Military Sports | "Soldier Assault" on the Banks of the Baisha River

"Soldier Assault" on the Banks of the Baisha River

■ Li Chengtian, Xin Yue, Han Chao

The base conducts small competitions and skill contests during training breaks to build recruits' physical fitness. Pictured: two-person novelty push-up training.

Before lunch, recruits conduct pull-up training in the corridor. Photo by Yang Kaige.

In the early days of summer, a gentle breeze stirs ripples across the Baisha River wetlands in Qingdao. Distant mountains emerge and fade in the haze; morning sunlight scatters soft reflections across the water, and birds pass overhead from time to time — a scene like an ink-wash painting alive with birdsong and flowing waves. On the riverbank, at the training ground of a base under the Naval Aviation University, a burst of resounding chants shatters the morning stillness. Recruits, spirits high and footsteps crisp, run toward the rising sun.

Since mid-March, the recruits have been training here for more than two months. Weathered by wind and sun, tumbling through the dirt, young and tender faces have been tempered into steel within the camouflage barracks, embarking on the journey from civilian youth to qualified servicemember——

How to conduct training that closely matches recruits' actual conditions is a question that new-recruit training units think carefully about every year. This year, the unit confronted head-on the pain points and difficulties in the traditional training organization model — insufficient training precision, inadequate motivation, constraints of venue and time, and gaps in mentorship coverage — and boldly innovated its training organization model, effectively breaking through training bottlenecks.

Precision Training: One-on-One Mentorship

Swimming is a basic skill for every naval officer and enlisted member, and it is also a major "stumbling block" in recruit training.

High technical demands, rigorous standards, and pronounced reluctance among recruits… Swimming has long been one of the most difficult and challenging subjects in recruit training. To consolidate the training foundation, standardize the teaching process, and improve the training-organization capability of cadre, the base organized all cadre to conduct special training before the training cycle began, breaking swimming instruction down into six progressive stages: land movements, preparatory activities, water familiarization, arm-and-leg breakdown drills, full-stroke coordination, and comprehensive reinforcement.

During training, new-recruit cadre organized training in a step-by-step, scientifically structured manner, following the sequence of land before water, breakdown before full stroke, and fundamentals before intensive reinforcement.

The unit also introduced a junior instructor one-on-one mentorship mechanism, transforming broad-brush guidance into fine-grained mentorship, combining collective instruction with individualized coaching to ensure that every recruit received precise guidance and efficient improvement.

Recruit Ding Junxin, from Chongqing, is slight in build and introverted by nature. A childhood experience of falling into water and choking left him with a fear of water. During swimming training, he would always deliberately hang back at the rear of the formation, reluctant to enter the water.

Throughout the training process, new-recruit cadre kept close watch on every detail and corrected errors hands-on; Ding Junxin gritted his teeth and broke through his psychological barrier, overcame his fear, and pressed forward, practicing repeatedly in the pool. He went from being afraid to enter the water, to mastering floating and breathing exchanges, to independently swimming 25 meters and then 50 meters. In just two weeks, he successfully shed the label of "landlubber" and passed the 100-meter qualification assessment.

Recruit Li Zhuohang has a strong, muscular build, but his physical coordination is relatively poor. Before enlisting, he had taught himself to swim, but his technique was non-standard — his stroke efficiency was low and his breathing rhythm was somewhat erratic.

As the saying goes, sharpening the axe does not delay the chopping of wood. After enlisting, to help him correct his technique, new-recruit cadre Lu Qingzhu first led him through repeated land-based practice of swimming movements, standardizing arm stroke, leg kick-and-squeeze, and breathing rhythm one by one, and correcting the bad habits he had previously developed. After entering the water, cadre corrected his technical details one by one: during the arm pull, emphasis was placed on keeping the arms straight, precise entry angle, and full catch-and-push power; during the kick, the requirements were slow leg recovery, rapid foot flip, and a continuous, powerful kick-and-squeeze; during breathing, the head rotation was to be natural, inhalation short and efficient, and breath-holding steady and sustained. With professional guidance, Li Zhuohang voluntarily stayed in the pool for extra practice, refining his technical details one by one.

After a period of solid training, his movements became increasingly standard and fluid, his stroke efficient and effortless; he could easily complete 100 meters, and his training confidence and motivation improved markedly.

Relying on this refined training model, new-recruit cadre, grounded in each recruit's individual characteristics and weak points, taught in accordance with individual aptitude (因材施教) and applied precision training — carefully polishing technical movement details while also helping recruits work hard on physical fitness — breaking through personal limits and filling gaps in military physical training. After several months of effort, the recruits not only overcame the difficulties of swimming training and strengthened their physical conditioning, but also forged the strength of will to face difficulties without fear and press forward in the face of adversity, laying a solid foundation for subsequent military training.

Moving the Venue Forward: Ready to Train Anytime

The horizontal bar pull-up is a "hard bone" in recruit physical fitness training, and it constrains improvements in fitness scores and overall training levels.

As a measure of comprehensive upper-body, back, and core strength, pull-ups place relatively high demands on physical conditioning, movement standards, and muscular strength. In the past, this base — like most new-recruit training units — conducted horizontal bar training concentrated on outdoor parade grounds, subject to significant constraints of time, venue, and weather. Recruits practiced infrequently, with long intervals and poor continuity, making it difficult to form stable muscle memory, and score improvements were slow.

This year, the base uniformly installed horizontal bars on every floor of the barracks, extending pull-up training from outdoors to indoors, bringing equipment into the corridors, and providing recruits with convenient conditions to train their fitness and build their capabilities anytime and anywhere.

During class breaks, after lunch, before lights-out, and other fragmented moments of time, the silhouettes of new comrades doing pull-ups can be seen throughout the corridors. Everyone proactively uses every spare moment to train, gradually building upper-body strength, standardizing movement fundamentals, finding the right sense of muscle engagement, and forming muscle memory. The continuity and systematicity of recruits' pull-up training improved significantly, and scores climbed steadily.

Recruit Xiong Fupeng, 19 years old, is somewhat overweight. Before enlisting, he favored snacks, lacked exercise, and had weak upper-body strength. At the start of training, Xiong Fupeng was at a complete loss when faced with the horizontal bar — after gripping the bar, his body would drop, his arms going soft and trembling; he could not even hang for 10 seconds, let alone generate the force to pull himself up.

After horizontal bars were installed throughout the indoors, the training equipment visible everywhere in the corridors gave him far more training opportunities. Under the guidance of new-recruit cadre, he started with foundational assistance exercises such as Australian pull-ups and kipping swings, using the fragmented time after meals, between classes, and before sleep to train consistently. At the same time, he persisted in push-ups, dumbbell curls, and other exercises to strengthen his upper-body. Two weeks later, he was able to pull himself up with the help of resistance bands — and felt tremendously excited.

Day after day of persistence left calluses on his hands and frequent soreness in his arms, yet he never spoke lightly of giving up. One month later, he could independently complete 5 pull-ups… Xiong Fupeng, who once feared the horizontal bar, now proactively charges toward higher training targets.

Recruit Zheng Tianwen is slight and small in stature, with insufficient upper-body strength; at the start he could not generate the force to complete even a single standard pull-up.

New-recruit cadre had him begin with grip strengtheners and sustained bar hangs, using resistance bands to support his body for assisted pull-up training, developing a feel for latissimus dorsi engagement, and gradually reducing the assistance as he transitioned toward completing pull-ups independently.

After more than a month of hard training, not only are his movements standard and correct, but his arm muscles have become firm, and his whole bearing has grown increasingly upright.

Sweat more on the training ground, bleed less on the battlefield. Squad leader Yang Zhi remarked: "Ever since horizontal bars were added in the corridors, recruits have more training opportunities, their motivation has strengthened, and everyone's progress has been quite remarkable."

Installing horizontal bars indoors not only resolved the problems of venue and time constraints, insufficient pull-up frequency, and slow score improvement, but also cultivated in recruits the good habits of seizing every available moment, training hard, and persisting with determination, laying a solid foundation for comprehensively improving physical fitness and consolidating the training base.

Digital Empowerment: Growth Made Visible

Entering the gate of the base's student company, digital training display boards stand out prominently. A light tap on the screen brings the entire squad's training status into view at a glance. Opening an individual profile, each trainee's scores across all subjects and their strengths and weaknesses are precisely displayed; opening a single subject, the full roster's scores and growth curves are clearly visible — truly achieving full traceability of the training process, quantification of training outcomes, and precise identification of training weak points.

This is the "smart hub" of recruit physical fitness training, enabling recruit physical fitness training to leave behind the rough-and-ready era of "going by experience and feel" and enter the scientific stage of "relying on data and emphasizing precision."

A hexagonal capability radar chart quantitatively displays each recruit across six dimensions: 3,000-meter run, pull-ups, parallel bar dips, sit-up crunches, breaststroke, and treading water. Like leveling up in a game, every breakthrough and every step of progress in training is intuitively visible here, and training results are converted into clearly visible capability graphics. Recruits, seeing and feeling their own growth, gain a sense of achievement and gradually shift from "I'm made to train" to "I want to train."

The bitterness of training accompanies the sweetness of growth. College-student recruit Zhang Xuanming looked at his hexagonal radar chart, almost entirely contracted toward the center, and felt considerable anxiety. New-recruit cadre, using the digital training display boards, compared his training data horizontally against his fellow recruits in the same cohort and tracked his personal growth curve longitudinally, identifying three weak points — insufficient endurance, weak upper-body strength, and below-average cardiopulmonary function — and tailored for him a "progressive, daily micro-improvement" enhancement plan:

The 3,000-meter run starts with short-distance interval running, with the number of interval sets gradually increasing, building aerobic endurance over middle and long distances through intensified speed training; using resistance band assistance, he first conducts regressed pull-up training, gradually mastering the correct way to generate force; crunches are performed in sets, with the count slowly increasing… After each day's training ends, Zhang Xuanming stops in front of the digital display board, carefully checks the day's data, and keeps close watch on changes in the weak areas of his radar chart.

After more than a month of gritting his teeth and persisting, his 3,000-meter run time improved from 15 minutes to 12 minutes 40 seconds, his horizontal bar pull-ups broke through from 0 to 8, his crunches stabilized at more than 60, and his swimming score rose to "good." Looking at his increasingly full radar chart, Zhang Xuanming's training drive grew stronger still.

The data-driven training model makes the training process more controllable, methods more scientific, and outcomes more precise, effectively stimulating recruits' training potential and ensuring training benefits are maximized. This year, the student company's overall recruit training progress advanced 1–2 weeks ahead of the same period last year, the excellent-and-good rate improved by 10–15%, training precision improved significantly, and training quality achieved a leap forward.

Instructor squad leader Wang Chaowei remarked with deep feeling: "Today, our recruit training has completely left behind the old routine of 'going by experience, by impression, by feel,' and has fully shifted to the model of 'relying on data, analysis, and science.' We can precisely lock onto recruits' weak areas and bottleneck subjects, and target-specifically formulate supplementary training plans; the relevance and effectiveness of training have improved substantially."

Precision mentorship for efficient training promotion, forward venue positioning for normalized intensive training, and digital empowerment for precision training delivery — these three approaches have become the key to this unit's stimulation of training vitality and improvement of training quality and effectiveness. On May 25, in a physical fitness spot-check organized by higher authorities, the 3,000-meter run achieved an excellent-and-good rating across the board, the swimming excellent-and-good rate exceeded 90%, and the pull-up excellent-and-good rate approached 90%… A series of innovative measures have taken root and borne fruit, making recruit training at this base more scientific and effective.