Royal Army College

Lesson Overview

The earlier lessons gave you the why and the what. Lesson 01 set the instructor's first duty as the duty of care, the principle that you hold other people's bodies in trust and answer for what you do to them. Lesson 02 gave you the principles on which all training rests, and Lesson 03 taught you to build them into a programme that moves a group toward a goal over weeks. This lesson is where the programme meets the ground: how to take a group for one period of physical training and run that session well, so that they leave fitter than they arrived and none of them leaves injured.

A session is not a list of exercises shouted at a group. It is a shaped hour with a beginning, a middle, and an end, each part doing a particular job, and an instructor in the middle of it who watches, teaches, controls, and, when something goes wrong, stops. This lesson teaches the shape of the session and why each part matters; the warm-up as a method and the cool-down as a habit; how a physical skill is taught, by the same explanation, demonstration, imitation, and practice cycle the drill instructor uses; how to control and motivate a group so all can see, all can hear, and all are built up rather than broken down; how the ground and the weather change what is safe; and how to give every exercise an easier and a harder version so that a mixed group all trains at its own level on the same morning.

A word at the outset, the same one every lesson on this course carries. This is the knowledge layer. Running a real session, with your own voice, your own eyes on a moving group, and your own judgement on when to push and when to stop, is a skill built in person under qualified physical-training and medical supervision, and certified there. Learn here the structure and the method, so that when you first take a group you already know the shape of what you are doing and the safety that runs through all of it. By the end you will be able to set out the three-part structure of a session and say why each part matters, run a warm-up as a method and explain why skipping it injures, teach a physical skill using the explanation-demonstration-imitation-practice cycle while watching and correcting technique, control and motivate a group so all can see and be seen and are built up rather than humiliated, adjust a session for the ground and the weather and hand the early signs of heat or cold illness to first aid, give an easier and a harder version of an exercise so a mixed group all trains safely, and exercise the standing authority to stop a session or an individual the moment something is wrong.

Key Terms

Session: a single period of organised physical training, shaped in three parts (warm-up, main activity, cool-down) and led by an instructor from start to finish.
Warm-up: the opening part of a session that raises the heart rate and body temperature, mobilises the joints, and prepares the body specifically for the work to come.
Main activity: the central part of the session where the training effect is produced, the part the programme is built around.
Cool-down: the closing part of a session that brings the heart rate and breathing down gradually and returns the body toward rest.
EDIP: the teaching cycle by which a physical skill is taught, Explanation, Demonstration, Imitation, Practice, the same cycle taught for drill in the Drill and Ceremonial course (RMT 130).
Cue: a short, plain instruction that fixes one point of technique, given so that a group can apply it at once, for example "chest up" or "weight through the heels".
Progression: a harder version of an exercise, given to a national who finds the standard version easy, so that they are still challenged.
Regression: an easier version of an exercise, given to a national who cannot yet do the standard version safely, so that they train the same movement at a level they can hold.
Duty of care: the instructor's binding responsibility for the safety and welfare of those they lead, set out in Lesson 01 and running through every session.
Refer: to hand a problem beyond your competence to the proper person, a medic, a physical-training authority, or a doctor, rather than attempting it yourself.

The shape of a session

A session has three parts, always, and in this order: a warm-up, a main activity, and a cool-down. This is not a convention to observe when there is time and drop when there is not. The body is not a machine that runs at full power the instant it is switched on and stops dead when it is switched off. It is a system that has to be brought up to working temperature, worked, and brought back down, and each of the three parts does one of those jobs. Drop the warm-up and you ask a cold body to do hard work it is not ready for, which is how people are hurt. Drop the cool-down and you leave the body abruptly, which is uncomfortable and wastes an easy gain. The main activity is the reason the session exists, but the warm-up and cool-down are what let it happen safely and repeatedly, day after day, without breaking the people you lead.

   THE SHAPE OF A SESSION

   |---- WARM-UP ----|------- MAIN ACTIVITY -------|-- COOL-DOWN --|
        prepare              produce the              return the
        the body            training effect          body to rest

   effort
   high   |                  ______________
          |                 /              \
          |          ______/                \
   low    |_________/                        \________________
          +----------------------------------------------------
           raise & mobilise   the work of the day    bring it down

   Rough share of the time: warm-up about a sixth, cool-down a
   little less, the main activity the bulk in between.

The proportions are a guide, not a rule to the minute. In a session of an hour, a warm-up of around ten minutes and a cool-down of five to ten are sound, with the rest given to the main activity. A short, sharp session needs proportionally more warm-up, not less, because the body goes hard sooner. A long, steady session can warm up more gently because the first part of the main activity does some of the warming itself. What never changes is the order and the presence of all three parts. An instructor short of time shortens the main activity and keeps the warm-up and cool-down, because a shorter session that is safe is worth more than a full one that injures.

The warm-up, as a method

The warm-up is where most preventable injuries are prevented, so teach it as a method with reasons rather than a routine to be copied. A good warm-up does three things, in order, and you should be able to name them and say why each matters.

First, it raises the heart rate and the body temperature. Gentle continuous movement, a jog, a brisk walk that builds, easy skipping, gets blood moving to the muscles and lifts their temperature by a degree or two. Warm muscle is more elastic and contracts more efficiently than cold muscle, and warm joints produce more of the fluid that lubricates them. A cold muscle asked to stretch or contract hard is a muscle close to tearing; a warm one has give in it. This is the plain physical reason the warm-up cannot be skipped, and it is worth saying to a group in those terms, because a group that understands why warms up properly even when you are not watching.

Second, it mobilises the joints that the session will use. This is movement, not held stretching: swinging the arms in circles, rolling the shoulders, gentle controlled lunges and squats, rotations of the hips, ankles, and neck, taking each joint smoothly through its range several times. This prepares the joints for the angles and loads the main activity will demand and finds, harmlessly, any joint that is stiff or sore this morning before it is loaded hard. Note that this is moving mobility. Long, held, static stretching belongs at the end of a session, not the start; holding a stretch on a cold muscle does not prevent injury and can briefly reduce the muscle's power, which is the opposite of what a warm-up is for.

Third, it prepares the body specifically for the work to come. A warm-up should rehearse, gently and at low load, the actual movements of the main activity. If the session is running, the warm-up builds from a walk through a jog to a few faster strides. If it is lifting or loaded carriage, the warm-up includes the lift or the carry with little or no weight, grooving the movement before load is added. This specific part is what turns a general warm-up into preparation for this session. It also serves as a last rehearsal of technique under your eye before the work begins in earnest.

   THE WARM-UP, THREE JOBS IN ORDER

   1. RAISE        gentle continuous movement
                   -> heart rate and temperature up,
                      muscle elastic, joints lubricated

   2. MOBILISE     moving (not held) joint movement
                   -> joints ready for the range and load,
                      stiffness found before it is loaded

   3. PREPARE      the session's own movements, low load
                   -> body and technique rehearsed for
                      the specific work to come

   Skip it and you ask a cold, stiff, unrehearsed body to
   do hard work: that is how muscles tear and joints sprain.

Why insist on it so hard? Because the injuries a missing warm-up causes are exactly the ones that take a national off training for weeks: pulled muscles, sprained joints, strained backs. They are common, they are painful, and they are very largely preventable by the ten minutes the warm-up costs. An instructor who cuts the warm-up to fit more work into the hour has not made the session better; they have traded a certain small cost now for a likely large cost later, and have done it with someone else's body. The duty of care set out in Lesson 01 begins, in practice, with the warm-up.

The cool-down, and why it is done

At the end of the main activity the body is hot, the heart is beating fast, breathing is hard, and blood is pooled in the working muscles. The cool-down brings all of that down gradually rather than stopping it dead. It is the warm-up in reverse: easy continuous movement, a slowing jog falling to a walk, that keeps the blood circulating and lets the heart rate and breathing settle steadily instead of dropping suddenly. Stopping hard work abruptly, especially standing still straight afterward, can leave a national light-headed, because the muscles were helping to pump blood back to the heart and that help vanishes the instant they stop. A few minutes of easy movement avoids that and is simple good practice.

The cool-down is also the right and only place for held, static stretching, the slow, gentle, sustained stretches of the muscles the session worked, each held without bouncing or forcing. The muscles are now warm and willing, which is exactly when stretching is useful and safe, and it is a calm few minutes that returns the group toward rest in good order. It is the least glamorous part of the session and the first part a lazy instructor drops, which is precisely why a good one keeps it: a small, cheap habit that closes the session properly, leaves people comfortable rather than abruptly spent, and signals that the session is run to a standard from first minute to last. It is also a natural moment to look the group over, ask how feet and joints feel, and catch a problem before it walks away unreported.

Teaching a physical skill: the EDIP method

Much of what an instructor does in the main activity is not just leading work but teaching movement, because an exercise done with poor technique trains the wrong thing and often injures. A poor instructor counts repetitions and lets form fall apart; a good one watches the movement and corrects it, treating each exercise as a skill to be taught and held to a standard. The method for teaching a physical skill is the same four-step cycle the Drill and Ceremonial course (RMT 130) uses to teach a drill movement, remembered by the word EDIP: Explanation, Demonstration, Imitation, Practice. The Army teaches movement the same way whether it is a turn on the square or a squat in the gym, because the cycle matches how the body learns a skill.

   EDIP: HOW A PHYSICAL SKILL IS TAUGHT

   E  EXPLAIN       name it, say what it trains and the
                    key points to watch (the cues)

   D  DEMONSTRATE   show it performed correctly, twice:
                    once at full speed, once slowly by parts
                    (they copy what they see, faults and all)

   I  IMITATE       the group does it, slowly, while you
                    name the common faults and correct

   P  PRACTISE      the group repeats under your eye, you
                    correcting technique, not just counting
                    -> the longest step by far

         cycle repeats; build a complex movement one part
         at a time, and move on only when each part is sound

The explanation names the exercise, says briefly what it trains and why, and gives the two or three key points of technique, the cues, that matter most. Keep it short. A group standing still listening is a group not training, and three clear cues land where ten are forgotten.

The demonstration shows the exercise performed correctly, normally twice: once at full speed so the group sees the finished movement, then slowly and broken into its parts so they see how it is built. The demonstration must be correct, because a group copies exactly what it sees, including the faults. If you cannot yet demonstrate a movement well, use a national who can, and watch from where you can talk the group through it. Show the movement from the angle that makes the key points visible; for a squat, from the side, so the group sees the back stay flat and the hips travel back.

The imitation is the group performing the movement for the first time, slowly and with control, while you name the common faults aloud before they happen and correct each as it appears. This is where you fix the shape of the movement before any speed or load is added.

The practice is the longest step by far, because a movement is learned not when it can be done once but when it can be done correctly every time, including when the body is tired. Throughout the practice you are watching and correcting technique, not standing at the front counting. Fewer good repetitions are worth more than many poor ones, and the correct response to failing form is to slow down, reset, regress the exercise, or stop, never to grind out broken repetitions because a number is not yet reached. A repetition done with a rounded back under load is not a repetition toward fitness; it is a repetition toward a back injury, and counting it is the opposite of the instructor's job.

Two habits make the corrections land. Correct the movement, not the person, naming the fault and the fix plainly ("knees are falling in, push them out over the toes") rather than mocking the national who shows it. And correct the most dangerous fault first: a rounded back under load is fixed before a shallow depth, because one risks injury and the other only a less good repetition.

Controlling and motivating the group

A session is led, and leading a moving group well is a skill of its own. Two things must be true at all times: every national can see and hear you, and you can see every national. Position yourself so both hold. For a demonstration, gather the group where all have a clear line to you and to the angle that shows the movement; do not demonstrate to people strung out in a line where half see only the backs of others. During the work, place yourself where your eye covers the whole group, and keep moving so that you see every national in turn rather than watching the keen ones at the front while someone at the back quietly hurts themselves. The test is the one this course returns to: can all see and be seen? If not, move the group or move yourself until they can.

Control also means clear timing and clear instruction. The group should always know what it is doing, for how long, and what comes next. Count or call the work plainly, mark the start and end of each effort cleanly, and give the next instruction before the last one ends so the session flows rather than stalling. A group unsure what it is meant to be doing drifts, loses intensity, and is harder to keep safe; a group that is clearly led trains harder and more safely at once.

Motivation is the other half of leading, and how it is done matters more than that it is done. Encouragement should build the national up, not break them down. Praise effort and good technique, push people to find a little more than they thought they had, and use the group's energy to carry the individual, because a national will hold on through a hard effort for the section that would stop alone. What has no place is humiliation: shouting a struggling national down, mocking the slowest, or singling someone out for ridicule. Be plain about why, because an aggressive, demeaning style is sometimes mistaken for hard, effective instruction. It is neither. Humiliation does not build fitness; it builds fear, and a national who is afraid hides the very things you most need them to tell you, the niggle, the dizziness, the pain that is changing how they move. The instant a national learns that admitting a problem brings ridicule, they stop admitting problems, and the next problem you hear about is the injury that could have been caught. Encouragement that builds is therefore not only the decent way to lead but the safe way, because it keeps open the honest reporting the duty of care depends on. The Foundations of Military Leadership course (LDR 201) develops this at length; in the session it comes down to a simple line: drive people hard, and treat them well while you do it.

The ground, the weather, and the body

A session does not happen in the abstract. It happens on a particular piece of ground, in particular weather, and both change what is safe. Check the ground before you use it. A hard surface, tarmac or concrete, multiplies the impact of running and jumping and is a common cause of shin and joint problems; favour grass, a track, or firm natural ground for impact work, and progress onto harder surfaces gradually rather than all at once. Look for hazards underfoot, holes, loose stones, broken ground, wet and slippery patches, and either clear them, route around them, or choose other ground. Slope, surface, and footing all change how an exercise should be run, and the instructor checks them rather than discovering them when a national turns an ankle.

Weather matters as much as ground, and the body's response to heat and cold is a serious safety matter the instructor must understand at the level of recognising trouble early. In heat, and especially in heat with humidity, the body struggles to shed the warmth that hard work produces, because sweat cannot evaporate and cool the skin when the air is already damp. The result can be heat illness, which is dangerous and can become life-threatening. The instructor's job is prevention and early recognition. Prevent it by moving hard sessions to the cooler parts of the day, easing the pace and load when it is hot and humid, building in rest and shade, and insisting on water before, during, and after. Recognise it early: a national who becomes unusually tired, develops a headache, feels sick or dizzy, stops sweating or sweats heavily and clammily, or whose behaviour changes, becoming confused, irritable, or unsteady, may be developing heat illness. Cold is the opposite hazard and as real. A national working in the cold, particularly when wet, tired, or underdressed, can lose heat faster than they make it; early signs include uncontrollable shivering, clumsiness, slurred or muddled speech, and withdrawal.

Here the instructor's competence ends and another's begins, and knowing exactly where that line falls is part of the duty of care. Your job is to prevent these conditions, to spot the early signs, to stop the activity at once, and to hand the person to first aid; it is not to diagnose or to treat beyond that. The detailed prevention and management of heat, cold, hydration, and the body in the field is the subject of the Field Health, Hygiene, and Sanitation course (MED 210), and the recognition and treatment of a casualty is taught in the Combat First Aid course (MED 201). This lesson asks you to know the early warning signs well enough to stop and refer, and to build sessions that do not create the conditions in the first place. Refer beyond your competence, every time, without hesitation or embarrassment. A session stopped early because an instructor was unsure is never a fault; a casualty made worse because an instructor pressed on is always one.

Progressions and regressions: one session, mixed abilities

A real group is never all of one fitness. On the same morning you will have a national who finds the standard exercise easy and a national who cannot yet do it safely, and your job is to train both well in the same session. You do this by holding the same movement for everyone but offering it at more than one level: a regression, an easier version, for those not yet ready for the standard, and a progression, a harder version, for those who find the standard too easy. The group does the same exercise together; each national does it at the level that challenges them without exceeding what they can do safely.

   ONE EXERCISE, THREE LEVELS

   REGRESSION  <----  STANDARD  ---->  PROGRESSION
   (easier)            (the aim)        (harder)

   press-up    | hands raised on a   | full press-up   | feet raised,
               | bench or box        | on the ground   | or slower tempo
   ------------+---------------------+-----------------+----------------
   squat       | to a box, or part   | full-depth      | hold a load, or
               | depth, holding on   | bodyweight      | jump out of it
   ------------+---------------------+-----------------+----------------
   run/effort  | jog or brisk walk   | the set pace    | a faster pace or
               | the same time       | for the time    | more ground

   Same movement for all; each national works at the level
   that challenges them without exceeding what is safe.

This is not lowering the standard for some and not others. A national made to attempt an exercise beyond their current ability will do it with broken technique and is the likeliest person in the group to be injured, while a national held to an exercise far below their ability is not being trained at all. Giving each the right level keeps everyone working hard, keeps everyone safe, and keeps the slower national in the session and progressing rather than failing publicly and giving up. It honours both the duty of care and the purpose of the session at once. The detail of the exercises themselves, the standard form for each and the family of easier and harder versions, is the subject of the next lesson; here the principle is that a good instructor always has an easier and a harder version of every exercise ready, and uses them.

Safety throughout, and the authority to stop

Safety is not a part of the session; it runs through all of it, and it rests on one standing authority that belongs to the instructor and that this lesson exists to make plain. You may stop a session, or pull a single national out of it, the moment something is wrong, and you must. That is not a failure of the session or a weakness in the instructor. It is the instructor doing the most important part of the job. The duty of care set out in Lesson 01 is, at the sharp end, exactly this readiness to stop.

What triggers it is anything that tells you the work has become unsafe for the group or for one person. The signs of heat or cold illness above, at once. A national whose technique has broken down under fatigue and will not come back with a correction or a regression. Pain, real pain, in a joint or a muscle, as opposed to the ordinary discomfort of effort; pain that changes how a national walks, runs, or lifts is stopped and referred the same day, never trained through. A national who has gone quiet, grey, dizzy, or who simply does not look right. A hazard that has appeared on the ground. When you see any of these, you act: stop the individual or the whole group, deal with the person, and refer to a medic where the smallest doubt remains. The bias is always toward stopping, because the cost of stopping early is small and recoverable, and the cost of pressing on through a warning is a casualty.

This is why the aggressive, never-stop, weakness-is-not-tolerated style of instruction is not toughness but a danger. The instructor's hardness should be in the standard of the work and the technique, never in a refusal to listen to the body or to the national. The genuinely tough session is the one run hard and run safe, that leaves a group fitter and whole. Hold that together and you are conducting a safe and effective session, which is the whole of this lesson and the heart of the instructor's craft.

In Practice: A Morning Circuit on the Common

A physical training instructor takes a mixed section for a morning circuit on open common ground beside a sports field. The group runs from the very fit to two nationals lately returned from minor injury, the morning is already warm and the air is humid, and she has the hour and the duty of care to run it well.

She begins with the ground. The far end of the field is hard, sun-baked, and pitted with rabbit holes, so she sites the circuit on the soft grass nearer the trees, where the footing is even and there is shade for the rest points, and she walks the lines once to clear two loose stones and a length of old fencing wire. Then the warm-up, run as a method and not a ritual: three or four minutes of easy jogging to raise the heart rate and warm the muscles, then moving mobility for the joints the circuit will use, shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles taken smoothly through their range, then a few of the actual circuit movements at low effort to prepare the body and let her see each national move once before the work begins. She holds the static stretching back for the end, where it belongs.

For the main activity she teaches each station by EDIP before the group works it. At the press-up station she explains the movement and gives three cues, demonstrates it correctly from the side once at speed and once slowly by its parts, has the group imitate it slowly while she names the faults, and only then sets them practising, moving among them and correcting form rather than standing at the front counting. She positions herself where she can see the whole group and keeps moving so the two returning nationals at the back are under her eye as much as the keen ones at the front. She runs the circuit at three levels at once: the two returning from injury press up with their hands raised on a bench and jog the running leg, the main body do the full movements at the set pace, and the fittest pair work a harder version, so all are challenged and none is hurt. Her encouragement drives them hard and builds them up; she praises good technique and effort and never mocks the slowest, because she needs every one of them telling her the truth about how they feel.

Halfway through, one of the fittest nationals, pushing to lead, goes quiet, then complains of a headache and looks unsteady on his feet. In the heat and humidity she does not hesitate or tell him to work through it. She stops him at once, moves him into the shade, gets water and cooling going, and sends for the medic, because the early signs of heat illness are exactly what the Field Health course (MED 210) and the Combat First Aid course (MED 201) taught her to hand straight to qualified care rather than manage herself. The session continues at an easier pace for the rest while she keeps an eye on him. She closes with a proper cool-down, an easy jog falling to a walk to bring the heart rate down, then the held stretching the warm muscles are now ready for, and a quick word round the group asking how feet and joints feel. The section leaves fitter than it arrived, the returning nationals trained at their own level without setback, the affected national caught early and in the right hands. The session worked because it was shaped, taught, led, watched, and, at the one moment it mattered, stopped.

Check Your Understanding

Set out the three-part structure of a session in order, and say what job each part does and why none of the three can be dropped. Then explain the three things a warm-up does, in order, and why skipping the warm-up causes injury.
Name the four steps of the EDIP cycle and say what each is for, and explain why the instructor watches and corrects technique through the practice rather than simply counting repetitions. What is the correct response when a national's form breaks down under fatigue?
Explain the difference between a progression and a regression and why offering both lets a mixed-ability group train safely in one session. Then state the early warning signs of heat illness an instructor must recognise, what the instructor does on seeing them, and where the instructor's job ends and qualified medical care begins.

Reflection (write a short paragraph): This lesson holds two things together that can seem to pull against each other: driving a group hard enough to make them fitter, and caring for them well enough that none of them is harmed. Think of the moment in the vignette when the keen national goes quiet with a headache in the heat, and the instructor stops him at once rather than letting him press on. Describe what the genuinely tough instructor does there and why stopping is the strong choice rather than the weak one. Then consider an instructor who runs the same session by humiliation, mocking the slow and refusing ever to stop: why does that style not only fail the duty of care but actually make the session less safe, and what does it cost the instructor in the one thing they most need from the group?

Summary

A session has three parts, always and in order: a warm-up to prepare the body, a main activity to produce the training effect, and a cool-down to return the body toward rest. The main activity is the reason for the session, but the warm-up and cool-down are what let it be done safely day after day; when time is short, shorten the main activity and keep the other two.
The warm-up is a method with three jobs in order: raise the heart rate and temperature, mobilise the joints with moving (not held) movement, and prepare the body with the session's own movements at low load. Skipping it asks a cold, stiff, unrehearsed body to work hard, which is how muscles tear and joints sprain; static stretching belongs in the cool-down, not the warm-up.
The cool-down brings the heart rate and breathing down gradually with easy movement, prevents the light-headedness of stopping dead, and is the right place for held static stretching of warm muscles; it is a cheap habit that closes the session to a standard and a natural moment to catch an unreported problem.
A physical skill is taught by EDIP, the same cycle as drill (RMT 130): Explanation of the movement and its key cues, correct Demonstration twice, Imitation slowly with the faults named, and Practice as the longest step, throughout which the instructor watches and corrects technique rather than counting repetitions; when form breaks, slow down, reset, regress, or stop, never grind out broken repetitions.
Control the group so all can see and hear you and you can see all of them, lead with clear timing and instruction, and motivate by building nationals up, never by humiliation, because encouragement that builds is both the decent and the safe way to lead, keeping open the honest reporting the duty of care depends on (developed in Foundations of Military Leadership, LDR 201).
The ground and the weather change what is safe: check the surface and clear hazards, favour softer ground for impact work, and in heat or cold prevent illness, recognise its early signs, and stop and refer at once; prevention and the body in the field belong to the Field Health course (MED 210) and casualty treatment to the Combat First Aid course (MED 201).
Train a mixed group by holding the same movement for all and offering a regression (easier) and a progression (harder) of every exercise, so each national works at the level that challenges them without exceeding what is safe; the standard form and the families of versions are the subject of Lesson 05.
Safety runs through the whole session and rests on the instructor's standing authority and duty to stop a session or an individual the moment something is wrong; the bias is always toward stopping, because stopping early costs little and pressing on through a warning costs a casualty. This and all practical instruction is mastered in person under qualified physical-training and medical supervision, and certified there.

Conducting a Safe and Effective Session