Welcome to Becoming Bad Us, I am your host Carly Box and this is my podcast series where I chat to Defence Force applicants from the Barracks Gym. Throughout these episodes it is my aim that you will find someone you can really resonate with, someone that helps you realise you are not alone and others are most definitely going through the same experiences as you. I do often interview past members of the Barracks Gym so that we can give an insight into life after Inwism and for appointment and how training at TBG really helped to prepare these people for life in the military. I hope that you can find all stories inspiring, informative and motivating as each person works on physically preparing themselves for the change from civilian to serving member.
So chuck your headphones in, be ready for a no filter discussion about the realities of preparing for the military and remember that it all comes down to how about you want it. This episode is brought to you by the Barracks Store. Head over to www.thebarracestore.com.au to check out all our latest merchandise. If you haven't got yourself a pair of TBG tights yet then you need them.
I'm currently wearing them now so they're obviously good for podcasting but even better they are awesome for training. An athletic fit that's still sleek and feminine, nice and buttery and soft, they have pockets, high waisted and they are absolutely beautiful to train in. They don't write up, they don't fall down and they just look good. So make sure you head over to the Barracks Store, get yourself a pair of those today.
Use the code TBGBADAS to get 10% off. Welcome to another episode of Becoming Bad Us. So we are coming to you from Brisbane's Lockdown, Wells 3 Days Extended to 7 and God knows when we are going to be able to open the gym again. So let's podcast.
Everybody that trains with us is now training with us online. We've got our battle buddy system all set up. We have made sure that they have all their training available to them online on TrueCoach. On TrueCoach I have all their demo videos for all their exercises.
They can ask the coaches questions. We've got our group chat. We've got Zoom yoga happening tomorrow. The coaches are doing live Q&As.
We are kind of winging it as we go because we just want to make sure that everybody is taken care of and everyone is happy and everyone is getting what they need out of lockdown. But at the same time we're trying to be proactive and have a really good plan in place so that we can make sure that everybody is good to go. It's annoying. Lockdown is honestly so annoying but let's use the opportunity for what it is and let's try and learn some stuff.
Now I have my baby with me. He is currently in the garage on my chest so he's very close to the microphone. You can probably hear him snoring but we're just going to roll with it because you know what? That is my life.
So today we're going to talk about how to pass a beat test. I guess you're hoping I've got some magic for you. But what I'm going to talk about is what not to do. I'm going to talk about a couple of things but we're going to start with what not to do.
So at TPG we don't do the beat test for training. It's as simple as that. We don't do the beat test for training. It is a test, beat test, PFA, fitness assessment.
It's an assessment. Okay so it's not a method of training. It's a test. So I like to liken it to a marathon runner would not go out and do 42 kilometres every day and train.
An Olympic swimmer is not going to go out and do 100 metre freestyle sprint every single day when they go out and train. We need to be realistic when we're training for the beat test and know that by doing the test itself every single day is not actually helping us better our efficiency as a runner, our VO2 capabilities and our headspace. Now let's talk about headspace first. Okay what you're doing by doing the beat test every single day is crushing your mindset.
Okay so not only are you probably getting in a shitty training session which we'll talk about in a second, you are absolutely slaughtering your mindset. So let's say you're struggling to get past 5.2 and you need 7.5 as a bare minimum pass mark. So you get to 5.2. You get to 5.2 day in, day out.
You don't actually start working in the beat test until level 5. Now if you feel like you disagree with that's fine but all it means is if you are struggling before level 5 you just puffed. You're not dying, you're not struggling, you're just puffed because you're physically exerting yourself. Each level in the beat test goes for a minute.
Okay so don't worry about how many shuttles, don't worry about how many metres. Okay it goes for a minute. Okay so by the time you get to level 5 you've barely been working for 4 minutes. Okay you don't actually start working until level 5.
So you've only really done about 3 minutes of exercise I use in air quotes. You use the first few levels as a bit of a cruise, it's a bit of a warm up to kind of warm into things right? You're not actually doing anything, you're not actually doing any work. Okay so say you're only getting to level 5, 5.2.
You've done like 10 seconds of work. So you're effectively doing a maximum 3 minute training session each time. You're effectively doing a 3 minute training session each time. It's not very effective.
Okay we'll talk about that in a bit more detail soon but when it comes to your mindset you're barely exerting yourself. If you're getting to 5.2, you're getting frustrated, you feel like shit about yourself, you're bashing your head against this like metaphorical brick wall constantly. So you are effectively driving yourself fucking crazy by doing the beat test every single day. Alright so what we want to avoid doing is avoid driving ourselves crazy.
So we just want to you know when we often use the terminology apply safe which is a weapons terminology. Apply safe, put the weapon down, step away. Apply safe, put the beat test down and just step away. It is not serving you by doing the beat test every single day and I cringe when I see in forums.
I'm going what's the best way to drive the beat test and people come in and go yeah make sure you just do the beat test every single day. That's the best way and I'm like oh my god oh my god that person is going to absolutely slaughter their mindset. Okay so you come into it with a mindset that's pretty confident and you're like yeah cool that's you know I'm fine I've got this like no worries. And then you do your beat test you get to 5.2 you're like oh you know at least I didn't get any worse but I'm a bit frustrated that I didn't get any better.
You do it again the next day you get to 5.2, 5.1 you know same thing your mindset starts to dip you do it again the next day your mindset starts to dip. Before you know you're doubting like a super shitty mindset and it takes so long to drive you back up out of that spiral. So you're wasting energy you're wasting mindset energy on something that isn't serving you. Okay so that's why we don't do the beat test every single day.
Okay so by doing the beat test every single day you're effectively just driving yourself nuts. And it's not fair on you and it's not helping you at all. It's not helping you being that good mindset that you need to be strong enough to get through your intensive training and pass the beat test. Okay so the most common error that we ever see with AF and place applicants who are trying to improve their beat test score is that they do the beat test as training.
Okay whether it's every day or a couple of times a week you are absolutely wasting your time by doing it every single day. Alright and here's why so I'm going to use John as my imaginary applicant. Okay John writes to us and he says I can only get to level 5.1 on the beat test. I practice it every day but I'm stuck.
Why am I not improving? Alright John let's have a chat. Alright sit down mate. No he wrote to us so he's not sitting down with us but he can sit down anyway.
Sit down John. Alright to get to level 5 on the beat test we'll take you approximately 4 minutes and 15 seconds. The first two to three levels you are only really lightly shuffling with a second or two rest at each end. By the time you get to level 4.1 you are starting to warm up and you're puffing a little bit harder.
Again okay you're just puffed you're not dying you're just puffed. So from level 4.1 I guess you could say you were starting to properly run. So around that level 4 to level 5 mark is when you actually start to properly run. 4.1 to 5.1 is only 180 meters and it only goes for one minute.
So if you're doing the beat test for training every single day then this is what your daily running training would look like if someone programmed it for you. Run 180 meters in 60 seconds stopping every 20 meters. So you're basically doing a 60 seconds of irrelevant running training every single day and wondering why there is no improvement happening. The beat test measures your VO2 max and during 180 meters every day doesn't help your VO2 max it just doesn't.
The biggest piece of advice we could ever offer you is to focus on becoming a good runner and efficient runner and then passing the beat test any day of the week will be a byproduct of your training to becoming a better runner. Okay so how do we become a better runner? We do effective training methods that are going to mimic the same energy system that we need to pass a beat test. So someone actually wrote to me the other day and said I'm trying to train for the beat test in the 3.4 at the same time.
That's fine you can but they are two different energy systems. I'm not going to go into that science but you need to do different styles of training in order to be effective and efficient runner in those two different methods of testing. So what do we do? How do we become a better runner and what are the effective training methods?
Well let's have a chat about it. Alright so on our website we've got a blog section and in the blog section we have over 90 blogs. Now a lot of those blogs talk about the beat test and I'm going to link in the show notes the most amazing blog that we have on the beat test which actually has an example training program that you can use to get started to make sure that you're doing relevant training for the beat test. Alright so if you want to ace the beat test stage of your recruitment process then you need to focus on interval and speed training.
At the Barakshin we focus on interval training and Mazz training and we then combine that with fight like training and some longer runs as well. So at the Barakshin we have a focus on interval training which we then also combine with fight like training some longer runs, heels, friends, etc. Now if you're able to schedule these various different running sessions in a way that your body has time to recover between sessions this is really really important because it helps you prevent injuries and over training and over use injuries. Alright so an example of beat test training program could look like this.
You've got a combination of Mazz training which is running 8 distance in 15 seconds, resting 15 seconds and then running that distance again for a total of 3 minutes. So in this example we're going to do 50 meters in 15 seconds. So it's a 90% effort so it's a sub-maximal effort so you should be sprinting but not full like who's same bolt sprinting. So you should be like 90% of a sprint so if you're running and getting to the end and you've got like 3 seconds left in 15 seconds you need to bump it up to 55 meters or 60 meters.
So you should just be getting to the line on 15. So we run 15 meters in 15 seconds, we rest for 15 seconds and then we repeat this for 3 minutes. You then have rest and then you do it all again. You should be making the line as I said at about that 14 second mark with your effort level at about 8 to 9 out of 10 like I said it is a sub-maximal effort so it's about halfway between this sprinting and a jog and if you're finding that it's too easy then you need to bump it up another 5 meters.
Fight like training is super easy. You can have an active rest. It's not just stopping it's an active rest. So your active rest for these sessions is a slow jog though it's not like I do as little as possible it's just a slow jog and the effort level is at a 9 out of 10 during the fast run phase of these sessions.
So fight like is where you will and going between light poles on a street is really effective so you will sprint from one light pole to the other and then you'll jog to the next one. Then you'll sprint then you'll jog at TPG we have a 400 meter block that we use so they sprint the short distance they jog the long distance they sprint the short distance they jog the long distance and they do that 3 times and they rest. You've got interval training so it's run as far as you can in an allocated time so run for 3 minutes 2 minutes rest and it's a static rest standing still. Run as far as you can in the 3 minutes and then rest in place for the 2 minutes and try and make it back to your original start point so a lot of the time people will just have their watches going.
They'll just run for the 3 minutes and then they'll stop in place for 2 minutes run again for 3 minutes and so on and so forth. This will be laid out in this blog that I'm going to put in the show notes for you all as well. So longer distance running shouldn't require too much exertion you know we're not doing it at a sprint speed you should be able to maintain a chat if you're running with someone else and get some time getting that time under your legs is really good for conditioning. Alright so here is what week 1 will look like for training.
Now we don't need to train every day. Maximum 3 days of training and week 1 will do 3 days, week 2 will undo 2 days, week 3 will do 3 days and week 4 will do 2 days. So we're not flogging it. We don't want to have those overuse injuries and we want to have adequate rest and you need to have an entire rest in between.
So train on a Monday, rest on a Tuesday, train on a Wednesday. So at TBG our training program is laid out so that it is a Monday running Tuesday strength, Wednesday running Thursday strength and that means that there is adequate rest in between each of those different types of training sessions and it doesn't matter if you've gone hard and running you'll still be able to go hard in strength because again different energy systems. So week 1 day 1 is most training so 15 seconds run 15 seconds rest for 5 minutes or 10, 10 shuttles and rest for 3 minutes and we do that whole thing 3 times. So 15 seconds run 15 seconds rest.
We normally just lay out some markers, 50 meters apart and people run from 1 back to the other and they just rest at each end. Some people like to do it so they're like sprinting around a block. It's up to you how you do it. It doesn't really matter as long as you've got the ability to sprint.
Again, so most training and then day 2 will be fight like training. So 45 seconds slow jog and 15 seconds faster run. So that's a 15 second fast run and then slow jog for 45 seconds and then sprint again and then jog and sprint again and we do that 5 times. And then day 3 is a longer distance run.
So 20 to 30 minute jog at about a 5 out of 10 effort level. We then move forward and we continue doing a combination of Mazz in a long fight like training as well as a longer distance runs. It's so crucial that you warm up and cool down for these though. You can't just like go into a running session and sprint because you're going to do your homies.
You have to warm up properly and on our YouTube channel we have an adequate amount of warm ups on there as well. So you can actually go through and pull up those videos and have a bit of a look. If you still are finding this quite overwhelming then hit me up. The link will be in our show notes and we can get you onto our online training or you can come in for a two week trial at the gym and you can see how it works.
You can see how the training works and you know you'll be able to implement that as we've laid out for you and start to get those results. But this is the only way that you're going to pass a beat test. Now it's not guaranteed that like do this for three weeks on your pass because everyone comes from a different starting point. Everybody has different biomechanics and everybody operates differently and I quite often get people saying you know how long can I expect before I'm passing.
I don't guarantee anything because you have to put in the work as much as I'm prescribing the work to you. But B without us actually seeing you and seeing how you run and seeing you're running efficiency and you know how much weight you're carrying and your current level of ability. It's really hard for us to diagnose how long it could take. Some people it takes four minutes, some people it takes a year.
You don't know. You just have to start training yesterday and get onto that relevant training. Get yourself on a training program like ours and make sure that you are working hard towards passing that beat test. The only way you're going to pass it is to do training that is relevant.
So let's stop doing the beat test every single day and let's make sure we're implementing this relevant training. It's hard to explain the training program while I'm talking. So make sure you hit that link in the show notes and it will take you straight to this blog which literally has it laid out for you. Alright, thanks for joining me today guys.
Don't forget to head over to the Barrack Store. Grab yourself a pair of tights. Grab a hat while you're there. We've also got a lockdown program there as we're sorry.
Yeah, thanks for joining me and I hope this has been helpful. Thank you.