Page 53 - 1RHA 2024

1st Regiment Royal Horse Artillery
1RHA BAWF – A year on deployment Captain G Rawlye RHA
It has been an incredibly busy year for 1RHA, on CABRIT rota- tions, trawls and various exercises. The BAWF team had been building well over the previous period, but with a lot of person-
nel deployed it has pulled the BAWF team apart and made com- peting difficult. This has, however, provided a fantastic oppor- tunity to train and grow the BAWF team membership. This has been taken on in earnest in Estonia for CABRIT 14, where a long term holistic training programme has been advertised for the 6 months and has seen a good uptake across the Arty Group.
Deployments can be the perfect opportunity to implement training programmes, and routine can really help the tour pass productively, as well as quickly. So, a progressive training pro- gramme was started which focussed on 6 components of fitness: Strength, endurance (muscular and cardiovascular), flexibility, mobility and balance – all of which are key to BAWF competi- tions and achieving good form on lifts. In order to achieve this, the programme included two training sessions a day. The early morning switching between Zone 2 cardio, calisthenics and yoga sessions. While the afternoons were strength and conditioning sessions built off a legs/push/pull split. While this was a lot of training, the key was progressive overload and building a strong base from which to progress onto more complex moves and arduous BAWF circuits to mitigate injury.
Despite 0630hr starts, a committed team of 12 would sally forth every morning, with the Chestnuts TAC Group heavily involved. Working on the stabiliser muscles to reduce injury when fatigued
on lifts such as the clean and jerk, calisthenics workouts included a lot of shoulder mobility and strengthening exercises along with core. The strength and conditioning started with lower weight and higher reps to solidify muscle memory on the main com- pound lifts, before upping the weight and reducing reps. Built into these sessions were technique exercises to progress onto clean and jerks and snatches.
After the foundation had been built it was time to up the intensity of the workouts and move to more circuit based sessions in the afternoons, starting to focus more on muscular and cardiovascu- lar endurance over strength.
In order to measure the efficacy of the programme and how people were progressing, those taking part completed a physi- cal assessment to establish their baseline. This involved working up to their 1 Rep Max for Squat, Bench press, Deadlift, Shoul- der Press, followed by max pull ups and dips, followed by a best effort 1.5 mile run. This assessment was then repeated at the half way point and end of the tour to measure people’s improvement. While there were varying degrees of success, everyone who managed to stick with the programme got stronger and faster.
To put the new team to the test, some took part in the Battlegroup Strong man competition and more yet in the Battlegroup sports day events. While not sweeping any trophies, the team put in a fantastic performance and have cemented as a team for next year, and future BAWF competitions to come.
51