Thanks for the great insights. You echo what I am trying to teach people about the development of adaptability. We waste a lot of events that could be used otherwise to develop adaptability. Physical training, whether it is for the military or civilian organizations (I believe companies should require their employees to do it-and pay them!) could be innovative in the way they do it. Your remarks about the Army physical fitness test are so true.

Don

COL Maureen Laboeuf, once the head of the Department of Physical Education, wrote a chapter in “The Future of the Army Profession” which lays this out exceptionally well.

The APFT is a relic which now may be limiting our combat fitness instead of ensuring it. First, the wide variety of specialties in the Army demand a different level and quality of physical fitness for each specialty. The APFT, however, provides about the same standard to every individual and only measures a narrow slice of certain components of fitness. Second, while regulations and doctrine state that the APFT is only a tool for the commander to assess the unit’s level of fitness, individual APFT scores have a significant impact upon promotions, evaluations, and awards—meaning that officers and NCOs often neglect their overall fitness and optimize their performance for the test. The bureaucracy also limits the ability of the chain of command to remediate or separate those that cannot meet the physical demands of their job, yet can still pass the APFT.

Since COL Labouef wrote that article almost six years ago, I have heard of two or three potential changes to the APFT, each of which never came to fruition. Although the decision making process is opaque to me, I would suggest that the changes were shot down by Army senior officers and NCOs whom have spent their entire careers “training to the test,” and would likely be exposed as physically unfit by any new testing system. These officers clearly have a vested interest in preserving the status quo.

Using PT as an opportunity to develop adaptability is an excellent idea. The closest thing I’ve seen to that is the use of regular combat training, and adding additional elements to it to make it more physically demanding. Perhaps we need to stop thinking of physical training and other types of training as two clearly delinated events and acknowledge that training is training is training–and every training event needs to include as many elements that improve readiness as possible.