The Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) is designed to assess a soldier’s physical fitness and readiness for combat.
Army Combat Fitness Test Events in Order
The ACFT consists of six events, conducted in the order provided below:
Deadlift
- Purpose: This event measures muscular strength and endurance in the lower back, glutes, and legs.
- Scoring: The maximum score is 340 points for lifting 340 pounds. The minimum score is 60 points for lifting 140 pounds.
Standing Power Throw
- Purpose: This event assesses both upper and lower body power.
- Scoring: A maximum score of 100 points is achieved for throwing the medicine ball at least 12.5 meters. The minimum score is 10 points for a throw of at least 4.5 meters.
Hand-Release Push-Up
- Purpose: This event evaluates upper-body strength and endurance.
- Scoring: The highest score is 100 points for completing at least 70 reps in 2 minutes. The minimum score is 10 points for at least 10 reps.
Sprint-Drag-Carry
- Purpose: This dynamic event tests a soldier’s speed, agility, and anaerobic endurance.
- Scoring: The maximum score is 100 points for finishing the course in under 1 minute and 33 seconds. The minimum achievable score is 10 points for completion within 3 minutes and 30 seconds.
Plank (which replaced the Leg Tuck)
- Purpose: The Plank event is used to focus on a soldier’s core strength.
2-Mile Run
- Purpose: This event is designed to gauge a soldier’s cardiovascular endurance.
- Scoring: The best score is 100 points for completing the run in less than 12 minutes and 54 seconds. The minimum score is 10 points for completing the run in under 21 minutes and 7 seconds.
The major ACFT update has replaced the leg tuck event with the plank.
Alternate Aerobic Events
Alternate aerobic events include:
- Stationary Bike
- Row
- Swim
- Two-and-a-Half-Mile Walk
Soldiers will have to be able to adapt to the new standards of the Army, and they will just have to be forced to improve.
How to Train for ACFT
How to train for the ACFT
This blog post will discuss how to train for the Army Combat Fitness Test. We will break down the six test elements, how you should prepare for each, and then how you should structure that into a progressive program from week to week.
Let’s talk about the six elements of the Army Combat Fitness Test. The first element is the three-rep max trap bar deadlift; this is a proper strength exercise, and to train for this movement, we need to do heavy deadlifts.
Exercises recommended online aren’t the best way to train for this. For example, doing things like a staggered squat jump will not improve how much you can trap bar deadlift, and there are better ways to build up to a full trap bar deadlift safely.
So instead, use heavy loads with the trap bar and build progressively, doing sets of one, three, five, etc.
The principle to consider here is the said principle or the specific adaptations to the posed demand principle, meaning that if we want to get better at heavy lifting, we need to be lifting heavy weights and not doing things like light jumps, because there’s not going to be very much carryover between those light jump movements and doing a heavy deadlift.
The second event is the standing power throw, which involves an explosive throw of the medicine ball back up and behind your back.
Because this movement is very leg-based, we want an excellent triple extension through the hips, knees, and ankles. Some exercises we include for this are a broad jump, vertical jumps, and dumbbell-loaded jumps.
These movements are all focused on significant, explosive triple extensions that will allow you to give a lot of power to that medicine ball and throw it up and back behind you.
Then one technique tip for this is to throw it back at about a 45-degree angle behind your head to get the most distance.
The third move is the hand-release push-up for two minutes. For this test, you need a lot of endurance. For this event, I would do two different training days.
On one day, you do a weighted push-up, and on the other, you do more push-ups so that your muscles can last longer. Combining both of those should set you up well to perform well on this test.
The next movement is the sprint drag carry. While it does say sprint, this is also an endurance or conditioning-type drill because it’s five times 50 meters, which will challenge your conditioning.
For this, we’re going to do some conditioning in the program. We will combine carries, sled pushes, and repeated sprints.
The fifth movement is the plank hold. Again, this one is simple for training; we will do a bunch of planks and hold them for as long as we can. Doing this at least twice a week in your training will be enough to make meaningful improvements and improve your time each week as you train.
Then, lastly, we have a two-mile run.
You want to do something other than two-mile runs to improve at the two-mile run. You also want to do lower-intensity aerobic work because the more we build that aerobic engine, the more efficiently we can improve the run time for this event.
We have a combination of a few different types of aerobic training. On day one, we have a lower-intensity proper aerobic session where you’re trying to keep your heart rate around 70 to 75 percent of your maximum heart rate.
You want to stay under that 75 percent, even if that means you must do a slow run or walk-jog to keep it there.
We want to do some dedicated aerobic training with a lower heart rate because that will be very beneficial to improving your two-mile run without building a lot of fatigue.
Generally, if you don’t know your max heart rate, you’ll want to run at around 130 to 155 beats per minute.
I recommend running the first mile at about a minute slower than you could run in the two-mile test, and then for the second mile, I want you to run at your actual two-mile pace.
Week-to-week training this way should have you making a few seconds of improvement each time you do this threshold run for two miles. You’ll also nail down your pacing strategy by holding back a bit on the first mile and then going really hard on the second.
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