If you have just completed a really difficult business project with tight deadlines or have just completed a CrossFit session and now think highly of yourself, then spare a thought for the military students (both domestic and international) who undergo months of training at the Venezuelan National Guard Military School (Grupo de Acciones de Comando).

China Military Online (2016) gives us a small taster of what students go through:

“There is a giant pile of sand on the school’s playground. Cadets were required to carry a bag of 30 kg of sand and run to the top of the mountain 5 km away with that sandbag.

In the beginning, cadets were able to finish with 1.5 hours. But later, some cadets needed three to four hours to climb to the top as they got tired. In the meantime, the instructors were still brutally overdriving them. Several cadets couldn’t stand the abuse and left angrily.

When they finally transported tons of sands to the top of the mountain, they were ordered to transport these sandbags back to the playground instantly. When this task was completed, Chen’s clothes were worn and his body was full of bruises and blood stains.

However, these “inhuman tortures” did not satisfy the instructors. In order to continue to weed out the weak, the instructors began to create “disasters” for cadets.

Because every day is high-intensity training, cadets were all exhausted. After midnight, the instructors will arrange tasks including cleaning of weapons and theory learning sessions, and sometimes they would let cadets stand to chat.”

Reference

China Military Online (2016) PLA Special Operations Members Shine in South America. Available from World Wide Web: http://english.chinamil.com.cn/news-channels/china-military-news/2016-04/12/content_7003604.htm. [Accessed: 17 April, 2017].