RLSH physical fitness test

What would you guys consider a realistic and practical test to gauge somebody's level of fitness to do this kind of stuff?

Not like anybody would be "kicked out of the community" over it or anything, but what do you think would be a realistic goal for people to aim for on a larger scale than just a few isolated people? What I'm thinking of is a kind of low minimum standard that people could adopt and use for whatever purposes they felt appropriate.

Here's the army's one:
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Here's the FBI's one:
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Both have the big advantage of "no special equipment required." Neither is particularly mission-oriented.

I don't think either is absolutely appropriate, but the FBI one might be modified into something workable.

Maybe.


Any thoughts?

The FBI program didn't take age into account, and different levels of fitness are needed depending on your desired mission. A crime patroller will need to be better conditioned than a homeless outreach rlsh. If patrolling with a team, the physicality may not be as demanding. Generally, for crime fighters, it's best to be in optimal shape. A balance of speed, agility, and strength works best to get you out of most hairy situations, and gives you the best chance of surviving those you can't get out of.

Minimum standards for crime fighter in their 20s should be run an 8-minute mile, 100 sit-ups in 60 seconds, 40 pushups in 60 seconds.

I can do the pushups and the situps but not the 8 minute mile. Getting those 3 would be a great start for anyone, and of course self defense ability is of equal or greater importance to fitness.

I'm thinking for a "crimefighter" type, but a very minimal baseline. Your proposals are in a good ballpark, but probably too high -- especially... not to be sexist or anything... but to expect a female to do 40 pushups in a minute as a minimal standard.

The only issue with self-defense is objective testability... which I can't think of anything to address.

8 minute miles are exactly the pace of an "Airborne shuffle." All it takes is running regularly, basically.... but at 3-4 miles at a time more than sprints or dashes.

I'm against having different standards for girls. Standards should be across the board.

Also, maybe we have levels, maybe level one is 10 pushups, level two is 20, etc.

My minimum is based on a male, admittedly. It just seems that mist crimefighting rlsh are men, so that's what I used.

As for the fighting skills assessment, use the same opponents for every rlsh to get a class ranking. I recommend an untrained but healthy opponent, a one-year student, and a ten year student. Keep moving up in difficulty if the rlsh can either defeat the previous opponent or last three minutes. Note their result ineach match. Separate the rlsh into classes based on their performance in this test, and have them fight their similarly skilled rlsh. One on one, one on two, then one on three. Time the fights. Rank accordingly. I'd be more detailed about ranking, but you get the idea.

This is a tough thing to standardize. Mostly because "bad-ass" is hard to quantify. I have a buddy who will introduce himself to people as Fat Tony. He is thick and wide like a giant fire hydrant and isn't built for acrobatics at all. Nature made him like a rhino. He is configured to stand his ground and duke it out. Now Fat Tony cant run any distance at all and he probably couldn’t do even a single sit-up. I am betting that he couldn’t even jog a quarter mile to save his life, but he walked all day (and I mean ALL day) at the fair and it didn’t bother him one bit. I have put the gloves on and sparred with him a couple times. He is massively strong and almost impossible to hurt. I can hand out some pretty good shots in rapid succession and he just laughs like a demon. Admittedly I was able to avoid almost all his attempts to land a solid punch, but when he did get me I literally thought -Jesus! I cant take too damn many of those- and had to back off and actually shake it off for a few seconds while avoiding him. In a real fight, if he had gotten ahold of me I would have been in serious trouble.

So even though Fat Tony couldn’t even begin to pass any sort of fitness test as discussed here, He is a proper tough guy and anyone could feel very confident to have him cover their back in a bad situation.

Then there is Taneglia (we just call him “T” most of the time) and he is about 5’ 8” at a buck fifty and a bit pencil-necked. He could easily pass most any fitness test because he swims, bikes and rows all the time. His cardio is through the roof and he has endurance beyond most men. Its easy to underestimate him but I swear the little bastard is carved out of wood.

Again, he is a proper bad-ass but in another way entirely from Fat Tony.

So if the goal is to set up some way to measure a “crime fighter” against a set form of testing, it will be necessary to have different tests for different body types etc. And yes women would need a different scoring system. Men (even smaller men) are going to achieve far greater strength (especially in the upper body) faster and in greater quantity than women. We are built differently and women are not on average going to command raw physical power the way men will. Its biology.

That's why you use the same opponents to test everyone, and gradually increase the difficulty of the opponents. It's definitely not a perfect system, but if you use scenario-based exercises it will at least give you some way of assessing how effective a rlsh might be on patrol fir different eventualities.

Take Fat Tony, for instance. If he were an rlsh, would he be effective as a crimefighter? I think generally he would not. He couldn't rush to the aid of a mugging victim. He could be a witness and report the crime, which is also heroic, but probably wouldn't be effective in confronting the mugger. Now if I was on patrol and needed a team mate to secure an entryway for me, he's the rlsh for the job. In this instance he'd be very effective.

Taneglia sounds like he'd be very effective in chasing scenarios. If he can sprint and talk at the same time, he could help mobile rlsh rundown criminals who flee on foot by providing location information so mobile could intercept.

It's all a matter of allocating your human resources properly. Regardless of physical fitness or martial ability, everyone has something they can contribute.

Fat Tony and I bounce at a couple of the same clubs. He would be very effective as a crime fighter. He couldn’t chase down someone that ran off, but if a mugger runs off; that is a win right there. And where I live they defunded the hospital for the mentally ill. It sounds impossible but they literally just dumped hundreds of people out on the street. So the hand-outs that The Rev and I do mean that you must accept that some folk are going to be irrationally paranoid and sometimes violent with no real predictability. Fat Tony would be great for that to. He is an expert at dealing with violence and reading body language. Most muggers would take one look at him lumbering their way and get lost quick. If they didnt he would be a bad guy to stand toe to toe with. So to just decide out of hand that he probably wouldn't be effective in confronting a mugger is nothing short of inaccurate.

Now T on the other hand could chase down a bad guy nine times out of ten. But he isn't built for hard core brawling. So he would probably need to employ something like pepper spray or a baton once he closed the gap. This doesn’t mean he is not tough. It means he is small.

My point is that there is no way to say “This sort of person would be a good RLSH crime fighter and this sort of person would not.” and have it hold any water.

Gauge wrote:

It's all a matter of allocating your human resources properly. Regardless of physical fitness or martial ability, everyone has something they can contribute.

Exactly.

The problem I see with using the same opponent(s) is that it would require that the opponent never gain in skill.

Also there is no way for a group to travel around being opponents for every RLSH looking to get their next merit badge. LOL

Zimmer wrote:

I'm against having different standards for girls. Standards should be across the board.

Also, maybe we have levels, maybe level one is 10 pushups, level two is 20, etc.

I feel generally the same way about female standards, but there are physiological differences. No military or police force tests women to the same standard as men in pushups except for some weird special ops things.

I'm not really thinking "badass" here so much as "baseline."

Maybe 30 pushups in two minutes, 60 situps in two minutes, and a 1-mile run at 9 minutes...?

I don't feel qualified at all to set up and administer a fair fighting test. I certainly don't have any real martial artists with ten years of experience in my pocket.

I meant no offense to either of your friends, just that in a general sense, I don't think I'd have Fat Tony on an active patrol unless I had a specific use for him. Sometimes we have to run and if he can't it can make the difference between getting to the victim late or in time, or getting away unscathed or getting injured or killed. I didn't mean to imply however that there is no way in which he could be effective. Specific actions he'd be perfect for. I judge fitness for patrol as the ability to perform all the activities one would normally perform on an active patrol. So Fat Tony would be more of a specialist IMHO. His contribution would be no less valued as part of a team.

As fir the training opponents, it would be ideal if they could be the same exact people every time, but there is another important reason you can't realistically do that. As time goes on they actually would grow in ability, and no longer be a reliable test. If you get in a thousand fights, you learn to fight. So while I do recommend the same skill level for your opponents, you'd eventually have to find new people.

If a troupe wanted to tour and test rlsh relative skill levels, they might make a couple bucks at
it. You're right that it's not entirely feasible, but more of an "if one could do it".

Gauge wrote:

If you get in a thousand fights, you learn to fight.

Conduct X number of sparring matches according to X rules for X amount of time wearing X equipment is an objective standard...

to get into fire academy it was 45 situps in 2 minutes, 25 pushups, and 1.5 miles in 15 minutes.

by week 7, your mile and a half had to be under 12:30.

@Gauge I didnt think you were being offensive or insulting. I just think you are being narrow minded. If you are going to require some regimented set of physical attributes to be generally useful in RLSH crime deterrent patrols, you may as well forget 90% of the people that do them now and are already pretty awesome.

If man A beats man B in a fight, and man B beats man C in a fight, it in no way means that man A will definitely beat man C in a fight. The exercise tests not only the fighting prowess, but other attributes as well. Judgment of this is all done by human beings, so is automatically subjective. This is one reason why Hazmat and I have differing opinions on his friend's ability to be an effective rlsh.

I see what you're saying, Hazmat, and agree that is a narrow way of thinking. But I am talking about a narrow slice if the rlsh pie: the serious crimefighter who routinely puts him/herself in extreme danger, looking for violent criminals.

With all due respect to other rlsh, there are many who cannot chase down a purse snatcher or survive a fight with three assailants long enough for help to arrive, or have a real chance of winning if help won't be coming. Telling the truth is not narrow minded, and the truth is exactly as you said. Many people here are not physically prepared to meet the demands of that kind of crime fighting.

That said, I also believe that there is another degree of crime fighting. The observe and report, intervening when necessary but otherwise calling authorities, etc. Where the physical demand is less, the physical requirements reduce proportionately. I am in no way saying that one shouldn't be a crime fighting rlsh if they aren't in peak condition, just that they honestly assess their own capabilities, and work within those parameters until such a time as they change those parameters.

I think Gauge is talking about the "Mike Tyson's Punch-out" method for training. Everyone starts out facing off with the same individual and progressing on to the next opponent and so-on. Each opponent represents the next level of training. That way everyone can be judged on the same scale.

Is that the idea, Gauge?

Hadn't thought of it in those terms, but its an apt analogy. Although I'd also have them fight the whole roster of opponents, even if they lose, to see what they're made of.

This may be useful for teams

I dont know how meany set ups I can do in 60 sec or how fast i can run a mial Ill have to git back to you on that but for pushups for me right now is 45 in 51 sec tested my self just now Ill have to test the sit ups and mial run later and no I am not trying to brag just thout if we culld all see what we can do now we culd averg it out just a thought.

Testing is great for teams. It keeps you sharp, exposes weaknesses that may have gone undetected in the excitement of a patrol, and highlights strengths that may have been unnoticed. It's a useful training tool, and helps to make better decisions regarding allocation of human resources.

Hazmat: I think I need to refrain from saying more about Fat Tony, as I have never met the guy, but am going off the limited information you posted about him. People surprise me often enough that I know some will shine where you don't expect it.

Fighting fat ppl is NOT easy.
They are hard to hurt sometimes

Fat can be a bitch when they get hold on you, but they usually got low stamina and weak knees.

Take a "fat" person.

Make it work out for three years or more but not less.

You WILL end up with a SERIOUS strength-and-stamina person-of-SQUEEZBILITY
because
the body NEEDS CALORIES
to build.

Fat people cant stop crimes...interesting theory...tell it to the guy who attacked my neighbor and the crackheads I used to bounce out of my hotel.

Do I think being fat is healthy? By no means and thats why Im already working on my weight.

But dont think for a minute that just because someone is fat that they are a pushover...Weebles wobble but we dont fall down.

Good links BTW - thats the exact info Ive been looking for for months...Thanks