Fitness & Readiness

The Army Fitness Test is the Army's physical fitness test of record. It replaced the Army Combat Fitness Test on 1 June 2025. The change was not cosmetic: the standing power throw was removed and the test dropped from six events to five. The remaining five events carried over unchanged, and the AFT has been used for promotion actions since 1 October 2025.

• Each event is scored 0 to 100 points, for a maximum of 500.
• Every Soldier must earn at least 60 points on every event. There is no trading a strong event against a failed one.
• The general standard is 60 points per event and 300 points total. Scoring is set by age group and, under the general standard, by sex.
• Soldiers in designated combat specialties are held to a sex-neutral, age-normed standard: 60 points minimum on every event and a total of 350 or better. Sex-neutral does not mean a third table; those Soldiers are scored on the male column regardless of sex.
• Height, weight, and body composition are not part of the test and are not scored on it. Body composition should be recorded at least seven days before or after the test.

The Army Body Composition Program exists so that Soldiers can meet the physical demands of duty and present a military appearance. AR 600-9 governs it. The regulation itself dates from July 2019, and the assessment method and several of the program's mechanics have been changed by Army directive since then. Use the current directive alongside the regulation, not the regulation alone.

1. 1

   Weigh and measure

   The Soldier's height and weight are recorded and compared against the screening table weight for their height, age, and sex.

2. 2

   At or under screening weight

   The Soldier meets the standard. No further assessment is required and nothing else happens.

3. 3

   Over screening weight

   The Soldier receives a body fat assessment. Exceeding the screening weight is not a failure by itself; plenty of Soldiers exceed it and pass the body fat assessment easily.

4. 4

   Body fat within standard

   The Soldier meets the standard and the record shows it.

5. 5

   Body fat over standard

   The Soldier is enrolled in the Army Body Composition Program and flagged.

A Soldier with a permanent profile takes every event the profile does not prohibit. The alternate aerobic events exist for one purpose: to replace the two-mile run for a Soldier whose profile prohibits running and authorizes a specific alternate. They are not an option a Soldier chooses because the run is hard.

• The authorized alternate aerobic events are the row, the stationary bike, the swim, and the walk. The profile must authorize the specific event, and the grader administers it to the standard in the current test guidance.
• Alternate aerobic events are graded GO or NO-GO, not on the point scale. A GO is recorded as 60 points on DA Form 705 and a NO-GO as 0.
• Because a GO is capped at 60 points, an alternate event can never help a Soldier past the minimum. It can only keep them from failing.
• A Soldier taking an alternate aerobic event must receive a GO on it. A NO-GO is a failed test.
• For promotion points, a Soldier with a permanent profile is awarded 60 points for each waived or alternate event and their actual score for the events they perform.

Enrollment in the Army Body Composition Program is an administrative action with real consequences, and leaders who treat it as a paperwork exercise end up with a Soldier who is surprised when their promotion or their school seat disappears. Explain the whole sequence at the counseling, not just the monthly weigh-in.

• The Soldier is flagged on DA Form 268. The flag suspends favorable personnel actions, which includes promotion, attendance at professional military education, reenlistment, awards, and favorable assignment actions.
• The Soldier is referred for nutrition counseling and for a medical evaluation to rule out an underlying condition.
• The Soldier is weighed and assessed monthly to measure progress and is counseled in writing on the result.
• The flag stays in place until the Soldier meets the body composition standard and is removed from the program.
• Failure to make satisfactory progress, and repeated enrollment, lead to separation processing under AR 635-200.

Satisfactory progress

AR 600-9 defines progress as a loss of three to eight pounds per month, or a reduction of roughly one percent body fat per month. A Soldier losing at that rate is making progress even while still over the standard.

Medical evaluation

Required before a Soldier is held accountable for non-progress. If a medical condition is the cause, the treatment plan drives the outcome, not the separation timeline.

Removal

The Soldier meets the standard, the flag is removed, and the record is updated. Removal is not automatic; someone has to process the flag removal.

A physical profile documents functional limitations. The medical provider owns the determination; the chain of command owns the accommodation and the training plan. Leaders who try to negotiate a profile are out of their lane, and leaders who ignore one are creating a line of duty problem for themselves. AR 40-501 sets the medical fitness standards the profile system is built on, and the profile itself is recorded on DA Form 3349.

P

Physical capacity or stamina.

U

Upper extremities.

L

Lower extremities.

H

Hearing and ears.

E

Eyes.

S

Psychiatric.

• A temporary profile covers a condition expected to resolve. It is reviewed at the intervals AR 40-501 prescribes, and a condition that will not resolve is converted to a permanent profile rather than renewed indefinitely.
• A permanent profile is approved by a designated profiling authority. A permanent 3 or 4 in any factor triggers a review of whether the Soldier meets medical retention standards.
• The profile states what the Soldier can do, not only what they cannot. Read the functional activities and the physical fitness section, because that is where testing is addressed.
• For fitness testing, a Soldier with a permanent profile takes every event the profile does not prohibit and takes an authorized alternate aerobic event in place of the run only if the profile prohibits running.
• A profile is not a flag and does not by itself suspend favorable actions. It also does not excuse a Soldier from a record test unless it prohibits the specific event.

Holistic Health and Fitness is the Army's system for building and sustaining physical and non-physical readiness. FM 7-22 is the doctrine. The core argument of H2F is that fitness is not just training volume: a Soldier who trains hard, eats badly, and sleeps five hours is not more ready, they are closer to an injury.

Physical readiness

Strength, endurance, and mobility built through programmed physical readiness training rather than through unstructured smoke sessions.

Nutritional readiness

Fueling for performance and recovery. Directly tied to body composition, injury rates, and how well a Soldier adapts to training.

Mental readiness

Cognitive and emotional skills that let a Soldier perform under stress and recover from it.

Spiritual readiness

The Soldier's sense of purpose, values, and connection to something beyond themselves. It is what carries a unit through the parts of service that are not physical.

Sleep readiness

Treating sleep as a resource that is planned and protected. Sleep loss degrades judgment, reaction time, and injury resistance measurably.

• The commander owns the H2F program. It is not a function that can be handed to a fitness enthusiast in the platoon.
• H2F is designed to be delivered by a trained team, including strength and conditioning, nutrition, physical therapy, and mental performance expertise, resourced at brigade level.
• FM 7-22 is the training system. ATP 7-22.01 carries the testing procedures. They are different publications and boards ask about both.
• The domains are not ranked. A unit that trains physical readiness hard while ignoring sleep and nutrition is running an incomplete program by design.

Musculoskeletal injuries cost the Army more available Soldiers than anything else in garrison. The H2F answer is not to train less, it is to train correctly: a structured session, progressive loading, and recovery that is planned rather than hoped for. Almost every avoidable injury in a unit traces back to a session that skipped preparation, jumped the progression, or turned into a punishment.

Preparation

Readies the body for the work that follows. It is not stretching for four minutes while the formation talks; it is a deliberate warm-up that matches what the session is about to demand.

Activities

The training itself, chosen to develop the specific capability the plan calls for that day.

Recovery

Brings the Soldier back to a resting state and reduces injury risk. It is the component units cut first and the one that pays for itself.

Precision

Exercises are performed to standard. A repetition done badly builds a compensation pattern, and a compensation pattern under load becomes an injury.

Progression

Workload increases deliberately and systematically. The most common cause of injury in a unit is a jump in volume or intensity that nobody planned.

Integration

Training components are combined in a balanced program instead of running the same session every day because it is easy to lead.

• Program the week before you program the day. Hard days need easy days next to them, and the fitness test is not a training session.
• Newly assigned Soldiers, Soldiers coming off a profile, and Soldiers returning from leave are the highest injury risk in the formation. Ramp them, do not drop them into the unit's current volume.
• Corrective physical training is not physical readiness training. Using exercise as punishment produces poor form under fatigue, which is the exact condition injuries happen in.
• Track injuries and near misses. A pattern in one platoon is almost always a training design problem, not a toughness problem.

Medical readiness is tracked individually and rolls up into the unit's deployability. Most of what pushes a Soldier out of a green status is administrative, not medical: an overdue periodic health assessment, an immunization, a dental exam. Those are the ones a squad leader can fix in a week, and they are the ones that sit unfixed for months.

• Individual medical readiness is built from a set of elements: the periodic health assessment, dental readiness, immunizations, medical readiness laboratory tests, individual medical equipment such as eyeglasses and protective mask inserts, and any deployment-limiting condition.
• Dental readiness is classified in four categories. Class 1 needs no treatment, Class 2 needs treatment that is unlikely to cause an emergency within twelve months, Class 3 is likely to cause a dental emergency within twelve months and is not deployable, and Class 4 means the examination is overdue or the status is unknown.
• The Medical Protection System, MEDPROS, is the tracking system of record. If it is not in MEDPROS it did not happen, which is why Soldiers who got a shot at a civilian clinic still show red.
• MRC 4 is the class leaders should have the least tolerance for. It means nobody knows, and it is fixed with appointments rather than with medicine.
• AR 40-502 governs medical readiness. Confirm the current edition, because the readiness elements and the reporting requirements are revised on their own cycle.

A record test that was administered badly is worth nothing, and the Soldier is the one who pays for it. Most disputed scorecards come down to the same three problems: the event was not administered to the published standard, the grader was not trained, or the scorecard is incomplete.

• The test is administered in the published event order: deadlift, hand-release push-up, sprint-drag-carry, plank, two-mile run.
• Graders are trained on the current standards and grade to them. A grader who counts a repetition the standard does not allow has invalidated that event.
• The deadlift scorecard records two attempts, and the heavier successful set is the one that scores. The equipment is a hexagon bar with bumper plates, not a straight bar.
• The sprint-drag-carry clock runs from the start of the first shuttle to the end of the fifth, with no built-in rest, and the carry shuttle uses two 40-pound kettlebells.
• The two-mile run is the last scored event and follows the other four with no recovery period built into the standard.
• Alternate aerobic events are recorded as GO or NO-GO, entered as 60 points or 0.