Physical Assessment Considerations
Military professionals love to provide opinions about physical fitness tests.
Here are some common negative phrases expressed in reference to the Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT):
“I’ve never run two miles in combat”
“It should have a ruck”
“A single Leg Tuck is an unrealistic expectation”
“The Plank is a joke”
“What was wrong with the old way of doing Push-Ups?”
“It takes too long to complete”
In fairness, there are plenty of positive sentiments expressed about the ACFT and many military/coaching professionals, myself included, feel that it’s a net positive compared to the Army Physical Fitness Test of old. If nothing else, the ACFT places value on a more diverse and combat relevant physical portfolio.
However, this article is not a review of the ACFT or any other physical fitness test. Instead, I rather share some considerations to keep in mind when creating, conducting, or critiquing evaluations of warfighting physicality.
Test vs Assessment
First things first, let’s distinguish between a test and an assessment. Simply put, a test has consequences associated with its scoring. Consequences might include promotion points, entry into a school or a specialized unit, reward, punishment, etc. By comparison to a test, an untested assessment is more of a diagnostic tool that provides actionable feedback. Scores can be used to identify strengths and weaknesses for maintenance or improvement purposes.
A physical fitness test can (and typically should) serve as an assessment. In other words, consequences of a test should include constructing a course of action to address weaknesses and maintain strengths identified by the test.
Job Simulation Tests
There is a wildcard to consider: Job simulation tests. Job simulation tests include a heavy handed skill component that differs them from physical fitness tests. In other words, they start to look, feel, and smell more like the job - giving them high face value. For physically demanding jobs like warfighting, Job simulation tests are often very physical in nature. Events are less siloed and more collective - Think SHOOT MOVE COMMUNICATE versus just MOVE.
Firefighting’s Candidate Physical Ability Test (CPAT) and the Army Rangers’ redundantly named Ranger Physical Assessment Test (RPAT) are examples of physical fitness tests that involve enough job skill elements that they’re no longer assessing raw physicality, even though they certainly bias physical over cognitive performance.
The Rope Climb
The example I love to use when presenting the difference between a fitness assessment and a job simulation test is the rope climb. You just witnessed a warfighter fail to climb a 20’ rope. Why did they fail to climb it?
Did they lack upper body strength? Did they lack grip? Anyone who understands how to best climb a rope knows there is a lower body contribution so maybe their legs were weak. Maybe they lacked proper climbing technique? Maybe the rope climb was part of a collection of tasks and they were pre fatigued because they lack capacity. Hell, maybe they are strong as an ox but carrying a lot of body fat. They could be wearing kit and the kit isn’t set up in a way that allows for ergonomically climbing a rope.All of these hypotheses are very plausible.
I have a friend who failed a SWAT test because she could not traverse a wall. Given her well-rounded physical badassery, I can only guess that lack of skill or lack of confidence prevented her from overcoming that obstacle.
Physical Assessment Principles
If you are looking to assess your own physicality or that of your unit, where should you start?
Let’s take a moment to reemphasize that the point of a physical assessment is to provide relevant, actionable information that guides a subsequent course of action.
Principles are not laws. They are a “proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning.” The seven assessment principles proposed below are foundational for how I approach assessment. You’re welcome to take them or leave them as you see fit to.
The selected events should…
Be safe to perform
Be valid and reliable
Assess occupationally relevant components of health/fitness/performance
Assess fairly narrow components of fitness
Be minimally influenced by skill
Be performed in an order that minimizes cannibalization
Avoid redundancy of assessed components
Prompt meaningful and actionable feedback
Let’s take a deeper look into each of the proposed principles.
Safe to Perform
This should be a no brainer but I’ve seen too many warfighters, including fit ones, get injured during fitness assessments.
It’s typically explosive events that involve change of direction where people get injured - Not because the events are inherently dangerous but because the soldiers being assessed are poorly prepared for all out dynamic efforts on events like the 5-10-5 or 40-yard Sprint. Ironically, the more explosive athletes might be at higher risk of injury because they can exert more power but lack the ability to express it safely (typically due to a lack of relevant training).
Valid and Reliable
Assessments should accurately assess the thing they claim to assess (validity) and be consistently repeatable regardless of who’s grading them (reliable).
For example, the Push-Up, when graded according to a set standard, is a valid measure of upper body pushing endurance for most warfighters while a 1-Repetition Max Bench Press is a more valid assessment of upper body strength. If an assessment has no objective grading standard or too much room for interpretation, its reliability decreases.
Occupationally Relevant
Relevant should not be confused with specific.
For example, resting heart rate is relevant to a warfighter’s health and performance but it’s far from specific. Job specificity is better suited for job simulation tests than assessments of raw physicality. Still, you should be able to connect assessment events to occupational demands.
Some soldiers might hate the 2-Mile Run because it lacks “specificity” but the aerobic capacity that it validly assesses is unmistakably a highly relevant and occupationally influential component of physicality.
Narrow Components of Fitness
The event that tries to assess all the things likely assesses none of them well.
This is a great place to talk about rucking. A lot of warfighters suggest that the 12-Mile Ruck should be an event on the ACFT. While not as convoluted as climbing a rope, rucking is a simultaneous display several contributing components of physicality, most notably aerobic capacity, lower body and core endurance, strength, body composition, tissue tolerance, and even skill. While rucking can provide an indication of fitness, it primarily provides an indication of how good someone is at rucking. As a 150 pound Ranger, my ruck was limited by lack of lean body mass and lower body strength. As my current 175 pound self, it would likely be limited by tissue tolerance, skill, and aerobic capacity.
By the way, this is the actual issue with the Leg Tuck. The Leg Tuck tries to measure too many things within a single event. Trouble performing leg tucks could be a result of poor upper body strength, poor core strength, poor shoulder/hip/spine mobility, or excessive body fat (granted, this influences any assessment that is a body weight exercise). For the soldier who can perform 0 to maybe 10 leg tucks, it’s more an assessment of strength while those performing higher repetitions are displaying more muscular endurance. This perspective does not suggest the Ruck or Leg Tuck are “bad” assessments. It simply suggests that they have some limitations that should be considered.
Minimally Influenced by Skill
A Power Clean is a great way to evaluate someone’s power IF they know how to Power Clean. Otherwise, a Power Clean simply demonstrates someone’s lack of skill with the exercise.
For most physical assessment events, you can never reduce skill contribution down to zero. Running involves skill. Jumping involves skill. Picking things up and putting them down involves skill. Even your approach testing involves skill. Performing a few diagnostic tests likely improves your score on a test of record simply because you’ve increased your familiarity with the events involved and how to best attack them.
When events do involve skill, make sure it’s relevant to the professionals being tested. For example, you can evaluate peak leg strength using a Mid-Thigh Pull, and it would involve less skill than a Deadlift. However, there is value in evaluating not just leg strength but leg strength specific to picking something up off the ground. The Deadlift is still simple enough that perfecting technique would only improve your score by a little bit - You still need to be strong.
Minimize Cannibalization
Performing more neurologically demanding (strength & power) events first and performing aerobic endurance events last, with muscular endurance events somewhere in between is the generally accepted best practice for assessing with minimal cannibalism.
Events that generate a lot of peripheral fatigue, like a 300-yard Shuttle or the Sprint Drag Carry (SDC) can be extremely difficult to recover from and negatively affect subsequent events like a distance run. The ACFT 2-Mile Run is, therefore, also a measure of a soldier’s ability to recover from the SDC (and the Plank). However, the effect should be fairly small compared to the drastic time adjustments made between the APFT and the current ACFT. While coaching at Group, we had operators perform their aerobic capacity assessment on a separate day from their 300-yard Shuttle assessment to minimize interference.
Worth noting, I’m a fan of assessing within training instead of stopping training to host an assessment. If I’m training relevant physical qualities, then I should have a decent gauge on where they are at any given time. I think the military tends to overvalue testing and undervalue training, and rather emphasize spending more time making physical investments instead of withdrawals.
Avoid Redundancy
I watched a movement screen last week that included three or more different ways of assessing overhead mobility compared to maybe one way of assessing hip mobility. I feel this approach is excessively redundant.
You cannot tease out every nuance of physicality within a fitness assessment.
Assessment events alone rarely tease out the “why” behind scores. Sometimes you can cross reference events to better understand the reason for poor performance and sometimes you need to conduct follow-on assessments (or maybe just a follow-on conversation).
I caution you to not attempt to make one assessment the end all be all of evaluation. It’ll inherently have too many unnecessary redundancies that make it too logistically intensive and extensive. Warfighters will hate you for it. However, be prepared with secondary ways to better understand performance. For example, a poor 2-Mile Run score is likely the result of poor aerobic capacity but it could certainly be connected to disadvantageous body composition, lack of time spent running, or an injury. I know some big fellas with awesome aerobic capacity who can smoke a row but comparatively struggle on a run.
Prompt Meaningful and Actionable Feedback
Assessments are all but useless if they don’t include meaningful and actionable feedback.
A numeric score is not that meaningful. A comparison to one’s past and others’ performances is more meaningful. A discussion about how assessed qualities affect quality of life and occupational ability is even more meaningful. Including guidance on how to improve performance is likely the most meaningful.
Feedback should not lead with an improvement plan. For feedback to be actionable, it must first be valued by the person receiving it. A proposed course of action should be sensitive to the warfighter’s current state of being - behaviorally. There are countless perfect programs collecting dust because they failed to account for warfighters’ willingness to execute them.
Endex
Zoom out.
Obsess less about assessment events and think more about what it is you’re attempting to capture. Keep in mind that physical fitness is only one of many contributors to warfighter effectiveness. Any Given Day has four cornerstones and only one of them is physicality. Equal attention should be paid to adaptation to stress, honing your craft, and influential engagement.
Physical fitness is important for all warfighters but more important for those with more physical jobs. I personally believe that every uniformed member of the armed services should maintain a level of physicality that exceeds most current minimums because every uniformed member is trained in basic combat skills. However, I also understand that the military is needing to adapt to a progressively less physically fit American culture. A test alone won’t fix that. However, if it’s valued by warfighters and leads to actionable feedback, there’s at least a chance that it can be a positive influence on the physicality of the force.
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