I've been trying to get an army worthy of the name, but it seems like no matter what i do, they never advance much beyond dabbling or novice in whatever they are training, until i start getting sieges that last past my trap corridor. Also, the one instance i had where my military was up to about 30 dwarves (10 squads of 3), they all immediately started fucking off in this giant cluster of armor trading. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but I made some new armor, and dwarf A decided his superior quality bronze breastplate wasn't as good as this other one, and took his off, dumped it in a stockpile, and then went to grab another BP. immediately afterward, another dwarf did the same thing. It ended up that all but the few i had assigned specific gear to, were basically swapping bits of armor for no real reason. They weren't upgrading from junk to masterwork, in most cases they were grabbing the same quality they already had, or in a few cases downgrading.
Also, they don't seem to spar but rarely, mainly I see lots of "waiting for X demonstration" or "organizing demo" or whatnot, with a lot of indifividual drills intermingled.
My barracks is basically a 12x12 room with some weapon racks in it. I have another set of rooms where they can sleep, with enough beds for 40 dwarves. I have them on 2 month on, 1 month off rotations. They all have a training barracks assigned. I can't think of anything i'm doing wrong, but it doesn't seem like i ever get any of them to actually train. They basically stand around for 2 months, and then go stand around in the dining hall for a month. I'm sorely tempted to just runeforge their stats to something like what it should be after 12 years or so of combat training...