Angela Papple Johnston - ACFT For Dummies

3 Repetition Maximum Deadlift: The 3 Repetition Maximum Deadlift (MDL) represents your ability to safely and effectively lift heavy loads from the ground, bound, jump, and land. This event tests how well-conditioned your back and legs are; the better-conditioned those muscles are, the less likely you are to become injured when you have to move long distances under heavy load. Fitness components: Muscular strength, balance, and flexibility

Standing Power Throw: The Standing Power Throw (SPT) represents your ability to throw equipment on or over obstacles, lift up your battle buddies, jump over obstacles, and employ progressive levels of force in hand-to-hand combat. It tests how well you can execute quick, explosive movements. Fitness components: Explosive power, balance, range of motion, and flexibility

Hand Release Push-Up – Arm Extension: The Hand Release Push-Up – Arm Extension (HRP) represents your ability to withstand repetitive and sustained pushing that’s often necessary in combat tasks (like when your driver gets the HMMWV stuck in the mud and every vehicle in the convoy is mysteriously missing a tow bar). This modified push-up event tests your chest and core strength. Fitness component: Muscular endurance

Sprint-Drag-Carry: The Sprint-Drag-Carry (SDC) represents your ability to accomplish high-intensity combat tasks that last between a few seconds and a few minutes, such as building a hasty fighting position, reacting quickly in a firefight, carrying ammo from one place to another, or extracting a casualty and carrying him or her to safety. The Sprint-Drag-Carry tests your strength, endurance, and anaerobic capacity. Fitness components: Agility, anaerobic endurance, muscular endurance, and muscular strength

Leg Tuck: The Leg Tuck (LTK) represents your ability to carry heavy loads, climb over walls and other obstacles, and climb or descend ropes. The strength required for this event can help soldiers avoid back injuries. ( Note: Throughout this book, I often refer to this event by its abbreviation, LTK, to help distinguish it from the plain old exercise known as the leg tuck.) Fitness components: Muscular strength and endurance

Two-Mile Run: The Two-Mile Run (2MR) represents your ability to conduct continuous operations and ground movements on foot, as well as your ability to recover quickly in preparation for other physically demanding tasks, like reacting to enemy contact or carrying ammo from Point A to Point B. Fitness component: Aerobic endurance

The ACFT doesn’t offer age brackets for scoring like the APFT did. That means whether you’re 18 and fresh out of Basic Combat Training or you’re a seasoned soldier with plenty of combat experience, you’re held to the same standard. The aim of this book is to get you to meet or exceed the standard so you can enjoy a full and illustrious (and injury-free) military career.

The Army uses the ACFT to test soldiers’ range of motion and flexibility. Because both these things are an indicator of combat fitness — and because the Army needs combat-ready warriors on the battlefield — these test events can help determine a soldier’s overall fitness. The fitness gurus behind the scenes know that having a good range of motion also helps prevent injury, so the Army wins twice: It gets the combat-ready soldiers it needs and keeps servicemembers fit to fight.

The Army is quick to point out that training for the ACFT doesn’t put you at a higher risk for injury, provided that you train properly and don’t overdo it. New training resources, like the updated Field Manual 7-22, Holistic Health and Fitness, include guidance on minimizing a soldier’s risk for injury while preparing for the test. See Chapters 7and 8for exercises to help you improve your range of motion, and Chapter 9for stretches that can improve your flexibility.

Balance is an important part of the ACFT, and you use it in the 3 Repetition Maximum Deadlift and Standing Power Throw. The Army wants to see how well you can resist forces that cause falls (like throwing a medicine ball behind your head). Your core plays a huge role in balance, so these events show the military brass how well-conditioned your back, abs, and legs really are. Strengthening your core is just good business anyway. A strong core contributes to healthy mobility later in life; just as importantly, it makes fitting into your uniform and falling into the right spot on the Army’s height and weight chart easier. Wobble over to Chapter 8for ideas on improving your balance to max out your ACFT scores.

Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. You’ve probably heard that at least a dozen times throughout your military career, and it applies to your mentality as well as your body. Modern combat situations require mobility and agility, and you see these two key abilities tested on the ACFT. Technically, mobility is the ability to move freely and easily, and agility is your ability to do so quickly. The Army needs to know that you’re able to move like a warrior. You don’t have to be a professional athlete, but you do have to meet Army standards.

Most notably, the ACFT checks out your mobility and agility in the Sprint-Drag-Carry event, where you have to perform three distinct exercises quick, fast, and in a hurry. I cover those in Chapter 2.

Movements that require maximum (or near-maximum) power output in a short amount of time tap into what fitness pros call explosive power. You see professional sports players use explosive power every time you watch a game; a quarterback uses it when he throws the ball, an outside hitter uses it when she spikes a volleyball, and wrestlers use it when they lift an opponent. The ACFT measures your explosive power in the Standing Power Throw, but that’s not the only event that requires it — you use explosive power during the Sprint-Drag-Carry, the Two-Mile Run (if you sprint to shave a few seconds off your time), and maybe even during the LTK.

Remember the difference you and your family noticed in your physique after you graduated from Basic Combat Training (BCT)? When you joined the military, you may have already been strong — but you weren’t “Army Strong.” The ACFT measures your muscular strength and endurance in ways that you may not have trained for in BCT, and its demands are serious. It checks your muscular strength in four key areas: your legs, your core, your chest, and your upper back. You see muscular strength and endurance testing on the 3 Repetition Maximum Deadlift, Hand Release Push-Up – Arm Extension, Sprint-Drag-Carry, and LTK.

Muscular strength and endurance are related, but they’re not the same thing. You need endurance for tasks like lugging fuel cans around the motor pool, while strength ties into the maximum amount of weight you can lift one time. (In the gym, it’s called a one-rep max .)

The Army measures your aerobic fitness through its old standby, the Two-Mile Run. Though you’re unlikely to have to run for two miles in a combat situation (and you’re even more unlikely to have to do it in your PT uniform), you are likely to engage in aerobic exercise — cardio — on the battlefield. The Army needs to know you can hack it, and it figures out what your endurance is like by making you run. Getting a good picture of a soldier’s aerobic fitness takes about 12 minutes of continuous exercise, and most people take longer than that to cover two miles. (Personally, I’d rather the Army just made me run for 12 minutes to see how far I get, but so far, they haven’t been very receptive to the idea.)