Training the Part Time Soldier (Reservists) - Mountain Tactical Institute

This article re-enforces a few ideas I already had. It put some random ideas that I've had and put them together and made an excellent argument for pushing reserve and Guard soldiers harder than most units are willing to.
There are a couple points in this article that I really appreciated:
"don’t let fitness training get in the way of technical practice”
"Senior leadership is always preoccupied about pushing troops too hard on a weekend, often seen as a reason why attendance is lower than desired, or the myriad of other lame excuses"
"There is a fine line between screwing with the troops and leaning hard on them. Find that line and set up camp, it will serve your soldiers in the long run."

Excellent article. Thanks for the post CPT (Join to see)

Fantastic article that should be a must read for all traditional guard and reserve leaders.

When I was in the Guard, time management was a big issue. Most often there was too much down time. Training activities were poorly planned and barely supervised. There were a few folks who basically did nothing as they were allowed to BS all day instead of participating. I was lucky as I had a job that kept me busy throughout the weekend, but I was the exception to the rule.

PT was a big issue for my unit as most folks in the Wing were not very fit. I think that at least one day of drill should include a short PT session. Maybe not on the Wing level, but at least at the unit level. Once my unit was activated, it became pretty obvious who didn't have a fitness regiment included in their daily lives. I feel that if folks knew they would have to do PT during drill it would hopefully encourage folks to maintain some type of fitness level on their off time.