The 62-year-old says he’s a 12-time world record holder. And, once again, he proved age isn’t a factor in being the world’s best.

The Marine veteran, who served as an officer with the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division, set the world record for “longest time in an abdominal plank position (male)” with a time of 8 hours, 15 minutes, 15 seconds, Guinness World Records reported.

“I believe in the plank as a total body-conditioning exercise,” Hood told Marine Corps Times on Friday. “I have learned a lot from training in that pose. It’s the best exercise I have ever done.”

Hood first beat the record in 2011 with a time of 1 hour, 20 minutes and 25 seconds, according to the organization. His recent time beat that of Mao Weidong of Beijing, China, who had lasted 8 hours, 1 minute in the plank position in 2016 — outlasting Hood in that competition.

After Marine Corps service, Hood served as a special agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service before his retirement as a supervisory special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration. He then undertook a stint as a law enforcement professional adviser to U.S. military forces in Afghanistan in 2008.

“I got involved in this because I was training anyway with the Marines,” Hood said. “At the beginning, this is about me, training to do my best. It runs in my blood!”

Hood began professional competitions with jumping rope and stationary cycling before deciding on planking, which became a Guinness World Record event in 2010 and recently was added as an option in the Marine Corps’ Physical Fitness Test.

He has 16 official attempts with 13 world records, spanning from 1986 to his most recent achievement in February, according to his count. Each record has been verified by at least one international agency.

The fitness fanatic also holds the international world record for planking at a time of 10 hours, 10 minutes, 10 seconds, accomplished in June 2018 near his home in the Chicagoland area, his website states. He also earned the world record for “The Most Plank Time Accumulated in 24 Hours,” a new category and record, with a time of 18 hours, 10 minutes, 10 seconds.

Both feats were accomplished at a 24-hour fundraising event at the Indian Boundary YMCA in Downers Grove, Illinois, where Hood was fitness director. Proceeds benefited the YMCA’s “Urban Warriors” program, which paired military veterans with violence-exposed youths for mentoring opportunities.

“I just need to inspire one,” Hood told the Aurora Beacon-News at the time. “One person, one reader, one club member. If I just inspire one to change their life without putting a hand on them, I’ve accomplished my goal.”

According to Guinness World Records, Hood completed 674,000 situps and 270,000 pushups and endured more than 2,100 hours of planking in preparation for the recent attempt.

Hood, the father of three sons — two of whom also served in the Marines — dedicated his recent, record-breaking performance to veterans’ mental health awareness. He completed the 8-hour session at 515 Fitness in Plainfield, Illinois, which boasts an “innovative, patented approach” to mental health counseling with physical fitness.

“I had the experience of going to Afghanistan, and it was the first time I had ever seen combat death, and I saw what these guys go through. That was a real eye-opener for me,” Hood told Marine Corps Times over the phone. “These guys come home, and they think, ‘We are Marines. We can handle it.’ But those experiences, the trauma that they go through is real.”

Through endurance competitions and setting world records, Hood said he aims to be an example for using exercise in healing.

“[Physical training] — that’s my anchor. That’s what grounds me. I’ll hold that [planking] pose for any Marine or civilian that walks through that gym door,” he said. “There are storms we go through everyday that we can weather. I want them to know there’s no stigma anymore.”

It’s been a little over a year and a half since Ray underwent the most important medical procedure of his life, a one-of-a-kind surgery he hoped would remedy catastrophic injuries he sustained eight years earlier.

The former Navy corpsman — he wished to remain anonymous — was on patrol in Afghanistan in 2010 when his team encountered a Taliban ambush that immediately inflicted heavy casualties. Ray leapt into action, scrambling toward a wounded Marine through a barrage of enemy fire.

Then, in a flash, he was hurtling through the air.

“I remember everything froze and I was upside down,” he told the MIT Technology Review. “I remember thinking … ‘This isn’t good.’ And then I was on my back.”

The blast from the roadside bomb triggered by the pressure of Ray’s boot would have undoubtedly killed personnel in conflicts when flimsy or nonexistent protective equipment did little to enhance survivability.

Ray’s gear kept him alive — barely.

Both of his legs were severed above the knee, injuries he would eventually learn to cope with through the use of prosthetics.

But Ray would leave much more than his legs behind in the dirt of Afghanistan.

The explosion ripped apart his midsection, severing his penis, scrotum, and a section of his abdominal wall.

In time, relief of having survived the catastrophic maiming dissolved into despair, with thoughts of living with such extensive disabilities prompting suicidal ideations.

“There were times you’d be hanging out and guys would be talking about getting hurt, and that’s one of the first things when they get blown up, to check down there, and they would say things like, ‘If I lost mine I’d just kill myself,’” he told the New York Times in an interview last year.

“When I would actually think about killing myself, I would think, ‘Am I really just gonna kill myself over a penis?’”

This recollection was echoed by Army Lt. Col. Timothy Tausch, the director of trauma and male reconstructive urology at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

“As soon as they wake up, they’re not asking about where their legs are,” he told the MIT Review. “They’re asking where the testicles and the penis are. You can’t put a number on how significantly this affects one of these wounded warriors’ lives.”

At the recommendation of his urologist at Walter Reed, Ray entered into discussion with medical professionals to explore what options existed for someone with his affliction.

It was during this time in 2013 that Ray met Richard Redett, a plastic surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore who specializes in genital reconstruction.

Redett was quick to recommend Ray undergo a phalloplasty, a procedure that, according to the MIT Technology Review, involves “a rolled tube of tissue, blood vessels, and nerves taken from the forearm or thigh and transplanted to the groin, an ersatz penis that needs an external pump to get erect.”

But Redett’s soon had a change of heart, and the surgeon opted instead to list Ray as a candidate for the first full penis and scrotum transplant ever performed on a military veteran.

“This was actually something that could fix me,” Ray told the MIT Review.

“I could go back to being normal again.”

Ray got the call to report to the hospital in March 2018. A recently deceased match had been found, an improbability that required a donor of similar age, color, and size.

First, transport of the graft had to be arranged in a way that ensured the tissue would survive a flight back to Maryland.

A single section was cut from the donor’s lower abdomen containing skin, muscles, tendons, bone, blood vessels and nerves. Transported on ice, the section measured 10 inches by 11 inches and weighed about five pounds, the New York Times reported.

When the graft arrived at Johns Hopkins, nine plastic surgeons and two urological surgeons got to work.

“We felt very confident we could do it, but we had never done it,” Redett told the MIT Review. “If you’re not anxious for something like that, you’re not thinking hard enough.”

Redett and his team completed the full transplant after a meticulous 14-hour procedure. At one point, up to 25 people were in the operating room.

The operation, which was estimated to cost between $300,000 and $400,000, was funded by Johns Hopkins, with each of the surgeons performing the procedure for free.

Two days would go by, the report said, until Ray could see the surgical result.

“In the back of your mind, you know this is a transplant, and you wonder if it’s going to be too much for you to handle,” he told the MIT Review. “Once I went through with the surgery, all of those concerns just went away.

“It was one of the best decisions I ever made.”

His quality of life has improved dramatically since the procedure, the report said, with Ray placing a renewed emphasis on physical fitness and a blossoming social life.

Functionally speaking, Ray can now urinate standing up. And while he’ll remain unable to father children due to the destruction of his own reproductive tissue, male enhancement medications like Testosterone and Cialis have made it possible for him to achieve erectile function.

“He told me, which was the best news I could hear, that it feels normal,” Redett told the MIT Review.

According to the report, 1,367 American service members have suffered genital injuries during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over 500 of those have been determined to be so severe that their only remedy may be the same procedure performed on Ray, of which only four total have ever been done.

So it comes as no surprise that the service wants to determine who is at risk for such injuries and how they can be prevented. What is unusual, though, is that Army researchers are not looking at traditional predictors of MSK workplace injuries like repetitive motion, weight, posture and weight-bearing loads, but at run times.

Run times? You bet. According to Dr. Bruce Jones, a senior Army Public Health Command physician, and Todd Hoover, operations division chief for the Army Wellness Center, males who can’t run 2 miles in less than 15 minutes and women whose 2-mile runs take longer than 18 minutes are at greatest risk for MSK injuries.

Add other factors, such as smoking, being below or above Army weight standards, or not getting enough sleep, and the risk climbs.

“The point is, this is preventable, so we can actually, through some targeted, precision programs, focus on soldiers who meet this risk criteria, refer them to Army Wellness Centers and then … coach their behaviors to improve their performance and decrease the risk factors,” Hoover told reporters during a briefing at the Association of the United States Army annual meeting Oct. 16 in Washington.

The pressure for soldiers to be physically fit is high: their missions often depend on it and they must meet military physical fitness standards each year, including the new Army Combat Fitness Test, to be rolled out service-wide in fiscal 2020.

The traditional approach to getting soldiers in shape has been to increase their physical training — more miles spent on roads running or marching or increased trips to the gym.

But Jones and Hoover say these approaches usually don’t improve fitness, they only lead to injury.

“The more you do it, the more you get injured,” Jones said. “There are a couple of studies that suggest there are thresholds of training above which injury rates increase but fitness does not … you have to tailor this at the unit level and at the soldier level.”

And here’s where run times come in. Units — and the soldiers themselves — can identify who is at risk for injury if they don’t meet the 15-minute or 18-minute 2-mile run time criteria. Then, through the Army Wellness Centers, they can develop a plan to increase their aerobic fitness, not by adding more time in the gym, but through high-intensity interval training, HIIT, or other types of training.

“HIIT is a way of getting more fit with fewer footsteps. There’s a bigger bang for your buck,” Jones said. “If you’re trying more and you’re not getting more fit, especially if you get injuries, those are the three cardinal signs. There’s a way to back off on training … We are not saying you should do less work, we are saying that it needs to be looked at more objectively and scientifically.”

The service operates 35 Army Wellness Centers worldwide that provide weight management and metabolic testing, exercise testing and prescriptions, stress management and biofeedback, body composition analysis, nutrition education and wellness coaching.

As part of the exercise testing and prescriptions, some facilities have a new device called the K5 wearable metabolic analyzer, which measures maximum oxygen uptake during exercise, heart rate, stress and other physical measures. Used alongside other tests such as body mass index measures and resting metabolic rate, Army Wellness Centers can guide troops to optimal fitness, the researchers said.

Sometimes, the trimmest soldiers or those with bulging muscles aren’t the fittest.

“We’ve been arguing for some time — it’s not necessarily the Army’s position — but we’ve been arguing that you need to look at fitness and fatness to decide which soldiers are optimally ready,” Jones said.

According to the APHC, knee injuries, caused by overuse, are the most common MSK condition among soldiers, followed by back problems related to physical training or vigorous operations.

The knee and other overuse injuries are the ones that can be addressed by increasing a person’s aerobic fitness, Hoover said.

Running slowly puts less stress on knees but the decrease in stress is negated by the increased number of steps slower runners take, actually adding more stress to the joints.

Increasing a runner’s aerobic fitness through HIIT or other training method, and the chance of developing an acute or chronic MSK injury declines.

“In the general population, we think to solve a problem we have to do more … but the reality is it sometimes takes more of a precision approach,” Hoover said.

Army Wellness Centers are designed to help soldiers, family members, retirees and anyone in the military health system whose health and fitness are affected by abnormally low or high body mass index, are unfit or could benefit from nutritional guidance and sleep issues that affect performance.

They are available to beneficiaries through a doctor, unit or self-referral.

The centers aim to improve health and fitness in the military community (AWCs are open to all branches of service) to increase readiness, decrease attrition and save the Pentagon billions. While the researchers did not have the current estimated cost to the Army of the monetary loss caused by decreased productivity or the medical costs of treating MSK injuries, Pentagon estimates in 2001 for all the services were between $12 billion and $20 billion.

The Army researchers said the service must develop new approaches to fitness that will improve readiness and save money, even if it means changing a mindset that believes more training leads to a fitter force.

“The data’s pretty clear that if you are in poor aerobic fitness — poor aerobic capacity — and either lower or high body composition, those are the risk factors … The mindset [now] is you look at people aesthetically, you look at weight or the guys with the big muscles and you think they are physically fit … but the reality is that aesthetics really aren’t necessarily the best indicator,” Hoover said.

Locations of all Army Wellness Centers are located on the Army’s AWC website.

Robert Wilkins, a retired Air Force master sergeant, was appointed by President Donald Trump earlier this year to serve a two-year term on the White House Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition.

Wilkins is also head of veterans outreach for Sightline Media and leads the media company’s nationwide outreach efforts with veterans’ groups. He also helps support the news organization’s expanded coverage of multi-generational veteran’s issues.

The council’s purpose is to “promote, encourage and motivate Americans of all ages to become physically active and participate in sports.” The PCSFN is made up of athletes, chefs, physicians, fitness professionals and educators who serve in an advisory capacity through the secretary of Health and Human Services.

“You do not realize the importance of your health until it’s gone,” Wilkins said when referring to how he wants to encourage motivation for fitness and nutrition in the country.

Military leaders in recent years have voiced growing concern about fitness among today’s youth because the vast majority are unfit for military service, primarily due to obesity.

According to Trump’s executive order on the council: “My Administration recognizes the benefits of youth sports participation, physical activity, and a nutritious diet in helping create habits that support a healthy lifestyle and improve the overall health of the American people. My Administration therefore aims to expand and encourage youth sports participation, and to promote the overall physical fitness, health, and nutrition of all Americans.”

The presidential council publishes guidelines and standards that allow the president’s office to issue awards for physical activity tests and challenges. The council members will meet twice a year under the oversight of first daughter Ivanka Trump.

Wilkins said he hopes the council will be able to help raise general awareness about fitness and encourage young people to take the first steps toward a healthy lifestyle.

“Taking it slow and tracking one’s progress is a great method for steady improvement,” Wilkins said when referencing what it takes to get started.

Notable members of the president’s council also include former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and former NASA astronaut Jim Lovell.

Left to their own devices, they focus on the bench presses, squats and deadlifts they have been doing since high school. Maybe they throw in some single-joint exercises for good measure — after all, who doesn’t want to look great with their sleeves rolled up?

They live in a military culture that obsesses over fitness and nutrition. Despite having greater access to expert (and not-so-expert) advice on more health-related topics than ever before, the military is still struggling with high occurrences of exercise-related injuries. The Army alone spends $3.8 billion annually on musculoskeletal injuries.

What’s wrong with this picture? Plenty.

Forget about aesthetics or your 1RM deadlift. The focus should be on training as a tactical athlete for what matters most: performing the real-world tasks that could be a matter of life and death. Tactical athletes who only squat, deadlift, and bench — and then deploy into a three-dimensional environment — will be in trouble.

So the next time you’re at the base gym, keep these tips in mind:

Three-plane approach. Incorporate the full spectrum of strength, speed and power in all planes of motion. If all you do is squat, bench and deadlift, you’re training the sagittal plane but ignoring exercises that involve rotation (transverse plane) or lateral movements (frontal plane). Your body is lacking symmetry and is vulnerable and untrained in those areas.

A great rotational exercise for the torso is the half kneeling tube rotation: Anchor a tube to the wall so it’ll be at chest height when you’re on one knee. Face perpendicular to the anchor with your knee closest to the anchor on the ground, then grab the handle and move away from the anchor to create tension in the tube. With arms extended in front of your chest, rotate your torso over the outside leg without allowing your hips to move. Flex the abdominals and maintain tall spinal posture throughout.

Quality over quantity. For some service members, it is more appealing to lift 500 pounds poorly than 300 pounds properly. Placing an emphasis on quality sets you up for longevity. You’ll perform and feel better as you age.

A quick best-practices primer:

• Maintain a good base of support: Balanced symmetrical foot position that is typically between hip- and shoulder-width apart.
• Keep neutral hips and spinal posture. Imagine your hips as two bowls side-by-side filled with water. Neutral is any angle where no water spills.
  
• Create intra-abdominal pressure: Fill the belly up with air prior to movement, maintain pressure throughout, and exhale back at the start.
  

Stretch and recover. You have to be able to counter the stresses of your job and your exercise — that means you have to stretch and perform some soft-tissue work. Most exercise-induced musculoskeletal injuries are preventable. Decreasing your exercise volume every few months and incorporating recovery into your daily regime is key.

Every day, perform soft-tissue work and stretch the muscle groups worked in your training that day. If you performed lateral and medial hip work, for instance, use a foam roller to attack your gluteus medius (side of the pelvis), tensor fasciae latae (outside of your upper thigh) and adductor group (inside upper thigh). Follow that up with a figure four and frog stretch to lengthen the tissue. Check out this video for guidance.

You can still get strong. Building muscle isn’t the problem: In fact, being stronger reduces the amount of perceived stress and increases the body’s ability to absorb and produce force. It’s how and where you build that strength, and what other areas you might be neglecting as you begin another set of biceps curls, where problems come in.

Capt. Anthony Cruz is a former officer in charge of the Army Master Fitness Trainer Course and current Medical Services officer in the Army Reserves. He coaches full-time at Dynamic Fitness High Performance Kinesiology, where he works with recruits, active-duty military, fire and police, as well as veterans. He earned a master’s degree in exercise science. Get more workout tips from his cheat sheet, “7 Powerful Ways to Peak Performance,” here and follow him on social media (@dftacticalperformance).

Some ran figure-eights around cones to test their agility, leaning heavily to one side as they curved around, lightly touching the floor to maintain their balance. One TACP’s feet slipped out from under him, and he skidded on the ground, prompting laughter and a pained “Oh!” from his fellow TACPs.

Another planted his feet, gave a 20-pound medicine ball a few test swings, and flung it behind him and over his head. He turned around, glanced at how far it had gone, and muttered disappointingly, “I threw it too high.”

Those were just two events in a new test designed to measure the Air Force’s first career field-specific physical fitness standards — called Tier 2 standards.

The test, which is being finalized now, seeks to evaluate how well TACP airmen and their officer equivalents, air liaison officers, can perform the physical tasks required for their jobs.

The test is expected to go into effect sometime next year. And other physically active career fields — both inside and out of the battlefield airmen community — could follow with their own specialized standards.

Neil Baumgartner, chief of the Air Force’s exercise science unit, who led the design of Tier 2 standards, said that the Air Force is well on its way to establishing career field-specific standards for two other battlefield jobs — combat rescue officers and pararescuemen.

The Air Force is also working on standards for explosive ordnance disposal airmen, who are not considered battlefield airmen.

By the end of 2018, Baumgartner hopes those three jobs will have established at least prototypes of their own standards.

Job-specific standards are also in the works for the remaining battlefield jobs: special tactics officers, combat controllers, and special operations weather.

The Air Force is considering crafting similar standards for other jobs that require physical activity but don’t fall in the special tactics or battlefield airmen categories. That could include firefighters, security forces, SERE, loadmasters, civil engineers, and others.

“The task going forward is to take this goodness into the other occupational communities within the battlefield airmen community,” said Col. William Fischer, chief of the military force policy division. “And then there’s other communities that we feel also have very specific, occupationally based physical requirements. I think you’ll see this kind of Tier 2 test go out to other career fields.

“As we finalize this first wave, we’re going to take that feedback and engage other communities in the Air Force and find out if this kind of science would apply and benefit their communities.”

It’s crucial to tailor each Tier 2 standard to the specific requirements of each career field, Baumgartner said.

“You have wide ranges of requirements across the” career fields in the Air Force, Baumgartner said. “What a TACP has to do on the battlefield is dramatically different than even what another battlefield airman has to do, let alone the rest of the Air Force.”

Fit to fight

The Air Force kicked off its rollout of the Tier 2 standards with demonstrations Jan. 8-9 to the group of TACPs, who were in the Washington area for a summit of senior enlisted TACPs.

Over the next few months, the Air Force’s personnel office and other organizations will finalize the policy rules.

Policy decisions that have not been finalized include what happens if someone fails a test and isn’t qualified to go downrange, and how long they will have to correct that problem.

Chief Master Sgt. Matthew Nugent, the Air Force’s TACP career field manager, said one option could be to allow TACPs three chances to pass, and then either separate them or reclassify them into another job.

In rare cases, Nugent said, commanders could have the option of issuing a waiver for a TACP who fails the test but has the potential to come back and qualify in the future.

Maj. Justin Bañez, the Air Force’s career field manager for ALOs, said TACPs will likely have to take the test annually, and it will probably be at random to make sure they are fit year-round.

By the time 2019 begins, the new PT standards are expected to be fully in effect, said Bañez, who also is the close air support branch chief.

Baumgartner has been thinking about how to establish these kinds of standards for about two decades, but the Air Force has been working on it in earnest since about 2013.

It’s not just about determining physical fitness, Fischer said. The new tests will make sure the TACPs are the best TACPs they can be.

“In the end, we think we’re going to get better TACPs out of projects like this,” Fischer said.

Nugent said the tougher standards will also build young TACPs’ confidence that they will be able to handle the grueling physical challenges they’ll encounter on their first deployment.

“Before I deployed [for the first time], I was required to be Tier 1 compliant,” Nugent said. “Pushups, situps, and a 1.5-mile run, I didn’t have the confidence going into combat from that test.

“This test gives you confidence. If you watch our NCOs taking this test, if you watch the sweat and the exertion … when they’re done, [they’ll say] ‘Hey, I feel confident going into combat.’ If you’re confident going into combat, then you’re going to kill the enemy and break stuff.”

Higher standards

The Tier 2 standards are intended to set a minimum baseline of strength, speed, agility, and endurance necessary for TACPs and ALOs to be able to do their jobs.

Unlike the regular fitness standards, which all other airmen are required to meet and are now referred to as Tier 1 standards, Tier 2 standards are the same no matter what gender or age an airman is — either they can do the job, or they can’t.

“The Tier 1 PT test is a health-based test,” Bañez said. “It makes sure you are healthy and determines your risk for cardiovascular disease, but it’s not necessarily a good predictor of your ability to do your job. The Tier 2 test focuses on what your career field requirements are — what are your critical physical tasks. For a TACP, that could range anywhere from having to pull my buddy who gets shot, to be able to climb over obstacles, or into a helicopter, those types of things. This test is supposed to be predictive of your ability to do those types of tasks.”

The Tier 2 tests have also been designed to take into account the heavy equipment TACPs wear, which means airmen will perform these tests in their regular PT gear — not in battle rattle.

The only component both tests have in common — the 1.5-mile run — is much tougher under the new standards.

In the Air Force-wide Tier 1 test, men under 30 must run that distance in no more than 13 minutes and 36 seconds to avoid failing.

But to avoid failing the Tier 2 test, a TACP or ALO must run 1.5 miles in 11:31 or less.

The TACP and ALO test drops the pushups and situps all other airmen must now do.

The other nine components of the new test include a 1,000-meter row, a 100-yard farmer’s carry, an extended cross knee crunch, weighted lunges, pullups, a trap bar deadlift with five repetitions, a two-cone agility drill, a medicine ball toss, and a grip strength test.

In November, the Air Force exempted TACPs and ALOs from having to take most Tier 1 tests. The one exception was the abdominal circumference, or tape test, which will still be required.

TACPs and ALOs will get anywhere from 1 to 10 points on each component, and must score a total of at least 46 points out of 100 to pass.

However, anyone who scores a 1 in any component automatically fails the test.

The components “are all linked,” Bañez said. “Not being able to do any one thing would be indicative of a risk to your ability to do your job. A guy can be really good at lifting heavy weights, but if I need him to ruck to the objective, three or four miles, and he can’t do it, then he’s not really effective. You need a good balance across the board.”

Nugent also said it’s important to maintain these standards because TACPs can get up to $525 a month in incentive pays.

If the Air Force is paying out that money to a TACP, it needs to be sure he can deploy and do the job when called upon.

The tests also will make sure TACPs aren’t hiding any injuries that the Tier 1 standards might not reveal, Nugent said.

“If you’re a young staff sergeant with two children, and you’re earning [hundreds of dollars] a month in proficiency pays, and you come back from a deployment and you’re hurt, you’re going to be more reluctant to say something about your injuries,” Nugent said. “And you may mask those injuries because you don’t want to lose proficiency pay.

“This test forces our guys to have those conversations, because you can’t hide behind Tier 1 anymore. If I know you’re struggling with this event — ‘Hey what is going on?’ ‘Well, Chief, I didn’t want to tell you, but I’ve got a lower back injury.’ So, it provides a good look in the mirror.”

Feedback from the field

To set up these standards, Air Force officials sat down with TACPs and ALOs to collect a list of real-world scenarios and mission requirements.

“Whatever they needed to do regularly in the field, [Baumgartner] then took those muscle groups and those muscle movements and went from there,” Air Force spokeswoman Brooke Brzozowske said.

This included requirements like being able to move while carrying 65 pounds of radios, batteries and other heavy equipment on their backs, Bañez said.

The Air Force studied airmen doing those kinds of tasks in full gear in simulated battlefield scenarios, and then studied those same airmen doing exercises in PT gear with standard exercise equipment.

Officials then looked at the results to see which exercise results correlated with success in the simulated battlefield tasks, and used those correlations to build the Tier 2 requirements.

For example, the two-cone drill is meant to measure TACPs’ agility, balance and coordination.

In combat, a TACP under fire might have to stay low and “move from a covered position, to another covered position, return fire, maybe have to go grab something,” Bañez said. “Especially as TACPs — we’re on the battlefield in close proximity to the enemy, and oftentimes we have to maneuver to get to a better vantage point to be able to call in close-air support. We may have to grab a buddy that’s down.”

TACPs also carry a much heavier load than most troops on the battlefield, Nugent said.

Not only do they have to carry the same body armor, weapons and ammunition as other troops, but they also have to carry multiple radios and batteries necessary to call in airstrikes when things get hot.

What’s more, Fischer said, sometimes they have to move up steep inclines such as the mountains of Afghanistan while carrying that weight. Other times, they’ll have to drop to take cover from incoming fire, and then get up quickly and repeatedly to move to another location, all while being weighted down with all that equipment.

That’s why the test includes weighted lunges, performed to a metronome ticking at 56 beats per minute with a 50-pound sandbag on their back.

The Air Force found that such weighted lunges would be an effective way to measure how well TACPs would perform those physical tasks under that weight.

The medicine ball exercise is meant to track how effectively a TACP can lift and move heavy equipment in the field, or toss a sandbag when setting up a base.

The trap bar deadlift — where TACPs must lift at least 276 pounds five times — requires tremendous lower body strength and could translate to having to lift an injured comrade on the battlefield, Fischer and Nugent said.

“What happens when one of your buddies to your left or your right goes down?” Nugent said. “And now you’re dragging him away from the battlefield to get him to a safe place to administer combat aid. That right there is a measure of that ability. Lower body strength is important.”

The Air Force considered a one-rep test, but ultimately decided on five repetitions to measure endurance as well as strength.

“What good are you on the battlefield if I get you somewhere and you can only do something once?” Fischer said.

Bañez said airmen in the TACP and ALO career fields have known that these standards have been coming for the past two years or so and have been training to them already.

The Air Force has also been providing the necessary equipment, such as the particular size and type of Dynamax medicine balls required and hand grip dynamometer.

Strength and conditioning coaches and physical therapists embedded in the units are building their training programs to make sure airmen are focused on the right elements, and not too-long runs or “beach body muscles,” Bañez said.

And, Fischer said, the coaches and therapists will be paying closer attention to how airmen exercise before the test to make sure they train more efficiently and safely.

“We’re able to be smarter about our physical fitness — not just sweating for sweating’s sake,” Fischer said. “We can catch problems before they magnify” and turn into injuries.

And, “This is fun.”

The winds were blowing freezing rain, covering him and the bike. He had taken off his iced-over goggles, leaving his eyes exposed to the elements.

“I couldn’t even use my GPS because it was all ice, all the buttons were iced over,” said Sweeney, 52. “That’s what I expected the race to be like: miserable. It was just so cool.”

“Cool” may not be everyone’s first word choice to describe this experience, but for Sweeney, it was his favorite part of a three-day, 200-mile winter bike race that covered portions of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The longest of three races that make up the Jay P’s Fat Pursuit event, Sweeney was one of 25 entrants and 20 finishers, taking 13th place with a time of 51 hours, 15 minutes.

“I just love it,” he said of the harsh conditions. “It’s when I’m at my best.”

It was the first winter bike race for Sweeney, the Bioenvironmental Engineering Element Chief at Buckley Air Force Base, Colorado. He didn’t even own a winter bike, but he did bring extensive backpacking and biking experience.

In 2013, he biked 700 miles of the Tour Divide Race in six days. The 2,800-mile course stretches from the U.S.-Mexico border into southwestern Canada, but he had to stop when his bike failed him in New Mexico.

Sweeney, who plans on retiring in the fall of 2019 to race full time, also bikes to and from work, about 46 miles round trip, three or four days a week. The other days he takes it easy, only biking a total of 20 miles and riding the light rail part of the way.

“My goal is to only drive once a month [to work],” he said, including the winter months.

‘I WAS DEFINITELY NERVOUS’

Jay Petervary, an endurance biker who once held the record for fastest completion time of Alaska’s 1,000-mile Iditarod Trail Invitational, founded the Fat Pursuit event in 2014 and added the 200-mile race in 2016. Sweeney said he considered tackling the 200-miler about four or five months ago; he emailed Petervary, who approved of the winter travel experience he had backpacking.

“I told him, my goals of the race are: No. 1, to live. No. 2, to not have to get rescued, and No. 3, to finish,” Sweeney said, laughing.

He succeeded on all accounts. Only 34 racers have finished the 200-mile event in its history; only one finished in 2017.

Those statistics weighed on his mind heavily at the starting line Jan. 5.

“I was definitely nervous at the start,” Sweeney said. “There were some really top-list racers. I first thought, am I good enough to do this?”

But he had a plan: Ride as long as he could on the first day, rest for four hours, ride as long as he could on Day 2, rest for four hours, and so on. He started off slowly, to conserve energy and to stay out of the way of the faster racers.

His wife, Elizabeth, watched his progress on a location tracker at the race’s headquarters. Sweeney said he was motivated by her and “a lot of my friends … watching the tracker and rooting for me to finish. I absolutely believe the reason I can finish these races is their support.”

UPS AND DOWNS (AND ICE CREAM)

At times it was fun, like when the first rest stop had ice cream waiting.

Other times, it was downright scary. Sweeney said he miscalculated the time it would take to reach the first checkpoint, leaving him on the road longer than expected.

“I was energy deprived from not eating and I got a little bit scared at how cold I got,” he said. “I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to recover.”

He estimates he slept about 30 minutes on the first night, too high on adrenaline to fully rest. He said he got about two hours of rest the next night, but crossed the finish line on the third day feeling “really good.”

Even better was his post-race shower, and dinner with his wife at the race headquarters.

“I think I had pizza. It was so good,” he said, thinking back to the energy bars and freeze-dried meals he relied on for over two days.

After 200 wintery miles on the Fat Pursuit, Sweeney’s first thought post finish line was, “OK, I’m done. What’s next?”

One plan: Revisiting the Tour Divide and finishing the 2,100 miles he missed the first time.

Push, don’t pull: “It’s more leg-driven focus,” said Army Maj. Donald Bigham, chief of human performance at the Human Performance Integrative Office at Fort Benning, Georgia, whose in-competition deadlifts have topped 630 pounds. “They’ve got to treat it as a push, rather than a pull. … Learn how to push first, because your legs are the strongest.”

The push will help stabilize your back, Bigham said, setting your frame up so you can lock out the weight easier. He’s a big proponent of the lift in general, calling it “probably the best exercise you can do to focus on strength.”

Target weaknesses. “When you get to a maximal weight, where are you failing?” asked Staff Sgt. Brad Arbic, who recently managed an 805-pound deadlift in training and has topped 765 pounds in competition.

If you’ve got trouble getting the weight off the ground, Arbic suggests deficit deadlifts — stand on a plate to force yourself to pull farther than you normally would. Trouble locking out? Consider block pulls or pin pulls, where the bar begins farther up the lift and “you’re actually starting at the hardest part, or the part where you fail,” Arbic said.

Don’t just jump in. “I think it’s awesome that the Army has added [the lift] to some of their tests, but they shouldn’t rush putting a ton of weight on the bar,” said Marine Lance Cpl. Mckenzie Curtis, a former junior worlds powerlifter who’s now a military police officer stationed in Japan. “That can actually hurt you more than help you.”

Curtis champions an incremental strength-building approach (get the basics here). And while she’s not facing a deadlift as part of her Marine fitness testing, she did do seven pullups on her last Physical Fitness Test to max out her point total.

“I’m training to do 20 like the males,” she said.

Literally.

“What we see in the mirror is what we work on,” said Army Maj. Donald Bigham, an elite-level powerlifter and chief of human performance at the Human Performance Integrative Office at Fort Benning, Georgia. “We’re doing our chests, we’re doing our biceps, we’re doing our quads, we’re putting ourselves in a position that [ignores] our posterior chain, which is what allows for physical dominance.”

Military Times spoke with Bigham and other competitive powerlifters in uniform to get some tips on getting stronger — whether it’s part of a New Year’s fitness resolution or a plan of attack to take on an upcoming fitness test. Some of their best advice:

1. Posterior plan. So, how would Bigham — the Army’s 2016 male athlete of the year after winning four gold medals at that year’s International Powerlifting Federation Raw Powerlifting Championship — recommend shaking up your workout?

“If I could change one thing in the gym, it would be to cut out so much anterior work,” he said. “Cut out the bench press on Mondays, the ‘bis and tris’ on Tuesdays and the 100,000 abdominals on Wednesdays.”

Instead, Bigham suggested a 180-degree rotation. Functional strength will come from exercises targeting the glutes, hamstrings and the rest of the posterior chain, he said. Biceps curls will help with what troops see in the mirror, but won’t help during ruck marches.

Bigham weighs in around 180 pounds. His in-competition squat tops 600 pounds. The 45-year-old has been a competitive lifter since 1991, when he was introduced to the sport as an enlisted Marine serving in Okinawa, Japan.

2. Power trio. Not surprisingly, the trio of powerlifters we spoke with advocated for the three lifts — squat, deadlift and bench press — that make up powerlifting competitions.

But it’s not just out of loyalty or personal focus, said Army Staff Sgt. Brad Arbic, an intelligence analyst with 7th Special Forces Group whose 766-pound deadlift in a November event in Las Vegas set a record for his age and weight class.

The three core lifts “really encapsulate all of the musculature,” said Arbic, 35, who weighs in around 300 pounds but can pass the Army’s tape test thanks in part to a 22-inch neck. They also direct focus away from areas that might not need it.

“You’ll see guys putting a lot of attention on very small muscles,” Arbic said. “For example, biceps. Biceps are a very, very small muscle in comparison to the other muscles in your body, but they probably receive the preponderance of attention.”

3. Go slow. Before the Marine Corps sent her to Okinawa as a military policeman, 20-year-old Lance Cpl. Mckenzie Curtis already had international travel experience as a member of the U.S. junior worlds powerlifting team that competed in Prague in 2015. She took second in her weight class, and though she gave up the sport (and lost 30 pounds or so) when she joined the Marines, she’s recently picked it back up.

Her approach to adding muscle: Don’t take shortcuts, and don’t expect big leaps in performance.

“Going up gradually each week may not seem like much, but in the long run you will see results,” said Curtis, who competes in the 84-kilogram (181-pound) class but said she may drop to 158 pounds as her lifting career continues.

She builds power by adding five pounds per week to low-repetition, high-effort sessions on the core lifts: three sets, five reps each for squat and deadlift, five-by-five for bench. Too much to add? Go smaller if you must, but keep going.

“My coach actually made special plates that allowed me to go up 2.5 pounds a week,” Curtis said. “He’s a welder.”

4. Be flexible. Bigham isn’t big on single-joint exercises — they may help define a targeted muscle group, but they’re not reflective of the multi-muscle movements required of service members in the field.

“We don’t move on fixed objects,” said Bigham, whose gold-medal collection includes wins at events hosted by weightlifting icons Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lee Haney. “So if [service members] can learn to move weight in space — I don’t care if it’s a kettlebell, a dumbbell, a barbell — at the end of the day, they’re going to be a better tactical athlete. They’re going to be able to complete that last 100 yards with success.”

Already on the kettlebell bandwagon? Bigham suggests trying to keep the ball in space, rather than resting it on your wrist or forearm, for an additional stabilization workout.

5. Be versatile. The squat, deadlift and bench may provide a stellar core workout, but that doesn’t mean you can limit your fitness regimen to those exercises, or any other group of lifts.

Curtis recently completed her first half-marathon and mixes in multiple visits to the StairMaster with her lifting routine. Arbic clocked a 15:50 on his most recent two-mile run. Bigham said a typical 20- to 25-hour training week should include four to eight hours of active recovery work, which could involve anything from stretching to a brisk walk.

6. Don’t ignore stop signs. “You’ve got to understand your pain scale from zero to 10,” Bigham said. “Anything above a three in training, we don’t do … because now we’re deteriorating. We’re taking away from that movement pattern. We can stay under three and do those exercises, it can still be a benefit for us.”

Smart lifting can build strength and help address lingering injuries; Arbic said the pain from an early-career back injury sustained during an airborne operation has dropped drastically thanks in part to his workout routine.

And while he may not favor single-joint exercises for building overall strength, Bigham said they have great value for troops working through injuries. Targeting a weakened area gives the lifter a greater sense of what progress is being made, what parts of his form are being affected and, most importantly, a clear line on what’s causing any pain.

Beyond injury, there are other reasons to put on the brakes.

“The only thing worse than not training at all is overtraining,” Arbic said. “You put yourself in a position of being overtrained, you increase your potential for injury exponentially.”

7. Know your fuel. All three lifters stressed the importance of proteins when it comes to building muscle. Bigham recommended between 1.5 and 1.9 grams of protein for every kilogram of body weight — that might mean 175 grams or more of protein a day, so don’t count on a daily steak (60 or so grams for a 9-ounce meal) to check the box.

Arbic leans toward tuna, while Curtis is a fan of protein bars. All three lifters stressed that dietary needs will vary widely based on the individual and the fitness goal; Arbic suggested learning as much as you can about your resting metabolic rate and other factors before you dive in on a new diet plan.

“You have to understand how much you’re burning” before you can start building strength, the 6-foot-2 staff sergeant said, “and then you have to take in excess.”

8. Stay still. Don’t be the lifter at the gym who is moving everything … except the bar.

“You see somebody benching, their feet are moving around, their body’s flopping around, there’s all this extra movement,” Arbic said. “That’s not helping them generate the force required to push the weight. … You’re essentially bleeding energy.”

Stop shuffling your feet and “plant yourself to the floor,” said Arbic, who restarted his competitive powerlifting career in 2015 after earning a world title in 2003 as a 21-year-old. “Set your position and hold it.”

9. Ask. Arbic’s build, and the number of plates he uses, can draw some questions from fellow lifters.

“They’ll always preface it with, ‘I don’t bench 500 pounds, but …’ ” he said. “And I’m like, ‘Dude, your max to you is the same as my max to me. It feels the same. The only thing that separates you and me is time.’ ”

He started a YouTube channel with videos that address some basic weightlifting techniques and concerns.

Curtis suggested YouTube as a good starting point for those seeking weight-room tips or interested in breaking bad habits.

“I see it a lot: People not squatting low enough, bouncing their reps on the bench off their chest, and deadlifting with complete back bending over,” she said. “Watch videos. Ask fellow lifters for advice. Don’t be discouraged.”