Forces fitness, it’s A State Of Mind, the official slogan of the Royal Marines but around camp you may here “Train Hard, Fight Easy”. I’ll give you an insight of one day in the Royal Marines that you have to complete before even getting to Lympstone. This is to test your mental aptitude, physical endurance and ultimately the essential quality of indefatigability. Forces fitness at its best.
Up at the crack of Dawn and a nice cold shower to start the day with a boot of an instructor up your arse to make you motor and get outside dressed ready to march to scran ( that’s food by the way ).
They tell you to eat but you don’t feel like it because of nerves so you force it down anyway, then back to the block to give it a good scrub and check yourself over ready for inspection. If you or the block isn’t up to standard ( which you never are ) then get down and kiss the floor because your doing press ups and you do at there pace together. After the cleaning and beasting for being average muster outside for some real physical tests.
Forces fitness starts with the mile and a half squad run at a fairly easy pace to get you warmed up, then your off on your own for the 1.5 miles in under 10 mins or your best effort and boy do they want to see it. After everyone has finished its a short jog back to the camp ready for the swim. After doing press ups in the changing rooms for being to loud and slow we went out to the pool. In groups of 6 we swam a full length out then back 1/4 of the way to tread water for 2 mins before swimming back and pulling ourselves out of the pool. 2 minutes can feel a long time but if you keep relaxed then you’ll be fine. I was surprised at how many people struggled with this and were dragged out of the water by the hoop.
More lectures followed after the swim then we hit the gym, a Bleep Test to start after a brief warm up where you had to achieve level 12 upwards, 60 press ups in 2 mins hitting your partners fist with your chest and your back straight, 60 sit ups in 2 mins with your finger tips on the side of your head touching your knees with your elbows and 6 pull ups done to the instructor telling you when to bend and stretch. All this was done with a few extra press ups and shuttle runs for not being quick enough and not listening to orders, if one person messes up you all get it.
After the gym it was time for some well deserved lunch and boy are you hungry. After feeding yourself up you had a couple more lectures where your trying to keep yourself awake then down to the bottom field that so many people dreaded on camp and why? We were about to find out.
It started pretty relaxed, the instructors joking and showing us how to attack the assault course and heck how we were with heights and ropes, then they hit us first a full length around the assault course as a team, then as individuals, after completing it the second time I was blown out but we hadn’t finished. We were beasted up and down this hill crawling in the mud doing burpees, press ups anything they could think of to push us to destruction, they called it last man standing, now I knew what the bottom field was, after a good 30mins of this most of us could hardly walk they stopped and we jogged back to a shower block to get our overalls off and shower before the final lecture and find out our fate if we made it or not.
This was just one day of the PRMC to test your ability to see if you have what it takes to get your Green Beret.
Forces fitness is different to civilian fitness in the gyms so be prepared.
Forces Fitness - Royal Marines
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