Robert Stănciulescu’s scientific contributions

The contribution of the motor capacity to the formation of skills specific to carrying out the combat actions that characterize the modern warfare is immense because it brings together all the motor acts performed to maintain relations with the natural or social environment, including those done through the performance of skills specific to certain activities with a military-applicative nature. The acquisition of the knowledge specific to the development of basic motor qualities as well as the consolidation and improvement of basic and utilitarian-applicative motor skills that represent the purposes of physical activity is achieved through intense activity. They are processes that also require a certain set of intellectual activities which involve effort to understand and perform specific activities. Therefore, motor learning capacity also involves the engagement in activity of important body processes such as: affectivity, memory, imagination, thinking or will.

The war carried out in extreme conditions requires exceptional training involving a degree of difficulty far above most situations encountered on the battlefield, because, on the one hand, the fighter performs missions in conditions totally different from those of a classic warfare and, on the other on the other hand, he must face special physical and mental demands. In order to be able to meet all the demands imposed by the hardness and complexity of these areas of action, it is necessary for the fighters who act in such environments to have a versatile training. Along with the intellectual, technical, tactical and psychological training, the physical component of the training plays a basic role, which in my opinion constitutes a pivot of all the other components of the training. In the paper, along with the demands and rigors of extreme environments, there are presented a series of benefits of an exceptional physical training which, by ensuring a solid motor capacity, also ensures a part of the mental preparation for the fight, elements that are the basis of the training and consolidation of specific combat aptitudes and skills.

Ensuring higher indices of development for the basic motor skills, essential components of the motor capacity, is an essential condition of performance in the specific activities carried out by the students in military educational institutions, but to fulfill this objective, activities to consolidate and perfect the body’s intermediary capacity are necessary, i.e. the improvement of the indices that characterize dexterity, mobility and suppleness. Therefore, the motor capacity is formed on the one hand by the basic motor qualities of the body, the coordination capacities, the intermediate capacities, as well as the basic motor skills and utilitarian-applicative skills. All these components have their particularly important role in motor activities; between them there is a strict conditionality link. The paper presents aspects and opinions regarding the body’s intermediary capacities and underlines the role of their development in the training, consolidation, development and improvement of motor qualities as well as of the motor skills and aptitudes, specific to ensuring the motor capacity of military students.

Throughout time, people have had to use their own body to defend themselves from an attack when weapons were not available, close combat being the oldest form of combat known to man. As the human being evolved, a series of accumulations took place in everyday life, the techniques and methods of struggle enriching their content and reaching near perfection. The paper presents a series of opinions regarding the contribution of close combat techniques in the training of the Land Forces soldiers because, through the particularly complex demands they exert on the human body, they lead to obtaining positive, multiple and unique effects, creating the conditions for a training exceptional for the purpose of adapting the fighter to the demands of the battlefield at the beginning of this century.

Over time, numerous studies have identified and analyzed the causes that led to armed conflicts. Unquestionably, political-military or armed conflicts have played a decisive role in universal history. Most often, they ended – for large human communities – with what we can call, in current terms, regime change, loss of independence, fragmentation or dissolution of previously constituted entities, the surrender or gain of new territories, great losses that could reach the dissolution of some military powers. This document aims to bring to the fore the armed conflict seen through the influences brought by past events in conjunction with the events of the present, in order to identify which are the main reasons of armed conflicts.

The military actions carried out throughout time strongly highlight the special importance that the level of motor capacity development has in the training of the fighter. A great number of research studies have underlined the effects of a regular participation in complex training programs that ensure an adequate level of development of the components of this training category. Therefore the identification of the optimal scientific methods for the development of the components of physical capacity is a priority in the training system. The paper points to the methodical aspects related to maximizing a basic component of the motor capacity of the fighter’s body, namely the coordination capacity which involves identifying the best methods and procedures for maximizing the effects of the body’s dexterity, mobility and suppleness.

The adaptation of the fighter to the combat situations within the different missions, as well as the need to face any request coming up during the confrontations, imposes an extremely complex training system. Having an essential role in combat, the fighter must acquire qualities both in terms of mental, biological and physical features. Due to the threats that hang over the fighters at any time in this type of conflicts, the emphasis in their training is aimed at training in conditions as close to the existing reality as possible, with a focus on the impact that the battlefield has on his psyche and physique, so that at the same time he can adapt his systems of action of the body to the requirements of any nature imposed by each mission. The paper highlights that the process of training this type of fighters includes, among the training pillars, physical and mental training as a support for exceptional training and effective exercise of roles and missions entrusted to the military organization in peacetime, in situations of crisis and especially at war. In the economics of the formative process, physical and mental training represents the essence of a high level of acquiring the qualities specific to the successful conduct of combat, a fact for which their development has been and will always remain a priority objective throughout the continuous training of fighters.

The analysis of military conflicts in the latter part of the twentieth century has led to a revision of ideas about the concept of physical training in modern armies in Europe and America. The dimensions of the scientific and technical revolution show that the power of military imposition depends on the intensive technologies of knowledge, and physical training has been redefined as an urgent need in the training of the military and placed in its proper place. Not only is it no longer neglected, but, as if more than ever, from the data provided by foreign military literature, it is clear that the training of the fighter begins and ends with physical exercises. Military specialists say that in increasing combat capability, physical condition comes immediately after the technical and tactical experience in terms of importance, representing 20-30 % of the time allocated to training for combat. This orientation includes the theory of the training practice of future students in the Land Forces Academy, the assessment of the level of physical training being an essential objective in the training system.

The evolutions in the theaters of operations have highlighted in the last decades a profound change of the realities in the sense of the increasingly obvious contouring of an enemy whose characteristics are specific to the social networking. Since the classic ways of action are inefficient under these circumstances, it became necessary to investigate and explain the new realities. In this context, military leadership acquires certain particularities that concern, on the one hand its essential foundations and, on the other hand, the actual ways they display at all hierarchical levels.

In terms of forming and training the fighters, the modern armies have delineated well-defined instructive horizons, the development of the physical potential, characterized by the increase of the parameters of manifestation of the basic motor qualities as well as of the motor skills and applicative skills specific to carrying out the combat actions being very well harmonized with the development of intellectual, psychological, moral and specialist competencies. The maximization of the capacity of effort to meet the intensive and long-lasting demands as well as the improvement of the fighting skills specific to the modern combat area represent a permanent concern of the specialists in the field, who amplify the training process in an activity based on the most complex and efficient training techniques. The paper presents the techniques, methods and means for optimizing the training in the self-defense combat, in order to ensure a rich bag of scientific information necessary in accomplishing the objectives for the training of the fighters.