BOTTOM LINE: THE STRUCTURE, EXECUTION AND SPECIFICITY OF the air force's fitness program DOES NOT MEET THE Air FOrce's STATED OBJECTIVES

Air Force Instruction (AFI) 36-2905 (Air Force Fitness Program), para 1.1 states:

"...Being physically fit allows you to properly support the Air Force mission. The goal of the Fitness Program (FP) is to motivate all members to participate in a year-round physical conditioning program that emphasizes total fitness, to include proper aerobic conditioning, muscular fitness training, and healthy eating. Commanders and supervisors must incorporate fitness into the Air Force culture establishing an environment for members to maintain physical fitness and health to meet expeditionary mission requirements. The Fitness Assessment (FA) provides commanders with a tool to assist in the determination of overall fitness of their military personnel. Commander-driven physical fitness training is the backbone of the Air Force Fitness Program and an integral part of mission requirements. The program promotes aerobic and muscular fitness, flexibility, and optimal body composition of each member in the unit.".

Here are my Top 5 reasons why the Air Force Fitness Program does NOT prepare it's Airmen to "properly support the Air Force Mission," and why it is NOT promoting total health and wellness for Airmen.

The Air Force Fitness "culture" (if there is one), despite the goals of the Fitness AFI, centers on the Fitness Assessment (the PT Test), and NOT regular fitness for overall health and wellness. Commanders are essentially impotent and ill-prepared to execute a fitness program that goes beyond the Fitness Test. Airmen generally fall into three categories regarding Fitness:
- Self-motivated Airmen: That comparatively small percentage of Airmen performing their own Fitness programs designed to meet specific individual health and/or fitness goals. This may be in-addition to squadron or flight organized PT
- Oh-shit my test is coming Airmen: Airmen who see the pending Fitness test on the horizon (within 2 months or so) and decide they need to jog 2 miles three days per week and do some push-ups and sit-ups to prepare enough not to fail
- Pending disciplinary action: Airmen who have failed their test, who have been forced into the oft-defunct BE WELL program (mandatory training for those who have failed) or who are desperately striving to avoid discharge

We must develop a 4th category that embraces the latter 2 categories: Airmen following a motivational, interactive, challenging, rewarding, well-prepared Fitness syllabus that truly emphasizes Fitness attributes necessary to the Air Force mission, but more importantly, that develops healthy overall movement patterns necessary for daily life (See #2 and #3)

2. The Air Force Fitness Test FAILS to assess the components of Fitness essential to the Air Force Mission, nor does it test Fitness components essential to long-term independent healthy living. HQ AF/A1 (Personnel) is clinging to outdated studies and concepts of Fitness as it relates to performance and health. This stems from an outdated perception of what Fitness is (or a lack of a definition of Fitness). Let's look at the elements of the USAF Fitness Assessment:
-1.5 mile run. Running 1.5 miles is an assessment of cardio-pulmonary capabilities. However, what does that tell us about an Airman's ability to quickly exit a convoy vehicle and sprint 50 yards to cover (while wearing body armor) or to repeatedly lift 150-200lb missiles while wearing a gas mask? The answer is: very, very little. A well-developed aerobic base is a good assessment an individual's ability to do longer steady-state efforts or to recover between repeated bouts of shorter (glycolictic) work--the kind generally seen in daily life. But it does not tell us enough about an Airman's ability to execute those shorter bouts of physically-demanding work. Thousands of young Airmen in varying AFSCs found themselves embedded in combat convoys in Iraq or Afghanistan; the ability to run 1.5 miles could only take them so far when survival depended on lifting heavy objects (including yourself) and moving them quickly in combat situations. The Air Force has decided to make the 1.5 mile test 60% of the overall score; way to double down on an empty hand! They're stuck in the 1980s cardio-is-king mentality. To the Air Force, there is only one metabolic pathway, and like Lenny in Of Mice and Men, the Air Force will pet, and stroke, and love the 1.5 mile run to the detriment of its Airmen. Instead of training all metabolic pathways and fostering the ability to do high-power output bouts necessary for life and service, the Air Force fosters a culture of distance runners. Why not test 400-800m run intervals (loaded or unloaded)?

-Push-ups and Sit-ups. The Air Force uses push-ups and sit-ups to assess "Muscular Fitness." Other than the Fitness Assessment, I cannot think of a time where life or a job in the Air Force dictates doing a push-up or a sit-up (getting out of bed...kind of....maybe?). I can, however, think of a movement that is required for every AFSC (from Commanders' Support Staff to Combat Controller) and of every ambulatory individual in life: picking up an object from the ground. Why do we not test an Airman's ability to pick up an object? Or to take an object from the ground to their shoulders? Groceries, children, a box of printer paper--they all require movement from the ground to waist-height or higher. We don't do push-ups on the job; we almost ALL lift things. Yet the Air Force will post a glossy OSHA poster saying "lift with your legs not your back" and call it good. What if we taught Airman how to to lift objects? And what if we tested their ability to lift and carry sandbags? Hell, even testing their ability to lift and move boxes of printer paper is a more valid indicator of their mission preparedness and of their ability to function in daily life than push-ups and sit-ups.

-Waistline Measurement. At least it's not BMI! Overall, I don't have many spears for the waistline measurement, other than it is weighted MORE than muscular fitness and that there is insufficient Air Force-wide guidance and squadron-level oversight on lifestyle and nutrition factors affecting waistline. Again--assess the ability to do the job. I'd rather have a slightly overweight Airman that can move ten 50 lb. sandbags 50m in under 5 minutes than an Airman that meets waistline measurement standards but can't lift the 50 lb. sandbag at all. Actually, i'd rather not have either. BUT, i'm willing to bet that the Airman who regularly trains for and can execute the 50 lb. sandbag challenge outlined above WILL meet the waistline standards.

3. "Commander-Driven" Fitness programs, per the AFI, are not effective. The flaccid concept of nebulous non-mandatory "Commander-Driven" fitness programs opens the door for an unimaginably broad range of programs; from non-existent to dangerous. Per AFI 36-2905: "Consistent with mission requirements, commanders are encouraged to schedule or authorize military service members’ time to participate in physical fitness training during the duty day."
There is no Air Force-wide requirement for consistent mandatory Fitness training. Commanders who choose to implement programs must generally rely on poorly-trained PTLs (Physical Training Leader) insufficiently armed with the knowledge or experience to work with a wide range of athletic abilities, injuries, and movement patterns much less to design a comprehensive fitness program.

My vision is a standardized Air Force-wide syllabus of fitness training that begins in BMT ("basic training"). In BMT, Airmen receive instruction and exposure to foundational movement patterns, fitness methodology and General Physical Preparedness (GPP) conditioning (CrossFit's Level 1 Seminar is unequivocally the best model for this). This continues in tech schools (job training) where skill development and conditioning continue. Finally, a sustainment program of mandatory weekly workouts are implemented Air Force wide.

Why not an Air Force Fitness website (Sharepoint is all the rage) that contains an entire Fitness syllabus for BMT (every warmup, workout, and cool-down, and life-style and nutrition academics) and a 6-month top-off syllabus (mandatory for tech schools), and then daily workouts for execution at the flight, squadron, group or wing-level?

4. There is an insufficient emphasis on appropriate sleep management, rest and recovery. Do a quick word search in AFI-36-2905 and you will NOT find the word "sleep" anywhere. You'll find "recovery" twice (once in the section outlining testing rules after pregnancy and one statement that cooling down will "hasten recovery"). And you'll find the word "rest" exactly ZERO times. So, as components of a Fitness program, rest, recovery and sleep are essentially neglected. A quick glance at the frequent shift work-cycles and stressful conditions in the military highlight the critical need for sleep, recovery and rest as essential portions of the Air Force Fitness program; especially if a stated objective of that program is to improve overall health. The concept of flexibility is given a cursory acknowledgement in AFI 36-2905, but it is neither assessed, nor included as a core tenet in Air Force fitness "culture" (or "non-culture" as it seems to be).

5. Fitness facilities that perpetuate cardio-centric training and poor movement patterns. Except for a few outliers, Air Force Fitness facilities are built around treadmills and ridiculously-expensive (and just simply ridiculous) machines that, in general, promote unnatural isolated movement patterns. Give me one year worth of money the Air Force spent on outfitting their facilities with "machines," and it's likely I could outfit nearly every SQUADRON (that's 30-100 Airmen per squadron) with an independent facility capable of training its airmen safer and more efficiently. Or better yet, ban the purchase of new LCD TVs for one year and use that to outfit each Group with a fully-qualified professional fitness trainer to run squadron-level or group-level PT.

6. BONUS - Per AFI 36-2905's stated purpose for the Air Force's Fitness Program, the waistline measurement (a health marker) does not belong on the Fitness Test. Relegate health markers to the annual Physical Health Assessment (PHA - the annual checkup) by trained medical professionals. Make the Fitness test a assessment of the ability to perform tasks associated with daily duty and potential deployed duty.