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Many thanks to a gracious Second Lieutenant at TBS who took part in a Q & A session with us to share advice after his recent graduation from OCS. Feel free to follow up with any questions or comments of your own below! How would you characterize your overall experience at OCS? My experience at OCS was that of an up/down adventure. There are good days, … Continue reading Q&A With a Successful OCS Graduate
Dry Out Boots Overnight After going through wet or muddy courses at OCS, you’ll have to run your boots under a shower to clean off the dirt. Even if you’ve properly applied Camp Dry as instructed in “Wet is the Enemy,” you’ll end up having thoroughly soaked boots eventually. The best way to dry out boots is leave them in dry room temperature air for … Continue reading Three Ingenious Boot Care Tips
We’re on facebook. This will make it easier to share and follow new content, and give an easy forum for asking questions when the Q&A pages and comments area on here gets crowded. So, there you go. Friend the blog on the ‘book and don’t look back. Friend the USMC OCS blog  Continue reading Hooray Social Media.
Danners Are the Best. That’s the bottom line. “Everyone” who has Danners loves them. They feel so comfortable and natural from the very first time you put them on. The Danner RAT boots pictured above are now standard issue to every Marine headed on a deployment. Danners are very well cushioned inside, which contributes to the insulation (great in winter, a little hot in … Continue reading USMC Boot Review: Danners
Candidate X did well at OCS physically, but ended up dropping with a new appreciation for his own strengths and weaknesses. He has graciously accepted an invitation to conduct an interview with the OCS blog as he prepares for another run at the grueling course. How far into OCS did you get? While I wasn’t able to successfully complete USMC OCS by our end date in … Continue reading Interview With A Dropped Candidate
Candidate Question: Question about boot sizes. How much toe room should one have in the boots? And if there is too much room what happens? A: Brian, have just enough room for a bootsock liner (just use a dress sock) and a thick, cushioned bootsock. If there is more than just a little extra room, your foot will slide forward and back while running and … Continue reading Candidate Q: Boot sizes
A short primer 2009–Yes Bates Lights were used and were “kosher” for any and all events when I attended OCS. They were especially useful for the E-Course, but were disallowed or discouraged on the O-Course since they have terrible traction on the rope. 2011–Banned? Bates Lights were disallowed from OCS totally, according to multiple sources. “I am going to OCS on May 27 this year. … Continue reading Bates Lights boots at OCS
We didn’t even have a female platoon in our company.  But one of the things I can straighten out is that all pull-ups in my PFT discussions now apply to males and females. Women now do Pullups, not the flexed arm hang.
Before each PT workout begins, the “form for PT” chaos must go down. The platoons must form themselves in perfect ranks to do robotically operated stretches to yelled commands with proper shouted responses. No infractions are allowed–for example, wearing a watch to PT, bringing a pen in your pocket, or not being loud enough. For most all of OCS, if everything operates perfectly smoothly, somehow … Continue reading Push-ups and Flutterkicks: Prepare for Pain
