Police Officer Preparation & Law Enforcement Resource - Archive

I am not a police officer yet, do to the fact that I need to finish school, and I was wondering how to get stronger and more in shape. I'm in high school right now and 17 and a female, so I need all the help that I can get. I try to stay in shape with playing water polo, monday thru friday, and run for an hour on the weekends at my school track and I dont eat a lot of junk food, or any soda, but it seems like my fitness has not improved at all, in the past month, or loss of weight. I want to be in shape long before I get to the academy. So do any of you have any suggestions. thanks

First off, loss of weight does not mean you are in better shape!

As a matter of fact, as I've gotten in better shape, I have actually have gained weight. Muscle weighs more than fat, or so I am told.

How are you gauging your fitness performance? Are things becoming easier for you? Such as are you less tired after a run than you were before or something of that nature?

For me, I am doing strictly strength training at the moment due to the fact that my knee is busted, but I was doing a mix of strength and cardio. Basically you need to work your whole body for strength and do your cardio on a regular basis.

Also, you may want to realize that "good shape" for the academy will mean you will not be thin as a rail, instead, you'll be a bit more on the "beefy" side, but you'll have muscle, not fat.

Actually what I do, is keep on going until I am out of breath and then i stop, or how far i can run in an hour at an easy pace, that's what i do when i try to improve my times.

Well, at some point, you will reach a plateau where you really won't be improving your times or performance that much, after all, there is only soo much we can do with our bodies and there is a limitation on all of us (unforunately, rofl).

What are you currently running time wise? I know for me, before I had to stop, I was doing two miles in fifteen minutes, which would have gotten me into and most likely graduated from the Trooper academy.

Right now I can run at least 3 to 4 miles in an hour at an even pace, and in a mile I can run about a 8:20 minute mile.

Thats not too shabby, definately recommend working to bring that down a bit.

But for your age, your definately at a good point right now - just keep at it.

Also try to vary your workouts... otherwise your body will adapt to what you are doing and it will stop improving. For example, on Saturdays you could mix up the type of running you do in an hour. You could start off by doing a 5-10min warmup jog, then do some "doubles" (one "double" would be: do 12 pushups then sprint as hard as you can for 10-15 seconds. Then walk back to the start and repeat. Thats one "double". Your next "double" would be with squats instead of pushups). After you've done at least 4 "doubles" you then could run at an "easy pace" for 2 miles or whatever. If you have time left, do some more pushups and squats, throw in some situps too.

Don't be confused when I say "easy" run. No run should ever be easy, you should always be outside your comfrot zone. An easy run would have you breathing hard enough that you could maintain a conversation with someone, but it would be difficult.