For those of you unfamiliar with the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program (MCMAP), there are three belts that each require you to learn and perfect a series of progressively more difficult techniques. All Marines upon graduating from TBS on the officer side and Recruit Training on the enlisted side have earned their first one: Tan Belt. The instructors during MCMAP week are NCOs from the Martial Arts Center of Excellence (MACE), which is located on the TBS campus. Every day [...]

  Range week is about a 3-week phase of instruction that comes right after your first slew of basic classes (those last about a week or two), the first major exam, and right before MCMAP week. As the name implies, the ultimate objective of range week is to make you proficient at marksmanship with the M-16 service rifle and the M9 service pistol. It's much more than that though, and it will be amongst the most demanding weeks of your [...]

The Basic School is still several months away for me, but I am too eager to wait to write my first article related to TBS. At this point, there is nothing for me to write about that would be very useful to anyone. What I want to do is outline what I plan to write about once I get to TBS. This is also an opportunity for everyone out there to comment in with topic suggestions. Perhaps there are specific [...]