For 40 years, the Army implemented the APFT, or Army Physical Fitness Test. It was perhaps not the greatest test in the world at measuring a soldier's physical fitness, but it was easy to administer and to a large extent succeeded in its manageable goal of assessing a baseline level of fitness.
The APFT graded soldiers on three events, the push-up, sit-up, and two-mile run. Points were tallied for each event on two separate tables, one for men and one for women.
In a push to make soldiers more physically fit with combat-focused events which should better translate to how soldiers have to perform in the field, the Army created the Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) which is currently in the process of replacing the now obsolete APFT. The new test introduced a gender-neutral grading system, meaning there was no difference in how male and female soldiers were graded.
Then the controversy began.
The ACFT consisted of six events, required equipment the previous PT test did not, and included an event called the leg tuck which surprisingly became a sticking point for modern military gender politics as some female soldiers thought the event was unfair. Now the leg tuck can be substituted with the plank exercise. And gender-based grading standards? They're back too.
That controversy recently came to the forefront in a congressional hearing in which Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida, a former Special Forces soldier, began asking questions during a panel about Special Operations culture.
"My concern is that on the one hand, we make all of these areas accessible and I think that's absolutely right. But then a few years later, we start questioning, well, why do we only have certain numbers in the force? So one, do you agree with the gender-neutral standard physicality?" the congressman asked RAND corporation analyst Linda Robinson.
"I do believe gender-neutral standards are important and standards need to be high because that is the essence of what Special Operations Forces require," Robinson replied. She went on to say that there are other subtle barriers that women in the military are up against, but that does not mean that training standards should be lowered.
Waltz pointed out that, "They're now reversing course and going back to male and female physical standards ... and now they're getting a lot of pressure that having one standard is now discriminatory.
"So it seems to me where some groups are talking out of both sides of their mouth here," Waltz continued. "So now we're gonna have male and female standards for the infantry for special forces, for artillery, and last I checked, the enemy's bullets don't care. Carrying that guy to the helicopter doesn't care. The artillery round doesn't care. It's a standard." Unfortunately, the congressman's time elapsed and Mrs. Robinson was not able to respond during the hearing itself.
Army Major and neuroscientist Allison Brager said these are the growing pains as the Army implements a newer, tougher PT test.
"Tough shit, this is the new standard, you meet it or you don't. My own personal opinion, I think it is better to have quality over quantity," she told Connecting Vets. From her point of view, the ACFT is a good test that measures aerobic and anaerobic fitness but is now being watered down for political reasons as the Army releases 2.0 and 3.0 variations in response to criticism.
"The ACFT 1.0 was the way to go, not this 3.0. They are watering it down," she said. "They violated all the principles of scientific method," she explained because after doing the data-driven research the Army is now changing the standards in order to get a different end result.
"That's not how science works," she said.
However, there may be some legitimate complaints about the ACFT. One female active-duty soldier that Connecting Vets spoke to said that the hex bar used during the deadlift event forces her to use an excessively wide grip because she is of such small stature coming in at under five feet tall.
"It feels like my shoulder blades are going to pop out of their sockets," she told Connecting Vets. However, she also insisted she would meet any standard put in front of her, just that she would like to be able to use an Olympic bar which allows her to use a more appropriate grip.
"As a society, we have gone away from this idea of meritocracy and this idea that everyone gets a trophy. This idea that we have this very objective test, is what you want in a soldier. Hands down if you can't make the cut you can't make the cut," Brager, who has taken the ACFT said. "I'm not some anti-feminist, sexist or elitist. I'm an elite athlete and I meet the standard."
With the Army seemingly unable to figure out its own PT test, former Air Force pararescueman and doctor of physical therapy Doug Kechijian offered a solution that some may find as controversial as the ACFT itself: do away with PT tests entirely.
"There is never going to be a perfect test that mimics the job because the job is the best way to evaluate that," Kechijian told Connecting Vets. "Large organizations are not comfortable with that type of discretion, so it becomes political," he said.
"Are leg tucks important to the job? If you want to have a standard for the job it should eliminate men too. They are making this way more complicated than it needs to be," he explained. According to Kechijian another Army favorite, the pull-up, is a proxy for ladder climbing or to test grip strength for fast roping, but once you know a soldier can do some pull-ups the way to evaluate troops moving forward is simply to assess their on-the-job performance. .
"Are men and women different is a silly question to even have. Most male operators just want one standard. I think it looks foolish on the Army to do all this research and spend millions of dollars on developing this test. To spend all that money and time and then because you don't like the results you are going to change it again, it is a clown show," he said.
"If we are going to have women in combat arms we are going to hold them to the standard of men because that is the way it has to be. Gender should have no influence on that in my opinion. Sure we might have a smaller Army, but you will have quality over quantity," Brager added, explaining that the Army needs to assess cognitive abilities in this endeavor as well, and not just IQ but soldiers' reaction times and how they respond to uncertain situations under stress.
Kechijian's questioned the entire paradigm of military physical fitness testing. He said that professional sports teams are not signing athletes for tens of millions of dollars based on a PT test but rather based on how they play the game.
"They know who can play and who can't. You are always debriefing in the military and the best fitness training in those jobs is the full mission profile," he said. "How many debriefs said we would do better if we did more pull-ups, bench presses or leg tucks? If you make the standards really high then maybe it was too hard ... or was it correct and now you are mad that a lot of people don't qualify for the job? Do you want it to be an elite job or not?"
The NFL puts an emphasis on the 5-10-5 shuttle drill, but according to Kechijian, how well an athlete does on this test is no indicator of their longevity in the NFL. It does not assess who is the best at playing football. The same goes for military PT tests, and when the military hires advisors from the pro sports world to implement their problematic sports tests, they become even more problematic when applied to the military.
From Kechijian's point a of view, Army leaders should let basic training, advanced individual training, SOF selection courses, and other professional development courses in the military weed out weak soldiers. After that, administering the occasional PT test is of little value and instead, troops should be assessed by their actual job performance in the field. However, this may lead to some heart attacks in the metric-obsessed Army known to emphasize statistical analysis and checking blocks above human interaction and hands-on leadership which does not brief as well and can be difficult to quantify.
Brager agreed with this assessment. "I've been on several working groups for NATO and SOCOM and I have the same mentality as Doug. The Infantry is different, the Airborne is different. Armor is different, where physical fitness is not going to make or break it to determine mission success."
At that point, "you are probably collecting data to cover yourself so you can present it to an officer who presents it to an elected official. I measured it, here it is. Typical check-the-box kind of a thing," Kechijian said. "A well-run course has all those checkmarks in place to make sure the right people get through regardless of gender. Now they want to change it again because they didn't get what they wanted out of the research collected data."
"If you keep trying to retrace your steps, it is not scientifically sound, that is not science. It is unethical and unscientifically sound in my opinion," Brager said. "If that is what you are going to do then don't complain about the results. Ask and you shall receive. If you want a less-lethal force with sub-quality performance then that is what you get."
Want to get more connected to the stories and resources Connecting Vets has to offer? Click here to sign up for our weekly newsletter. Reach Jack Murphy: jack@connectingvets.com or @JackMurphyRGR.