KORAT ROYAL THAI AIR FORCE BASE, Thailand -- Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 533 Marines earned their Marine Corps Martial Arts Program brown belts after completing an exhausting station rotation drill here March 25.
“I definitely feel like I earned it,” said Lance Cpl. Jeremiah Cain, VMFA(AW)-533 airframe mechanic. “I was never confident with my ground fighting. I never really knew what I was doing because I never had any background, but after going through the course, I know a lot more than I knew before.”
The brown belt course, led by MCMAP instructor Sgt. Josenrique Rocha, VMFA(AW)-533 training chief, began March 10, a day after VMFA(AW)-533 arrived at Thailand for exercise Cope Tiger 2011.
“I just emphasize what the principles of MCMAP really are. The program synergistically combines your physical, mental and character discipline,” said Rocha.
The course ran five days a week for three weeks. The students began training at 2 p.m. and finished at approximately 4:30 p.m. daily.
“(Sgt. Rocha) would show us a move, make sure we understood it, and then he would show us the real practical application,” said Lance Cpl. Michael J. Freauff Jr., aviation ordnance technician. “A lot of our exercises were fighting one another. So you actually get to practice what you’ve been taught.”
During the course, the Marines covered the tan through brown belt syllabuses, grappled daily, overcame challenging physical training sessions and were given several classes to build character and mental strength.
“The PT sessions were not only very good for the body, but also very good mentally,” said Freauff. “Especially (the final drill), it was such a killer thing that you had to have mental strength to complete it.”
By week three, students began to perfect the tan through brown belt syllabuses while mastering their ground fighting techniques, all in preparation for the final, most intense drill of the course, the station rotation drill.
“It’s a drill that focuses on teamwork, communication and accommodates everything they learned throughout the duration of the course,” said Rocha.
The drill consisted of 10 rotating stations: two mission stations, seven exercise stations and a grappling station with the course instructor.
The two mission stations were the burpee and sprawl stations. Once Marines at either station reached the total number of repetitions posted for mission accomplishment, they stood and screamed “mission mission mission!” The eight other stations continued to exercise until the instructor heard the class echo the mission call in a loud, motivated unison.
To complete the drill, the class had to make four complete course rotations; however, if Rocha heard the monitoring instructors call out a Marine for slacking on an exercise three times, he would give the command “reverse rotation.” Once given, the students had to go back to the prior station and reach the mission all over again.
“The hardest thing about the drill was trying to keep going with your exercise but at the same time trying to be loud and give pointers to the person fighting,” said Cain.
To even the playing field, Rocha offered a catch. If any of the students were able to make him tap out while grappling, the drill would end immediately at his tap.
“Sgt. Rocha’s best aspect is that he’s very technical. He didn’t go full out until he thought there was a chance of the drill ending,” said Freauff. “He applied it to how somebody would react in danger mode. They would snap and the adrenaline would start to pump.”
Occasionally throughout the drill, Rocha would call a break in which the fighters had a chance to hydrate and regain composure while a student gave a short lecture on one of the core values.
“Instead of having an onslaught of them wasting every drop of energy they had, we gave them supplemental breaks that gave them the chance to not only catch their breath and sip water, but also talk about the core values,” said Rocha. “When they did that, even though they didn’t notice it, they were coming together as a team, and every time they left the middle, they came back to their stations even louder.”
Rocha’s goal of unit cohesion was reached and by the end of the drill, although exhausted, the students began to work and communicate as a team. Together they completed their rotations and the drill was ended.
“We go through boot camp and we have that cohesion and teamwork toward the end, but then when we go through Marine combat training, military occupational school training and get to the fleet, everybody is on their own schedule, so it’s kind of hard to get that cohesion back,” said Rocha. “Communication was a big thing. I tried to implement what the program already has through drills, grappling and showing each other that they can coach each other with the techniques that they all just learned.”
After the drill, the Marines were given time to sustain one last time before finally testing out for their brown belts. The class had a zero percent failure rate and all students graduated.