Some athletes deliberately train in lower-oxygen environments. Some exercise while wearing weights, and of course all exercise bikes I’m aware of let you turn up the resistance, and treadmills generally let you apply an incline. Claude says militaries “routinely” train in artificially harsh circumstances:
Q: Do militaries do some training in circumstances that are deliberately harsh, harsher than what they’re likely to encounter in the field?
Yes, militaries routinely conduct training in conditions that are intentionally harsher than typical operational environments. This approach serves several important purposes:
Deliberate stress inoculation: Training under extreme conditions helps soldiers develop mental resilience and the ability to perform under pressure. If you can function when exhausted, cold, hungry, and under intense stress, you’ll be better prepared for the unpredictable challenges of actual combat or missions.
Building unit cohesion: Shared hardship during training creates strong bonds between service members. When soldiers have endured difficult challenges together in training, they develop trust and teamwork that carries into real operations.
Examples of harsh training conditions:
Sleep deprivation exercises lasting days
Training in extreme weather (desert heat, arctic cold) beyond what’s expected in deployment areas
Physical challenges with heavy loads over long distances
Simulated prisoner-of-war scenarios
High-stress decision-making under artificial time pressure
Safety margins: Since training accidents are more controllable than combat situations, militaries can push limits in training to ensure soldiers won’t hit their breaking point in actual operations where the consequences are far more serious.
Elite units like special forces take this philosophy even further, with training regimens specifically designed to push candidates beyond normal human limits to identify those who can perform under the most extreme circumstances.
The underlying principle is that if you train harder than you fight, you’ll be over-prepared rather than under-prepared when it matters most.
The principle is eminently reasonable.
It’s not often done in purely academic environments, to my knowledge. I would guess one reason is that (from what I’ve heard) stress can interfere with memory (although Claude says it’s complicated and can go either way), and a pretty large component of academic learning, especially that which is tested on exams, is putting facts into your memory.
Emotional skills are a mind thing, and academic habits probably carry over to it (at least to any formalized “emotional skill training” program) by default… perhaps also the psychologist thing of “make the patient maximally comfortable, both physically and emotionally”. But I think emotional skills depend much less on memorized facts, and, really, the heart of it is indeed being able to respond well to potentially stressful situations. So “resistance training” for emotional skills seems pretty appropriate.
Some athletes deliberately train in lower-oxygen environments. Some exercise while wearing weights, and of course all exercise bikes I’m aware of let you turn up the resistance, and treadmills generally let you apply an incline. Claude says militaries “routinely” train in artificially harsh circumstances:
Q: Do militaries do some training in circumstances that are deliberately harsh, harsher than what they’re likely to encounter in the field?
Yes, militaries routinely conduct training in conditions that are intentionally harsher than typical operational environments. This approach serves several important purposes:
Deliberate stress inoculation: Training under extreme conditions helps soldiers develop mental resilience and the ability to perform under pressure. If you can function when exhausted, cold, hungry, and under intense stress, you’ll be better prepared for the unpredictable challenges of actual combat or missions.
Building unit cohesion: Shared hardship during training creates strong bonds between service members. When soldiers have endured difficult challenges together in training, they develop trust and teamwork that carries into real operations.
Examples of harsh training conditions:
Sleep deprivation exercises lasting days
Training in extreme weather (desert heat, arctic cold) beyond what’s expected in deployment areas
Physical challenges with heavy loads over long distances
Simulated prisoner-of-war scenarios
High-stress decision-making under artificial time pressure
Safety margins: Since training accidents are more controllable than combat situations, militaries can push limits in training to ensure soldiers won’t hit their breaking point in actual operations where the consequences are far more serious.
Elite units like special forces take this philosophy even further, with training regimens specifically designed to push candidates beyond normal human limits to identify those who can perform under the most extreme circumstances.
The underlying principle is that if you train harder than you fight, you’ll be over-prepared rather than under-prepared when it matters most.
The principle is eminently reasonable.
It’s not often done in purely academic environments, to my knowledge. I would guess one reason is that (from what I’ve heard) stress can interfere with memory (although Claude says it’s complicated and can go either way), and a pretty large component of academic learning, especially that which is tested on exams, is putting facts into your memory.
Emotional skills are a mind thing, and academic habits probably carry over to it (at least to any formalized “emotional skill training” program) by default… perhaps also the psychologist thing of “make the patient maximally comfortable, both physically and emotionally”. But I think emotional skills depend much less on memorized facts, and, really, the heart of it is indeed being able to respond well to potentially stressful situations. So “resistance training” for emotional skills seems pretty appropriate.