Requirements for Army rangers

me | 4/26/04 | Me

[NotchJohnson]

Several questions about enlisting . . . What is boot cam like? What physical fitness standards have to be met? Also, what are the standards for the Rangers? Can you explain your experience on the physical fitness side of basic training?

[cmsgop]

Your Body will not like it one bit, Cool Name btw....

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Read "The Coveted Black and Gold: A Daily Journey Through the U.S. Army Ranger School Experience" by J. D. Lock. I did and I learned a lot. The author secretly kept a diary through the 60 or so days of Ranger hell.

[babaloo999]

http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,Smith_121703,00.html

[kezekiel]

It says a lot about the Delta Boys that during the hellish hours of Mogadishu, they looked at the Rangers and saw what they thought were a bunch of undisciplined, inexperienced kids.

In my mind, this takes nothing away from the Rangers, who I am sure deserve every inch of their reputation. I guess to the elite of the elite, everybody else looks like an amateur.

[Riley]

I was a Marine, not Army, but my understanding is that in Ranger training, you are running around doing marches and manuevers without sleep until you literally begin to hallucinate. I heard a story about a Ranger candidate that was trying to stuff coins into a tree, because he was convinced that it was a Coke machine. Another sat on a break, talking to an elf sitting on a toadstool that he was absolutely convinced was quite real.

Just like in the Corps, you have to want it bad enough to be willing to put up with anything they throw at you, no matter how weird or silly it may seem at the time, and no matter how tired or hungry you are, until you graduate.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

During the Viet Nam war, I'm told many outfits went thru a Ranger shortcourse. There were 101st Airborne Rangers and other Rangers besides Rangers.

[glorgau]

It's a bunch of no-sleep, lots of pain for no apparent reason exercises. There are a number of military things tossed in for good measure. ;-)

Basically a test of ones willingness to follow any lawful order.

[NotchJohnson]

Thats a start, what about recovery - meaning rest, food, sleep? Also, how do the men get up to doing 20 chin ups? In my YMCA nobody does chins but Uncle Sam can take most anybody and they knock out at least 10 or 12, not bad.

[Voice in your head]

So-called "boot camp" is called basic training. It is a joke. It is just an indoctrination into the Army, where you will learn basic soldiering skills, such as rifle marksmanship, land navigation, etc. Physical training is designed to get you to a minimum level of fitness, which is the ability to do 42 pushups in 2 minutes, then 52 situps in 2 minutes, and then run 2 miles in somewhere around 15 minutes or so.

From there, you go to (AIT) Advanced Individual Training, which builds upon what you learned in basic training and is more specific to your MOS (Military Occupational Specialty).

If you enlist to become a Ranger, then you go to Airborne School after AIT, where you spend 3 weeks learning to fall out of an aircraft. Then you go to the Ranger Indoctrination Program (RIP) where you will get screwed with and "smoked" (slang for physical training beyond muscle failure) constantly.

If you make it through RIP, you will go to a Ranger battalion. There are 3 - 1 at Hunter Army Airfield, in Georgia, 1 at Fort Lewis, Washington, and 1 at Fort Benning, Georgia. There, you will have about a 6 month period. Your life will suck and you will be screwed with endlessly by everyone that outranks you. You will be a private and everyone will outrank you, because they all graduated from Ranger School and that is the only way to make it past private, if you are an infantryman in a Ranger battalion). If you are deemed not able to adjust, then you will be sent to a regular Army unit. If you remain with your battalion, then you will be expected to go to Ranger School. If you graduate from Ranger School, then you will return to your unit and be promoted to Specialist, which is when your life will finally stop sucking. If you can't pass Ranger School, then you will go to a regular Army unit.

Rangers do things the right way, because they have endless funding, the best equipment, and they can be selective about who they keep and who they get rid of. Regular Army units get low priority for funding, have crappy equipment, and have to work with whatever personnel that they get. The payoff to being a Ranger is that you are in the best infantry unit in the world, you have the best equipment in the world, you are surrounded by the best soldiers in the world, and you get to go on all the cool missions.

As one would expect, the Ranger battalions are selective and standards are high. Minimum standards in basic training won't begin to prepare you for what is expected of soldier in a Ranger battalion. You should be able to "max" your Army Physical Fitness Test (75 pushups in 2 minutes, 82 situps in 2 minutes, 2-mile run in 12 minutes) and be a strong swimmer and have decent upper body strength (you should be able to do 10 dead hang pullups).

Check out the link for Ranger School here: http://www.benning.army.mil/rtb/rtbmain.htm

[NotchJohnson]

Is there a physical makeup that seems to do better in the Rangers than others?

[Voice in your head]

You mean tall and lanky versus short and stocky? No. It boils down to how hard you are willing to push yourself and how hard you work to get in shape.

To answer your earlier question - you increase the number of pull-ups that you can do by doing pull-ups more often.

[Frohickey]

What if you were raised in a Cimmerian village, that is attacked by snake cult raiders. And your blacksmith father is killed by war dogs of the raiders and mother is beheaded by the raider leader?

[NotchJohnson]

Thanks, I was afraid you would answer that way on the second question. Nothing beats hard work, and doing it all day long. Speaking of hard work, I knew a lady who joined up, went to Ft. Jackson, ate everything they through at her and she still lost weight. She could not lose weight beforehand.

[timydnuc]

Prepare yourself to be a man. There is nothing like it. A Ranger is something that is made. It doesn't exist in society, because it isn't needed here. It's needed in combat, and it is taught well in Ranger training.

First, they strip you of all the things that basic didn't strip you of. You are not an individual anymore, you will be an integral part of a fighting force. The force is a unit, meaning that you are no longer an individual, you are one in the unit. When the unit reacts, you will react, when the unit eats, you will eat, when the unit fights, you will fight. The unit is the essence of your existence, as it sould be. The hours are horrendous, the responsibility is immense, the reward is priceless. The ability to "stand and deliver" will be there for the rest of your life, and the pride......the pride, will live in you and spread for the rest of your days. This is an outfit that transcends a fraternity, it's the best of the best, and your brothers are the patriots that "stand, and deliver". Be proud, my friend, as I am proud to have been a Ranger.

[patton]

Yeah, sort of. Then again...

[patton]

Sure. Little guys with glasses, that refuse to quit.

[jwalsh07]

I have a different story about basic training but it was about 30 years ago. My best friend in the Army arrived at Basic as a 5'8", 170 pounder with no definition and lungs fatigued from smoking.

He exited basic training at 5"8", 185 pounds of solid muscle and able to force march, run and march, 12-15 miles to the range and back with a full load.

You won't go on leisurely jogs of two miles. You will run until you puke or walk because you can't run any more. You'll be fed nutritious food but you'll always be hungry because there is not enough time to consume the calories you'll burnoff every day from 5am until lights out.

You'll do more pushups and squat thrusts than you ever thought possible if like my friend you have a comedic personailty with poor timing.

You'll toughen physically and mentally or you'll be shown the gate a bit early. You'll have a feeling of comraderie that you will experience nowhere else at the end of those forced marches and when they are done with you, you'll be a man ready to depend on and be depended upon by your fellow soldiers.

If you want to do it, you can.

[Living Stone]

Sleep!? There's plenty of time for sleeping in the grave. Thats what they used to tell me, and I wasn't even a Ranger, just a poor ignorant infantryman.

[patton]

and lungs fatigued from smoking...

Give me a break - I used to max the run (12 min), stop around the corner from the finish line, and stroll over the line smoking a cig.

It made the CO epileptic - and the 1sg laugh.