The great thing about the PFE is that you do not need a gym or any equipment to practice for it! The sit-ups and curl-ups can be done practically wherever, and you don't even need a track to practice the run. For the curl-ups, you can use a couch or a stool with something weighted on it to keep your feet down.
My Two Main Pieces of Advice:
1. Practice the PFE in order. When you take the PFE the order will be: push-ups, curl-ups, run. By practicing in order you train your body to test in order. (The push-ups take more of a toll on your abs than you'd expect which make curl-ups more challenging).
2. Make training part of your
daily schedule. During the school year, I would wake up five minutes earlier than usual to do the push-up and curl-up portions of the PFE—it doesn't take long at all! By incorporating PFE training into your daily schedule, it will become a routine, which will help keep you on track and motivated.
Do a benchmark PFE and see where you stand. Use the
PFE scoring table to check your score. If you don't have time to do the whole PFE, do the push-up and curl-up portions since they don't take much time and are easy to incorporate into a daily routine.
Push-ups: @trackandfield08 is 100% correct about practicing cadence push-ups, and the video provided is perfect for practicing.
What really helped me improve my push-up score was doing push-ups until failure and then doing five more "negative push-ups." Negative push-ups are when you start in the "up" position and lower yourself as slowly as possible. I would do one negative push-up, take a few breaths, and then repeat four more times. After the fifth negative push-up, I would take a quick break to catch my breath and then start the curl-ups.
Curl-ups: The obvious tips are to practice curl-ups and do ab exercises. Personally, I found the curl-ups to be more challenging mentally than physically. To combat this, I started counting in sets of ten or twenty rather than counting from 1-100.
Counting up and down from ten works the best for me. I find this strategy helpful because ten is much more achievable than fifty or seventy and it is way more motivational than hearing sixty and knowing that you still have forty curl-ups left
Examples (the "/" signifies the end of a set):
example 1:
up 10, down 10, up 10/ up 10, down 10, up 10/ up 10, down 10/ up 10, down 10/
----------30------------/----------30-------------/---------20--------/-------20---------/ = 100
example 2:
up 20, down 20/ up 20, down 20/ up 10/ down 10/
-----40---------/--------40--------/-10--/---10-----/ = 100
I like to start with higher sets in the beginning when I have energy and a lot of motivation and then bring the set number down towards the end when I start to struggle.
If you are able, practice so that you have time leftover (finish before 2 mins is up). If you can consistently knock out 100 curl-ups with time to spare, you will have a little bit of a buffer when it comes to the day you actually take the PFE.
The Run: You have to practice by running. Like everything else, the best way to get better is to practice that event. I never had time to do complete PFE practices, so I ran whenever I had time. (Also run with a watch to check your splits)
I enjoy running, but I enjoy long distances (5+ miles) and not worrying about how fast I run. I was training for a race at the time, so I did a lot of long, slow runs. These long, slow runs actually helped improve my PFE run score a lot.
If you can't do/don't want to do long-distance runs, then running mile and a half runs for time and doing speed workouts would probably be the most beneficial.
With all that being said—know your body and don't push yourself too far. It's better to take a day off if your legs/knees hurt from running than to cause a serious injury that forces you to take weeks off or even gives you problems with the DoDMERB (lol).
Final Advice: Read
this manual and make sure that you practice the way you're going to be tested. Additionally, I'd recommend getting in touch with the person you want to administer your PFE (my HS gym teacher administered mine) because his/her calendar will probably get very busy during the school year. Also, if you're feeling confident, don't be afraid to take the PFE over the summer (if that's allowed). This is probably when you and your PFE administrator will have the most flexibility in your schedules. You will also probably be in peak shape for PFE testing since that is what you will have been practicing for. You could also take the PFE over the summer and then retest later in the year if you aren't happy with your results.
Summary:
1. practice daily
2. practice in order
3. CADENCE PUSH-UPS
4. do push-ups until failure + 5 negative push-ups followed by curl-ups immediately after
5. run a lot
6. talk to person you want to administer PFE
7. maybe do PFE over summer
8. push yourself but know your limits
You have the right idea starting to practice so early—you will be so thankful you did! Best of luck and hopefully my advice helped. I hope to see you next year!
