The never ending battle over the ACFT continues to be waged:
The new sergeant major of the Army offered a full-throated endorsement of the Army Combat Fitness Test on Tuesday as lawmakers on Capitol Hill debate defense spending and the future of the controversial physical assessment.
“We’re going to continue doing the ACFT,” Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Weimer said during a question-and-answer session at the opening of this week’s annual Maneuver Warfighter Conference on Fort Moore, Ga., the former Fort Benning. “The ACFT is really helping us change the culture of fitness in the United States Army.”
His backing of the six-event, CrossFit-style Army fitness test comes as competing bills in Congress propose different futures for the Army’s physical exam.
The House-passed version of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act would force the Army to adopt gender-neutral standards for the ACFT. But the Senate version of the bill would mandate the Army dump the ACFT, at least temporarily, in favor of its old test, the three-event Army Physical Fitness Test, or APFT. Both chambers in July passed their version of the legislation, which sets annual Pentagon policy and spending priorities, but must rectify differences within the versions before one compromised bill approved by Congress can be sent to the White House to be signed into law by the president.
It will soon be official that troops that score over a 540 on the ACFT will not need to weighed or taped:
Soldiers who earn a high enough score on the Army’s fitness test will be exempt from body fat standards under a new policy that will go into effect immediately, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston announced Thursday.
Service officials said they believe those exemptions will help reduce the error rate of the Army’s body fat measurement method to almost zero.
Body fat is only measured on soldiers who fail to meet the service’s weight standards for their age and gender. The Army did not provide how many of its nearly 1 million active, National Guard and Reserve soldiers are failing the standard each year.
The policy change came from a body composition study that also recommended the service simplify its tape measure method for calculating body fat for those soldiers who exceed weight requirements. A second recommendation would allow for a biometric screening on approved devices to calculate body fat if the soldier fails after a tape test. Those two recommendations are still pending approval from the Army, Grinston said.
You can read more at the link, but the number of highly fit Soldiers who have trouble passing a tape test in my prior experience is very low. They are usually very large muscular people who just have weirdly shaped bodies that don’t pass the tape test well. This new regulation is going to really help out this small number of people. Most people that tape overweight in my prior experience are just that, overweight.
After years of development and testing the Army has gone from having an age and gender neutral fitness to one that is basically the older fitness test that had age and gender scoring scales, but additional events. Here is the score card that shows the max and minimum standards per event:
The full scorecard can be downloaded at this link.
The Army’s new physical fitness test is on its way with units beginning to field the equipment to take the test this year and final implementation in 2020:
There are six events in the ACFT:
Strength Deadlift. This is a three-repetition maximum deadlift to test muscular strength; it mimics movement to safety and effectively lifting and carrying heavy loads.
Standing Power Throw. This event involves throwing a 10-pound medicine ball as far as possible over the head and to the rear. It measures upper and lower muscular power, balance and whole body flexibility.
Hand-Raised Push-ups. This event forces the soldier to go all the way to the floor and raise his hands before coming back up again, measuring upper-body muscular endurance.
A 250-Meter Sprint, Drag and Carry. This is five different events within one event — a 50-meter sprint; a backward 50-meter drag of a 90-pound sled; a 50-meter movement; a 50-meter carry of two 40-pound kettle bells; and a final 50-meter sprint. It measures muscular strength, power, speed and reaction time.
Leg Tuck. A soldier hangs perpendicular to the pull-up bar and brings his knees up to his elbows and back down again for one repetition. It measures muscular strength, endurance and grip.
Two-Mile Run. The ACFT retains the two-mile run portion of the APFT, which is designed to measure aerobic and muscular endurance.
All events must be completed in 50 minutes or less, so there is mandated rest and a maximum time for each event, Frost said. Each soldier gets two minutes’ rest between each of the first five events and five minutes of rest before the two-mile run. [Military.com]
You can read much more at the link, but if soldiers must complete the test in 50 minutes or less I will be interested to see how a company level unit will be able to execute this with six events. It seems units would have to make this a multi-day event to get everyone complete.
I am also interested to see what the minimum scores will be considering this is a gender and age neutral test.
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