Wait hang on…
We activley train our CFAVs to brief cadets to take pain killers to get through pain to complete a hard activity that is known to injure people…
Yeah, thats safe
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I road marched for years and have never seen that. It’s nonsensical.
If you’re in that much pain, paracetamol isn’t going to get you over any line, start or finish.
Where it comes in useful is at the end of the day, to ease the aches of walking 25 miles or maybe to take the edge off before sleeping.
I always had low injury rates in my teams. But we focussed heavily in our training on speed. Slower teams have more injuries, so walk slower and have more injuries. Whereas the faster teams had fewer injuries, because time+walking equals injuries.
This wasn’t fluke, we didn’t walk faster because we were carrying fewer injuries, we had fewer injuries because we deliberately walked faster. I used to sit the cadets down in January and ask them, would you rather do the march in 8 hours, or do it in 6 and be feet in the paddling pool, post-dinner before the 8 hour teams were even in?
The other advantage of being in quick: no queues for the medics, so I could let them deal with the blisters properly, but I wouldn’t hesitate to lance one if it needed doing. (Although, being frank, I rarely had to lance any, most of the time they would have already burst before I got to them. In which case: disinfect, clean, bandage and tape.
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Agreed with all of this.
But that slide is from the training package that, since ~2021 IIRC, is required to be delivered to cadets.
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Yikes.
Wait. No. I lie.
The training package has been required since about 2021.
But the presentation that slide is taken from was new this year, dated 07 May.
JFC, who wrote that? It’s like they wanted the activity canned?
“RAFAC-HQ-PEd-RMO”
Is that a paid or volunteer role?
Does it matter?
The Safety Centre should have been involved in the writing of the policy, surely?
Very unlikely, people don’t talk to each other much.
My main issue is that, again, someone’s wet themselves and delivered a top line brief without any meaningful details.
It would be nice if, just once, someone issuing these could actually show some empathy and understanding of the impact of their diktat.
My biggest concern is that the way this is sold risks surreptitious self-treatment, which could cause even greater issues.
This needs a policy rewrite that factors in and reflects the reality of endurance events ASAP.
I’ve never road marched, and I’ve never popped a cadet’s blister, but the way this is being communicated is problematic.
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If only we had some kind of in-house medical professional who could advise on these kinds of issues 
Corrected that for me.
It does massively need rewriting, but for a different reason too - there’s a significant difference between soreness & pain, for any physical activity.
Soreness: monitor but usually safe to continue. No painkillers required.
Pain: stop activity, as could lead to injury or an injury has already occurred.
Note: this comes from my England Athletics coaching qualification.
Yes, this applies to blisters too. Although at the soreness stage (hot spots) it’s possible to take action to prevent any worsening (taping, usually).
The biggest issue is some people don’t know the difference between soreness and pain because they’ve never really exerted themselves before, so they think feeling sore means they’re in pain. Road Marching gives cadets the opportunity to exert themselves and understand just how much effort they can safely put into something without having to quit.
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Is this the first intervention by the Corps-level MSO! Flexing their wings across the organisation, without realising what actually happens and brining in reality!!
If it is, then I can see any activity with a modicum of physical exertion being canned, let alone the slightest of risk causing the activity to be banned.
personally i feel the IBN should be the “notice” which is put up on the “digital notice board” (be that on SharePoint announcements, weekly briefs, Region messages or whatever route) to indicate policy X has changed because of Y.
there appears to be a resistance to change policy when it needs changing - wrong attitude
while at the same time a readiness and ease to releasing IBNs willy-nilly - wrong attitude
What is worse, they are released without “proper follow up” that the policy is updated in a timely manner - i am sure some on here can point to examples where IBNs have been in place for 12, 18, even 24 months before the policy was updated.
by all means create a IBN, but it should be followed up with policy change which happens within the month. rather than filed as “too difficult” or simply “embarrassing” to have a policy which is at Ver 26 as it shows a lot was wrong and needed updating.
in this case, there is an IBN released which points to a Safety Notice. The IBN indicates X, Y and Z policies are impacted by this change and are being looked into.
in the background, this creates an immediate review of policy which is completed and released by the end of October (~one months time, the IBN includes the target publishing date for the updated policy)
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Wait…so the unsafe part of ROAD marching is the popping of blisters, and not the walking in a ROAD bit?
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Arguably yes, I’ve never heard of anyone being injured by a collision.
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I’ve been in the organisation for ages now, and I’m genuinely shocked that this is the official guidance. I’m glad that I’ve never had anything to do with road marching.