At least they tried to hide the fact that the task had no inherent value. There's no better way to destroy someone mentally than to make them perform an arduous

At least they tried to hide the fact that the task had no inherent value. There's no better way to destroy someone mentally than to make them perform an arduous yet pointless task. If the intention was to maintain the team's physical fitness, surely there's a less injury prone exercise that could have been arranged. My guess is that the purpose was to condition you and your team to accept and perform a task without understanding the reason why the task was being performed.