Extra Military Instruction: Limits, Hazing, and Complaints

Extra Military Instruction, or EMI, is additional training a leader orders to correct a specific performance deficiency. It is administrative and non-punitive, which means it is not discipline under Article 15 and it does not go on your service record. It is also tightly bounded: rules limit who can assign it, when it can happen, how long it can last, and how closely it has to match the problem it is meant to fix. When a leader ignores those limits, EMI stops being lawful training and starts looking like illegal punishment.

What EMI Is, and What It Isn’t

The legal home for EMI is the Manual for Courts-Martial, Part V, Paragraph 1.g., which groups it with counseling, admonitions, reprimands, and administrative withholding of privileges as measures that “promote efficiency and good order and discipline.” The MCM states these measures “are not punishment” and that Article 15 does not apply to them.¹ Because it isn’t punishment, EMI can be used even for conduct that isn’t a chargeable UCMJ offense.

The Navy and Marine Corps JAGMAN defines EMI as “a bona fide training technique that attempts to improve an individual’s performance by focusing additional effort on some deficiency in the individual’s performance of duty.”² The Army calls the same concept “nonpunitive corrective measures” or “extra training or instruction.” Different labels, same idea: targeted training to close a gap.

What EMI is not: extra duty or hard labor without confinement. Those are punishments and can only be imposed through nonjudicial punishment or a court-martial. If the task assigned looks like extra duty rather than instruction aimed at a specific gap, it is being misused.

Who Can Order It, and When

During normal working hours, the authority to assign EMI is built into the supervisory relationship. Officers, noncommissioned officers, and petty officers can all direct a subordinate to perform additional training during the duty day without special permission from the commanding officer.² A senior in the chain can restrict that authority, but the default is that any leader has it.

After hours, the rule tightens. Only a commanding officer or officer in charge may authorize EMI outside normal working hours. In the Navy and Marine Corps, the CO generally cannot delegate that authority unless the Chief of Naval Operations or the Commandant of the Marine Corps has specifically permitted it. The Coast Guard follows the same structure, though delegation to commissioned officers and senior enlisted personnel is allowed. If a junior petty officer orders after-hours EMI on their own initiative, that order lacks authority.

The Limits That Protect You

EMI is capped at two hours per day under normal circumstances.² When it runs after hours, it must be consecutive with the workday unless military necessity requires otherwise. Reserve component personnel cannot be assigned EMI outside their normal inactive-duty training periods.

Several hard limits sit on top of the time cap:

EMI cannot be assigned on your Sabbath or equivalent day of religious observance.
EMI cannot be used to deprive you of normal liberty. Once you finish the training, your liberty period starts like everyone else’s.²
The moment you demonstrate proficiency in the area where you were deficient, EMI must stop. Continuing it past that point turns training into punishment.

Setting matters too. EMI has to take place in an environment appropriate for the task being taught. Practicing uniform preparation in the barracks is reasonable. Doing the same drill in a parking lot in the rain is not, unless weather is genuinely part of the training objective.

The Training Must Fit the Problem

This is the rule most likely to be broken. The JAGMAN states plainly that “EMI must be logically related to the deficiency in performance for which it was assigned.”² Fail a uniform inspection, and extra time on uniform preparation is valid EMI. Being told to scrub floors or clean equipment for the same deficiency isn’t. There is no logical connection, so it fails the nexus requirement.

A practical test: could a reasonable observer look at the assigned training and immediately see how it corrects the specific performance gap? If the answer is no, the order probably isn’t lawful EMI.

Push-Ups and Physical Exercise

Whether push-ups can be assigned as EMI depends on the branch and the reason. The Army explicitly permits “brief physical exercises” as corrective training for minor acts of indiscipline, such as push-ups for showing up late to formation, as long as the exercises don’t violate policies against hazing, bullying, or unlawful punishment.³

The Navy and Marine Corps are stricter. Because JAGMAN requires the training to be logically related to the specific deficiency, physical exercise generally works only when the deficiency itself involves physical readiness. Additional conditioning for a failed physical fitness test fits. Burpees for arriving late to a watch does not.

Branch Differences at a Glance

Army

Under AR 600-20, these are “nonpunitive corrective measures” or “extra training or instruction.” The regulation calls the authority “part of the inherent powers of command” and requires that training be “appropriately tailored to curing the deficiency.” Training can extend past normal duty hours and must stop once the deficiency is corrected. Deficiencies handled this way are not noted in the soldier’s official records. The regulation also warns that corrective training must not be used “in an oppressive manner to evade the procedural safeguards inherent to the imposition of nonjudicial punishment.”³ If the conduct really warrants Article 15 action, leaders can’t dress punishment up as training to skip the process.

Navy and Marine Corps

Both branches follow JAGMAN section 0103. The two-hour cap, Sabbath protection, liberty preservation, and nexus requirement all apply. The structural difference from the Army is the stricter rule on after-hours authorization: only a CO or officer in charge can authorize it, and delegation requires CNO or Commandant approval.² Individual commands may add their own limits on what level of leader can assign how much.

Coast Guard

The Coast Guard mirrors the general framework. Officers, chief petty officers, petty officers, and NCOs can assign EMI during working hours. After-hours EMI needs CO authorization, which may be delegated to commissioned officers and senior enlisted. The two-hour cap and Sabbath restriction apply, and normal liberty must be granted on completion. The Coast Guard recommends putting EMI orders in writing, which is good practice in any branch.

When EMI Becomes Illegal Punishment or Hazing

The Marine Corps hazing order defines hazing as conduct that causes a service member “to suffer or be exposed to an activity which is cruel, abusive, humiliating, or oppressive.” It carves out “administrative corrective measures” and “extra military instruction as defined in the reference” from that definition.⁴ The exclusion only holds if the EMI actually meets the regulatory definition. Assign unrelated tasks, blow past the time cap, target someone’s Sabbath, or use it to strip liberty, and the protection falls away.

Article 93 of the UCMJ makes cruelty and maltreatment a punishable offense: anyone “who is guilty of cruelty toward, or oppression or maltreatment of, any person subject to his orders shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”⁵ Excessive physical training as “instruction” for a non-physical failing, or humiliating tasks unconnected to any training objective, can bring a leader under this article.

How to Push Back on Improper EMI

Article 138 Complaint

Under 10 U.S.C. § 938, any service member who believes they’ve been wronged by their commanding officer can seek redress. You start with a written request to the commanding officer accused of the wrong, and that officer generally has fifteen days to respond. If the CO denies redress, you have ninety days from discovering the wrong to deliver a written complaint to the next superior commissioned officer. It travels up to the officer exercising general court-martial jurisdiction, who must examine the complaint and take appropriate action.⁶

Inspector General

Every service branch has an IG system for complaints about abuse of authority. DoD recommends starting with the local IG office. If the local IG can’t resolve it, complaints can be escalated to the DoD Hotline, which handles reports of fraud, waste, abuse, and violations of law or policy.⁷ IG complaints are confidential and run outside your direct chain, which matters when the person misusing EMI is your immediate supervisor.

What It Means for Your Record

Because EMI is administrative, it does not appear on your permanent military record. The MCM keeps corrective measures separate from Article 15 nonjudicial punishment, which does carry formal consequences.⁸ The Army regulation says outright that “deficiencies corrected through this training will not be noted in the Soldier’s official records.”³ The Coast Guard has a similar prohibition on service record entries for EMI.

The underlying performance problem can still surface elsewhere. A supervisor may reference ongoing deficiencies in a fitness report or evaluation, and the fact that corrective training was needed can inform that narrative even if the EMI itself is not recorded. The distinction is between documenting the EMI as an event, which regulations forbid, and documenting the performance issue that led to it, which regulations do not.

1
Joint Service Committee on Military Justice. Manual for Courts-Martial, Part V – Nonjudicial Punishment Procedure
2
Department of the Navy. JAGINST 5800.7G CH-1 – Manual of the Judge Advocate General
3
Army Publishing Directorate. Army Command Policy (AR 600-20)
4
Headquarters United States Marine Corps. MCO 1700.28 – Hazing
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 10 USC 893 – Art 93 Cruelty and Maltreatment
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 10 USC 938 – Art 138 Complaints of Wrongs
7
DoD Office of Inspector General. DoD Hotline
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 10 USC 815 – Art 15 Commanding Officers Non-Judicial Punishment