Is it true that tactical athletes don’t have a “season?”
Yes, in the sense that we don’t have one particular time of the year when we have to throw a jersey on and compete under the lights.
But the military is able to plan unit training out a year in advance via the Long Range Training Calendar and execute with reasonable certainty.
Yes, of course random taskings and opportunities pop up at the last minute that steal available time.
But that’s not what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about a general training progression from individual to collective proficiency before a unit deploys to a combat theater or combined training center.
The military organizes unit training and supports unit taskings by building training proficiency in cycles – specifically the Green-Amber-Red cycle.
Those of you who have endured terrible red cycle taskings may cringe a little bit reading this right now, but hear me out…
The system itself is pretty effective when prioritizing what you should be training – and it’s flexible to adjust based on your time available.
It is simply a way to organize your time, so you are “peaking” when you need to.
Instead of saying that tactical athletes don’t have a season and using that as an excuse to train the same way year round, what if we thought about our physical training more like this?
Let’s say you’re going to Ranger School a year from now. Or deploying to a mountainous environment.
How should your training look one year out?
I can tell you that you should NOT be hopping on a Ranger School plan and repeating it 3 times.
Or doing endless box step up to prepare for the mountains.
Why? Because training plans like that are built to prepare you for a specific environment and intentionally ignore the development (or at least make them low priority) of other physical qualities that are important – but not necessarily used in that setting.
What you should be doing a year out is building your total physical fitness. Strength, power, hypertrophy, big endurance base, and speed.
Then switch to your mission specific plan at 12-16 weeks out.
What you’ll find is that your peak is significantly higher by entering that program with a better foundation of total fitness.
Think of it like this…
For most of the year we are going to raise your performance floor – your baseline capability of what you are able to perform on any given day.
Then in mission specific plans we raise your ceiling so you can peak certain qualities.
Raising the floor results in a higher ceiling.
Here’s a way you can apply the Green-Amber-Red system to your own training:
Red Cycle: You’ve just returned from a deployment, CTC rotation where you trained inconsistently for a month or more, or you’ve come back from any school or any event that caused a break in training.
You could also be re-introducing training post-injury.
Your training focus should be on building quality movement patterns and reinforcing/rebuilding the neuromuscular pathways that makes movement feel efficient.
In this phase we are doing both strength and aerobic foundations development.
Nothing really fancy here – just building good, quality movement, and gradually adding load in preparation for more advanced training down the road.
If you’ve never barbell trained before, then this is your first stop.
Red Cycle Programs:
Amber Cycle: This is where a majority of people are for most of their year.
They’re past the base building stage but still not right up on a deployment or school.
Our goal here is to basically get as fit as possible. We’re getting strong, we’re getting fast and powerful, we’re getting jacked (of course), and continuing to build a big cardio engine.
Training on Red Cycle was really general with strength and aerobic base development, now we are getting somewhat more specific and training max strength, strength endurance, power, and repeat power capacity through focused cycles.
For conditioning we are past base building and though we continue to improve our base, we are also focusing on speed and improvement to mid distance runs (2-5 miles) and ruck times.
Amber Cycle Programs:
Warfighter, Mobility, Yoke Bundle.
This is also why Warfighter is not a fixed 12 week program. Some people are on Amber cycle for 6 months before needing a more specific plan. Some people are on it for years/indefinitely and it meets all of their requirements to perform their job.
Green Cycle: You are now 12-16 weeks out from a school or operational environment that requires training specificity.
Not everyone needs a specific Green Cycle program. Many will be fine with just running Warfighter.
But if you are attending a school that is run/ruck biased, deploying to a high altitude and mountainous environment, you need specific training for that.
When going on a Green Cycle program, you have to be willing to detrain certain qualities to a degree, so you can peak the ones that are most important.
If you’ve trained through Red and Amber cycles, you have a strong foundation to now increase training specificity in preparation for your event.
Green Cycle Programs:
Warfighter: Half Marathon Prep (you stay on Warfighter and do the strength, but this adjusts the conditioning days)
Sustainment: Programs that target specific deficiencies and goals. These aren’t full programs, but additions to your current Red, Amber, or Green cycle program.
Team Yoke (additional hypertrophy focused on shoulders and back)
Restore and Reinforce: Hip Program
Restore and Reinforce: Shoulder Program
So, do tactical athletes have seasons?
Not necessarily, but we can take many of the principles from traditional strength and conditioning that apply to the off-season, pre-season, in-season progression and make them work for our population.
Because we don’t have fixed dates for competition, it’s helpful to think of our physical readiness model as cyclical, where the time of each phase can be adjusted based on the needs of the athlete and the anticipated time to a deployment or training school.
While this model is structured similarly to a military training cycle, I see this as equally applicable to first responders.
Most probably would not have to come out of Amber Cycle. However, preparing for a special selection event, or in the case of Wildland Firefighters, preparing for fire season, would be a reason to move to Green Cycle.
In summary, this tactical readiness cycle is one way that athletes can think about their training long term and establish priorities. It’s also a way for units to align their physical readiness with their individual and collective training pathways.
Remember, frameworks and systems = consistency.
Put an end to the days of “go do PT” and be intentional of how we are developing our most valuable asset – the human.
PS – More coming on this subject. We’ll write more about how volume, intensity, and exercise selection will progress within each cycle in a future article.
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