Posted on 08/02/2015 7:28:50 PM PDT by markomalley
The Navy will relax the body weight standards in its physical fitness assessment beginning next year, as it moves away from what service leaders say is too narrow a gauge of health and physical ability.
New rules to be announced Monday and set to take effect in January will result in more sailors’ passing the body composition portion of the physical fitness assessment, or PFA, and participating in the exercise portion of the assessment, Navy officials said. Current rules prohibit anyone who fails the body composition portion from moving on to the exercise test.
The new rules add a single-step abdominal measurement for those who don’t meet the Navy’s maximum weight allowances by height, and they raise body fat limits to a maximum 26 percent for men and 35 percent for women, following Department of Defense standards. They also reduce the number of permitted failures to two in three years from three in four.
Navy officials said the changes are the first step in the Navy’s move away from an emphasis on body size and toward strengthening the exercise test, known as the physical readiness test, or PRT.
“I want them taking PRTs,” Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Adm. Bill Moran said of the changes in a video released by the Navy. “I want them testing. I want them physically active. That’s going to improve our overall health at the end of the day.”
The fitness assessment is held twice annually. Last year, around 5,000 sailors failed at least one of the two cycles, according to the Navy, the majority because they didn’t pass the body weight portion, known as the body composition assessment, or BCA. Only those who exceed the Navy’s maximum weight allowances by height are currently required to “tape-in,” or have their body fat percentage calculated by measuring neck and abdomen circumference.
Current rules call for sailors who fail three physical fitness assessments in four years to be separated from the Navy.
As part of the new guidelines, the Navy will erase all but one prior failure from sailor records in January, and it will give those currently being separated for fitness reasons a chance to stay on, provided they pass an exercise test by Dec. 1 of this year.
The service will also overlook body composition failures in this year’s fall cycle, although it will require all medically cleared sailors to take the exercise test; failing the exercise test will still result in failure of the full physical fitness assessment.
The new rules keep the same maximum weight allowances but add the single-site abdominal measurement before the traditional taping. Male sailors with an abdominal circumference less than or equal to 39 inches will pass the body composition portion and move on to the physical readiness test, as will females with a measurement at or below 35.5 inches.
Those who fail the abdominal measurement will need their body fat composition calculated, using the current taping process measuring neck and abdomen circumference. Even with new body fat maximums, sailors must meet new limits for their age range. Those falling outside their range but under the maximum overall limit will still pass but be enrolled in their command’s fitness enhancement program, or FEP, as well as nutritional counseling.
Anyone who fails the taping portion will fail the full body composition assessment and will still fail the full assessment. But under the new rules they must participate in the exercise test.
The new rules also emphasize commander spot checks, or quick assessments of a sailor’s health outside the physical fitness assessment.
“It’s not a punitive measure,” Moran said in the video. “It should never be taken that way. It’s more of a way to say, ‘Hey shipmate, I’m worried about you, let’s go do the test. If it shows we need to get you on a program to better health, then let’s do that.’”
The new physical fitness assessment guidelines are part of a broader effort by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and service officials to emphasize a more holistic look at health and wellness over strict measurements. In a June directive, Mabus asked the services to update nutrition plans, increase access to base gyms, perform fitness spot checks and recognize those who exceed fitness requirements.
Navy officials have said the range of body types across the service make assessing proper body composition difficult. They’ve suggested the body composition assessment may be thrown out altogether in the future as other means of testing health become available, including the use of devices to measure sleep cycles, heart rate and blood pressure. The Navy is currently running trials of those devices and other tests throughout the fleet.
Not all sailors have welcomed talk of changing the fitness assessment. Some say loosening body composition requirements will have a negative effect on the service.
The exercise test may be strengthened in the future, officials say. The physical readiness test currently consists of curl-ups, pushups and a timed 1.5-mile run or similar cardio activity.
Can’t wait until the adults are back in charge.
By the way, I hope you don’t think I am personally attacking you on this issue, it is just something I feel very strongly about.
We are seeing these types of gradual loosening of standards in every service, and the end result is going to be a less capable military.
Everything will be fine in a peacetime military. but when there is actual battle damage to a vessel, people are going to see what is going to happen when sailors have to do extreme physical work in smoke-filled or high temperature compartments to save shipmates or the ship itself.
Men who have been in combat know that it places extraordinary physical demands that people who haven’t experienced it cannot imagine. Civilians think of ground combat as people with guns shooting at each other, and shipboard combat as ships making tight turns and launching missiles.
What ground combat really is involves wearing and carrying large amounts of heavy equipment while wearing heavy and confining clothing, sometimes in very high temperatures, while running from point to point, climbing, scrambling over things as adrenaline is being pumped into the body. It often goes on for hours or days.
Shipboard combat (which our Navy has been fortunate enough to avoid since WW II except for incidents like the USS Cole, USS Stark, and various fires aboard ships, is more deadly than most civilians can imagine. In WWII, it is a little known fact to most people that four times as many sailors were killed in the campaign for Guadalcanal as were killed on the ground, and to survive it required strength, toughness and endurance on the part of the sailors that rivaled anything taking place on a battlefield. Men working in chest deep water of smoke filled, darkened compartments trying to control flooding, steering casualties or engineering failures due to fire and battle damage. Trying to carry wounded men directly up ladders to escape flooded or fire-filled compartments.
These decisions they are making are not being based on things like that, they are being base on making sure that certain billets needed for advancement are open to women and men who would not otherwise be eligible (for physical reasons) in order to meet societal experimentation quotas and standards.
Now all Tranny women can pretend like they’re men with validation from our military. We are the laughingstock of history.
So are a lot of overweight sailors. Isn't 18 hours a day at sea work enough? Some days 20 hour days. What about 100% humidity in about 120 plus equipment rooms? Out of a ship of almost 5400 men only maybe a half dozen were so overweight they would have had issues working but they were senior enlisted.
If the Pentagon was serious about crew readiness and ship readiness they would go back to a male crew only policy which has likely done much more damage to readiness than weight ever did. They strain at a gnat & swallow a camel. It's not the sailors weight that's the issue it's who they are allowing on ships who have no business ever being there to start with under any circumstance. I'd say someone finally drummed into the Morons heads that they need able bodied men capable of doing work requiring a larger framed men.
I would defer to your experience in these things since you likely have more specific knowledge of those things.
I was decrying the trend in general throughout the military to reduce physical standards, and we will will end up with the Swedish army or navy.
But as you inferred, they are not serious about readiness, they are serious about advancing women at all costs.
they may all float better. drowning resistant.
women will be treated equal except’when they do not want to be treated equal. thats how this crapola works out.
now imagine the current turnover in the services and who isnt there anymore and who is.
now imagine whats left and how they wont have much problem firing on peple like us.
I administered the PRTs when I was in the Navy Reserves. The current standards aren’t that hard to meet. Frankly, one needs a little bit of “oh, yeah, I’ll show you!” to make it in the military. No sailor should accept not being in the best possible shape they could be in.
I got screamed at my first drill weekend because I couldn’t master a basic exercise. I hit the gym hard the next month and came back able to do it.
I served 2 years active and 5 in reserve in the Navy and I agree with you fully.
You are correct...... MAKE A HOLE !!!. Breeder hips, bubble butt and thunder thighs coming through....MAKE WAY !!
Meanwhile in North Korea:
The soldier said that, despite lengthening of the required term of military service, the size of North Korea’s armed forces is destined to decrease because few people born during the 1994-98 “Great Famine,” and who are now of serving age, will be able to pass the KPA physical examination.
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/discharges-07172015142820.html
When I was in back in the early 70s there were a lot of fat Chiefs walking around with coffee cups. And a few First Class POs, too.
Daily NK, a Seoul-based online newspaper run by North Korean defectors, said the military has cut the minimum height to 142 centimetres from 145 cm.
All able-bodied North Korean males aged 16-17 must begin mandatory service that lasts about a decade. Women deemed fit must also serve for a shorter period in the 1.2 million-strong military, the world's fourth largest.
“There were too many short boys who don't meet the previous height requirement... so the military is now accepting all who are taller than 142 cm,” said a North Korean source quoted by Daily NK.
The average height for South Korean boys of the same age is about 172 cm.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/north-korea-cuts-minimum-height-for-military-conscripts-as-past-famine-consequences-hit/story-e6frg6so-1226316548817
142 cm = 4 ft 9 in
Looking around the base here I’d say it’s pretty loose already.
Fat people float better....
I never had a problem with passing the Army PT test, usually with a 80% score, but I was always fighting the battle with the scales, especially after I moved from line units into staff jobs.
Haha...you’re right
There certainly are big, strong people that can perform remarkable feats.
I don’t think these rule change have anything to do with keeping them in. On the contrary - given this administrations record - I am certain these rules are about letting people in and keeping them in - that should have never been in uniform in the first place.
I kept thinking for a long time, that all of these choices and unilateral decisions regarding the military personnel and equipment were simply ignorant and stupid. And there are some parts that are.
But I have come to believe overall, that they are more calculating and willful than ignorant and stupid. As Joseph McCarthy said in his somewhat flawed analysis of the actions of General George Marshall after WWII (and I paraphrase) “If his bad decisions were made from ignorance or stupidity, odds would dictate that at least some of them would be correct...”
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