WANTED: 36,608 KETTLEBELLS
THE MILITARY BRASS all traveled to the South. Twelve higher-ups from different groups within the Army, like TACOM (Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command) and DCMA (Defense Contract Management Agency), who had all sorts of titles and ribbons and badges and awards among them. They exited I-20 in Lexington, South Carolina, and passed a Waffle House, Circle K, Bojangles, and Dairy Queen. A final turn led them down a rough road that ended at a palmetto-flanked entrance. The rectangular warehouse was more than two football fields long and walled in sheet metal. Five-foot-tall block letters—SORINEX—crowned the entrance.
Out front were pickups of all kinds. Lifted, burlytired, black and tan and white and red Fords and Chevys and Rams. Picture the parking lot of Bass Pro Shops. The Army’s top minds were here to inquire about whether the southern gearheads in this place could help them solve a national-security problem that was hitting critical mass.
This was early 2019, and although we had the most technologically advanced fighting force ever—able to conduct Hellfire-missile strikes from Predator drones piloted by men thousands of miles away—new research had found that soldier fitness had declined over the past few decades. Roughly 12 percent of active-duty soldiers were obese, a figure that had risen 61 percent since 2002. Obesity-related health care and recruiting cost the government $1.5 billion annually.
The Army was planning a generational shift in its culture of fitness that was going to start with its fitness test. Since 1980, the test had been simple—pushups, situps, and a two-mile run. But the new realities of war, military researchers determined, required a test that included forward-thinking strength and conditioning exercises: trap-bar deadlifts, medicine-ball throws, kettlebell farmer’s carries, sled sprints, and that two-mile run. Which meant the Army needed new fitness gear.
Lots of it, including: 1,098,240 pounds of hex barbells. 10,067,200 pounds of bumper plates. 183,040 pounds of medicine balls. 1,464,320 pounds of kettlebells. That’s 12,812,800 pounds of stuff that is heavy for the sake of being heavy, equal in weight to 2,135 of the pickups parked out front. And by government mandate, it all had to be made in
