In this article, I tell you how you can teach someone to march with a 30” step. It’s best to work as a formation (platoon/flight or color guard) and not individually. I was sent the following question by a reader and provided the answer below.
Good evening, sir, I have an instructional question for you. How would you go about teaching Sea Cadets the proper pacing? We have used tape before and have them walk up and down multiple times till they do it. But I’m asking for other ideas that you may have. Thanks!
To get a formation to achieve proper step length takes timing. Having individuals try to do it is difficult, it’s better to have a platoon march. You can tape or paint lines for a 30″ step, but if you have cadets with varying degrees of height, the ones with shorter legs may have difficulty achieving that step length.
The image below shows the lines I painted on a portion of the parking lot where I have trained cadets. I used two furring strips to create a clean line for each 30” and 15” step using different colors for each length. Using two tape measures helped speed up the process.
Have the platoon march to a metronome. You’re going to work on creating muscle memory for the tempo and for the step length. For how to set this up, read Metronomes Can Help.
With the metronome going, just have the platoon march. Check the step size by having a squad or rank march over the lines you taped or painted every once in a while, and also provide feedback to the platoon members to lengthen or shorten their step. Keep marching for at least an hour going through columns, flanks, and obliques. Halt often and informally give “dress and cover” each time to get everyone into proper Distance and Alignment Training. https://thedrillmaster.org/2016/03/08/distance-and-alignment-training/
Below is an example of what I mentioned in the paragraph above. You can see a two areas with painted or taped lines to gage how well the members of the formation are meeting the step length set.
Do all of this regularly and the platoon will soon find a step length that works for everyone that is fairly close to if not on the 30″ requirement. Step length is measured from heel-to-heel and nowhere else. Why? Because everyone’s heels are the same.
Don’t Run Over the Leaguers!
Achieving a 30” step size can work well for most everyone in their teens and older, but when we come to US Navy League Cadets, who are 11-13 years-old can have a bit of difficulty maintaining that step length, League Cadets are march in their own formation ahead of US Navy Sea Cadet Corps Cadets (13-17) and that can cause the Sea Cadets to catch up to the League Cadets rather quickly.
It might be best if everyone took a cue from the USAF and marched with a 24” step. That step length, just 6” shorter can make a world of difference.
Ultimately,
The formation finds it’s own step length with which everyone feels comfortable, if you let that happen. That’s not necessarily a good thing because most people will walk/march slowly and with a shorter step length. Most often trainers must “push” everyone in the formation to obtain the desired step size and tempo. We have our own muscle memory when it comes to walking and marching is walking at Attention, so we often need heavy training in this area.