# Police conditioning requirements

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-conditioning-requirements/135180>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 4, 2002, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-conditioning-requirements/135180 "2002-11-04T05:09:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\
**Post date:** [November 4, 2002, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-conditioning-requirements/135180/1 "2002-11-04T05:09:12Z")

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I was watching one of those reality shows called Max-X which consists of mainly of amateur videotape of people being idiots in some way or another. One scene showed a policeman in LA separating two fighting women and I was surprised by his huge overhanging belly. Most police I have seen both IRL and on TV lately seem (overall) to be in better condition than in years past.  
In the shows I have seen of police cadets in training the physical conditioning requirements seem quite demanding.

My question is - are the policemen with huge guts simply given a pass on conditioning requirements after they are with the force a certain number of years? How can police departments allow police in such poor shape to remain in a such a physically demanding job, or is there a lot less chasing of suspects IRL than you see on FOX’s COPS show?

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**Author:** ![Bongmaster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Bongmaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bongmaster)\
**Post date:** [November 4, 2002, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-conditioning-requirements/135180/2 "2002-11-04T17:17:14Z")

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It varies from place to place, I don’t think there is a standard. Just from personal experience they usually seem to allocate the heavier cops to desk jobs and such.

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**Author:** ![Riboflavin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Riboflavin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riboflavin)\
**Post date:** [November 4, 2002, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-conditioning-requirements/135180/3 "2002-11-04T21:41:25Z")

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Well, the first thing to bear in mind is that an overhanging belly does not neccesarily mean that the cop in question is really out of shape - back when I was into martial arts, I knew several people who had a huge gut and so looked out of shape, but were actually quite capable (as in, go through several sparring matches without a break, do splits while stretching out, etc.). It’s quite possible to have a big belly but still be in reasonable physical condition, especially if there’s some kind of metabolism weirdness to account for the wieght.

While I don’t know the specifics of LA, since they’re a large city I would expect them to have some requirements - larger towns tend to have more formal standards (partially because of lawsuit potential). However, I wouldn’t expect them to be the same as Police Academy requirements; generally the standards at school would be designed to help weed people out and to meet the toughest standards around for police, while the on-the-job requirements would be somewhat less.

And he could always be someone who’s got a desk job but happened to get stuck with that altercation.