Ok, let me try and remember something from waaaaayyyyy back - Ph II, III, and IV armour 2 Jan 1985 - 8 Aug 1985. (Am I really that old? Damn :crybaby
So there is a giant * to all this, my trg was 20 years ago and I've been away from armour for 16 years.
Ph II was like a combat leader course or section commander course. You would lead your section of 8-10 pers in patrols or section attacks. Everyone would rotate being the IC, 2IC, or member. It was all infantry stuff, no riding. I did the Ph II in the winter so there was much pulling of heavily loaded tobaggans across the snow and dealing with the slush. I also did a Ph II infantry as a reservist and that was hot, thirsty, and a lot of walking through swamps. So it sucks in any season.
There will be classroom lectures on counselling, performance evaluations, corps history, nbc stuff, etc, etc. When I went through we would typically leave for the field first thing Monday morning and return Friday afternoon. The weeks would roughly alternate between classroom and field with more field work towards the end of the course as final evaluations came up.
Ph III was the crew commanding course, On mine we were in Leopards. I'm not sure what the other commenter meant by 'spatially demanding' but one thing that I remember vividly was learning how to deal with a vehicle with a moving, stablized turret. If you have moved the gun over to a target to have the gunner observe it, the body of the vehicle is likely pointing in another direction. So if you say advance thinking you will moving in the direction of the turret/gun, you won't. The gunner can stay fixed on the target while the vehicle moves all over the place going every direction but towards the target. Getting used to this break between where you think you should be going and where you actually are was a challenge for many of us.
It seems Leopards aren't used any more for phase trg but I'm sure the other vehicles have their own particular maintenance demands. While we weren't vehicle techs we did participate in the simpler and often physically demanding tasks of track maintenance, changing road wheels, and, horror of horror, changing sprockets. For things that look big and tough tanks can be quite fragile and take a lot of maintenance. And of course there was much cleaning of the main gun (100lb breech block) and the mg's.
Ph IV was the troop leader course. We did ours in M113's as all the other vehicles were being used by other courses. The emphasis was on the tactics required to lead the troop and not the details of crew commanding although we did have to direct the driver and point the mg where the tank gun should be pointing for certain tasks
Well, that's some of my recollections
almost 20 years later. After all that I made a lousy armour officer and got out 3 years later. I'm much happier as a computer programmer stuck in Fort Lauderdale, FL ;D
Hopefully someone more current can fill you in on how things are today. From following the news as best I can I wonder what the future holds when there is so much emphasis on recce and the tanks rust, er, fade away. Good luck in your pursuits.