If your gut lops over your belt, you can either suck it in or hit the gym because the Air Force is not making any more changes to the PT test.

After spending eight months and hundreds of man hours looking into waist measurement standards, the Air Force considers the issue settled, said Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh.

"Screwing around with too many of the details doesn't buy us a lot; it creates pain and I don't think it changes the individual results that dramatically – and this is from a guy who worries about the abdominal circumference measurement every year," Welsh said at a May 21 virtual town hall meeting.

At the town hall meeting, Welsh also discussed a wide range of issues, including why many of the tasks that airmen complain about come from their units, not Air Force leadership.

Since October 2013, airmen who fail the abdominal circumference portion of the PT test have had the option of undergoing a Body Mass Index screen if they score 75 out of 80 points on the rest of the test. If they don't meet BMI standards, they can have their percentage of body fat calculated.

The changes followed an exhaustive review into longstanding complaints from airmen who claimed they can pass the push-up, sit-up and run portions of the PT test, but they exceed the waist maximums of 39 inches for men or 35.5 inches for women because they are built large.

"We looked at this from every angle possible; we talked to everybody who wanted to throw out an opinion – people who were critical of the test, people who were supportive of the test – and I'll tell you this, I got to the bottom line of: Abdominal circumference is not a reason to change the test," Welsh said.

Still, Welsh acknowledged that even he finds the waist measurement maximums challenging.

"Guys, I'm not a skinny guy," Welsh said. "Abdominal circumference is something I've got to think about. It keeps me working out, and I'm old enough now that working out is really getting tiring."

Welsh also fielded a question at the town hall from a first sergeant who asked if the Air Force will issue a formal list of tasks it can no longer do because airmen are overworked because of deep manpower reductions.

"The things that I hear from airmen when I wander around the Air Force, the things that really frustrate them aren't things that big Air Force is making them do," Welsh said. "It's things that are happening at the unit level."

When the Air Force launched the Every Dollar Counts campaign asking airmen how to save money, it asked several of the respondents why they submitted their suggestions to a website. Most said their chain of command would not listen to them.

"I'm working the top-end stuff hard and trying to make sure that our staff is not creating work that you don't need to be doing," Welsh said. "If everyone would work the same from the bottom end, I think we'd probably be a lot happier a lot quicker."

Welsh urged airmen with someone in their chain of command who does not want to make necessary changes to tell their supervisors, commanders and first sergeants "Hey, you gotta help me work around this roadblock."

Another airman told Welsh that noncommissioned officers are still expected to do volunteer work after doing long shifts and professional military education, but Welsh said volunteer work is not a prerequisite for promotion.

"Promotion is about job performance," he said. "It's not about who volunteers the most. So if have things at the unit level that drive people to feel like you must volunteer, even if it's hurting their family time, then you guys need to change whatever is driving that, because the big Air Force process is not doing that."

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