I'm still in the training-wheels, glued-to-my-cage-traps mode of fortress defense because, frankly, the military setup of DF is even
less user-friendly than the rest of the game, and considering the game in question, that's really saying something. At the rate I'm going now, the first military Marblehalls will have is gonna be the retinue of royal guards who accompany the king.
Frankly, I make no apologies for loving my cage traps: As long as my civilians think that the proper response to being attacked by a goblin is to dodge
toward said goblins, and as long as my recruits think that my command of "Go stand on this particular square" translates to "Go stand somewhere relatively near this particular square--and if you see a goblin, run directly at it, ignoring your overseer's frantic commands to
run the flux away," then I shall continue to stand by my main defense of a long, narrow, winding hallway with a cage trap crammed onto every single square. But I'm growing up--by year 6, I expect the traps will be almost completely replaced by a bitchin' setup of walls, towers, moats, and bridges, all bristling with shifty-eyed marksdwarves.
Oh and as for the hammerman part, lashers are called hammermen.
So why do I have a handful of caged Goblin Lashers? Though I haven't actually checked to see what they're carrying . . . they might have scourges, not whips.
Don't let your dwarves be woodcutters, miners, or hunters as this conflicts with their uniforms they currently own.
Although a fair level of skill in an "athletic" profession is a very good form of paramilitary training to prepare for actual military service: If the job trains strength, agility, and/or toughness, those dwarves will thank you for it when their hands are only cut open instead of being cut off.