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More want combat element in fitness test

Run a mile and a half. Do as many push-ups as you can in a minute. Ditto for sit-ups. And have your waist measured.

Now, compare the Air Force physical training test to the Marine Corps Combat Fitness Test: Sprint 880 yards, a half-mile. Lift a 30-pound ammo can from your chest over your head as many times as you can in two minutes. And, finally, navigate a 300-yard obstacle course that includes crawling, carrying a “casualty” and throwing a grenade.

All done decked out in your utility uniform and boots.

For seven airmen at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., who took the CFT at the invitation of the leathernecks assigned with them to the 33rd Fighter Wing, there is no comparison to the Air Force’s PT test. The CFT is no walk in the park, but it can be done, the airmen say. They passed, after all.

“I could barely feel my legs when I was done,” said Staff Sgt. Simon Delacruz, assigned to the 96th Security Forces Squadron. “The cans are the killers.”

The airmen’s respectable performance is encouraging a small but growing movement inside the Air Force that wants the service to institute its own CFT.

Perhaps the most vocal advocates are airmen who have served on the battlefield, such as joint terminal attack controllers. Their calls haven’t gone unheard — three airmen have developed CFT programs on their own, and the Air Force exercise physiologist responsible for the new PT scoring standards that go into effect July 1 is looking at how the service could incorporate a combat fitness element.

Even airmen who aren’t wild about a CFT are embracing the training. Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., just opened its fourth center for CrossFit, a strength and conditioning methodology used widely by other services and law enforcement agencies. At least seven other bases are also offering CrossFit classes.

Semper Fi fit

The Marines unveiled their CFT nearly 18 months ago on orders from the commandant himself. Gen. James Conway gave the directive after hearing from deployed Marines about the need for a different measure of fitness.

Today, Marines must take two tests — the CFT once a year and the PT test twice a year. On Jan. 1, airmen began taking their PT test twice a year as well as having the test administered by civilian fitness experts.

Air Force officials expect to see the PT failure rate jump from about 2 percent servicewide to 15 percent or even higher when test scorers begin using the tougher standards and minimum scores. About 10 percent of Marines failed the CFT during the phase-in period, which ended last March. So far, according to Corps officials, only 5 percent of Marines have achieved the perfect score — 300 points.

The Air Force is closely monitoring the Marines’ performance while it continues its research. Exercise physiologist Neil Baumgartner, who overhauled the Air Force’s PT test in 2004 and in 2009, wants to customize the CFT for various career fields. For example, a pilot and a personnelist would take different versions of the test.

“Doing that takes time,” Baumgartner said. “Right now the idea is still conceptual. It’s not set in stone.” He added that the earliest that airmen could see a CFT is three to five years.

The airmen at Eglin impressed the Marines with their dry run.

“They did very well,” said Marine Sgt. Maj. Bonnie Skinner with Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 501, who proposed the joint effort. “If the Air Force [had the test], seeing at least the airmen that joined with us, I don’t see them having a problem whatsoever.”

Marines — for the most part — like the CFT because it adds variety to their fitness program and helps prepare them for deployments, Skinner said.

“You are going to do a lot more things in a combat situation that are a lot closer to the Combat Fitness Test than what you are going to do for the normal PT test,” she said. “It’s positive reinforcement.”

A tug of war

The momentum for the Air Force to add a combat fitness test has come mostly from airmen returning from deployments.

“Being an old Desert Storm airman and being on five deployments — three to Saudi Arabia and two to Iraq — not once did a situation come up where you had to run a mile and a half. And no one could care less if you had a 32-inch waist,” Tech. Sgt. James Geiss wrote in an e-mail to Air Force Times, referring to the run and waist measurement components of the current PT test.

“When those rocket/mortar attacks hit the base, what mattered was that you get your butt to safety,” wrote Geiss, who is assigned to McChord Air Force Base, Wash.

Staff Sgt. Jermain Morrow prepares security forces airmen for deployment as an instructor with the 96th Ground Combat Training Squadron at Eglin and wants to see the Air Force adopt a CFT.

“It shows you what type of condition you are in to head overseas,” Morrow said.

Like Morrow, Master Sgt. Jerry Wright with the 96th Logistical Readiness Squadron took the test and thinks airmen would benefit from taking it. He knows, however, that not everyone would give the CFT a thumbs-up.

“You have a pretty big divide between the administrative Air Force and the flight line,” Wright said. “The administrative side isn’t going to be so receptive. The flight-line side that deploys where you have to take cover or you are getting shelled will like it.”

Master Sgt. Kevin Palumbo, with the 28th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., is a CFT detractor.

“It burns me that people who can shut down and go to the gym three times a week are the ones saying it would be great to do more testing,” Palumba said. “I wish to God I had the people and skill levels to support having an eight- to nine-hour workday and being able to include going to the gym during that period.”

For Maj. Shannon Smith, the discussion shouldn’t be an either/or debate about the CFT and the PT test.

“I agree combat fitness is important. However, it is not the only reason we should take a periodic fitness test,” said Smith, commander of the 790th Missile Security Forces Squadron at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo.

“First, our health care is paid for by American taxpayers, not just during our time on active duty, but for many years beyond our time in uniform. … If we make a concerted effort to eat right and remain physically fit while serving in uniform, the less problems we’ll have in the future, thus becoming good stewards of our tax dollars. Second, it is our duty and responsibility to present and maintain a professional military image to those same taxpayers.”

A trio of studies

Three airmen did their own research on combat fitness.

Capt. Thomas Worden started thinking about combat readiness on a yearlong deployment in Afghanistan. Too many times, Worden said, he found many airmen who could not even run for cover and he wondered whether the Air Force’s fitness test was part of the reason.

When Worden returned in April 2007, the civil engineer went off to the Air Force Institute of Technology, the service’s graduate school of engineering and management, where he set out to come up with a test to accurately measure an airman’s combat fitness.

Worden’s discovery: the half-mile run, 30-pound dumbbell lift and push-ups do the best job of determining an airman’s combat fitness.

Though Worden believes more research is needed, he also is convinced the Air Force — like the Marine Corps — must include combat fitness in its fitness program.

The PT test “is good at measuring general health and if an airman is going to rack up medical bills in the future,” he said. “But it’s not very good at measuring if you will be good at combat.”

In his “USAF Concept for Functional Fitness,” F-22 pilot and certified personal trainer Maj. Jeremy Gordon outlines a six-event CFT: an 800-meter run, a 50-repetition press of a 30-pound object, a 400-meter run, a 50-pound object carried 100 feet, 50 full sit-ups and five pull-ups.

Airmen’s scores would be scaled for age and gender and be based on how fast they could complete the course.

Gordon concedes his test would be “significantly more challenging” than the PT test but would force airmen to focus on “stamina, flexibility, strength, power, speed, coordination, balance, accuracy and agility.”

The PT test, according to Gordon, focuses too much on both the waist measurement and the 1.5-mile run, and neglects “total fitness.” It doesn’t prepare airmen for combat or their day-to-day jobs, he said.

“Rarely does an airman’s job call for long-duration exertions [like a 1.5-mile run] without any weight or external objects to move,” the report states.

An Air Force doctor has also weighed in with a fitness program, although he doesn’t call it combat fitness.

Lt. Col. Daniel Kulund, chief of the medical staff at the 319th Medical Group at Grand Forks Air Force Base, N.D., has designed the Virtual Military Obstacle Course. Airmen do the circuit-training program with a 10-pound plastic pipe — called a “fighting stick” — meant to simulate the size, weight and balance of an M16.

Kulund came up with the idea after observing how military obstacle courses require “maximum effort, and oftentimes an awkward position, so you could get hurt,” he said. “It’s really not a practical way of regular physical training.”

Kulund, who at 68 is the service’s oldest active-duty airman, has lobbied Air Force leaders to adopt his program servicewide. Former Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper showed interest; the chiefs of staff since Jumper have been less enthusiastic.

Like Gordon, Kulund thinks the Air Force should place a higher priority on total fitness and preparing airmen for the physical challenges of both their jobs and deployments.

“Air Force physical training is like the cross-country team with some push-ups and sit-ups put in,” he said.

Related reading

— At Luke, it’s gospel to preach combat fitness