Alpha-male boot camps are a joke

A recent trend of videos has swept across veteran social media and even leaked into general social media – it’s called the alpha male boot camp, and boy, do I have thoughts on it.

To properly set this up, I have to explain what these boot camps are and what they involve. There is more than one such boot camp, but they seem to have a similar approach: They promise average dudes the opportunity to be something more. They want to take you and put you through hell to prove you have what it takes to make it! 

Becoming alpha

You have what it takes to make what? I’m not sure. I’ll be the first to admit that there is a lot of satisfaction in completing complex tasks. These boot camps seem to be rooted in the idea of the feeling of accomplishment. They also lean hard into the silly culture of being an “alpha.” However, they ignore the fact that the guy who created the “alpha” concept after observing wolves, later realized his observation was wrong and spent his life attempting to correct it. 

What these boot camps seem to promise is that you’ll achieve the same feeling of satisfaction that you would if you graduated from a real boot camp. It reeks of the guy that says stuff like, “I almost joined, but….” and gives you some made-up story. I won’t name or give any more press to the companies conducting these boot camps, but their website is full of SEO-driven gobbly gook. It’s a lot of words that say nothing. 

They promise that doing their boot camp will make you a better man. In fact, it will save your mental health, marriage, and even your business! They also go into a lot of stuff about chimpanzees and bonobos, and I’m not really sure why that comes up. Anyway, they’ll turn you into a man (or maybe a chimpanzee, I think). All you have to do is pay them 18,000 dollars and suffer through 75 hours of movie-inspired boot-camp-like obstacle courses, exercises, and yelling. 

A misunderstanding of the point of boot camp 

Let’s start with the first problem. You have to pay these guys 18,000 dollars just to get yelled at, do some calisthenics, roll around in mud, and barely sleep. At first, I didn’t think it was real. In fact, I kept thinking that many of these clips were out of context and that those boot camps were something else. They certainly couldn’t cost eighteen grand! But they do, and it’s silly, and somehow, they are going to take you from zero to hero in 75 hours. 

However, they seem to fundamentally misunderstand the point of boot camp. There is also a reason boot camp takes longer than 75 hours. Boot camp offers potential recruits a multi-pronged approach to turning the average person into a basic-trained Soldier, Marine, Airman, Sailor, Coast Guardsman, or Guardian. In reality, the idea is to create an almost empty vessel that your service of choice can turn into the service member they need you to be. 

Boot camp breaks you down and builds you up. That seems to be what these alpha male boot camps promise, but it seems unlikely they can do it with a mere 75 hours of abuse and mistreatment. Boot camp is designed for you to slowly earn your title. You start at zero at boot camp. That’s how you’re broken down. 

Afterward, you accomplish a succession of harder and harder tasks. Boot camp is more than the yelling and the punishment exercises. You do things you never thought you could, like hit a target at 500 yards, complete an obstacle course, get CS gassed, and so much more. You live in a very close setting with your fellow recruits and develop a team. You can’t do that in 75 hours of yelling and push-ups. 

Related: These elite Marines combine tradition with special operations innovations

The reality of these camps 

Let’s also make sure it’s known that boot camp is the easiest part of your military career. Sure, you get yelled at, have no free time, and have zero privacy, but you adapt. Recruits still sleep in beds, eat three hot meals a day, and have central A/C. When you hit a deployment, you could be baking in 106-degree heat, be 36 hours with no sleep, and if you’re lucky, you won’t get stuck with a veggie omelet MRE right before your six-hour guard shift. 

Also, when watching the videos, the instructors do not show passion. Instead, it’s so phoned in I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. The instructors seem like they are having a tantrum rather than attempting to motivate their students. Compare these guys to a Marine drill instructor, and the difference is night and day.

Boot camp serves a purpose, and it won’t make you an alpha male. If you really want the boot camp experience, what I’m saying next might shock you: there are six organizations that will send you for free! They’ll even pay you to do it! There, you can get yelled at by accomplished service members who’ve been there and done that, not dudes who refer to themselves as secret geniuses. 

My favorite boot camp can be found at Marines.com. 

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