If you’re a law enforcement professional or tactical athlete, then this is your free 9 week strength and conditioning program. It’s designed to increase your overall strength, muscle mass, as well as increase your conditioning. In this program you’ll be provided with 5+ workouts per week, as well as various other resources to help you with your nutrition and recovery. All this is available in a free 38 page PDF. Keep reading for the complete guide to increasing your fitness.
As a law enforcement officer, I’m well aware of the unpredictable nature of the job. One minute you might be typing a report in your cruiser, and the next you might be in a foot pursuit with a violent felon. Or more realistically, you might be wondering why this complainant even called you! All of this means we can’t just specialize for one aspect of fitness, in this line of work.
Sure, it’s fun to lift tons of weight, and eat all the food, but that muscular strength isn’t helpful if you can’t get to the scene quickly. Moreover, the ability to jog forever isn’t going to assist you when you need to mechanically breach a door.
Law enforcement professionals need a blend of strength, muscle mass, and aerobic fitness. In my opinion, a solid fitness program also increases officer safety. If you read my article on 25 Gunfighting Stats Learned From Convicted Cop Killers, you’ll remember that criminals often size up their officers to better decide if they can prevail in a fight.
This program will cover all of these facets, and more. It uses exercise physiology, combined with a practical approach, to create a truly effective program. Let’s take a quick overview of this physical training program.
The 9 Week Strength and Conditioning Program for Law Enforcement and Tactical Athletes Overview
- Designed for current and future law enforcement officers
- Will work well for police academy training and Cooper physical fitness assessments
- Ideal for Police Officers trying out for SWAT / SRT units
- Even mix of strength sessions, and conditioning
- Designed for intermediate fitness level athletes with some gym experience
- Increases tactical strength, and improves injury prevention
- Can be done in a well appointed home gym or almost any weight room
If this seems like a good program, that can help you get in better shape, then make sure you download the PDF below. It’s a Dropbox link. I’ve included a lot of information for recovery, nutrition, as well as general program guidance on my training methods in the PDF as well.
I strongly recommend reading the beginning sections of the PDF thoroughly. Those section explain the methodology behind the program, including the acronyms. I’ve also included links to videos explaining proper technique on the movements. If you have a specific question about your workout, it’s probably answered there.
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9 Week Strength and Conditioning Program for Law Enforcement PDF
Now let’s cover what goes into making a good fitness program for first responders. After that, we’ll review additional resources that can help you find success on your way to becoming a stronger and better conditioned police officer. Towards the end of the article, I’ll give you some great recommendations for follow on programs after you’ve finished this one.
If you like this program, and want to try my most popular hybrid bodybuilding program, then check this out.
Key Fitness Components for Law Enforcement Officers
One of the biggest mistakes academy hopefuls, and experienced officers make, is training exclusively for a test. They focus way too much on their one mile run time, or the results of their latest one-minute push-ups test. While it’s good to have goals, training for a test is not true fitness. It’s over-specialization.
Instead, it makes more sense to train on basic fitness principles, that are broadly applicable to individual tests. A solid strength and conditioning program will increase strength, aerobic capacity, and better prepare you for a wide variety of tests.
Similarly, most research on law enforcement populations shows that there are some key corollaries that will benefit current and future police officers. Things like increasing grip strength, and posterior chain strength, will help you wherever your career takes you. Now, let’s see what this program is made of.
The 9 Week Strength and Conditioning Program for Law Enforcement and Tactical Athletes
This is a sample week of the program. As you can see, all of these exercises have a direct practical application to the job we do. I’ve chosen to program heavy compound movements (resistance training) such as bench press, or back squat, rather than rely exclusively on machines. Similarly, each day has a defined objective.
Workout 1, on the far left, is clearly an upper body day. After the primary lifts, I’ve incorporated a muscular endurance circuit to raise your heart rate, and build strength endurance. You can also see that I’ve included execution notes at the bottom of each section.
The exercise selection is fairly small so you can do these workouts in gyms that you might find in most police departments.
It’s important to review what the acronym RIR means. It stands for reps in reserve, which is a method of specifying the amount of weight I want you to use. For more advanced trainees, I would generally use a percentage based off of your one rep max; however, not everyone doing this program will have a 1RM.
If we look at the third workout, we can see that the deadlifts, and the box squats are five sets of five reps, programmed for 2 RIR. This means you will pick a weight that will allow you to finish your final rep of each set with the ability to lift two more reps, if you absolutely had to. In effect, you are leaving 2 reps in reserve.
Obviously, a 1 RIR set would be even heavier, as you would only be able to complete one more rep. This method also has the ability to account for daily fluctuations in strength. Some days you’ll feel great, and the weights will practically move themselves. On other days, everything will feel heavy. With RIR, it really doesn’t matter. You’ll still use the appropriate weight for that day.
Because everyone will start this program with a different level of fitness, I highly encourage you to check out this article on scaling workouts correctly. Some folks will need to lower the weight or reps, and others might find themselves altering the amount of running they will be doing.
This is completely expected. Even very fit officers, on SWAT teams, will modify workouts from time to time. The important thing is to maintain the goal of the workout, with a similar stimulus. I cover this in some detail in the download, and in even more detail in the article linked above. Check those out.
You can also see on workout 6 (far right) that it is an optional day. I expect that some of the more competitive athletes will want to complete a little extra work, however this isn’t mandatory.
This program is a 5 day split, with the last workout being optional. At a minimum, I expect you to have one full day of rest each week. If you don’t choose to complete the optional 6th workout, then you’ll have two rest days per week. You need to listen to your body, and figure out if you want to do this extra work or not.
Moreover, you can complete it some weeks, and skip it on others. Next, I want to review a few tools and tips that I didn’t include in the PDF. There are several calculators, and nutrition tools that can help you achieve your goals in this next section.
If you like this kind of info, then put your email below, and join the thousands of other folks that get these programs sent directly to their inbox. If you don’t, then I bet you secretly wish you were a firefighter!
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Nutrition, Recovery, and Fitness Tools
One of the biggest challenges in police work, especially for patrol officers, is nutrition. Depending on where you work, it can be challenging to find enough time to even eat during your shift. We’ve all been standing on a scene wishing we packed something to eat!
I highly recommend learning to cook some healthy meals and packing them with you. Not only does it save you money, you’ll find that your performance increases, if you’re able to eat the right amount of macro nutrients.
Along those lines, I’ve created a my ultimate nutrition calculator which will take into account your activity, body fat, and fitness goals, to provide you with some great recommendations for overall calorie intake and macronutrient splits.
It’s important to realize that I’m not telling you that you have to count calories, or weigh your food. This calculator can show you about how much food you should be eating. I’ve found it to be a valuable sanity check.
I want you to think of your nutrition just like a fitness program. You don’t immediately jump into max effort lifting and running, without a significant build up. Your nutrition is the same way.
Start by making small adjustments, like cutting out junk food. You can then add in a little more protein to your diet, which will help you build muscle. Eventually you can get to tracking your food if you want to take it that far. Don’t change your whole diet, while trying a difficult fitness program. Change your habits in a measured gradual manner!
Next I’m going to talk about some recovery methods that can help you feel better for your workouts, and build more muscle and strength.
If you like awesome functional fitness programs, and want to further increase your fitness, then check this out.
Recovery Methods for Police Officers and Tactical Athletes
Recovery isn’t complicated. The best and most effective recovery methods, are drinking water, sleeping 7-8 hours, and eating a reasonable amount of nutritious food. Sleeping is by far the biggest challenge for police officers.
Shift work is incredibly hard on us, however, I’ve noticed that we are often our own worst enemy. I completely understand an officer working a graveyard shift, and then being forced to attend court. I would also say that compounding this sleep deprivation with extra over-time assignments isn’t likely to help your fitness goals. I’ve definitely never done this several times.
If you truly want to increase your fitness and overall health, then I recommend planning your schedule (as much as possible) around your sleep schedule. Do your best to get 7-8 hours of sleep during a consistent time frame.
Just like your nutrition, this isn’t an all or none choice. I prioritize my own sleep, and I still end up getting called into work in the middle of the night, from time time. I do my best not to voluntarily mess my sleep schedule up. Small improvements over time can lead to big results.
Performance Enhancement for Physical Training
One of my favorite methods for increasing the amount of reps you can do is very simple. All you need to do is some light hyperventilation prior to your set. The research on that topic was quite interesting, and resulted in athletes lifting 35% more reps just by breathing heavily prior to their work sets.
This technique is best for sets that use full body movements and full-body workouts. It’s not going to work on your triceps extension and rear delt work! Moreover, it’s best for sets that are going near to failure. If you’re just doing a heavy double or single, you probably aren’t accruing enough metabolic byproducts for this technique to be effective.
Check out the article, and take a look at the research. I bet you’ll be surprised how well this technique works. I’ve found it to work very well on different muscle groups in my own training.
Walking for Recovery
If you’ve read the PDF download, you’ll know that I highly recommend a 10 min cool down on a bike or going for a walk after both types of physical training sessions. There is solid evidence that this increases strength, and muscle mass, and has the added benefit of being completely free.
I also recommend that patrol officers make it a priority to get out of their cars and walk for 10-20minutes a few times per shift. This easy physical activity can further aid recovery, and helps keep you a little more active throughout your shift. Sitting in your cruiser all day, wedged into a seat, isn’t great for your body.
Next I’ll cover some great programs that you can follow after you finish this program.
Finding Your Next Fitness Program
I’ve been writing programs on this website for years. The vast majority of these programs are functional fitness programs, and are completely free. However, I do have some premium programs, that include a lot more info compared to the free versions.
In this section I’m going to list several of my most popular programs for tactical athletes. Some of them will be functional bodybuilding programs, where as others might focus on endurance, or strength. I recommend clicking around to see which program interests you the most.
Programs to Build Muscle Mass
- The 8 Week Functional Bodybuilding Hybrid Program
- 6 Weeks of Muscular Growth for Functional Fitness Athletes Program
- 12 Week Free Bodybuilding Program
- The 11 Week High Intensity Bodybuilding Program
Programs to Build Strength
- 9 Week Functional Strength Program (Part 1)
- 9 Week Advanced Strength Program for Functional Fitness
- 7 Week Free Strength Training Program
Hybrid Programs: Strength, Muscle Mass, and Conditioning
- 15 Week Lift Heavy Run Fast Program for Functional Fitness
- 10 Week Functional Powerbuilding Program
- 9 Week Sprint Program for Running
This is just a small sampling of some of my more popular programs. I would estimate that if you followed all of my programs, you’d have a fitness program laid out for the next several years! I bet you can find something that will fit your needs.
Final Thoughts
We’ve covered a lot of information in this article, so I’ll wrap this up with some final thoughts. The most important thing to increase fitness is consistency. It doesn’t matter if you follow this program perfectly for two weeks, and then quit because that’s too much too soon.
I would rather have an athlete that did the vast majority of the workouts as intended, and had ok nutrition, versus Mr. Perfect for two weeks. Doing a good job consistently is an incredibly effective way to achieve a high level of physical fitness, in the long term.
I also want you to be patient with yourself. Our jobs are challenging, and there will be days that work must take priority over our personal needs. You aren’t ruining your progress by missing a day. Just keep the same workout order, and get to the gym when you can. You’ll start to see significant changes before you know it.
If you have any questions or comments, put them in the comments section below and I’ll get you an answer. Now get out there and get training!
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Hi Jake
Loved your functional BB program.
Coming off a 16 week hypertrophy, mainly high volume, program while training for a 5k (Easy, long & interval runs). Therefore I might be biased, but isn‘t this extremely low volume and it doesn’t target arms, side/rear delts, hamstrings and calves.
Today I added 2 sets of curls and lateral raises at the end. And I‘m planning to add some tricep and rear delt isolation work in the fourth workout. But still I think it won‘t be enough.
Could you provide your train of thought for the volume/intensity/frequency?
Thank you and best
Dani