Is the Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) becoming the ARMY’s version of the iPhone? No seriously? When is the new-new version coming? Do we have to wait until 2022 or are we getting a fall release? I feel this is the going to be the new yearly, if not semi-annual thing until all the kinks are worked out. With the release of the ACFT 3.0, that makes it the 3rd version in as many years. And just like Apple I either expect to see ACFT 3.0X or ACFT 4.0 before next year. The good thing is they are trying to make it “better”. Should’ve just made the LEG TUCK (LTK) Pull-Ups and the Sprint-Drag-Carry (SDC) a 300m shuttle to start with but no point in me continuing to beat that drum. The bad thing is they didn’t improve anything with the recent changes and just gave everyone a get out of jail free card like Monopoly to artificially improve scores.
When the original ACFT 1.0 came out I don’t think they believe it was going to be as big of a cluster f*ck as it has become. But once some soldiers saw what 1.0 was, it was clear that there were plenty of soldiers that were nervous, pissed and vocal about it all over the Facebooks. Heard tales of some soldiers being scared to death and dropping their retirement packets. The big thing that I kept here those was, “Why do we need to upgrade to a new one when the old test is just fine?” Change can always be scary. All of us are guilty of getting set in our ways and when something comes along that is going to mess up our routine, we often focus on the negatives versus trying to see the positives that can come from it.
And I’ll tell you what, the negativity was heard loud and clear. I’m surprised the ARMY didn’t utilize the CIA in conjunction with Marky Mark Zuckerberg to spin it into being the greatest test ever created all over the internet with bots and fake accounts commenting of how life changing the ACFT is! Then again, maybe they did… But as soon as people started to fail in droves they scrambled for a solution because the immediate results were BAD. Like really really bad. Like bad to the point that no one along the way was like, “Hey, this one movement is going to be a problem for 80%+ of our soldiers. Maybe we should start prepping them for it before we even release this test. Like what if we lie and say that pull-ups might be in the new test?” I believe that if they leaked a fib about pull-ups a year earlier in 2019 or 2018 the issues they have seen wouldn’t nearly as extreme. Still would’ve had issues, but I’m confident with the right messaging, education and training soldiers could have been better prepared.
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But of course, they didn’t think of that. Or should I say, the person that did think of that was silenced immediately. I’m kidding, I can neither confirm nor deny that that transpired. They just figured once “We” release this new test it will change the culture of the ARMY. (Insert shaking my head and rolling my eyes) So it didn’t take long before ACFT 2.0 was pushed out with a temporary modification to allow people to still pass while avoiding a certain test. The dreaded LEG TUCK. The front plank was given as an alternate event as a stop gap of sorts to allow people more time to keep training (or start training, because lets be honest, I bet you know someone who wasn’t doing anything) to prepare for the actual leg tuck event. I get it, a lot happened over the course of 2020, but come on, you could’ve got an at home pull-up bar to throw up in a doorway.
The simplest way to describe 2020 was it was WILD and there are too many things to list and me being a little nervous it’ll get flagged if I mention any of it outside of gyms getting closed, people working from home and so on. But the fact that they made the modification a plank still baffled me unless they had ulterior motives. Because there is nothing about a plank that even resembles what the physical demands of a leg tuck requires. Okay, maybe there is some core activation, endurance and strength that can be built in the plank that can carry over into the leg tuck, but, without something to work on improving or at least challenging your upper body and grip strength, it’s not the same. A chin over bar hold or a dead arm hang would’ve made way more sense.
And thus, after a few months the alternate test is now a permanent addition and the ACFT 3.0 was born. I’m not going to say I predicted this was going to happen (even though I did) but I was pretty sure this sh!t show was only going to get worse and changes would be made once the ARMY saw how bad soldiers were still doing with that pesky leg tuck. As soon as the alternate event for the LTK was a Front Plank and not anything to do with hanging from a pull-up bar I had a very strong gut feeling that my hopes for the ARMY to just make it a Pull-Up test were officially dead. So as of now, the pull-up is still out, but maybe in ACFT 4.0 my dreams will come true and it’ll be in like when the iPhone all of a sudden was waterproof.
I will say though, good on the Army for not entirely scrapping the Leg Tuck and sticking to their guns (pun intended). But come on, if someone can’t already do LTKs there is no chance that they’ll choose to do them on the test. Hanging from a bar is hard, pull-ups are hard, doing an actual movement while hanging from a bar is even harder. Plus, it is a way to keep BMI’s down as well. Hear me out. Anytime I get asked, “How can I get better at pull-ups?” My #1 answer is lose weight. It’s literally physics, plus it gets a chuckle out of them and that’s what I’m here for. And it does the same thing for making LTKs easier too. I think the failure all started way-way back when a pull-up was never a requirement of the original APFT. There is a reason it is considered one of the gold standards of strength.
No matter who I work with, Pull-Ups are always a staple in all of my programming, whether it’s my team training on TrainHeroic or any of my custom programming that I do for soldiers or gen pop. There is a reason they are a requirement at SFAS, RASP and a lot of other selections and schools. They’re in the MARINES PT Test, so it’s not like it would be this wild thing to add. I think ALL soldiers, male or female, young or old, 18B or 42R, should be able to do a pull-up. I’ve helped soldiers from all walks of physical fitness levels be able to get to 1 pull-up and beyond. It is not unachievable but sadly so many believe it is.
I have a female soldier in her 30s that when I first started working with her, she couldn’t do 1 leg tuck and couldn’t even do 1 pull-up or 1 chin-up. She was a self admitted runner and just ticked the box for ARMY PT. But she just emailed last weekend to let me know she took another ACFT and got 10 leg tucks. 10! I couldn’t be happier for her. Oh yeah, and she can blast out pull-ups now too. Weird how they coincide with one another. But naturally, one of her male senior leaders doesn’t believe that every female can get to 1 leg tuck, even with a full year of hard work. Therein lies the problem. That’s absurd. A year?!? I 100% could get anyone in the ARMY, barring an orthopedic issue to 1+ leg tucks in a year. No, it won’t be easy for someone who isn’t strong in their upper body, but with a year of training, EVERYBODY should be able to get to 1. Hell I might call my Mom and Dad and see if their 70 year old asses want to do some training to get a Leg Tuck just to prove that it is possible that anyone can get to that level within 1 year.
A new article recently came out showing that 44% of women who have taken the ACFT have failed it, compared to 7% of men since October 2020. All soldiers still have until March 2022 before the test can affect careers and officials have also stated they will continue to work on the test looking for ways to improve it and potentially implement more changes including the talk of gender-specific standards. Obviously, the failure rate is alarming, but if you keep adjusting the test what are you really testing anymore? I’m a little nervous that this trend will continue every year now with a new modification or new grading procedure. Are soldiers going to be lining up outside the gyms on base waiting for the release of ACFT 4.0 or 5.0? Or does it actually end at 3.0? I feel pretty confident that ACFT 4.0, 5.0 and 6.0 all are currently in development on some small unknown military base deep inside Silicon Valley.
But for real, why make the plank permanent and a fully scored event for a max of 100 points? I know why…better scores. Plain and simple. That’s it. They are sick of more and more data coming out showing how many people are failing the test. I remember seeing claims last year that around 75-80% of female soldiers were failing compared to around 33% of male soldiers. But they were pumped way back in October 2020 that by adding the plank they were expecting a 30-40% increase in the pass rate. Don’t worry, officials are saying that the Leg Tuck is still the primary test of core strength because it is a better correlation between fitness requirements needed for soldiers. If that’s the case, then why give the option for the plank? As soon as you give the option to choose one or the other, you immediately make the Leg Tuck obsolete. No one is going to choose that. Unless you can do 8-10+ strict pull-ups already. I could be wrong on that, but knowing what I know I’d bet 9 out of 10 soldiers are choosing the plank if they are unable to do pull-ups.
The ARMY said their justification for choosing the plank was, “…the plank resulted from some Soldiers, many years into their careers, who were not asked by the Army to build their upper body strength until recently.” Are you kidding me? I get a Push-Up is a push and not a pull like a Leg Tuck is, but a Push-Up is 100% an upper body movement. And the Army as a whole has just been so damn slack with its PT standards that even though it wasn’t ever in the APFT, pull-ups should be done by every human period. Who was in charge of PT? They are partly to blame just phoning it in with some random daily WODS. This isn’t a shot at all of those in charge of PT, just the lazy ones. But what’s even more embarrassing is getting an email from another one of my female soldiers about a number of other soldiers in her unit that couldn’t even hit the minimum on the plank with months to prepare. MONTHS! I bet I could get my parents to a 2:00 minute plank in 60 days easily. Oh and she was 27 weeks pregnant at the time and was able to improve all of her previous ACFT scores as well as being able to crush the plank only because her belly was in the way for the leg tuck.
My solution from the beginning of the ACFT coming out was to add pull-ups and ditch the Leg Tuck entirely. Haha, after now rereading my blog I realized how much I am beating this pull-up drum. Sorry not sorry. I think that is a way better metric and predictor of physical performance than a leg tuck, plus I knew immediately after doing a few it was going to be a big problem. And I am a big pull-up guy, like I shoot to get in 100 per day type of guy. I’ve been doing that for years and the first time I did a Leg Tuck I was like, “Oh this is going it be rough for a lot of soldiers.”
I think part of this failure, and I’ve voiced this before, comes from the thought that by creating the ACFT they would be able to change the “Physical Culture” of the ARMY. But all they did was create a test that people are going to train for and only train for. Sure, doing these tests is better than just doing push-ups/sit-ups and running 2 miles. And it is in fact more “functional” but the ARMY definitely dropped the ball. It should’ve been a two to three step process to roll out the ACFT. And it should’ve started with educating the soldiers on real strength and conditioning and what it really means to be physically fit. If they would’ve showed soldiers that strength isn’t a light switch that you can just turn on and you’re automatically strong I believe it would’ve tempered expectations and lessened the level of shock and fear the birth of the ACFT caused. Strength does not come easy; you don’t just get it by showing up in the gym for a week. You have to show up for months and months and months, consistently pushing yourself to move faster, lift heavier and so on and so on and so on repeating for years.
As we reach the end I have a few predictions for the next ACFT. My predictions for ACFT 4.0 are that there will be added Gender differences in scoring. Either a totally separate scale for males and females or the scoring will stay the same, but they will be ranking soldiers by the percentile they fall in within their gender and not against all soldiers. And I wouldn’t be shocked to see MOS specific grouping as well. I figure we’ll know something by October 2021 of what ACFT 4.0 will look like. Until then, get to training!
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I hope this can help some of you out there. If you have questions let me know geoff@gpshumanperformance.com
Geoffrey Steinbacher is a former Strength & Conditioning Coach within the THOR3 (Tactical Human Optimization Rapid Rehabilitation & Reconditioning) Program at Ft. Bragg. He is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) from the National Strength and Conditioning Association, as well as a Certified Athletic Trainer (ATC) from the National Athletic Trainers Association. He is also an Advanced Sports Performance Coach (USAW-L2) and Head Club Coach with USA-Weightlifting, and a Catalyst Athletics Certified Weightlifting Coach (CACWC-L1). Furthermore, Geoff has a BS in Athletic Training from SUNY Cortland and an MS in Exercise Science from Syracuse University.
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