A Close Protection Guide To Fitness Training

In the world today when carrying out the role of Close Protection Operative you will find that the maintaining of an elevated level of fitness is a must, if you wish to able to deal with the hazards associated with the job.

If your level of fitness is lacking then you will not be in a position to extract your client from a situation and that means you are as much use as a chocolate teapot and because of this you will endanger the safety of all those around you.

It does not have to be a confrontation that you are faced with to be required to produce a large physical effort.

There is always the possibility that your client is a health and fitness fanatic and likes to go a 10 mile run every day, I am afraid that the police will take a very dim view of you when they catch you driving the follow vehicle through a protected park or across the countryside.

Happily the bulk of Close Protection workers are professional and disciplined in their attitude towards maintaining the high standards that a client expects of them and will never have their fitness called into question.

What can you do if you are one of those who no matter how hard you try or how much you berate yourself, just cannot keep a training regime going?

Training on a consistent basis can be achieved through the use of a little imagination.

There are a couple of what we shall call tricks to help you change your attitude to physical exertion.

One is to source yourself a local club that offers any of these, running, mountain biking, cycling, tennis, basketball, hill walking, etc.

The key to keeping you interested and motivated is to have the group offer encouragement, companionship and if needed friendly banter to keep your effort levels up.

Let me highlight hill walking here and cite it as a perfect example of a quality activity for those of you that believe exercise is always tedious and boring, with this endeavour that this is not the case. And I shall state that, because you will be so engrossed in what is going on in the background, you will not realise that you are actually exerting yourself.

As a means of maximising your time you can also consider participating in sports that will actively improve and enhance your own CV.

This is in reference to endeavours like skiing, rock climbing, mixed martial arts and snowboarding, which are all activities that a potential client may wish to participate.

It is my own personal belief that MMA offers the best combination of anaerobic and aerobic effort and if I was allowed to chose only one sport then it would be MMA and I would do so without hesitation.

I have deliberately omitted high impact types sports like American football and rugby.

My reasoning behind this is that I do not think that the risk of serious injury merits addition to the list of viable alternatives.

You may argue that Mixed Martial Arts is listed but at least with the likes of MMA there is an acceptable risk because you are developing one other necessary Close Protection skill.

If you are still not convinced about improving your fitness with these simple techniques and do not see the need to get out there and do a bit, then I believe that you will need to start asking yourself the question, am I really in the right job for me?