Many of you are familiar with Mil-Spec Monkey, the gear review site that makes some hilarious morale patches seen festooned on troopers' body armor, pouches and sleeves in the zone.
Kit Up! is good friends with the whole crew over there, mainly a troupe of multimedia knuckleheads who work out on the left coast on the Army's virtual training and video game design efforts. I met them out at SHOT Show in 2009 and we've been collaborating ever since.
I wanted to pass along to you a writeup of an opportunity the Monkeys had going through SWAT team trainingnear Quantico, Va. Many of you will identify with the pace and technical difficulty of the modules. But you'll also get a kick out of some of the misery the admitted desk jockeys at MSM went through.
Here's a taste...
Day two had us up early at a nearby Crossfit gym. We nicknamed the instructor lady Iron Maiden as it looked like she could beat all our asses down. I had no delusions about being fit so I knew it was going to suck. Hell it probably could have been a Jazzersize class and it would have sucked for me. This particular workout didn't really look too crazy in theory, but while wearing full kit and under pressure for a good time, it took things to the limit. ... By the end I likely looked something like a zombie on his knees praying for death. I didn't puke, but that was the first time I had to go rock a #2 in the bathroom due to heavy exercise. The big lesson of the day was that a Stromboli breakfast before a hard workout was all kinds of a bad idea. Fortunately after about 15 minutes or so of embracing the suck I was back to semi-normal and was able to help the other teams.
Having covered a lot of hardcore training in my time -- and done a little bit of it to sample the misery -- I can totally identify with the Monkey's plight. Be sure to read the rest of the writeup (it's long) and take a look at the photo gallery.
We'll have more the MSM on our radar and will be sure to keep you up to date on their latest gear reviews and designs.
