Reply #15: this is the problem with reservists

[northzax]

who are mostly awesome people doing a crappy, underappreciated job. There is no fucking way that you can actually train well enough in one weekend a year to be an active duty soldier for a long period of time. Many simply don't have the stamina or physical training to survive the desert heat, endless guard duty and high stress situations. That takes full out training for 19 year olds, and a lot of reservists are older than that by far (50 year old part time gunnery sergeants?) The military is asking too much.

ON EDIT: let me give an example.

NBA rookies. despite the fact that some are insanely good at what they do, and have trained their whole lives for it, the part time training of the collegiate off-season is usually only good enough to get them through 30 games or so. They haven't trained to play hard for 82 games, so they hit the wall. Veterans have trained full time, and don't hit the same wall. Our reservists are hitting the wall, the spirit is willing, but the body can only take so much.