I’ve taken the ACFT three or four times now at this point. You’re tired sure by the end but for one, it’s a 21 minute pass standard for the run. I would be more sympathetic if we were talking something sub 18 min or so to still have to achieve. There’s enough rest times built into the test by the time you get to the run you should still be able to manage a 10.5min mile pace, and understanding how the test is structured, if you know you are going to be close on the run, maybe don’t max out the deadlift. Or run more than two miles twice a year and don’t make it an issue to begin. The goal is well rounded fitness, not Olympic lifters or bunny rabbit runners at the expense of other areas.
What I was more reacting to initially though with the article was prioritizing that as the most difficult event overall when I have seen my soldiers and peers struggle with by far more are the power throw and the leg tuck. They’re trainable events for anyone to get to passing, but for a lot of people, they haven’t done legitimate strength training at any point in their life because we had a culture up to this point that running fast meant you were fit. Building strength takes time. With how much feet dragging there has been with this test, particularly with Congress being involved, people have only slowly been starting to come around that this will be their new reality moving forward and they better figure out a solution to their weaknesses or else they’ll need to find a new job. Culture change is slow, and there’s a lot of that which will need to happen to make this successful in the long run.
There’s also zero discussion in the article that I saw (and maybe I missed it when I skimmed) about the incorporation of the plank as an alternate event to the leg tuck and how that’s affecting pass rates. Mainly because that data hasn’t had a chance to be collected yet because it was a very recent change and they were still operating under MOS tiers I would bet for passing scores for the majority of the testing that data set leaked collected based on the time period
Also for the record, I am responding to
@UHBlackhawk, not the article, because I respect him and his opinion. Take that how you will about how I feel about the article