New Army PT Test

[opngrnd]

The only point of the scale is to make sure the ruck is not too light.

Oh. Gotcha.

[OH58D]

Coming from the officer ranks, and ROTC, the current program for Military Science 3 contract cadets (Junior year of college) is to pass the APFT monthly. In the Senior Military schools like VMI, Citadel, etc. these contracted cadets do a 12 mile ruck (35 lbs dry weight) each Friday. This is prep for Cadet Summer Training at Fort Knox. During the 31 days at Knox now, two weeks are spent solely in the field for an extended FTX. The last requirement to pass is the 12 mile ruck with the weight mentioned before in 4 hours or less. If you do it in 3 hours you meet one of the requirements for the RECONDO badge. To prevent elevated failure levels, they start the 12 mile ruck at 2am and the coolest time of day.

The new head of Cadet Command is a friend of mine from my old aviation regiment and I'll be at Fort Knox the end of this month as his guest. I did ROTC basic camp in 1978 and advanced camp in 1979, both times at Knox.

[26 Inf]

If the equipment was kept in the hands of a higher power, say TASC (if such still exists, its were we got training aids etc. from) then you will sign for 1) old ammo can with 4)beat up stop watches,2) stop watch batteries 1) dollar store tape measure, 3)broken pencils and 2)rubber play ground balls, one dry rotted and the other with a dick drawn on it.

(*note, when YOU turn it in the dick has to be gone)

Awesome! And quoted for truth.

[WillBrink]

Coming from the officer ranks, and ROTC, the current program for Military Science 3 contract cadets (Junior year of college) is to pass the APFT monthly. In the Senior Military schools like VMI, Citadel, etc. these contracted cadets do a 12 mile ruck (35 lbs dry weight) each Friday. This is prep for Cadet Summer Training at Fort Knox. During the 31 days at Knox now, two weeks are spent solely in the field for an extended FTX. The last requirement to pass is the 12 mile ruck with the weight mentioned before in 4 hours or less. If you do it in 3 hours you meet one of the requirements for the RECONDO badge. To prevent elevated failure levels, they start the 12 mile ruck at 2am and the coolest time of day.

The new head of Cadet Command is a friend of mine from my old aviation regiment and I'll be at Fort Knox the end of this month as his guest. I did ROTC basic camp in 1978 and advanced camp in 1979, both times at Knox.

Legit. That's why I enjoy this forum: BTDT crust sarcastic salty SOBs giving out the the no BS info to my surface level posts where I get to learn shit.

[OH58D]

Legit. That's why I enjoy this forum: BTDT crust sarcastic salty SOBs giving out the the no BS info to my surface level posts where I get to learn shit.

Even though I chase cows for a living now, I stay close to local JROTC programs (5th Brigade) and give lectures at some of the senior military academies. I'll be a Fort Knox for the 7th and 9th Regiment Advanced Camp graduations this Summer. I remember when I first did the Army APFT back in 1978, it was similar to the current test, but we also did an obstacle course and some kind of shuttle run. I had no intention of being a ground pounder so I started out in M.I. and "graduated" to Aviation. I hated marching.

My West Point son is doing Air Assault School now, so I'll ask his opinion about the new PT program when he's done next week. I can already guess he'll say 2 miles in 20 minutes will be easy. He plods along right now at about 13:30 for the two miles. He's averaging around 287-290 out of 300 on the APFT right now.

[Larry Vickers]

Its been a while but I recall the old 3 event PT test took 2-2.5 hrs to get a smaller sized company done and it required no eqipment or measuring. It was also retarded simple.

I know to civilians having this equipment on hand sounds like a simple concept and easily affordable, managable by any half assed cross fit operation.... up but it only belies a true misunderstanding about how things in the army really work. None of these thing will be findable when needed and certainly not in the quantities needed to do this in a timely organized fashion. This stuff will also have to available for regular morning PT and miraculously not go missing. If the equipment was kept in the hands of a higher power, say TASC (if such still exists, its were we got training aids etc. from) then you will sign for 1) old ammo can with 4)beat up stop watches,2) stop watch batteries 1) dollar store tape measure, 3)broken pencils and 2)rubber play ground balls, one dry rotted and the other with a dick drawn on it.

(*note, when YOU turn it in the dick has to be gone)

Id venture a guess that on any given week day morning at Ft. Bragg there were at least a dozen PT tests going on in division area. A PT test administrating staff would have to be nearly battalion sized on its own. A whole new level of POG will rise from the primordial ooze. They would have to go nuts just building more chin up bars. Our battalion area had two sets of 2 chin up bars... and not near each other. Talk about a bottle neck in the process.

Army fitness might be dated but isnt the problem, we kicked alot of ass before medicine balls. Americas recent crops of weak willed lazy kids and a lack of gruelling disciplinary push ups is.

Its not impossible, its just brimming with hang ups and I seriously doubt it will have much impact beyond its own cumbersome implementation. It will be the ACU of PT tests, with glowing OERs soon to follow.



Sent from my SM-J727T using Tapatalk

This is absolutely spot on. I could not have said it better myself. Nailed it

[Averageman]

Looking at this, I keep remembering how hard I tried to maintain consecutive 300 scores. I also remember having a lower back that was wrecked by various combat and noncombat activities.
If you would have told me I had to do some sort of deadlift and the max was "X" amount of pounds, I would have loaded the maximum and lifted that SOB, even if it further wrecked my back. I was that hard headed.
I keep hearing about the Army experimenting with a number of new ideas such as closer medical attention, improved PT, even to the point of having Physical Therapists on hand for help. I'm just guessing that if you implement something that has the potential to further damage already damaged bodies, we're screwed, we will lose a lot more guys getting out on medicals than we can afford to lose as legacy experience.
The whole cart before the horse thing needs to be closely monitored, very closely. A sixty to seventy five man Tank Company isn't going to be able to pull this off on their own as things are currently configured.
Dick drawn on the medicine ball or not.

[OH58D]

Looking at this, I keep remembering how hard I tried to maintain consecutive 300 scores. I also remember having a lower back that was wrecked by various combat and noncombat activities.

In my last year before retirement, we had a CSM (late 40's at the time) with the 101st AB who said the day he couldn't max the APFT, he would retire. He was a real hard-charger and a man of his word. On his last test he scored something like a 290 because of progressive arthritis in his knee. He retired at 23 years.

This new test is age neutral, so I guess the standards remain constant even with age progression? I wonder if this is designed to reduce the number of retirees over a period of time? Certainly this means field grade officers are going to invest more time in their own fitness. I've also seen plenty of senior non-comms put on weight in MOS's in the service support and combat service support fields.

[Wake27]

Great. All the salty guys are now going to have even MORE events to aggravate their injuries...

I severely damaged my left labrum a few years ago. I can push just fine, but have no desire to do stop-and-go push-ups, fling things backwards, or hang off of stuff unless needed. I do train to same muscle groups with an emphasis on taking care of previously injured areas, but wonder if we didn't just trade the sit-ups for a whole bunch of other problems. (FWIW, I usually attain 100pts/100pts/80pts on the APFT events)

I know things have to be measurable, but I was hoping for the Army to pick a more individualized approach. I feel like this will just turn into another form of training for a test vs training for fitness.

Agreed there. I had surgery on a jacked up cartilage labrum several years ago, for some reason hand release pushups are one of the few things that still bother it.

[T2C]

I do agree with setting one standard for everyone to meet. Establishing different standards for different genders is counterproductive to team building.

I would think that everyone in the U.S. Army should be able to fill the role of rifleman, regardless of specialty. If it hits the fan, a technician may have to fill the role of rifleman. Determine what the job requires and set a standard for meeting that requirement. It may require some of the technical types to hit the gym more often than they do now.