT session, unless the instructor/sergeant commanded me to go sit and hydrate. Otherwise I’d suffer in silence. I was willing to die rather than continue to be fat and out of shape.
↑ That’s how you stop being fat right quick without possibility of failure.
“I would rather die than stay fat and out of shape”.
Only once during drill did he command me to sit and hydrate. I was essentially standing drunk/out on my feet, being that fucked up from fat boy being a man and pushing a true 100% on the preceding mile run (I’d guess 7:57-8:00 all out, the first time I was not over an 8 minute pace.)
I hated being fat, weak, and out of shape, and as a freshman I changed it. It didn’t even take a whole semester. As said earlier I scored damn near perfect on the end of semester PFT, and at that point I wasn’t getting woozy so easily.
Every day I had went there, but as I said suffered in silence. I wasn’t going to be a fat kid much longer.
On the first day of PT they had told us to do as many situps as we could, I walked into class with that mentality, and therefore did situps into the hundreds, I only stopped when the Sergeant commanded me to stop (only stopping me as class was about to end, he’d let me continue otherwise). A bunch of the cadets had created a semi circle around me to watch and cheer the lunatic freshman on. I had made an impression on all, both the instructors and cadets.
Willing to die.
Each and every session I’d build up so much stomach churning lactic acid, and do it again the next day. I didn’t care that my stomach churned half my waking hours, being the worst in 4th period science class where I once dropped backpack on to do 50 pushups to prove a point.
Worth it? Hell yeah! I was committed.
Yet many around me…their PT scores were a failure to start, a failure to end the semester, and the same every PT test throughout highschool.
I remember thinking :
“What! You can’t make any progress? Are you even trying! You’re not! Get the fuck out of the corp.”
“How the fuck has your fat ass walked every second instead of running, how is it that you’ve never done more than 7 pushups!”
I put in effort and therefore made progress.
I did pushups and situps at home. I sprinted a 200 or 300m stretch of my walk home daily. Sometimes that flung my water bottle out of the side pocket of my backpack.
Every PT run I did in the least scientific manner…I sprinted until I couldn’t, and slogged the rest as fast as I could.
I’d run a fast 200m, a good 400m, have the 800m be 2:00-2:15, and then finish the 1600m at 6:15. Gasping. No science. Just effort.
My science teacher was astonished that I put in a mile 4x weekly ever nearing a 6:00 race wholly unpaced.
I did get to the 5:55 area as a sophomore, the same year one of the seniors would every day run a perfectly paced 6:15 mile, and all bets were off as to which one of us would beat the other that day. My time was unpredictable, one day would be 5:55, the next 6:30, every run being in that time range, while he never strayed from pace.
I’d continue running until the fat fucks had finished, and a buddy often joined me on this. Extra PT! Why? Cause it was too easy otherwise.
Each night I sat on an exercise bike til it said 1000 calories burnt, every day, 8-9 months or more without exception, never missing a day until I’d stalled out for 2 or 3 months at 178lbs and stopped requiring it of myself.
This one fat ass mexican cadet who I also had in gym class, the gym teacher (at the time a fresh from college volleyball 24yo blonde, I’m told was a butterface) looked the other way as I kept flat tiring him on my extra laps. Motivation. He actually ran that one time, and one time only. Physically capable, mentally weak. He ran to stop getting his heel kicked. Corporal punishment can work, though to me punishment pushups aren’t punishment.
This psycho short jock dude said he finished a mile when he’d only truly done 3 laps? It was all the instructor could do to keep me from going off on him. I don’t know that I’d have won (both a true mile and the theoretical fight), he was a scrappy muscular middleweight, I had height, reach, and a few softer pounds on him, but on principle I had to be kept from going off anyway. 16yo me saw that shit as a personal insult considering what my true 6:15 was to his “6:13”, something I thought him to be physically capable of.
I hated the slacking all around me, and the officer looking the other way for slackers so as to keep numbers in the corp up.
One time the sergeant pulled me aside and quietly thanked me for not coming to blows with the school linebacker (sophomore year) for his in my face screaming insubordination.
“Sorry, bureaucracy keeps my hands tied. Thank you for keeping your cool, I know you’re in the right, I can’t kick kids out of the corp, the two of you is not a fight I’d want to even have to try separating. I don’t think I could, it’d go until the school cop arrived to assist.”
I was livid, and I don’t think I had kept my cool either We were nose to nose and the reason it hadn’t come to blows was that me and him both sensed the fight would be a pyrrhic victory, probably both in the hospital, and that being the one to start the fight was not going to fly with either of our fathers.
I feel that my 14yo/15yo intensity is how man is supposed to live.
A lesson I’d forgotten : just keep going, regardless of how shitty you feel.
No matter how tough it is in the moment, 10-15 years later it’ll feel like it was only minutes ago.
And the described level of intensity?
It’s innate!
Persistence & Tenacity