Recruits (police, military, whatever) who are coddled and babied at the outset to get them up to minimal training input standards, will be the first to quit when it gets tough in real life on the job.
Opinion of a former Navy frogman.
That’s a good point, so it’s not how that program should be run.
The bottom line is to accept that the civilian world is not that big for physical fitness, and that lots of recruits who are intellectually and emotionally up for the job need some guided physical instruction.
But the emphasis is never on just making the minimum, but to get them so fit that even if they are having a bad day, they do a lot better than minimum.
Most instructors would be thrilled if all their recruits were significantly above minimum on day one, but that almost never happens. And the slowest and weakest slow everyone else down.
And yes, there are also a lot of physically fit recruits who cannot hack the intellectual or emotional part of the job as well. So if they are unlearned, classroom prep works as well.