 Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us for today's town hall hosted by SMA Michael Grinston and command sergeant major Andrew Lombardo from the US Army Reserve Command. Thank you everyone for joining us, especially those during battle assembly. We've got a lot of watch parties out there today and looking forward to the discussion and the questions. So with that Sergeant Major Lombardo over to you. Thank you, Sergeant First Class Frontier Army Reserve Soldiers. Good afternoon on behalf of General Daniels and the entire command team. I'd like to welcome you to the Army Combat Fitness Test Town Hall where I get to distinct privilege to introduce your Sergeant Major of the Army, Sergeant Major of the Army, Michael Grinston. So I know that many of you are attending battle assembly and this is party schedule training while others will tune in and watch later. So for the commands out there and leaders, thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to do this. As you know, the Army Combat Fitness Test is the assessment for the physical domain of the Army's holistic health and fitness program. Physical fitness is an important component of individual and unit readiness. That's because we must make sure that all soldiers are physically and mentally prepared to deploy, fight, and win. And as the SMA Consulate reminds me, winning matters. With that said, there have been many questions regarding the new assessment and today those questions will be answered. This session, like Sergeant Randy has said, is being recorded and the link will be placed on our Army Reserve Facebook page. So those who do not have the opportunity to watch live are able to access the information shared in today's Town Hall. Before we begin, I just want to thank everybody for your service to the dedicated Federal Reserve of the Army, America's Army Reserve, and how you represent and communicate the value of service to our nation to your communities. I ask that each of you talk about your story as twice the citizen to your families, friends, employers, and coworkers. You are our number one priority and the most effective recruits that we have. And with that, I'll turn it over to our 16th Sergeant Major of the Army, LaFleur, as yours, SMA. Sergeant Major Lombardo, thank you for your opening comments and thank everyone for tuning in today and I look forward to the discussion. Before I even get started with the discussion about the Army Combat Fitness Test, I just want to say there's a lot going on in the world right now. So we just sent thousands of soldiers to Europe. I truly don't believe that COVID still kind of finished yet. And all that we do in the active component would not be possible without the mission of the support of the Army Reserve, especially when you look at the fourth no-notice deployment of the 82nd over to Poland and a no-notice deployment of 1st Brigade, 3rd ID. And I'd just like to say, you know, let's keep all of those soldiers that are over there in our thoughts and prayers as they go through a difficult no-notice mission with all the other things that are going on in our country. So I really appreciate everybody and I wanted to just take a little time today to talk about some of the Army Combat Fitness policies and procedures, you know, for all our soldiers, because this is important. And with all that we do, leadership matters here, especially with fitness. There's a lot of information that's going to be talked about today. This is just a discussion. There's been updated policies. There's updated doctrine. So this does not substitute for any reading of the Army Directive or those policies. This is just an additive to give some clarity for all that information. So I encourage everyone to take time to read the Army Directive and the executive orders that are going to follow. And any time that you can find yourself reading up on the field manuals and the Army Training Publications, they'll be out soon and I ask you all to go ahead and take time to read through those. So I look forward to it and we'll just kind of jump right in as I'm still waiting for the first slide to come up. Okay. If you could go ahead and go through the first slide, please. There are those next. Okay. I got the spinning dial here, but we'll continue to go. Here's where we're at with the Army Combat Fitness Test. I just want to talk about the evolution of what this has. I'm really excited on this evolution. It's taken us 40 years to actually change the Army Combat Fitness Test. We've been developing this test for years and for three years, it's actually changed. We had Army Combat Fitness Test, the original version. Then it was Asian or neutral. Then it was 1.0. Then we went to 2.0. Then eventually we got to 3.0. That was the latest version of the test that came out in June of 2020. We had a little bit of gender norming in there. It was designed as an occupational fitness test with occupational standards. That's kind of how it evolved over time. But what it is now, if you go to the next slide, is this is the Army Combat Fitness Test. This is not 4.0. We're dropping all the numbers and the letters of everything. This is just going to be the Army Combat Fitness Test. We've removed the leg tuck. We've added the walk back for units without alternate testing equipment. That's one of the reasons we added that walk back in so that you could do some of that without equipment because the alternate events were just bike, swim, rower. We added the walk back in. The diagnostic test will begin in 1 April. The record test for United States Army Reserve in the Army National Guard will begin on 1 April 23. Some of the personal actions may start a little more, a little later. Most everything for the Army National Guard in the Army Reserves will start on 1 April 23. You can take a diagnostic test before April 23. You can do and you pass and you'd like to use that with dialogue with your commander. So I want to use this prior to April 23. Once you hit April 23, that could be your test of record. But for the total Army, complete total Army, the implementation for everyone will be complete by April of 2024. And if you want to have more information about the test, there's the website right there at the bottom. You can get that link and then you can go and look up all the things on the Army Combat Fitness Test. But how did we get to this version of the test? When, if you could go to the next slide, please. We did a RAND independent study. The RAND independent study was ordered off the National Defense Authorization Act where they said we had to do an independent study of the Army Combat Fitness Test. So that was complete actually in February. And based off the recommendations in the RAND study, this is how we developed the test that you just, that I just explained to you and how we came up with those items that we just talked about, where we removed the leg tuck. And if I didn't fail to mention, we normed the test as opposed to being gender neutral. When you look at it, here's the recommendations. And for those that you maybe can't see those right up front, I'll just go ahead and say the independent RAND study had four top level recommendations. They were addressed shortfalls of the ACFT evidence base. Consider ways to mitigate impacts to the workforce. That's one of the reasons that we gender normed the test to mitigate that. And so it takes us to support training improvements over time. And that's why we have some of the longer lead times for the United States Army Reserve. So we take some more time to go ahead and implement the test. And then institutionalize a formal senior level management structure. And there is a structure that we'll do by annual reviews on the Army Combat Fitness Test. So basically we took all the recommendations and we listened to them. And then over the course of the last six or seven months, we've developed a course of action. And that's the reason why we have the new Army Combat Fitness Test. And it's based on evidence. And the one thing that we did change, and if you were to read the RAND study, it said, you know, consider norming the test. So it doesn't make it one of the recommendations there, but it actually says it in the RAND study. So this is based off of the RAND study and the evidence-based and a sample size of 630,000 Army Combat Fitness Test records. So we took the evidence of all that. Everybody taking the Army Combat Fitness Test for the last year or two, plus the RAND study, and then we mitigated the impacts. And I just described those impacts. One of those was make it gender normed. And then I talked about the training and the governance over time. Give the next slide, please. And here's what we developed as the scales. We relatively went back to the age and gender normed brackets that we had for the APFT. So when you look at these age brackets, you'll see a very similar, if you looked at the APFT. And that's important because the similar brackets would assume and similar standards, not similar standards because it's a completely different test. But when you went to age and gender normed, you would expect similar results. So we don't have all the results because we hadn't taken the test for record. But some would say, how do you mitigate the impacts? Well, we mitigated it by making it gender normed and by age. And that's how we mitigate the impacts. And we would assume that similar pass and fail rates like we had with the APFT. And the APFT, on average, I believe, it was maybe 5% or 6% would fail the army physical fitness test. So as we developed these scales, we had developed them in a similar manner. So you would assume maybe 4% or 5% in each group may fail the army combat fitness test. We don't know. But here are the men and max for those age groups and by men and women as you look at the scales. And these are just the men and the max. So you could say, why did we go back? The reason we went back is I think I already explained that. It's a general fitness test, not an occupational fitness test. And then when we look at it, the plank versus the leg tuck, this was indicated in the RAND study for those that really want to dig in and read every line. I believe it's actually on page 14, the page numbers have changed over time. At one point it says the leg tuck wasn't an accurate predictor of core strength for all soldiers. And that's why we looked into it and had one exercise. We kept it the same so everybody would assess core strength. But when you read below that, and there's a little chart, again, if you really wanted to dig into the data on the RAND study, there's a chart that shows the leg tuck is a good, is a multiple component exercise. So you have to have grip strength, upper body strength and core strength. So you couldn't exactly evaluate the core strength if you didn't have the grip strength and upper body strength. So we decided to go with one, one, one event. And that would be the plank and a lot of units or correction, a lot of services or two already have a plank. So we use some of that information to develop our plank scores. But we had some data, but not a lot data. And so we implemented these scoring based off of what the other services have done. Okay. So that also that those would have a similar testing experience. Now on the temporary and permanent profiles, I'd ask you all again to read into the Army Directive and the X-Word when you get into, because there's temporary profiles, not to be confused with permanent profiles. Similar to the APFT is that if you're on a temporary profile, you should not be taking the ACFT. You just, when you recover, condition and take the PT test, that's pretty much the same as we have for the APFT. On permanent profiles, it's a little different. I will clarify this a little bit. In the original version of either the Army Directive or the X-Word, it said you must do Max Dead List, Print Direct Carry, and an aerobic event. We've taken out those other two because we try to implement probably too much in saying that, you know, we want to do Max Dead List, and the Print Direct Carry, and an aerobic event. We've not done that prior to now. So with the APFT, according to DOD policy and the Army policy, you must do an aerobic event. So we went, we took out the other two and just said, okay, if you're on a permanent profile, you have a similar result as it must do an aerobic event. One of those aerobic events are the walk, stationary bike, swim, and the row. Again, this is just permanent profiles. If you have a permanent profile and you can do certain events on the PT test, on the Army Combat Fitness Test, you will take those events. If you take the push-up, you'll get points for the push-up. If you don't take the Sprint Direct Carry, then you will get minimum points if you needed those points for either promotion points or something later. You would get a minimum score of 60. That will not be averaged out or anything else. If you don't take that event and you are on a permanent profile, you would receive a minimum passing score for that event. For all the events that you take, you'll receive the score that you get. These policies give us a long lead time for temporary profiles for obvious reasons. Okay, now next slide. Here are the new ACFC standards and the timelines associated with that. We're already in April, so you can move from the left to right. You can administer an Army Diagnostic ACFT, and there will be no adverse actions. If you're in the active component, that will be a period of six months. If you're in the Army Reserve, that will be until one April. You have until one April to administer a diagnostic, and then after one April 23, that will be your test of record, and you can start flagging on that time. If you don't pass before one April of 24, you're allowed to be separated in that time. When we looked at the policies for separations and recovery, because we do have a six-event PT test, and the old policies, there was a shorter time period. We doubled the amount of time that you had to recover and pass the ACFT. So we went to more time for you to recover and pass. You'd still be flagged if you're an Army Reserve soldier. If you haven't passed by April 23, you're subject to be flagged, and if you don't pass that test by one April 24, you'll be allowed to be separated. So I'll go down each one somewhat quickly. I just talked about the flags. Soldiers can extend if they haven't passed the ACFT, and you can do some kind of extension, but you will not be allowed to re-enlist. If, in fact, in one April 23, you have not passed the ACFT, you will not be allowed to re-enlist. The valuations, one October, you'll be allowed to, I'm sorry, with through dates of one April, for active promotion in one April, I'm sorry, one October 22, and then one April 23, you'll be allowed to put these on your NCOERs and evaluation reports in April 23. If you're commissioning, it'll be required for all commissioning in April 23. I already talked about if, well, I did talk about it, but promotions, when you get promoted, if in one April 23, and you have not passed the Army Combat Fitness Test by one April, and you have to take it, and if you don't take it, you will be flagged. So starting one April, if you're flagged, you're not allowed to stay in the Army until you actually pass the Army Combat Fitness Test. We're still working on the promotion points and how that will affect you for those Soldiers for Specialists, the Sergeant and Sergeant, the Staff Sergeant. We may adjust those, but we have a little bit of time to get the scales right, and we'll publish exactly what the promotion points, scales will be shortly. I should have those out prior to one October of this year. And I've already talked about separations. Initial military training, starting in one October, all initial military training, if you're going to basic training in AIT, will be required to graduate and pass the Army Combat Fitness Test. That's all components, everyone. In one October of 22. And the same thing for professional military education, all components, if you have a, if there is a graduation requirement or a prerequisite requirement for a physical fitness test in one October of 22, that will be a requirement. You must pass the Army Combat Fitness Test in October of 22, regardless of the component. If you start a professional military education, that already has a requirement for a fitness standard. And we wanted to do that to not have different timelines for a school, because we're all in the one Army school system. Okay. If you go to the last slide, please. I think all leaders need to know this. Please, again, read the policy. There'll be a chain teach that's working its way all the way down. And the reason we ask everybody to do this is when we did Army Combat Fitness Test 3.0, the old version, it felt like, you know, people didn't actually get this all the way down of what the test was. And it caused some confusion because people were under the assumption that we're using the old version. So the Army Combat Fitness Test has changed. It's just the Army Combat Fitness Test. And everyone needs to know the policies all the way down to the lowest level. And I look forward to your discussions. And I thank you for joining me today. So thanks. Esimac, thank you. Our first question is coming from the 412th Theater Engineer Command. So if they would unmute their microphone and we'll get them here on screen and then go ahead and ask your question when you're ready. Back in Esimac, this is Specialist Mathis with the 412th Theater Engineering Command. The reason for you today is, why is it that Compost 2 and 3 have an additional year to prepare for the ACFT versus Compost 1 when the only meaningful change has been the plane? Okay, thank you for the question. I just wanted to give you a little bit more time because you don't go, I don't know, 31 days a year giving you more time to allow you for a little bit of the change. And some things didn't really change too much but I wanted to ensure that you had plenty of time to take the latest version and the diagnostic PT test so that there still is a requirement in the XOR to do a diagnostic PT test before you do full implementation and because of your schedules, we thought it would be prudent not to go that you only have six months. And when you look at the data, not every unit when asked to take the Army Combat Fitness Test has actually taken it in all Compost. So we want to give you plenty of time for that diagnostic Army Combat Fitness Test before you got to the test of record in order to do that with the amount of days that you work in a normal schedule on duty, we needed to give you more time. Thank you. All right, our next question comes from the 332nd Medical Brigade. So we'll give them an opportunity to get their microphone off of mute and ask their question. 332nd Medical Brigade, nothing heard. We'll go to the 85th US Army Reserve Support Command for our next question. I'll meet your microphone and we will take your question. After this question we can go back to them if they get their mic fixed. Roger. Okay, go ahead. 85th, anybody? Okay, back to 332nd and 139th Medical will be after them if somebody. Okay, Ella, go ahead and do a question from the internet. Maybe go back to the 412. See, their mic work, we just got to ask them to ask more questions. So, okay, 412th. We'll come back to you. Go ahead and start right there and see what happens. Cards have been released. What does the data show when you compare the pass rates for the current test standards compared to the original version of the ACFT and how does that compare to the APFT? Okay, that was I think a complicated question. APFT versus ACFT versus, well, we haven't done all the data yet compared to the new ACFT because we hadn't taken it. So, it's going to be hard to compare everything that you hadn't actually taken and then compare it to the old APFT data. So, we don't actually have the information ready and can compare the data. That's why we do need that six months and to go ahead and get it into the system. We haven't even built the digital training management system, haven't updated the scales in when you put it in. So, we'll be able to compare it once we have all the data. However, when we took the old data and we said, here's the pass rates. Again, we just kind of based it off of what the old pass rates were and said, okay, if everybody that took the max dead lift, here's everybody, men and women that's taken it and here's all their ages and this is who scored at the top and we said, okay, if we scored at the top 95% would fail, okay, that's the top and then at the minimum, 5%, okay, what would be the minimum if only 5% failed that event, which is very similar to the APFT. So, we expect the similar results but we don't know yet because we actually haven't taken this version. So, it's hard to compare something we haven't gotten all the data. We need to get that information in but we expect similar results. I think that answers the question. All right. We'll go ahead and do one more from Facebook. We have a user John May who thinks these are just vetted questions from units. So, we'll go ahead and ask his just to let him know what are the odds and Sir Major Lombardo, feel free to come in on this one as well. The odds of guard and reserve soldiers getting a stipend added to drill pay for gym membership or some other program to help with training equipment. Okay. I'll be the first one to jump in. I will say you can ask anything you want. You can start with that. I've done more than one of these town halls. So, please ask whatever you want. So, I'll throw that out. Best number one. Number two, we still don't exactly see a need for a gym membership and unfortunately the example I gave everybody is all the gyms closed in Army and I don't know about March 2020. So, everybody assumes that all the active component gyms are open. They actually weren't. So, but we still had a requirement to do the Army combat fitness test and believe it or not, I looked at every week and probably about 18 months worth of data and we actually saw the success rate go up even during the pandemic. So, you know, a lot of gyms and all the gym lockers, they were closed to so somebody's like, well, but you had these other things. So, a lot of those things with the active component were actually shut down, but we still had people taking the Army combat fitness test in certain locations, even though they couldn't actually use the equipment they pulled out and do just the test and then that was it. We've seen people get better. I will tell you that the number one failed event number one failed event is still the two mile run and the number one past event is the max deadlift. So, there's a lot of body weight things that you can do. There's a lot of exercises with minimum equipment like, you know, just sprint up and down for the sprint drag carry run backwards one do a lateral grab some sandbags. So, there's a lot of things you can do if you want get with the master fitness trainers or send a note to the master fitness school and they will send you an exercise plan. They did for me. I sent them and said here's my weakest event and the exercise they gave me actually were with no equipment and I just say that right now we're not looking to give any gym memberships Sir Major Lombardo any follow up with that. SMA, thank you. I think the point that you made about the master fitness trainer. I know the school house is opening up significantly more seats available just so just the leadership out there just take a look at your units ensure that you have adequate master fitness instructors in your units to be able to do exactly what the SMA is discussing. There are some options that we're looking at through the Reserve Organization of America through offering reduced gym memberships through Planet Fitness and possibly they're looking to donate some equipment throughout the Army Reserve and Army National Guard but that's not going to affect the citizen soldier that lives 60 miles away from a Reserve Center but they're looking at reduced memberships as far as funding through the Army Reserve as the SMA said nothing is planned at this time stop running over to the SMA. Yeah I would say to add on to the master fitness course is going to double the amount of slots they have for the master fitness trainers and that's all compost are allowed to go to that course actually I think about 50% of the instructors are Army National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers at the master fitness school so they fully understand you know the complications of being a traditional guards soldier National Guard or Army Reserve soldier so we're doubling them out the other thing we're also doing is we're trying to implement a tactical strength and conditioning facilitator course into the basic litter course so everyone will have a more in-depth knowledge of how to exercise and do these movements appropriately with body weight Alright SMA we'll go to US Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command for our next question so go ahead and unmute yourself and ask a question. Good afternoon SMA Master Sergeant Williams Master Sergeant Williams I can hear you it just sounds really loud but go ahead and ask your question and then I'll try to answer it My apologies SMA Given the personnel I'll ask Sergeant Major Lombardo if he wants to jump in but I don't think so I think you know if it's a flagging action that has to be done by soldiers with an NTOIC and an OIC and they can probably help set up the equipment they can probably you know kind of help you out with maybe some administrative things but I'm still almost certain that has to be done by an Army soldier and we're not going to leave that up to civilians especially on the grading Sergeant Major Lombardo anything I missed on that Hey thanks SMA so thanks for the question your spot on SMA that's going to be an Army Reserve soldier or an Army soldier that's going to administer it Alright our next question comes from social media you said the two mile event was the most failed event so why would we not look at lowering that or making another change to that as opposed to increasing the time I believe you're asking why do a two mile run as opposed to adjusting the run times because we're looking at the we're trying to get the VO2 max and it's not about running it's about your VO2 max and how do we get that and I'm almost certain you have to run about 12 minutes to get that VO2 max and that threshold so we can appropriately assess that so we do need a length of time for you to run to do that that also lends into why it has to be done in a certain order so you can't do the run you can't do the sprint directly and do certain things because it's designed in that in that specific order to get the appropriate effects on the body so we're not doing it just the SU for two miles it's to make sure we get appropriate assessment or your VO2 max okay thank you for that and we'll go back to 139th Medical Brigade if I there up now for the specialist hall how will score for the promotion points be calculated okay we're still working on the exact score we had about four courses of action that we were working on to reduce those I believe we're going to reduce some of the promotion points score a little bit and I think I got the percentages not at the top of my head about 24-25% of your grade on the current ACFT promotion points were only physical fitness so and that was much larger than any other component in other words if you ex shoot expert with your rifle or you had similar things that you've done your PT test was overly weighted to any other component of the promotion points so we're looking to do reduce that so it may not be the overall arching component and put illnesses on those things for soldier skills like expert soldier badge weapons marksmanship so I don't know the exact promotion points yet we're still just trying to get a little bit of the data on the ACFT but we'll make that adjustment soon because right now if you're an E4 going to E5 there's 180 promotion points we're looking to reduce that a little bit but just so it's proportional to the other events and try to incentivize those other combat skills like the expert soldier badge to double that the amount of points we get but we don't have it exact right but we're looking to reduce it somewhat so it's a little bit less of the main proponent of your promotion points thank you our next question comes from social media about flagging regarding soldiers flagged for APFT are soldiers flagged for APFT no longer flagged or they still flagged and do they have to take an APFT to remove that or can they take an ACFT to remove that flag well I would say if you're still flagged for the APFT and you're still in the army I would question someone's leadership so the APFT has not been allowed for a long time I think even in basic training took that out in 2019 so three years and then in 2020 we said that the ACFT is the test record and then we said well if you in the latest Exord not the one we just published or the one prior to this and I think that was around June of 2020 it said if you have failed the APFT you will be flagged and you will remain flagged until you pass the ACFT I'm sorry the APFT so if you are flagged for the APFT and you're still flagged that's been like two years so yes you have to pass the APFT because right now if you would like to do anything that is still a valid order and then in the regulation or the army directive we did have a small clause about you could take the APFT if you don't have one for promotion points because the promotion points will come later so if for some reason you don't only take an ACFT and you needed promotion points you would have to take an APFT so until 1 April of 2023 you may actually have to take one if you would like to increase your promotion points if you're not then once the promotion points are in effect for ACFT you will take the ACFT however if you've been flagged that long and I would question what's going on and why you have it passed the APFT already Sir Major Lombardo anything that I missed on that No, no, that's the man I think you received somewhat of a similar question last Wednesday Acknowledged all All right, Sir Major, our next question will come from the back to Yusef Kapok headquarters if they want to unmute themselves for their next question Good afternoon SMA, my name is Sergeant Gustafson here at Yusef Kapok we're stationed on Fort Bragg so we're very fortunate to have numerous resources when it comes to conducting the ACFT however other units may not have the same level of resources currently there's a time hack from start to end of the ACFT but for the units that have test site location and a run route in different areas they may not be able to hit that time hack is there any way or possibility to change the verbiage to the ACFT should be attempted to be given within a certain time frame No so we need to you're going to have to come back and say that why we can't execute this because if I have more time there's a reason the run time is a little slower because you just did a sprint drag carry then you just did the next event and then you did a plank and then you get ready to go if I get an hour between my plank and my run time I'll probably score fairly well so those standards are there to make sure everybody has a very similar test experience so I think the advantage by a much longer and I'm not talking about a few minutes because I'm the first one to do the plank or the end but if I get an hour and a half between my plank and my run time my run time will probably be a lot faster and I don't think that's the similar standards that we've set so we just need to kind of figure that out I'm sure you can you can work through that this issue for many years and all kind of components and all kind of locations based off run rounds and weather and there's all kinds of things that come into play because we've all had this but it needs to be a very similar it's not about location it's about making sure that there's one standard so if you have a much longer time between those events it would give an instinctive advantage if I may just to address that a little further so in the Army Reserve the way we distributed the Army Combat fitness test equipment was by facility so we have about slightly over 700 facilities across the 50 states 5 US Territories and every facility or facility group has sets of ACFT nothing dictates through this may be a training management issue nothing says that you have to take the ACFT at a facility and nothing says that you can't go to another location to take the ACFT I'll give you an example London, New Hampshire there's an armed forces reserve center there that's got Army National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers there and the terrain is suited so that you can't do the run so what they do is they contract with the localized readiness division to get an indoor location where they can actually do the run and do the Army Combat fitness test events so your leadership works through the readiness divisions in the United States Army Reserve headquarters to ensure that there is an adequate location where you can take it if your specific facility is not suited to do that and just keep in mind the regular Army also has recruiting stations in different places around the country like let's say Chambers Street Manhattan and they also have to use some ingenuity in order to be able to take the Army Combat Fitness Test over to USMA. Thank you. There's a lot of challenges no matter the compo. When I look at Wayne Wright, Alaska we got to make some adjustments there too and we're all working through that and even taking an Army Combat Fitness Test in one of the the Air Force provided facilities I think at some point we do actually have to think of much broader on this route than we have been we have ROTC programs with active duty soldiers at a lot of universities that have great facilities ready to do this and they have equipment too so I think we just have to broaden the way we think of it through training management. There's a lot more equipment and facilities out there in your state than you would realize again I just asked you to think of if there's an active duty soldier at the University of Auburn why can't I use those facilities to take my Army Combat Fitness Test. Thank you. You actually just answered the next question about just what are some different ways that soldiers that are not co-located from their reserve center could find ways to train so I don't know if there's anything more you would want to illustrate on that point or we'll go to the next unit question. I just think there's a lot more than we think that are available. Recruiting stations actually have they have some other equipment meaning every soldier has to do the OPAT which we've already issued out a deadlift bar and weights and a ball so they have some of that stuff too and those are locations all across the country in a lot of states so just to broaden it up I didn't even talk about just the recruiters that have some of that equipment too. Alright thank you. Our next question from social media is about a lot of the DA forms and the ATPs and the FNs just any indication on when we can start to see some of those forms and manuals be updated to reflect these changes? Yes the biggest one for me is the training management system which is our system or record to get that input so that you don't have to do a manual calculation of the score so CAC-T which is the combined arm center training has that responsibility. They're looking to have that piloted out in Maine and for release in June so in the digital training management system about the first week of June is where anticipate that you could put the test in DTMS and then would give you the appropriate score based off the standard so we got to write the code and then because we told them you know like three weeks ago go figure out the code because we didn't tell anybody till the last week in March they're trying to figure out the code so again around the mid-June I think we'll start seeing some of the digital training management system we're working on that first and then the ATPs will come as quickly as we can the good news is that we really don't need to change a lot of manuals we changed them 10 years ago we just need to pull them out and read through them and read them they've got some really good training plans in the training manuals Thank you we'll go to Master Sergeant Sibley Sibley sorry for the pronunciation there for our next question That's alright afternoon SMA, CSM Lombardo Master Sergeant Sibley with the MI Readiness Command out for Belvoir just during our diagnostic test I noticed that we had some soldiers who may not have been given their all because there was no consequence during that phase just wondering if there's any built-in mechanism so that we could possibly adjust the scoring standards once we get more data from soldiers actually going all out for the test SMA over Yeah, thank you we had a big debate over this probably for about a year now about this are people really giving it 100% and there was some key indicators that they weren't so if your run time all of a sudden was 37 minutes or 38 minutes on a 2 mile run and I'd say you weren't giving it 100% or giving it anything so that's an extremely long amount of time so the scores will be adjusted and we're looking at ways to incentivize giving it your all and then adjusting these scores over time however the governance like I talked about every well twice a year they'll look at it and look at all the data and then when we look at the data we actually do see the scores increasing over time based off of how we perform there's a couple things that we you may not see increase on though I want to be very cautious we do you know again this is a little technical but when you look at some of the data meaning we'll take one event the max deadlift there are gains to a point meaning if I start getting really heavy on the deadlift that doesn't actually give you a good overall performance so if I can do you know 600 on a deadlift that doesn't make it the physical fitness that performance ever looking at so there's some things that maybe cap that maybe you could do a lot more on but we're not trying to get increased that that capability is just to do a deadlift so but there is the mechanism with this structure to relook the scores for and we are looking to increase those minimum scores over time thanks SMA thank you we'll go to the 139th medical brigade for our next question good afternoon SMA this is first lieutenant fields with the 139th medical brigade considering the training that is needed to be done for the ACFT which can cause soldiers to put on an increase in muscle mass when can we expect an update to the current height and weight standards well I will be clear you might not see any change to the height and weight standards so there's a study that's ongoing right now to kind of determine if we need that and I would really like to say as we look across are you really putting on more lean muscle mass and we are the study shows that maybe you're not maybe we're just getting bigger so our goal is to look at this and say are we actually putting on lean muscle mass we've run that study on Fort Bragg and I encourage you all if it comes to your state or can't post station please take a part in that survey it's a volunteer body composition survey and we need multiple compos we need older folks younger folks we need all body shapes and types and then when we did this at Fort Bragg we actually saw some people go no I don't want to do it that's actually hasn't been helpful for the survey so what we had to do is actually had to go back in and extend the amount of time we needed for the survey and for those that don't know what we're doing on the body composition you know survey is you come in and you do four different types of testing you'll do what's called a DEXA it's a dual X-ray scanner and they'll scan and that's the most accurate piece of equipment we can find in the nation that gives you lean muscle mass and bone density then you'll do like an electrode scan where it sends little electrodes in your body then there's one scan of the body and just tells you how you do and then and then the end is the tape so and we're calculating your army combat fitness test scores so of course we're going to have to read just some of the scores because didn't have the exact test so we're looking to see what's the discrepancy is there a discrepancy from the tape test to all those other ones will be cost-efficient to you know build by a 40 or $50,000 machine where would that be located and it's really complex when you talk about United States Army reserve soldiers so if you were to fill the tape where would you go get this other scan done and how accurate is the tape so we're getting all that done I'm hopeful to get all that completed in the next few months and then there'll be an out brief and then there'll be decisions based off of the science not on speculation or you know my thoughts on it so there's a lot of scientists and data scientists that are looking at should be complete by this summer but it may not be any changes so I just I wouldn't just lean in that we're doing a height and weight study and then automatically say well yeah we're going to make some changes because when I when I did my I went down and I was I am actually my data is part of the survey it was to my benefit to do the tape test I was probably about three to four to maybe six or seven percent less body fat the tape test that I was in all the scans that I was done meaning if I were to be scanned I had more body fat than what the tape test told me so we're looking at three things number one is how did you do in your fitness test how do you do on and compared to your height and weight scales you know how did that tape test compared to the other mechanisms that we did and we're also looking at the height and weight tables are they accurate so it's it's multiple components of the aspect and that's why the survey I'm sorry that why we need more time to get through and then get it finished and that's why we need all kind of body types and shapes and sizes you need to be able to give us your ACFT data so we put that in the system scan your body don't try to cheat the system and then then we all need some time to analyze that we're trying to get that all done by October but I until I see the data on what we need to execute all I know is my data so we'll need some more time to get that done we're hoping to see yes everybody put on you know 5% lean muscle mass but that's not been what we've seen in the when I was there so I'll have to get the data to look at it thank you alright quickly we'll just any other units that are online that had a question or something came up we'll just do one very short alibi raise your hand in the chat otherwise SMA okay great 412th engineer command we'll take last question from you SMA want to know where can we send inquiries or comments we have questions about this town hall after over well if you hated the town hall send it to Sergeant Rainier I mean I guess if you want to do an AAR you know you thought it was that bad I mean and then the second one was sent it to Sergeant Major Lombardo he loved you know I'll give you his personal email or you can send it to me but Sergeant Rainier we keep in the chat open for a period normally we keep the chat open for a little while so you can send in comments in there and then Sergeant Rainier monitors that for a period of time but I'm not sure we will SMA and we have leaders present in the Facebook live comments as well okay does that answer your question they are coming like right now in front of everybody as we close the sound be bold stand up that answered my question SMA thank you alright Sergeant Major Lombardo we'll go ahead hold on we'll do the last question somebody else has their hand up but this will be the last one I think looks like Sergeant Anant Toki 807 Med SMA Sergeant Toki from 807 Med Brigade SMA this captain represses from the Second Medical Brigade in Kent Parks California Sergeant Major Lombardo said the purpose of all of these changes in the ACFT is to increase unit and personal readiness has there been any studies or results even at a small scale that show improve that units that participate in these tests actually have increased unit and personal readiness over yes you really have to combine multiple things and I'll kind of you know combine how we did the small study of when you add in the holistic health and fitness capabilities we've seen a reduction in muscular skeletal injuries and the reason I have to say in the holistic health and fitness form and not for the ACFT is because the National Defense Authorization Act said I can't pull your data as an individual it's literally impossible for me to know if you increased your score on the ACFT were you in better shape did you have less physical ailments because I was not allowed to pull your individual data so meaning if I can't pull your individual data and go compare that to how you're doing on profile more or less it's hard to do a study on something that they said you know the National Defense Authorization I said you're not allowed to do army so I go back to the holistic health and fitness so before that NDA language is in there when we implemented holistic health and fitness and we had those tactical strength and conditioning facilitators and we had occupational therapists and we were doing different training for this test we saw less muscular skeletal injuries so it's kind of going all the way back a couple of years because it was hard to compare data when we weren't allowed to pull the data of a system and compare it to an individual we could just we just got scores and demographics is that so when we did the study you could say well you had the score but when I pulled it it just you know mail 54 and then here's the score so but it didn't say oh that's you know that's you know Sergeant Major Grinston so it just had you know your age demographics and then a score and then that's how we got all the data but we weren't allowed to compare it but we do believe the ultimate goal was to change how we do physical fitness and have less injuries less lower back injuries less musculoskeletal injuries and that's what that is the ultimate goal of what we're trying to do but thank you for the question Thank you SME Alright SME we'll go now to just some closing comments we do want to be respectful of the time a lot of these units are having their battle assembly currently so Sergeant Major Lombardo or SME Grinston any final thoughts So I guess I'll start it out so SME I guess number one is thank you for taking the time of the day to do a second town hall and answer some of the questions for our Army Reserve Soldiers just for our leadership out there just remember April of 2024 is a requirement to take a record Army combat fitness test but don't wait until April 2024 right like challenge your soldiers out there and any time from here forward you know get them out there exercise the equipment, get them familiar with them they should be familiar you know with the supporting exercises to take the ACFT and just for the soldiers out there you're not going to get fit by conducting PRT they're battle assembly weekends you have to make this part of your holistic health and life and establish a fitness program throughout the month and your master fitness truck master fitness trainers can help you with that but finally I think I'm not sure if this was pointed out but the 2.5 mile walk has been added and SME I believe you did cover it but and that's just in the event that there's some locations where it's not you know where you may need to exercise that with that SME I appreciate all and looking forward to get this going over to you yeah just in closing I want to say again thank you thank you for all that you've done the last two years and really in regards to you know COVID you know forest fires hurricanes we the nation could not have survived the last two years in my opinion without your hard work and your dedication to your country and you continue to work hard you get no notice asked all the time to go do whatever it is and every time you've been asked you just kind of executed whether it's putting together you know 14 you know urban augmentation medical task forces which was a couple years ago and it's just like hey we're just going to go do this and soldiers here just kind of did these kind of things so again thank you and thank you for taking the time to listen and thank you for all your hard work and dedication as a citizen soldier you have to manage your job the United States Army Reserve your family and oh by the way we want you to stay fit and do all these other things so I really appreciate all that you do not only just for your communities but for the country so thank you and have a wonderful day all right that does conclude our program today I want to thank everyone for joining us here on teams and online if you have any questions go ahead and leave them in the chat or right there in the comments on Facebook live and that concludes today's program thank you