Combat Fitness Revolves Around Relative Strength
Maj. John Baer
Monday, December 1, 2025
The Army’s most valuable resource is its soldiers, and their leaders have an urgent duty to prepare them for the physical rigors of modern combat as the prospect of large-scale war looms. That requires proactive focus on ways the environment is changing.
While the new Army Fitness Test is a positive step in this endeavor, it does not adequately assess relative strength, which is critical for success in modern combat. Relative strength in this context refers to a soldier’s ability to lift their own body weight and is measured by events such as pullups, rope climbs and leg tucks.
Regardless of Army fitness policy, commanders must understand the importance of relative strength and emphasize unit-level fitness programs that develop and assess it.
Changing Battlefield
Experts predict future combat increasingly will take place in urban centers as human activity coalesces around them. These areas are logistical hubs as much as centers of gravity for combat forces, and they are defined by a prevalence of vertical obstacles that impede movement. Walls, tunnels, ladders and fences are ubiquitous, and soldiers must be able to lift their bodies up, through and over these obstacles.
https://www.ausa.org/articles/combat-fitness-revolves-around-relative-strength
