As an NCO and a leader, you may be a member of a unit or know of a unit that uses pushups or some other exercise as a discipline or leadership tool. There have been debates for years about the value of this leadership tool in the Cadet Program. In late 1998 and again in 2001, the National Cadet Programs office stated simply that pushups and other types of exercise were not available as leadership tools for Cadets. This should have ended the debate, but hasn't.

As easy as they are, there are problems with pushups as a leadership tool. They lead to a laziness on the part of leaders. It is far easier for an NCO to merely order a problem Cadet to: "Drop and give me twenty" than it is to try to understand what the trouble is and to help fix it. This also leads to a false sense of accomplishment: the leader is not actually getting anything done. He's stopping everything to make sure a Cadet is doing the pushups he was assigned.

If a Cadet learns that his punishment for almost anything is only a set of pushups, he'll learn contempt for his leaders and their leadership tools. A healthy Cadet has no fear of twenty or thirty pushups! In this case using pushups is actually hurting the prestige of the leader. His leadership tools are ineffective and so is he.

Or, if a Cadet who is punished with pushups just can't do them, his peers will learn contempt for him because he doesn't have their physical abilities - in spite of what other abilities he may have. Cadets will also learn that their leaders don't care about their self-respect or their standing with their peers. In either case, the leader has lost prestige and the respect of his people.

If an NCO learns to depend on pushups as a leadership tool, he assumes they're fixing things without really addressing the problems his people have. He and his people will be very surprised when pushups stop working and his Cadets are suddenly facing suspensions, demotions or dismissals. Pushups give a false sense of actually solving leadership problems; they don't.

Finally, the value of pushups has not only been discredited by Civil Air Patrol, the armed forces have had similar discussions. To close this discussion, and hopefully close the debate, please read and take to heart a letter from someone who probably knows a thing or two about leadership.

NCO Leadership
The Marine Corps Gazette
December 1998

Enough on the incentive physical training (IPT) debate. Let me offer that I speak with some authority on the subject of IPT. You see, I've been a follower (one who receives IPT) and/or a leader (one who administers IPT) for over 30 years. Except for the time I spent in boot camp, I can never recall being the recipient of IPT. As well, except for the time I spent as a drill instructor (DI), I can't recall administering IPT. In fact, had I used IPT during my years as an NCO or my early years as a [Staff] NCO, I would have gotten little else done and to be perfectly frank, those I led back then would not have responded to IPT if they would have performed it at all.

There's a belief that IPT has long been an authorized tool for NCOs and [Staff] NCOs to administer as they see fit. Nothing could be further from the truth. With the exception of the IPT specifically authorized for DIs, it's never been an authorized tool.

Commanding officers are authorized within our system to mete out punishment to correct infractions. Call it semantics, or whatever, IPT is nothing more than a form of punishment when administered for wrongdoing. I further believe that any leader who advocates delegating a COs punishment authority to subordinates needs to have his/her head examined.

SgtMaj L.G. Lee
Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps