ACFT For Dummies. Angela Papple Johnston
Army recognized the need to measure overall fitness rather than a soldier’s ability to do push-ups, sit-ups, and a two-mile run. Although those exercises are good for measuring chest strength, arm strength, and cardiovascular endurance, they’re not necessarily indicators of how well a soldier can perform on the battlefield. (And don’t get your hopes up. That two-mile run didn’t go anywhere. It’s the last event on the ACFT.)
The ACFT uses six events to measure a soldier’s functional fitness. Each event is linked to common warfighting tasks, such as carrying other soldiers out of harm’s way and climbing out of sticky situations. The ACFT standards are outlined in a “living document,” which means they can (and most likely will) change as the Army identifies new challenges and comes up with better solutions.
Saying Goodbye to the Old APFT
Fitness training has been on the Army’s radar for years — but not from the very beginning. Seven decades after General Friedrich Von Steuben’s Blue Book laid out the drill and ceremony the Army uses today, West Point implemented the first physical fitness program for its cadets. The program included gymnastics, calisthenics, swimming, and fencing. Six years later, cadets were assessed for their performance on a 15-foot wall climb, a 5-foot horse vault, a 10-foot ditch leap, an 8-minute mile run (or an 18-minute two-mile run), a 4.5-mile walk that a cadet had to complete in an hour, and a 3-mile ruck with 20 pounds of gear, arms, and equipment in under an hour.
The Army scrapped the whole physical training (PT) program in 1861 when the Civil War started, but in 1885, the Army hired a new Master of the Sword, Lt. Col. Herman John Koehler. Koehler’s Manual of Calisthenic Exercises became the first Army-wide physical training manual. In 1920, the Army re-implemented its testing requirement. Soldiers had to successfully perform a 14-second 100-yard sprint, an 8-foot wall climb, a 12-foot running jump, and a 30-yard grenade throw as well as complete an obstacle course.
The test continued to evolve with the publication of Field Manual 21-20 in 1941. It’s the same FM in use today, but the events (and the test’s name) changed every few years until 1980, when the APFT you know and love became the standard.
Now that the creators of the last evolution have retired, the APFT has gone into retirement, too. (No word yet on whether it’s buying a red sports car, though.) Its replacement: the ACFT. Like many past evolutions of Army physical fitness testing, the ACFT includes multiple events designed to represent how well you can perform on the battlefield.
Sculpting a Fit and Lethal Force
The Army knows that military operations have become more complex. You’re not riding a horse into battle with your sword drawn. You’re up, they see you, you’re down. You’re wearing and carrying 80-plus pounds of gear through rugged mountain terrain, setting up OE-254s, performing HAZMAT operations in Level A, or emptying truck after truck full of supplies on a remote operating base.
Push-ups, sit-ups, and a two-mile run just couldn’t tell the military that you could perform under those rigorous conditions. In fact, all the APFT told the Army was that you could do push-ups, sit-ups, and a two-mile run. The APFT was designed to have 40 percent predictive power for performance in combat. But today, it’s all about functional fitness — and assessments indicate the ACFT has 80 percent predictive power for battlefield performance.
Training servicemembers for the ACFT (and requiring the test itself) is the Army’s way of improving soldiers’ physical fitness, reducing preventable injuries, enhancing stamina, and contributing to enhanced unit readiness.
The ACFT is required for every soldier. Age and gender don’t matter. Like my drill sergeant at “Relaxin’” Jackson told me, “You’re an infantryman first.” That means the Army wants assurance, whether you’re an 18-year-old male private or a 55-year-old female four-star, that you have muscular strength and endurance, power, speed, agility, cardiovascular endurance, balance, flexibility, coordination, and high-speed reaction time.
Is the ACFT harder to pass for some soldiers than it is for others? Yes. Does that mean you may need to work harder than your battle buddy? Absolutely. But that’s what this book is for. I can’t go to the gym with you, but I can show you what you need to do to meet the Army’s vision: “To deploy, fight, and win our nation’s wars by providing ready, prompt, and sustained land dominance by Army forces.”
The bottom line is that the Army is a standards-based institution, and those standards are in place to meet the requirements of combat operations.
HOW MUCH HOMEWORK DID THE ARMY DO?
The Army developed the ACFT over 20 years — it wasn’t a fly-by-night decision. After creating physical readiness requirements for all soldiers and conducting a specific study on physical demands, the Army zeroed in on ten components of physical fitness necessary for warfighting. The military brass consulted with military fitness leaders from the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, and the Netherlands, as well as fitness experts from universities and reps from government agencies to put together its latest evolution of physical fitness testing.
Picking Up Performance Basics
The ACFT challenges you to complete six events, each designed to test one or more fitness components. You need to prepare for these events to max out your ACFT score; I go into details on the fitness components in the following sections:
3 Repetition Maximum Deadlift: The 3 Repetition Maximum Deadlift (MDL) represents your ability to safely and effectively lift heavy loads from the ground, bound, jump, and land. This event tests how well-conditioned your back and legs are; the better-conditioned those muscles are, the less likely you are to become injured when you have to move long distances under heavy load.Fitness components: Muscular strength, balance, and flexibility
Standing Power Throw: The Standing Power Throw (SPT) represents your ability to throw equipment on or over obstacles, lift up your battle buddies, jump over obstacles, and employ progressive levels of force in hand-to-hand combat. It tests how well you can execute quick, explosive movements.Fitness components: Explosive power, balance, range of motion, and flexibility
Hand Release Push-Up – Arm Extension: The Hand Release Push-Up – Arm Extension (HRP) represents your ability to withstand repetitive and sustained pushing that’s often necessary in combat tasks (like when your driver gets the HMMWV stuck in the mud and every vehicle in the convoy is mysteriously missing a tow bar). This modified push-up event tests your chest and core strength.Fitness component: Muscular endurance
Sprint-Drag-Carry: The Sprint-Drag-Carry (SDC) represents your ability to accomplish high-intensity combat tasks that last between a few seconds and a few minutes, such as building a hasty fighting position, reacting quickly in a firefight, carrying ammo from one place to another, or extracting a casualty and carrying him or her to safety. The Sprint-Drag-Carry tests your strength, endurance, and anaerobic capacity.Fitness components: Agility, anaerobic endurance, muscular endurance, and muscular strength
Leg Tuck: The Leg Tuck (LTK) represents your ability to carry heavy loads, climb over walls and other obstacles, and climb or descend ropes. The strength required for this event can help soldiers avoid back injuries. (Note: Throughout this book, I often refer to this event by its abbreviation, LTK, to help distinguish it from the plain old exercise known as the leg tuck.)Fitness components: Muscular strength and endurance
Two-Mile Run: The Two-Mile Run (2MR) represents your ability to conduct continuous operations and ground movements on foot, as well as your ability to recover quickly in preparation for other physically demanding tasks, like reacting to enemy contact or carrying ammo from Point A to Point B.Fitness component: Aerobic endurance
