The Army’s yearslong fight over its controversial new fitness test isn’t over yet
Here we go again.
BY JEFF SCHOGOL | PUBLISHED JUN 28, 2023 4:05 PM EDT
Choosing a new fitness test has become the Army’s new forever war.
The Army Combat Fitness Test, or ACFT, has undergone a never-ending series of changes since it was first introduced in 2017, and now lawmakers could require the Army even further adopt changes to the fitness test of record or even revert to the test that the ACFT was supposed to replace.
The six-event test was meant to better gauge how prepared soldiers were to perform tasks in combat than the Army Physical Fitness Test, or APFT, which the ACFT replaced in October 2022, two years later than the Army originally expected. The initial version of the ACFT held male and female soldiers to the same physical fitness standards, regardless of age, but in 2019 initial testing showed that 84% of women who took the ACFT had failed it.
The following year, results from a field test showed that women were scoring up to 110 points lower on the ACFT on average than men. Female soldiers especially had trouble passing the leg tuck event, in which soldiers were required to pull their legs up to their elbows while on a pullup bar.
Over time the Army introduced separate scores for soldiers’ age and gender. In March 2022, the Army also dropped the leg tuck event from the ACFT after a study from the RAND Corporation found that the exercise was not a good test of core strength.
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-combat-fitness-test-problems-congress/
