{"id":39642,"date":"2017-08-15T20:37:21","date_gmt":"2017-08-15T20:37:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/militarytimes\/uncategorized\/2017\/08\/15\/the-army-is-testing-a-new-combat-fitness-test\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T02:08:06","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T02:08:06","slug":"the-army-is-testing-a-new-combat-fitness-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/militarytimes\/news\/your-military\/2017\/08\/15\/the-army-is-testing-a-new-combat-fitness-test\/","title":{"rendered":"The Army is testing a new combat fitness test"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The jury is most definitely in: The Army Physical Fitness Test, for all its simplicity and efficiency, does not measure how well a soldier will perform under fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Army has known that for years, officials told Army Times, and the service has spent more than a decade looking for a better way to not only measure combat readiness but also to train soldiers to that standard while reducing injuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Program managers at the Center for Initial Military Training think they\u2019ve finally got the right test: A six-event slog dubbed the Army Combat Readiness Test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They rolled it out in an early August pilot at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, where members of that state\u2019s National Guard and special operators from 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment gave it a whirl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[The ARCT] is as close physically as you can get to replicate the types of physical actions you\u2019ll do on the battlefield,\u201d Staff Sgt. Talen Peterson, a Ranger assigned to 2nd Battalion\u2019s Headquarters and Headquarters Company, told Army Times on Aug. 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The test, designed to be given to soldiers when they report to their first units, is different from the standard APFT in a very basic way: It measures five kinds of fitness versus the APFT\u2019s one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn reality, this has been in the works since the early 2000s,\u201d said Whitfield East, a research physiologist at CIMT, which is part of Training and Doctrine Command. \u201cSoon after we went to war, it was pretty self-evident that the APFT did not sufficiently identify the high physical demand capacities that soldiers needed to execute warrior tasks and battle drills and common soldier tasks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Running, sit-ups and push-ups all measure muscular endurance. They also do a great job of measuring basic heart and lung health, experts say, but don\u2019t have a lot to do with the kind of physical fitness needed to load artillery rounds or haul wounded troops out of the line of fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Five domains\u2019<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With that in mind, CIMT sought to create a fitness test that most closely resembled the Army\u2019s standard for combat skills: Warrior tasks and battle drills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you reverse-engineer combat specific tasks, you end up needing to train five different domains of physical fitness,\u201d Lt. Col. David Feltwell, the principal doctrine developer for the Army\u2018s physical readiness program.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those domains include muscular and cardiovascular endurance \u2014 which is measured by the APFT \u2014 muscular strength, explosive strength and agility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPrevious tests and attempts, or revisions, didn\u2019t get at all five of those fitness domains,\u201d Feltwell added. \u201cYou end up leaving a gap in a soldier\u2019s combat readiness if you don\u2018t train, for example, anaerobic endurance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n