If you're interested in tracking and sharing your progress on the new MARSOC 10-week prep workout, it turns out, there's an app for that.
MARSOC is the final stages of developing the MARSOC Physical Preparation App, a program that will allow Marines to ensure they're doing their workouts properly, as well as connect with others to boast about progress.
"The generation we're working with, the young Marines that we have now, everyone has an iPhone or a touchpad or something," said Gunnery Sgt. Peter Boby, the staff noncommissioned officer in charge of MARSOC recruiting team East and Okinawa. "It became thunderingly apparent to me that this is the way of the future; this is what we need to do."
The app, which will be available on Android and Apple devices, will contain the six new movement cards and five swim cards in the 10-week program. There are photos and images accompanying each of the exercises, Boby said, and videos that demonstrate technique for the more challenging ones.
This feature could actually give Marines a leg up on assessment and selection; Boby said one consistent problem with A&S candidates was that they trained on the exercises beforehand using incorrect technique, leaving them at a deficit when it came to certain workouts. Technique is particularly important, he said, when itcomes to pullups and the challenging upper-body workouts.
"The videos and the tutorials and the description of the exercises are pretty helpful," Boby said. "This is a little bit better [than the hard-copy workout book] because we can get into the film clips and all that fun stuff."
Based on manual entry of completed workouts and exercises, users can track their progress through the program in a chart.
It's interactive, too: users can send their progress reports to friends or even to a MARSOC recruiter, Boby said. Here, Marines can take a classic bit of fitness conventional wisdom into the 21st century: have a partner motivate you to do the work.
"A lot of times we encourage guys to get workout buddies," he said.
MARSOC will also be able to track aggregate data from users of the app, Boby said, to make future improvements to the workout plan.
Now being tested by Apple, the MARSOC Fitness Preparation App should be available for devices by the end of this month, MARSOC officials said.
