Fit to Fight: A History of the Royal Army Physical Training Corps 1860–2015

Fit to Fight: A History of the Royal Army Physical Training Corps 1860–2015 PDF Author: Nikolai Bogdanovic
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472824237
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Formed in 1860 as the Army Gymnastic Staff, the Royal Army Physical Training Corps (RAPTC) has been keeping the British Army in shape for just over 150 years. Drawn from every regiment in the army, prospective candidates undergo 30 weeks of intensive training before qualifying as a Royal Army Physical Training Corps Instructor. Based at the Army School of Physical Training in Aldershot, over the course of its history the RAPTC has trained countless instructors, including Olympic medallists Dame Kelly Holmes and Kriss Akabussi. This is a complete history of the RAPTC from its formation to the present day, illustrated with stunning images from the regimental collection, including historical photographs, commissioned pictures of objects and fine art, and facsimile reproductions of documents.

Fit to Fight: A History of the Royal Army Physical Training Corps 1860–2015

Fit to Fight: A History of the Royal Army Physical Training Corps 1860–2015 PDF Author: Nikolai Bogdanovic
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472824237
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Get Book

Book Description
Formed in 1860 as the Army Gymnastic Staff, the Royal Army Physical Training Corps (RAPTC) has been keeping the British Army in shape for just over 150 years. Drawn from every regiment in the army, prospective candidates undergo 30 weeks of intensive training before qualifying as a Royal Army Physical Training Corps Instructor. Based at the Army School of Physical Training in Aldershot, over the course of its history the RAPTC has trained countless instructors, including Olympic medallists Dame Kelly Holmes and Kriss Akabussi. This is a complete history of the RAPTC from its formation to the present day, illustrated with stunning images from the regimental collection, including historical photographs, commissioned pictures of objects and fine art, and facsimile reproductions of documents.

Indian Club Swinging and the Birth of Global Fitness

Indian Club Swinging and the Birth of Global Fitness PDF Author: Conor Heffernan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135040165X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
Emerging in colonial India, the fitness fad that was Indian Club Swinging became a global exercise practice in the early 19th century. Used by physicians, soldiers, gymnasts, children and athletes alike, clubs were used to solve numerous social concerns and ills, and often prescribed to treat everything from depression to spinal abnormalities. This book provides a definitive account of the rise and spread of club swinging as it spread from India to Europe and America, asking why and how it became so popular. Discussing the global, commercial fitness culture of the 19th century, Indian Club Swinging and the Birth of Global Fitness explores how the popularity of this exercise reflected much deeper global and domestic concerns about body image, military preparation and education. Addressing broader questions about nationalism, gender, race and popular commerce across the British Empire, it highlights the origins of our modern transnational fitness culture and shows how it intersected with global and colonial understandings of health, medicine and education.

The History of Physical Culture

The History of Physical Culture PDF Author: Conor Heffernan
Publisher: Common Ground Research Networks
ISBN: 195779223X
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
Physical culture can be crudely defined as those exercise practices designed to physically change the body. In modern parlance we may associate physical culture with weightlifting, physical education, and/or calisthenics of various kinds. While the modern age has experienced an explosion of interest in gym-based activities, the practice of training one’s body has a much longer, and fascinating, history. This book provides an engaged and accessible historical overview from the Ancient World to the Modern Day. In it, readers are introduced to the training practices of Ancient Greece, India, and China among other areas. From there, the book explores the evolution of exercise systems and messages in the Western World with reference to three distinct epochs: the Middles Ages and Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and its aftermath and the nineteenth to the present day. Throughout the book, attention is drawn not only to how societies exercised, but why they did so. The purpose of this book is to provide those new to the field of physical culture an historical overview of some of the major trends and developments in exercise practices. More than that, the book challenges readers to reflect on the numerous meanings attached to the body and its training. As is discussed, physical culture was linked to military, religious, educational, aesthetic, and gendered messages. The training of the body, across millennia, was always about much more than muscularity or strength. Here both the exercise systems, and their meanings are studied.

Critical Reflections on Physical Culture at the Edges of Empire

Critical Reflections on Physical Culture at the Edges of Empire PDF Author: Francois Johannes Cleophas
Publisher: African Sun Media
ISBN: 1928480691
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
This groundbreaking anthology provides a transnational view of the use of physical culture practices - to strengthen, discipline, and reimagine the human body. Exploring theses of colonialism, gender disparities, and race relations, this international examination of bodily practices is a must read for all sport historians and those interested in physical training and its meanings. Erudite, solid, enlightening, this is a truly valuable book for our field.

'The Army Isn't All Work'

'The Army Isn't All Work' PDF Author: James D. Campbell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317044525
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Between the Crimean War and the end of the First World War the British Army underwent a dramatic change from being an anachronistic and frequently ineffective organization to being perhaps the most professional and highly trained army in the world. Historians have tended to view that transformation through the successive political reform efforts of those years, but have largely overlooked the ways in which the Army transformed itself from within. This change was effected through the modernization of training, operational and leadership doctrines. The adoption of formal physical training and organized games played a central part in this process. With its origins in elite public schools and upper-class country homes, the Army's philosophy of Athleticism was a part of the ethos of 'muscular Christianity' widely held in contemporary British institutions. Under the potent influence of this philosophy, military sport went from a means of keeping soldiers from drink and the officers from duty, to an institutionalized form of combat training. This book documents the origins and development of formal physical training in the late Victorian Army and the ways in which the Army's gymnastic training evolved into a vital building block of the process of turning a civilian into a fighting man. It also assesses the nature and extent of British military sport, particularly regimental sports, during this period of evolution for the Army. Through an investigation of the Army's physical culture during this dynamic period, one can gain an understanding of not only how the Army's change from within occurred, but also of some of the important links between the Army and its parent society.

Mass Physical Training

Mass Physical Training PDF Author: Joseph E. Raycroft
Publisher: Forgotten Books
ISBN: 9780666991034
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Excerpt from Mass Physical Training: For Use in the Army and the Reserve Officers Training Corps Under his direction, millions of men to whom physical train ing and athletics had been a sealed book, were introduced to the advantages of systematic physical development. Hundreds of thousands of them were taught for the first time how to com bine health-giving exercise with play in the form of athletic games and sports. It furnished a striking demonstration of the value of such activities in the basic training of the soldiers. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

A Historical Review and Analysis of Army Physical Readiness Training and Assessment

A Historical Review and Analysis of Army Physical Readiness Training and Assessment PDF Author: Whitfield B. East
Publisher: Combat Studies Institute Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
In this monograph, Dr. Whitfield "Chip" East provides a pragmatic history of physical readiness training in our Army. He tells us we initially mirrored the professional Armies of Europe as they prepared their forces for war on the continent. Then he introduces us to some master trainers, and shows us how they initiated an American brand of physical conditioning when our forces were found lacking in the early wars of the last century. Finally, he shows us how we have and must incorporate science (even when there exists considerable debate!) to contribute to what we do-and how we do it-in shaping today's Army. Dr. East provides the history, the analysis, and the pragmatism, and all of it is geared to understanding how our Army has and must train Soldiers for the physical demands of combat.

Bodies for Battle

Bodies for Battle PDF Author: Garrett Gatzemeyer
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700632581
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Physical training in the US Army has a surprisingly short history. Bodies for Battle by Garrett Gatzemeyer is the first in-depth analysis of the US Army’s particular set of practices and values, known as its physical culture, that emerged in the late nineteenth century in response to tactical challenges and widespread anxieties over diminishing masculinity. The US Army’s physical culture assumed a unity of mind and body; learning a physical act was not just physical but also mental and social. Physical training and exercise could therefore develop the whole individual, even societies. Bodies for Battle is a study of how the US Army developed modern, scientific training methods in response to concerns about entering a competitive imperial world where embodied nations battled for survival in a Social Darwinist framework. This book connects social and cultural worries about American masculinity and manliness with military developments (strategic, tactical, technological) in the early twentieth century, and it links trends in the United States and the US Army with larger trans-Atlantic trends. Bodies for Battle presents new perspectives on US civil-military relations, army officers’ unease with citizen armies, and the implications of compulsory military service. Gatzemeyer offers a deeply informed historical understanding of physical training practices in the US Army, the reasons why soldiers exercise the way they do, and the influence of physical culture’s evolution on present-day reform efforts. Between the 1880s and the 1950s, the Army’s set of practices and values matured through interactions between combat experience, developments in the field of physical education, institutional outsiders, application beyond the military, and popular culture. A persistent tension between discipline and group averages on one hand and maximizing the individual warrior’s abilities on the other manifested early and continues to this day. Bodies for Battle also builds on earlier studies on sport in the US military by highlighting historical divergences between athletics and disciplinary and combat readiness impulses. Additionally, Bodies for Battle analyzes applications of the Army’s physical culture to wider society in an effort to “prehabilitate” citizens for service.

The Official British Army Fitness Guide

The Official British Army Fitness Guide PDF Author: Sam Murphy
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 085265118X
Category : Physical fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
Developed by the Army Physical training Corps, this is the first official guide to getting as fit as a recruit in the British Army and is based on the actual exercises and activities the Army uses to train its soldiers.

Victory to Defeat

Victory to Defeat PDF Author: Richard Dannatt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472860861
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
A compelling history of the decline of an army from the triumph of victory in 1918 to defeat in 1940 and why this happened. A salutary warning for modern Britain. The British Army won a convincing series of victories between 1916 and 1918. But by 1939 the British Army was an entirely different animal. The hard-won knowledge, experience and strategic vision that delivered victory after victory in the closing stages of the First World War had been lost. In the inter-war years there was plenty of talking, but very little focus on who Britain might have to fight, and how. Victory to Defeat clearly illustrates how the British Army wasn't prepared to fight a first-class European Army in 1939 for the simple reason that as a country Britain hadn't prepared itself to do so. The failure of the army's leadership led directly to its abysmal performance in Norway and France in 1940. Victory to Defeat is a captivating history of the mismanagement of a war-winning army. It is also a stark warning that we neglect to understand who our enemy might be, and how to defeat him, at the peril of our country. The British Army is now to be cut to its smallest size since 1714. Are we, this book asks, repeating the same mistakes again?