ACFT For Dummies. Angela Papple Johnston
or you’re a seasoned soldier with plenty of combat experience, you’re held to the same standard. The aim of this book is to get you to meet or exceed the standard so you can enjoy a full and illustrious (and injury-free) military career.
Range of motion and flexibility
The Army uses the ACFT to test soldiers’ range of motion and flexibility. Because both these things are an indicator of combat fitness — and because the Army needs combat-ready warriors on the battlefield — these test events can help determine a soldier’s overall fitness. The fitness gurus behind the scenes know that having a good range of motion also helps prevent injury, so the Army wins twice: It gets the combat-ready soldiers it needs and keeps servicemembers fit to fight.
The Army is quick to point out that training for the ACFT doesn’t put you at a higher risk for injury, provided that you train properly and don’t overdo it. New training resources, like the updated Field Manual 7-22, Holistic Health and Fitness, include guidance on minimizing a soldier’s risk for injury while preparing for the test. See Chapters 7 and 8 for exercises to help you improve your range of motion, and Chapter 9 for stretches that can improve your flexibility.
Balance
Balance is an important part of the ACFT, and you use it in the 3 Repetition Maximum Deadlift and Standing Power Throw. The Army wants to see how well you can resist forces that cause falls (like throwing a medicine ball behind your head). Your core plays a huge role in balance, so these events show the military brass how well-conditioned your back, abs, and legs really are. Strengthening your core is just good business anyway. A strong core contributes to healthy mobility later in life; just as importantly, it makes fitting into your uniform and falling into the right spot on the Army’s height and weight chart easier. Wobble over to Chapter 8 for ideas on improving your balance to max out your ACFT scores.
Agility
Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. You’ve probably heard that at least a dozen times throughout your military career, and it applies to your mentality as well as your body. Modern combat situations require mobility and agility, and you see these two key abilities tested on the ACFT. Technically, mobility is the ability to move freely and easily, and agility is your ability to do so quickly. The Army needs to know that you’re able to move like a warrior. You don’t have to be a professional athlete, but you do have to meet Army standards.
Most notably, the ACFT checks out your mobility and agility in the Sprint-Drag-Carry event, where you have to perform three distinct exercises quick, fast, and in a hurry. I cover those in Chapter 2.
Explosive power
Movements that require maximum (or near-maximum) power output in a short amount of time tap into what fitness pros call explosive power. You see professional sports players use explosive power every time you watch a game; a quarterback uses it when he throws the ball, an outside hitter uses it when she spikes a volleyball, and wrestlers use it when they lift an opponent. The ACFT measures your explosive power in the Standing Power Throw, but that’s not the only event that requires it — you use explosive power during the Sprint-Drag-Carry, the Two-Mile Run (if you sprint to shave a few seconds off your time), and maybe even during the LTK.
Muscular strength and endurance
Remember the difference you and your family noticed in your physique after you graduated from Basic Combat Training (BCT)? When you joined the military, you may have already been strong — but you weren’t “Army Strong.” The ACFT measures your muscular strength and endurance in ways that you may not have trained for in BCT, and its demands are serious. It checks your muscular strength in four key areas: your legs, your core, your chest, and your upper back. You see muscular strength and endurance testing on the 3 Repetition Maximum Deadlift, Hand Release Push-Up – Arm Extension, Sprint-Drag-Carry, and LTK.
Aerobic exercise for cardiovascular endurance
The Army measures your aerobic fitness through its old standby, the Two-Mile Run. Though you’re unlikely to have to run for two miles in a combat situation (and you’re even more unlikely to have to do it in your PT uniform), you are likely to engage in aerobic exercise — cardio — on the battlefield. The Army needs to know you can hack it, and it figures out what your endurance is like by making you run. Getting a good picture of a soldier’s aerobic fitness takes about 12 minutes of continuous exercise, and most people take longer than that to cover two miles. (Personally, I’d rather the Army just made me run for 12 minutes to see how far I get, but so far, they haven’t been very receptive to the idea.)
Aerobic exercise requires your heart to pump oxygenated blood to your muscles. Your heart has to beat faster to keep up with your movement, and your body has to figure out how to balance itself out until you stop the exercise. Check out Table 1-1, which gives you a ballpark range for where your heart rate should be in beats per minute (bpm) during moderate and vigorous aerobic exercise. The American Heart Association doesn’t distinguish between ages 20 and 30 (that’s why you don’t see a row in the table for 25-year-olds) because people in that age bracket typically fall into the same heart rate zones. Chapter 8 shows you how to take your cardio fitness up a notch or two, so if that’s an area you need to improve, you can find suggestions there.
TABLE 1-1 Heart Rate Zones
| Age | Moderate Exercise | Vigorous Exercise |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | 100 to 170 bpm | 200 bpm |
| 30 | 95 to 162 bpm | 190 bpm |
| 35 | 93 to 157 bpm | 185 bpm |
| 40 | 90 to 153 bpm | 180 bpm |
| 45 | 88 to 149 bpm | 175 bpm |
| 50 | 85 to 145 bpm | 170 bpm |
| 55 | 83 to 140 bpm | 165 bpm |
| 60 | 80 to 136 bpm | 160 bpm |