If you have dreams of working as a police officer and serving your community as you protect its citizens, there are a few things that you’re going to need to do physically before you’ll be able to graduate from the police academy and become a qualified police officer. Because of the physical nature of the work that police officers are required to do, it’s vital that you’re in good enough shape to take on every task put to you.
As part of your preparation to become a police officer, it’s wise to begin training physically so that the exercise and physical aspect of the police academy and officer training don’t take you by surprise.
To help you with this, here are three tips for physically preparing to become a police officer.
Train While Wearing A Weighted Vest
When you’re working and serving as a police officer, you’re going to be wearing a lot of different gear to help protect you and allow you to do your job. So when you’re doing your physical training, it’s wise to be training with some kind of gear on your body so that you get used to this.
While you may not have access to actual police gear that you can wear while training to get a more authentic experience, you can do things like wearing a weighted vest or even a backpack that you fill with something to give you some extra weight to carry around. As you do this, you’ll get used to having to do physical activity with some bulk that you’re trying to maneuver around, just as a police officer would.
Remember To Build Strength And Endurance
As a police officer, you’re going to be put into all kinds of situations where you’ll need to have physical stamina. This could include things like chasing someone down, holding onto someone, pulling people up or out of certain areas, or just being on your feet a lot. In all of these situations, you have to have strength and endurance, so you need to work on building these up now.
To help build up your strength and endurance, you’ll want to incorporate this type of exercise into your training. You can do this with exercises like running, lifting weights, agility exercises, body weight training, and more.
Get Your Run Times Down
Unfortunately, as a police officer, there will likely be times where people you’re trying to speak to will run away from you. So to be able to get these people, or just to be able to quickly get to any emergency situation, you need to be able to travel on foot pretty quickly.
In the police academy, there are certain times that you need to be able to finish about a mile and a half run. So if this is currently a challenge for you, you should work to get your run times down so that you can complete this part of the physical training and be ready to work as a police officer.
If you’re hoping to become a police officer in the near future, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you prepare physically.
