Marine recruits’ first experiences at boot camp typically involve getting yelled at. A lot. Although they may not appreciate it at the time, there is a proper technique to yelling and screaming at recruits— and it is one in which their drill instructors are well practiced.
Gunnery Sgt. Jensen Runion, who was recently selected as the Marine Corps’ Drill Instructor of the year, seems to have perfected the art of the scream because he has never been afflicted with “frog voice” — a term that describes the croaking sound an instructor’s strained vocal cords make — even though he has been yelling at recruits for nearly three years.
“We get told to blow out your voice — blow it out to where you’re just blowing out nothing but hot air,” Runion told Task & Purpose on Wednesday. “You keep screaming; you keep blowing out the hot air; then your voice comes back stronger and faster every time. And I feel that helped me a lot.”
Runion is currently assigned to Marine Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, where countless recruits have learned that doing intensive training in sand pits is a great way to ruin your day.
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To avoid straining his voice, Runion said he relies on his drill instructor training, which taught him to scream from his diaphragm.
“We wear our green belts or black belts around our abdomen, and we use that as a way to force out your voice,” Runion said. “Screaming through your diaphragm, you pretty much save your vocal cords.
Other drill instructors drink tea with lemon and honey or use throat lozenges to avoid getting frog voice, but Runion said he doesn’t use such techniques.
“The only technique that I use: I just scream louder, and then it just kind of comes back from there,” he said.
Boot camp is tougher mentally than physically
The Marine Corps announced in November that Runion had been selected as Drill Instructor of the Year. One of the ways he transforms civilians into Marines is by helping recruits overcome mental barriers that can prevent them from completing physical tasks.
If recruits “know” that they can’t do 20 pull-ups or complete a run in the required time, then they won’t, he said.
“A lot of recruits struggle with the obstacle course,” Runion said. “That first bar that you go over, it’s about 7 feet up. And, the shorter recruits walk up to that bar and they think, ‘No, I can’t do it.’ And I tell them: No, you can do it. It’s a mental thing.”
Runion said he was not the biggest or strongest recruit when he went through boot camp, and he draws on his experiences in the Marines to tell recruits from the first day of boot camp that they can meet the Corps’ demanding physical standards if they have the right mindset.
For example, for years, Runion avoided using a certain technique to tackle the obstacle course that involved flipping his body around the first bar because he didn’t think he could do it, but one day he tried it, and it worked.
“That taught me from early on that you’ve just got to tell yourself that you can do these things, because if you keep telling yourself you can’t do them, then you absolutely will not be able to do them,” he said.
Not laughing in front of recruits
Given the immense mental strain that recruits are under during boot camp, it is inevitable that they will make mistakes. And while it may not seem like it, there are a lot of moments in boot camp that are, frankly, quite funny — and even drill instructors sometimes struggle to keep it together.
One video shared on Reddit shows a Marine drill instructor struggling not to smile after being told, “This recruit feels like s–t, sir.” Another drill instructor comes to his rescue by immediately starting to yell at the recruit.
“The recruits will mess something up, and a lot of times it is funny, but you have to show face in front of those recruits,” he said. “We are teaching them that if I have bearing when they do some crazy stuff that, obviously, they will have bearing too.”
But if recruits start laughing when one of their own makes a mistake, don’t expect drill instructors to laugh, Runion said. Instead, they will pounce by starting to scream at the recruits and making them do intensive training.
“If I show the recruits that I’m breaking bearing, then I’m showing them that that’s okay,” Runion said. “You have kind of a strong mindset for this job. I’ll be honest, a lot of the stuff recruits do is funny, but, I mean, there’s a time and place, and in front of recruits is definitely not the time or place.”
