Military cadence

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In the United States armed services, a military cadence or cadence call is a traditional call-and-response work song sung by military personnel while running or marching. In the United States, these cadences are sometimes called jody calls or jodies, after Jody, a recurring character who figures in some traditional cadences; Jody refers to the person with whom a servicemember’s significant other cheats while they are deployed.

Requiring no instruments to play, they are counterparts in oral military folklore of the military march. As a sort of work song, military cadences take their rhythms from the work being done (compare sea shanty). Many cadences have a call and response structure in which one servicemember initiates a line, and the remaining SMs complete it, thus instilling teamwork and camaraderie for completion. The cadence calls move to the beat and rhythm of the normal speed (quick time) march or running-in-formation (double time) march. This serves the purpose of keeping SMs "dressed", moving in step as a unit and in formation, while maintaining the correct beat or cadence.

On top of the psychological effects that cadences produce, it is also claimed that they produce significant physiological effects. Many indoctrinated individuals will state that singing a cadence while running or marching helps SMs keep their heads up, take deeper breaths and exhale more forcefully and that this increases oxygen to the lungs and gives the body more energy. They think that this in turn makes the unit healthier and better prepared, despite the lack of evidence. These ideas are propagated in articles like the one referenced, but they do not support their claims with any evidence. ^[1] The practice of cadences is not common among elite professional runners or athletes, despite its claims to boost cardiovascular efficiency. Its use in Military training is more likely closer linked to tradition than to physiological benefits.

The word "cadence" was applied to these work songs because of an earlier meaning, in which it meant the number of steps a marcher or runner took per minute. The cadence was set by a drummer or Sergeant and discipline was extremely important, as keeping the cadence directly affected the travel speed of infantry. There were other purposes: the close-order drill was a particular cadence count for the complex sequence of loading and firing a musket. In the Revolutionary War, Baron von Steuben notably imported European battlefield techniques which persist, greatly modified, to this day.