The Mental Aspect: Training At Boot Camps
Mouse Trap Boot Camp
The words "boot camp" often bring up a wide array of images, from soldiers running or marching in perfect formation, to rope climbing, to instructors screaming at the top of their lungs. While boot camps have become much more general (originally boot camp was pretty much just a military term), the same idea applies.
Boot camps are areas where the expectation is of an extreme amount of training where a professional will push all individuals going through to receive their maximum potential. What many people do not realize, however, is that most of the training is not the physical, but mental. Overcoming mental blocks and obstacles is the most important part of any boot camp training.
Boot camps are almost always run by one professional whose job it is to push and motivate people into breaking their own mental barriers and achieving more. Usually this is not done in a kind, counselling type manner, but more with the "drill sergeant" method.
The reason for such an adamant, often abrasive, personality is because it is often too easy for an individual to be content with only a moderate improvement, where as the point of the boot camp is not only a large improvement, but also strengthening and moulding an individual to be capable of overcoming their own obstacles and superceding every goal they have made for themselves.
The hope is that after a boot camp, there won't only be the benefits from that boot camp alone, but also a continued benefit from a stronger, more capable, individual.
This is the philosophy used by the military to turn young boys and girls into strong men and women, capable of fighting, thinking, and excelling. Fitness boot camps go the same way, and boot camps are also used to try and mould juvenile delinquents into well-behaved productive members of society.
The "break down" that occurs is to also get the obstacles out of the way so everyone involved can be built back up afterwards. There are "corporate" and "bridal" boot camps, among many others.
These are more of a crash course type of thing to prepare everyone for what they are getting into, or in the case of a corporate boot camp, often an attempt to build unity and teamwork, hoping that will translate into loyalty to the company and better production.
With boot camps though physical may take place, it is the mental that builds people, and that is the building that is most valuable.