Bring the Navy’s Physical Fitness Assessment Into the 21st Century

An often-cited statistic among those concerned about physical fitness in the United States is that 71 percent of Americans aged 17 to 24 are medically ineligible for military service.¹ How significant is this fitness challenge for the Navy? Proper conditioning is such an anomaly in the current recruiting pool that today, if a new recruit reports to Great Lakes for boot camp and can pass the physical readiness test (PRT) at the standards associated with their age group (not score “outstanding” or “excellent”—simply pass), that recruit receives a $2,000 bonus. 

No one questions the grit of this generation; They’ve known nothing but wartime their entire adult lives, but continue to raise their right hand. Instead, many observers blame this phenomenon on the rise of “super-size” fast-food culture, the popularity of video games creating a more sedentary lifestyle, and the removal of physical education (PE) requirements from schools. Today only six states adhere to the PE standards set by the National Association of Sports and Physical Education.²

The Navy has worked hard to improve fleet fitness in recent years. The 2018 policy shift allowing Sailors to waive out of their next PRT if they scored “excellent” or “outstanding” motivated 10 percent of the force to improve their scores into these top two categories (98,000 Sailors achieved these levels in the last testing cycle). But if the Navy wants to build a true culture of fitness, it should leverage new wearable fitness technology to modernize the purpose and execution of the PRT.

History of the PRT

On 4 January 1909, Navy General Order No. 6 was issued, sponsored by Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt. The directive instituted the Navy’s first physical fitness test, and as one newspaper put it, “This [order] will give the corpulent sea fighters who have long occupied swivel chairs an opportunity to get into fit condition for the ordeal.”³ This Roosevelt-designed forerunner of today’s PRT mandated that officers would not promote until they passed the exam, and offered participants three options: a fifty mile walk in a total of twenty hours; a ride on horseback covering a distance of ninety miles; or a ride on a bicycle at a distance of 100 miles.^4,5

Navy General Order 284 suspended the PRT in April 1917 due to the heightened optempo of World War I, and it would not be rekindled for nearly 50 years. The modern physical fitness assessment (PFA) has morphed into a very different high-stakes evaluation. Through 2016, Sailors with multiple PFA failures would be processed for administrative separation. Because these were considered involuntary separations, each of these non-first term Sailors received separation pay. Amounts varied with rank and seniority, but a second-class petty officer with eight years of service, for example, would receive $28,333. Would Teddy Roosevelt be disappointed to know that the Navy paid to separate more than 1,700 Sailors in 2016 for failing to meet its PFA standards?

Today’s PFA is designed to provide a health and wellness exam for the Navy.  Some believe it ensures a minimum threshold of fitness such that every sailor can help fight a fire or pull an injured shipmate out of a flooded compartment. Still others regard it as a means to ensure a sharp appearance in uniform. But data suggests today’s PFA isn’t meeting any of those objectives. It’s outdated, administratively burdensome, and mistrusted by Sailors. This twice-annual hurdle invites binge dieting and quick weight-loss gimmicks. It is time for the Navy to modernize the PFA, and use it to build a year-round culture of fitness.

Modern PFA Policy

Navy veterans who served into the 1990s will recall a largely informal PFA experience: No standard PRT uniforms, no formal Command Fitness Leader program; A gaggle of guys in Led Zeppelin t-shirts and cut-offs, ‘jokin’ and smokin’ their way through a twice-annual, too-often- gundecked paperwork requirement.

In the wake of the post-Cold War drawdown, procedures became formalized and standardized. The fact that PFA separations more than doubled between 1994 and 1995 generated suspicion among Sailors that the assessment was a hidden personnel reduction tool.⁶  Three PRT failures in four years resulted in automatic processing for administrative separation. The core PRT that most Sailors take consists of a two-minute test of curl-ups, a two-minute test of push-ups, and a 1.5-mile run, with minimum standards broken down by gender and age group. But before one can take this phase of the PFA, a Sailor must pass the body composition assessment (BCA), a measurement of body fat ratio. This is where the overwhelming majority of PFA failures take place.

Current BCA procedures are as follows: Height and weight are measured and compared on a chart. If the Sailor is outside the chart’s age-graduated standard limitations, they then receive a tape measurement of their waists. If a male exceeds 39 inches, or a female 33 inches, they then proceed to what Sailors sometimes refer to as the “rope and choke.” The tape measure is again used, this time to compare the ratio between waist circumference and neck circumference. Many Sailors are convinced this is often applied incorrectly, and that even when done properly, is not an accurate evaluation of health. If Sailors fail this measurement, they can’t take the PRT, and automatically fail the PFA. 

 

In January 2016, with over 34,000 Sailors having at least one active PFA failure (and over 2,400 with three failures, awaiting out-processing), the Navy looked to reset its fitness program. Gym hours were extended and child care availability was increased, allowing more sailors time to take advantage of the gym. At least one healthy entrée and one side dish were made available at each meal in every galley and wardroom across the fleet. Additional age gradations were added to the BCA height/weight schedule, effectively increasing the acceptable body fat ratio and giving more Sailors the opportunity to prove their fitness by actually taking the PRT. Powerful incentives were created: Many billets in the National Capital Region, overseas opportunities, recruiting orders, individual augmentee assignments, and Recruit Training Command (RTC) duty began to require a successful PFA. Most significantly, personnel could not promote until successfully passing a PFA. As part of this new commitment to building a culture of fitness, a fleet-wide amnesty was implemented—a full reset, with every Sailors’ PFA failure count set back to zero. But moving forward, standards would be tightened: Now, just two failures in three years would result in administrative separation.

 

Unfortunately, these changes didn’t generate the desired effect. Just two years later, in January 2018, the number of Sailors with an active PFA failure increased to nearly 50,000. Under the new ‘two-fails-in-three-years’ policy, over a tenth of the Fleet was subject to separation if they failed the Spring PFA. At the same time, the Navy faced a manning shortfall of 7,500 gapped billets at sea. The “Separation by Reason of PFA Failure” policy was canceled, ending automatic administrative separation processing and severance pay. Enlisted personnel already scheduled for separation because of a PFA failure prior to their ‘Soft End of Activated Obligated Service’ had their separations canceled. Officers scheduled to be separated could request cancellation. All PFA failures were once again reset to zero, and going forward, enlisted personnel would be prohibited from re-enlisting if they had two failures during the previous three years. Officers would be separated prior to their next permanent change of station. But until that time, despite not meeting Navy physical fitness requirements, Sailors could continue to serve and deploy. It’s not the culture of fitness Navy leaders sought to inspire, and not the level of readiness and lethality today’s world requires.

 

Incorporating Technology

 

DoD Instruction 1308.3 provides the overall legal directive for military fitness. Specifically, it charges each military branch with executing a program “. . . designed to enhance fitness and general health, meet the services’ specific mission requirements, and include an annual assessment of each member’s fitness.” This policy leaves room for innovation among the Services. For nearly a decade starting in 1992, the Air Force shifted to an annual assessment in which Airmen rode a stationary bike while wearing an oxygen hose, measuring lung capacity (or ‘VO2 Max’ in fitness jargon), a criterion considered the gold standard in evaluating cardiovascular strength and endurance. In 2009, the Marine Corps began making one of their two annual assessments a ‘combat fitness test’, incorporating battlefield movements (lifting ammo cans, a fireman’s carry, and an 880-yard run conducted in “boots and ‘utes”). The Army is currently piloting a gender and age neutral assessment that will include components such as a deadlift and a standing power throw. And the Air Force is experimenting with moving to military occupational specialty-specific tests.

 

But so far none of the Services have shifted from a once or twice a year high-stakes test to incorporating technology that allows for constant year-round monitoring of activity and conditioning with the analytics to assess it. What if instead of the “three-mile club” as some joke (a 1.5 mile run for the Fall PRT and another for the Spring PRT), physical activity benchmarks could be documented year-round? Using new technology, that same gold-standard ‘VO2 Max’ test that used to require a stationary bike, a medic, and a clinical setting, can now be measured via a fitness-tracking wristband, such as a Fitbit.  

As an increasing number of innovative private-sector companies are doing to maximize corporate wellness, Sailors would upload their activity data at regularly scheduled intervals (perhaps monthly, or more frequently for a Sailor who has been assigned to the fitness enhancement program [FEP]). Their command fitness leader would have access to this dashboard. Benefits of this enhanced granularity would include: 

 

• Sailors could pick the exercise regimen most effective for them, and most conducive to fitness maintenance. Current wearable technology tracks and records workouts consisting of running, biking, weightlifting, stairclimbing, spinning, hiking, elliptical, pilates, yoga, kickboxing, martial arts, and swimming.

• Sailors and crews could arrange their own optimum workout schedules—no longer trying to manage (largely ineffective) command PT sessions around watchbills, qualifying requirements, inspection prep, gym availability, and deployments.

• Unit accountability: Analytics allow leaders to know which commands are not emphasizing (and creating the time) to maintain fitness. If every ship on the waterfront was “green” for physical readiness except one, the commodore could inquire into that outlier command’s climate. If every department on the ship was green except for one, the captain could seek an explanation from that department head. Contrast this with the current paradigm, where fitness data is available only twice per year—and is often a surprise.

 

Following a well-publicized incident in which military physical training locations were revealed last year, DoD barred the use of fitness monitoring devices on operational facilities unless the geo-location capability was disabled, and subject to commanding officer discretion. Certainly, there are data and operational security concerns, but many of the most capable devices do not have geo-location capability; they capture the number of miles run, but not where those miles were run. These are the models the Navy should use. Further, the same devices can store accumulated training data for 90 days, so Sailors who work in reactor spaces or sensitive information facilities can keep their data until the next safe and appropriate download availability.  

 

Piloting the Program

 

The best place to pilot this approach is through the RTC’s delayed entry program (DEP). Typical high school recruits will spend six months in DEP before reporting to Great Lakes. During that time, they live at home beginning the “sailorization” process: learning their ranks/rates, general orders of a sentry, and physically conditioning. But physical conditioning is done on their own (interspersed with an occasional group PT session), and on the honor system. The results too often are recruits who can’t begin training at boot camp because they can’t pass the initial “Forming PRT”. Incredibly, a Sailors’ fitness progress is “the single point of failure positively correlating to success at RTC,” yet approximately 60 percent of recruits fail their initial PFA.⁷ What if while awaiting their shipping date, recruits received their first piece of Navy-issued equipment—a fitness device. This would allow them to download their weekly conditioning data to their recruiter, inculcating personal accountability, objectively demonstrating their readiness to “ship”, and building a culture of fitness right from day one? Only after the program is validated in this context should the new tool be rolled out for utilization in the FEP, and once proven there, across the fleet for PFA use.

 

The days of Assistant Secretary Roosevelt’s 90-mile horseback PRT are long gone. Now it’s time to jettison the decades-old current evolution that has lost its effectiveness. The process of being “Forged by the Sea” should begin the moment a recruit commits to serve and enters the delayed entry program. It is time for the Navy to use fitness technology to build the most ready and lethal Sailors in the world.