General question about ADf Army Training, swimming.

Dryotriorchis

New Member
Hey i was wondering if any one here could help me with a question i have. I'm leaving for the Australian Army in three months. I just wanted to know (kinda lame question) with army training, whats teh swm test like. At the moment i can swim about 25ms. But enlistment papers say that you will need to be able to swim 30 in full gear and tread water for 2mins. I was just wondering do they expect you to be able to do that straight away or will they teach you the skills you need. For example i've never tried to tread water before so i don't even know if i can do it. Any advice would be good. Thanks.
 
A

Aussie Digger

Guest
If I were you, I'd simply go to a gym (with a pool) or a local public pool that offers swim classes and get a lesson or 2. Treading water's not a hard skill to learn, but merely takes a bit of practice to become good at.

You can probably learn the technique in 1 or 2 lessons at most and then practice on your own. IIRC when we did the swim tests, we did a 50m swim followed by 2 mins treading water, all of this was done in uniform, and with running shoes on, as opposed to ruining your boots).

It's not a hard test and I wouldn't worry too much about it, but I would advise, incorporate a bit of swimming into my training for Kapooka if I were you. It's an excellent all over exercise, that conditions your muscles and provides a cardio workout. Plus it's "low impact" and you won't be sore from it like you will be with running on hard surfaces all the time.

My advice would be to head down to the pool a couple of times a week and do a few laps. Have a break, do a few more and so on. Pretty soon you'll be swimming 500 - 1000m's (10-20 laps) without a break and you won't even notice it. You WILL, however notice the vast improvement in your overall fitness after a few weeks... Train like that before you get to Kapooka and you'll cruise through the PT there...

It also provides a bit of variety that might keep you motivated and interested in your training. Running all the time gets a bit boring, if you ask me. Cross training helps keep me motivated at least, and I don't NEED to train for anything anymore...

Anyway that's enough of a PTI rant for now. Best of luck with your upcoming course...
 

chasingthedream

New Member
please help if your an australian mbt crewman

hey guys hope all is well,

ive got many problems to face and one of them being able to not thread water so i have taken steps to start learning asap as my first interview is in 2 weeks. im keen as anything to serve my country and be the best at what i do but failure for me and my mates is not a risk i would like to take, so whats it like to be an mbt crewman and what kind of things should i keep an eye out for in order to perfect my training to come? I figure initial or general trainig at kapooka will be hard and im READY to take it head on arse down but not quite sure in the training side of things for a crewman. any info would be primo and cetainly not waisted!as i see this as a life long opportunaty and take it seriously.
thanks for your time.
 
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