Plank Owner

Please welcome back Recruit Sarah. In this entry she discusses the demands of physical training, especially when PT doubles as an incentive to improve. Conditioning can not only be important for dealing with the physical demands of the job, but can assist officers in dealing with the long term effects of stress.

 

“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.” ~Winston Churchill

Chaos.

People are shouting all around me. Instructors are aggressively imploring the recruit class to “keep our butts down!” Fellow recruits (those that are actually able to breath at this point) are yelling encouragements: “It’s all in your mind!” “Push through!” “We can do this!”

Normally an encourager, I am not contributing much at this point. The muscles that control my ability to breath and speak concurrently, and the parts of my brain controlling same, are preoccupied with keeping my body parallel to the ground.

It’s Friday.

It’s 5:15 pm (1715 for all the recruits that mock me for not speaking in military time).

It’s raining.

The recruit class is proned out in a plank position in the Academy parking lot. We are being punished “motivated” by the steadfast, insistent Physical Training (PT) Instructors.

Most weeks of Academy include 2-3 sessions of PT. The classes are based on CrossFit® principles. Being an officer, our bodies must be honed for multi-functional (as opposed to singular, repetitious) movements. We might have to go from sitting for hours to an all out sprint across unpredictable landscape, scale fences and then be prepared to engage an uncooperative person bent on escape at all costs. Our fitness will be tied to possible life and death outcomes.

The PT Instructors are all current police officers. They live daily the challenges that I can only imagine. They chose to spend their time at the Academy to make us better, urging us to challenge our perceived limits. Each PT session is intentionally planned to ensure we are physically and mentally prepared to face the rigors of a career as a police agent. Do we occasionally need some extra “motivation” to get the point the PT staff is trying to drive home?

Most certainly. Case in Point:

It is Friday of Week 5:

- Already 15 minutes past the end of the workday

- Plank position

- Asphalt digging into my forearms

- Rain soaking my clothes (did I mention it was raining?)

- Ab muscles screaming at the exertion of resisting gravity

Why are we in this position? Not all of the recruits had completed the workout correctly. The PT instructors have been trying for weeks to send the message that we must be attentive to details (keeping track of all reps) and make sure we don’t cheat ourselves.

During a ten-second rest between planks, the recruit next to me drops to the pavement. “This sucks,” he mutters, gasping for breath. I can only smile. My response? “All you can control is your attitude, stay positive.” His facial expression clearly communicates this was not a welcomed comment. For me – reprimand PT is fun. Epic, even. Don’t ask why.

Yet, it is true. My locus of control during Academy starts with my attitude. Planks should suck! A lot. I normally hate planks. My body has no problem telling me it hates planks, too. But, with the right attitude, planks seem much more palatable.

Planks will forever invoke this memory of my muscles screaming, alongside the other recruits. Rain pelting my back and dripping down my face. It should have been an awful feeling. Instead, it was galvanizing and invigorating. Forty-four of us meeting an obstacle head on and surviving the motivational moment together. Perhaps this is a preview of what it will be like to work as a team with our future departments (hopefully without the need to plank…too much).

“If you are not enjoying the journey, you probably won't enjoy the destination.” ~Author Unknown

Finding Time

Please welcome Recruit Brian, writing about transitioning to a new sleep schedule...for now.

When I accepted the job offer to become a Lakewood Police Agent, I knew I signed up for some heavy duty lifestyle changes.  At the top of that list, I was concerned about the impact it would have on my beloved sleep.  Most times, I fall asleep quickly and wake up refreshed, adrift with the quiet sound of the radio alarm playing in the morning.  Until this point in my life, I have been fortunate enough to sleep soundly throughout the night. 

For the past 7 years I worked from my home and made my own schedule.  As a result, sleep has been on my terms. Generally I awoke at 7 AM after a restful 8 hours of sleep.  Perhaps, if I got into an intense television viewing marathon (“Chopped” – a competitive cooking show) and didn’t get to bed at 2 AM, I could wake up for a 6 o'clock meeting knowing that I could catch an afternoon nap.  Unfortunately, whether I liked it or not, things were about to change. 

At the start of the police academy, I learned quickly that waking up at my “normal” time was not going to happen.  In order to be successful I would need a new sleep schedule - lights out by 2200 hrs (what most of the rest of America calls 10 PM) and awake by 0500.  Even though class starts at 0800 and ends at 1700 (5 PM… Well, you get the idea – I’ve begun the art of employing a cumbersome math equation whenever I tell time) there were many things that needed to be accomplished outside of class that would take up the majority of my free time.  Gone were the days of relaxing on the couch for an hour, watching TV and eating a leisurely dinner.    

Without a strict schedule, I would fall behind on my number one priority of studying.  Following closely behind were the little but equally important tasks like boot polishing, uniform pressing, street memorization and just plain staying awake through 8 hours of PowerPoint-driven lecture.  I also knew that intense instructor scrutiny of our fundamentals at the gun range, and technique learned during arrest control were about to steepen the learning curve.  Shooting our pistols accurately and searching suspects for deadly weapons are just two of the many areas that require extreme mental clarity.  They were also two disciplines where lack of sleep could lead to catastrophic consequences.    

For the most part, my strict sleep schedule has worked out as planned and I have been much more productive.  Before class I study or review techniques and after class I stay late to send emails, finish reports or get a workout in while going over notes from the day.  Best of all, I avoid rush hour traffic which helps maintain my sanity.  But with all of this change came some pit falls and there has been one major downside to my newly found regimen.  

Without fail, my internal alarm wakes me up between 5 and 30 minutes before 0500.  In a strangely sadistic way, it’s always the perfect amount of time to make going back to sleep completely worthless.  During the week, I have grown to reluctantly embrace the extra minutes, utilizing it for extra study time.   Unfortunately, this happens on the weekends when I could be catching up on some much needed beauty sleep.  Invariably my eyes will open around 0500…there I go again, even when referring to “my time”…and unless I am going on a skiing or fishing trip, I can’t think of one good reason to be up before the sun rises on a Saturday or Sunday morning. 

Now that we have hit the halfway mark, I have comfortably settled into my new routine.  However, in just three short months all of this will be turned on its head.  What started out as a conventional “8-5” (0800 to 1700, to be precise) schedule will become chaos as I take the headfirst plunge into the world of rookie police work.  Ten long hours plus overtime on graveyard shifts, working in the dark morning hours and then attempting to sleep while the rest of the world is wide awake and going about their lives.  I don’t anticipate that it will be an easy adjustment and potentially it will be the most difficult of the changes to come my way.  Perhaps with a little bit of luck and some semblance of routine, I will be able to sleep soundly through the day.