Army Fitness Test may see more changes
One option that the Army is considering is a gender-neutral standard that is higher for combat arms than for the rest of the Army. Another option that they are playing around with is repurposing the physical tests conducted for expert badges. The Army is also moving forward with providing height and weight waivers for those who score high on the Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT).
From Military.com:
The changes are still being formulated, with some of the uncertainty driven by two competing congressional requirements built into last year’s annual defense policy bill to “establish gender-neutral fitness standards for combat [jobs] that are higher than those for non-combat [jobs],” while also creating gender-neutral standards for all soldiers.
Grinston also said Tuesday that the service is moving forward with a change to its body fat standards that would create waivers for soldiers who score highly on the Army Combat Fitness Test, or ACFT.
The ACFT was originally intended to be gender-neutral, but the Army reversed course after early test data, first reported by Military.com in 2021, showed that nearly half of all female soldiers were failing the test.
That helped ratchet up debate during the last Congress over whether the new test was right for the service.
Democrats called for a postponement of the test due to “unrealistic standards” for “medical personnel, judge advocates, or cyber warriors,” also citing high failure rates for women. Meanwhile Republican lawmakers leveled heated criticism at gender-based testing benchmarks. The debate led to the inclusion in last year’s defense policy bill of the provision requiring a new “gender-neutral physical readiness standards” by June.
One option, as described by Grinston, would be combat job specific standards modeled after current tests like the Expert Infantryman Badge, an assessment meant to evaluate a soldier’s aptitude for combat. The EIB, Grinston said, now includes two total miles of running in full combat equipment, push-ups, sprints, “sandbags,” crawls, buddy rushes, and farmer carries.
Military.com provides more information here.
I suppose my day of taking the test in combat boots is over.
PT uniform: T-shirt, sateen fatigue pants, and combat boots!
Then around 1980 …. PT togs! Well, they were easier to PT in, but as we all know: you don’t go into combat wearing PT short-shorts.
Say, when did the army change over from white t-shirts to brown? I wore white in the USAF from 73~78, then when I joined the army the t’s were brown.
When BDUs came in, early ’80s.
My son is a Cyber Warrior and he passes the ACFT easily. He did say that the leg tucks are a beast.
Nah. Leg tucks are fine. Even this old dog can do it.
The problem was females can’t. So the leg tucks got replaced with planks sometime last year.
It was optional for a while. You could choose between leg tucks and planks. But now it is planks only.
One thing that seems to be forgotten by all of the “gender neutral” requirements is the fact that when the SHTF and you have bad guys inside the wire, EVERY BODY needs to have the physical abilities to fight back and/or save their Battle Buddies. We should have learned by now that there are no “rear areas” in our adventures abroad. Fight or flee…there is no hide.
Yeah.
Army of One. Equality for all. Buts lets change the standards for everyone and give more folks recycles!
Gender neutral means you have to meet a certain standard regardless of gender. Gender norm means that you are scored against a bell curve of your gender.
The ACFT was originally designed to be age and gender neutral and graded by MOS. There was a minimum Army standard, then increased standards for what you might call Combat Support and Combat Arms (Gold, Grey, Black, Black being the highest). That said even some Support MOSs (88M, for instance) were in the highest category simply due to heavy lifting.
So, to be Infantry, you had to meet the Infantry standard (Black, the highest), regardless of age or gender.
The original test contained leg tucks, and on the pilots very few women met even the minimum standard. Congress intervened, the leg tuck went out and the plank came in. Congress intervened again, and the Army will probably go back to an age/gender neutral test tiered by MOS.
Given the woke male bovine excrement infesting the senior leadership, exactly how many gender relevant testing standards would there be should the woke decide to implement it?
The Army fixed something that was not broke to promote more women and it blew up in their face.
Grinston is a fucking clown. What is next? Maybe lower standards for minorities to boot?
How about add the “Two-Hole Stretch” to the APFT.
Yeah. Grinston can score it.
12 inches = max points.
Congress directed that women enter all MOSs and units in the NDAA back in 2014 or so. The way the law was written there was basically no wiggle room. The only way to maintain standards was to come up with a tougher PT test- thus the OPAT for recruit screening and the ACFT for Soldiers. Very similar to the USMC IST and CFT/PFT (which were always age and gender normed, by the way).
Grinston had nothing to do with it.
Yeah.
He could have been a real leader and stood up.
Of course. He should have defied the law and in the process stop the Army from taking a giant leap in the right direction with regard to combat fitness.
Strange that we had very simple standard that required only a piece of string/tape measure and a stopwatch to conduct (there is not actually a requirement for wearing running shoes or shorts and t-shirt). That could be conducted anywhere and was universal with little discrimintation (age and biological gender only).
Then we fixed what was not broken to acommidate something that does not exist. Now units must spend thousands of dollars to acquire and maintain quiment sets for practice and execution. They now need a structure to do it under (wet fields are now responsible for cancelling more than allowing so we just had a 300×200 ft covered area built for our Soldiers), and the event takes several days for a unit to accomplish because of manning requirements and number of events. Now, we realize that some events were unrealistic, and many Soldiers don’t do these types of exercises and therefore it does not make sense! After how much study?
Don’t fix what isn’t broken!!!
The old APFT was designed more for thin runners than anything. They later adjusted the scale somewhat and even I could max it then, but it was still run heavy.
The new test is more about core strength, which is apparently lacking. I never ran more than about a hundred yards at a go while performing duties or in combat while I served. But I can clearly say that core strength is essential. Thin runners with little TRex arms are less likely to be able to carry a casualty off the battlefield while wearing 70lbs of armor and gear.
But now we test for that to be sure.
Exactly right.
The ACFT it is an all around, functional fitness test that requires constant training. You can’t just start training the month before and hope to pass. Soldiers have to do strength, endurance, cardio, and power workouts- the Tactical Athlete.
Even with the plank instead of the leg tuck it is no joke.
Nobody carries off the battlefield a casualty with the kit on.
You take casualties and that becomes your limit of advance. You secure the area and start casevac procedures.
We fight through the enemy first, and only then treat casualties. If I hear anyone screaming for a medic like in the movies while the fight is on, I bitch slap the muthefucker.
Leaders report casualties through the net, and keep pushing the fight forward through the enemy. Platoon Sergeant comes behind with the medic and set up the CCP casualty collection point, start treatment and casevac procedures, and pass the casualties to the Company 1SG at the AXP.
This aint new. We have been doing this for decades.
You have cherry picked a very specific combat scenario. The concept of ‘securing the area’ is a fantasy in modern conflict.
The task is evacuate a casualty to immediate safety; meaning drag someone to cover so you can then render aid. This is done in full kit, and generally involves dragging another Soldier in full kit from the point of injury to a place of safety.
There were three or four attempts to improve the APFT between 1995 and 2010 or so. Each and every one was vetoed by the SMA at the time because it required additional equipment, too much time, etc.
The difference with the ACFT is that Congress wrote into the NDAA (federal law) that all services must open all MOSs and all units to women, unless they could demonstrate that women could not perform in the job.
The only way to do that was with a gender neutral physical test. Regardless of your gender, if you want to be Infantry you must be able to do X, Y, Z. This goes far beyond what the APFT did, because even weak men could max it- the pushup is a body weight event, the run favors the tall slim person. In other words, it did not measure power, upper body or core strength, or muscular endurance.
One thing I saw in my time was that many a brass-ass opined that some 130-pound PT gazelle who had a 300 PT Score was far more of a Soldier than the stocky one who looked like he could manually lift a deuce or 5-ton on its side as well as ruck like there was no tomorrow while humping a machine gun. Now we have the Army changing its mind on PT Tests like it did on uniforms in past years. Before I retired my thought was that if one didn’t like the current Uniform all they had to do was wait six months until some General changed his mind.
Hey kids let’s have a do-over!
Navy to ‘reset’ fitness test failures amid recruitment, retention struggles
Move may allow up to 1,500 sailors to remain in the service, Navy rear admiral says
Fox News
Words fail me.
Ha Ha. So the standards went from tough-but-neutral to “the women are failin’!” to “let’s have age and gender standards so they pass” to now “we can’t keep people in the army so let’s ease the standards for everybody but combat arms.” Next will be “let’s change the combat arms standards because the women that shouldn’t be in combat arms can’t keep up with the combat arms standards.”
The test is tough; i went from decades of maxing every APFT to now (with the age standards) barely scoring a 551 despite my needing-surgery shoulders. My orthopedic surgeon is appalled at what ACFT training does to shoulders and knees. Just one more entry on my pending VA claim….
I see Grinston is still running his suck. Doesn’t he know he can shut up and retire?
What all the services never seemed to understand was this: Design the uniform and footwear (boots) so that the fitness test can be performed in “real” conditions. Give service members boots that actually can be run in and marched in without making someone a cripple. Why do we wear gear to test in that we don’t do battle in? Stupid. We still had some guys do boots and utes when I came in and they could never understand why anything else was needed.
I always hated that people would test using the stationary bike. I told my CO, when was the last time you were in danger and someone threw you a bicycle? And if they did, would you ride away and leave everybody?
Grinston didn’t come up with the requirement for the ACFT, the events, or the standards. He’s just the SMA that had to implement it.
The ACFT is far tougher than the old APFT. It is also a much better overall assessment of fitness for ground combat. It goes far beyond muscular endurance and cardio; it tests power, upper body strength, core strength, and even resilience. It is a straight up bitch, and it will drive Soldiers to stay fit constantly- you can’t just start prepping the month before the test and hope to pass.
When the ACFT rolled out very few women were passing the lowest standard. DACOWITS and the HASC/SASC at the time pressured the Army to get rid of the leg tuck and make the test gender normed. The current Sec Army complied. Then this happened:
congress challenges army pt test
Now the Army is going back to the original concept for the test, which is a good thing.
Cotton took some hits on his reputation a few years ago, but i’m largely a fan.