Training for Correctional Officers

[silverhand]

Been a Correctional Officer now for 5 months....and we work constantly since we are heavily undermanned.

I need to train but havent been able to attend my normal martial arts class for a long while now due to work...

What I am looking for is a workout that short, focusing on strength training, balance, and awareness...

Any Ideas?

[RA Miller]

Michael-

As much as possible, use your environment. When I was on night shift, after most of the inmates were asleep, I would crank off a few bar dips and pull ups in the dorm. My goal was a hundred of each every night. It didn't take long until I was doing the pull ups in six sets and the bar dips in three. Also put on 30 pounds.

You are in the perfect place to practice awareness. Every day for a month, make sure that you consciously smell at least ten times, notice some detail that's new, ten times; accurately plot where someone (behind you) is by sound 10 times. Stop in a room once a day and catalog every source of light, shadow and reflective surface you can use (and even a dirty concrete floor reflects- you only have to be able to see motion, not eye color).

It won't take long for these to become subconscious.

Pay special attention to your gut feelings and then dissect them. If you get a vibe off a crook, take a harder look and find out why. If you had to explain it in a report, what would you write?

Stay active. It's an easy job to get lazy on. Work secret isometrics. If you are sitting in a chair, tense and relax your abs and legs when you lean against a doorway, grip the doorjam hard. Stretch all the time.

Hope this helps.

Rory

[silverhand]

Thanks...

When I work a tower, I try to work out...I stretch constantly, pushups, dips...whatever I can think of, was just looking for more.

The Jail I work at is a Regional Jail, and the toughest in the state...out of all the regional jails in my state we average 39 uses of force a month, where the others max out at maybe 5... 75% of our inmates are convicted felons waiting to go to prison, the other 25% are pre-trial and mis. We house anywhere from 400 to 500 inmates at a time, in a jail built for 300+. We are only required to staff 14 Officers per shift, most of the time we will have 17 including Sgt. and Cpls. THe odds of something going down daily are huge, so you see my need to find alternative routes of training since I rarely get to train in my main MA system.

[Dennis Monk]

I read what what was posted there and you match my sentiments exactly. One of the most important things for new officers is learning to "feel out" their environment. As far as the smell thing goes. Right again! You will notice subtle differences between one block and another, even over the aroma of body odor. The normal sounds that become part of your routine (bad word I know) that you don't even pay attention to. In our jail some sort of air conditioning or heating is running all the time. For whatever reason, if it goes off, everyone that has been there for a year or so looks up wondering why it isn't on. Not because of what they hear, but because of what they don't hear.

[silverhand]

Smell is real important I have found. The smell of pen ink burning is similiar to the smell of pot...drugs get in the jail, but if we smell pot, its usually someone doing a tattoo, and heating up the ink or making ink out out of pen ink, shampoo, and shoe soles.

I have been trying some things you mentioned, Rory, and now I find myself, sore all the time, which is not a bad thing:)

Thanks for the help

Mike

[Dennis Monk]

It is very good that you are learning.
The day you decide you can't learn anymore, quit.
I say that because once someone feels that they have it all figured out, they start becoming reckless, careless and dumb. I have talked at length with you, even before you were hired. I feel confident that you are doing just fine.
I am also glad to see you listen to us old salty dogs.