The Briefing Room
General Category => Military/Defense News => Topic started by: rangerrebew on July 15, 2018, 11:34:26 am
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The Good and the Bad of the Army’s New Physical Fitness Test
Rick Montcalm | July 13, 2018
The Good and the Bad of the Army’s New Physical Fitness Test
After years of study, experimentation, and pilot testing across the force, the Army appears to have settled on a new physical fitness test—the Army Combat Readiness Test, or ACRT. This new six-event test will keep the two-mile run from the current Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT), but scraps the push-ups and sit-ups in favor of leg tucks, a medicine ball power throw, three-rep max dead lift, “T†push-ups, and a shuttle sprint-drag-carry. The ACRT follows a trend among the military branches, as the Marines, Navy, and Air Force have all adopted new tests and grading standards in recent years to better assess physical requirements expected of their service members.
Still, “everybody’s doing it†isn’t a sufficient reason to abandon the APFT—a physical fitness test that has been in use for almost forty years. So why is the Army doing it? The general argument against the APFT is that it focuses only on muscular and aerobic endurance and its events bear little resemblance to combat-focused physical tasks. The ACRT aims to fix all that by testing endurance, strength, explosive power, speed, and agility through events that mimic warfighting tasks like carrying ammunition, moving a casualty, and lifting a soldier over an obstacle. But, the new test comes with a few challenges that need to be addressed.
https://mwi.usma.edu/good-bad-armys-new-physical-fitness-test/