 Well good afternoon and welcome to the U.S. Army's Facebook Live. From the Pentagon, I'm Hank Minitrez of the Army G1's office. And our topic this afternoon is the Army Combat Fitness Test, or the ACFT. It's a result of a culmination of a result of years of research in the Army's effort to optimize holistic health and fitness. And as the world's premier fighting force, it is absolutely imperative that we have cohesive teams filled with disciplined, highly skilled, talented, and most importantly physically fit soldiers to bring our lethality to the next level. Individual readiness is the key to Army readiness, and that's what the ACFT is all about. Now we've got a lot of questions that we've compiled over the last couple of days that you've sent in through various social media avenues. We appreciate that. We're going to try to get to as many of those as we can. And we invite you to type in your questions in the comments sections here on the Facebook page. Got a crack team of folks behind the scenes that'll send those questions up to me and I will ask our panel members. So why don't we go in and introduce the panel now. First up is the 16th Sergeant Major of the Army, Michael Grinston, less than two months on the job and he's already doing a Facebook live on what is a very important topic. So I may want to thank you for being here. Next up is Command Sergeant Major Timothy Gooden. He is the Command Sergeant Major for the United States Army Training and a Doctrine Command TRADOC. They oversee 32 schools in the Army under eight centers of excellence. Each with them offering a different specialty. Our third panelist today is Command Sergeant Major Edward Mitchell. He is from the Center for Initial Military Training. And if ever there was an encyclopedia of the ACFT, it is this man right here. So gentlemen, I want to thank you three for being here this afternoon. The big Army announcement today and what I'd like to do is just have each of you offer a couple minutes or 30 seconds of your own thoughts before we jump into the questions. SMA, why don't you take it away? Okay, thank you very much. And thank everybody on social media for joining us this afternoon. It is truly an honor to be the 16th Sergeant Major of the Army. But today we're talking about a fundamental shift in how we do our fitness culture. The Army Combat Fitness Test will improve our lethality and our readiness and it's giving us highly trained, physically fit and lethal squads for the future. It's six events that have significantly been validated over the last years and it actually assesses 10 components of fitness that mirror about 80% of the things that we are asked to do in combat. There's still a lot of work to be done over the next few years or the next year to finalize the number of tasks related to the Army Combat Fitness Test for record. The ACFT will affect about 60 Army regulations so we still have a lot of work to do to make sure we get that information correct in the regulations. TRADOC and CIMT have worked hard to lead the proponents for the ACFT and they are analyzing the data that we're gathering from the 63 battalions and from our initial military training soldiers to optimize the ACFT. Our Army has had to adapt to change throughout our history. Today it's a positive step toward ensuring we have the best trained, highly disciplined force in the world. So thank you for joining us today and I look forward to your questions. Thank you, SMA. Sergeant Major Gooden. Good afternoon. Right now today TRADOC is preparing to move forward with one October of 2019 implementation of testing the ACFT in all courses that are within TRADOC. We will primarily be doing this in the basic training and the OSUT entry level positions but it will also be done in the BOLUX and also in the NCOS courses. We are doing this primarily so that after we finish this FY20 of basically a diagnostic test for everybody in the Army for all three COMPOs, the new soldiers that will be coming to your ranks will have experienced and tested on the ACFT and so they will have that experience. Another thing that I would like to talk about very briefly is about some of the misconceptions that are out there. There's quite a few rumors and misconceptions that are going on out there. I hope that you take this opportunity with the three of us up here to send in some questions that we may be able to answer about some of those misconceptions but some of the common ones that I hear about often are about, you can't start any training with it because you don't have any equipment and we do realize that we're still working on the equipment piece but there is a lot of training that you can do in preparation for the ACFT. A couple of things, number one would be just to execute some of the PRT items that are in the manual starting with the prep drill. You can do the conditioning drills, the climbing drill, the military movement drills and four for the Corps. A lot of those things will automatically help you get in the right frame of mind, a functional fitness type of mindset when it comes to performing well in the ACFT. Another one of the misconceptions out there is that if I'm on profile, I'm going to get kicked out of the Army. That is not true. You're not going to get kicked out of the Army if you're on profile. Some of these things will be determined as the SMA said as we go through this year of collecting data for everybody in the Army and a lot of those Army policies decisions will be made on those but we are not going to kick everybody out of the Army that is on a profile. So I look forward to your questions. Thanks for having me and this should be fun. Thanks. All right, thank you sir. Major Mitchell, it's up to you now. Hey, thank you sir. First of all, what I'd like to say, thank you for having me here at SMA and so I'm Edgy Gooden. But what I want to talk about is holistic health and fitness. The ACFT is only one small component of the holistic health and fitness, which is a comprehensive integrated, immersive health fitness system that generates lethal soldiers who are physically ready and mentally tough to go and guess what? Take care of our enemy on the modern day battlefield and the multi-domain environment. However, this overarching concept framework encompasses all aspects of the human performance, sleep, injury prevention and nutrition to optimize a soldier's individual readiness. You know, we're going to do this through five different systems under this holistic health and fitness. You got governance, where we access it and how we track monitoring and assess soldiers in progress. We also look at programs, how we coach, teach and mentor the soldiers and rehabilitate those soldiers. Then we look at the facilities and the equipment. You know, we do a lot of things across the armature where we give all of our soldiers equipment and stuff to go out there and train and fight and go take care of the enemy, but we don't give them the equipment and stuff we need for them to take care of their body. So that's something we're looking at under holistic health and fitness to give them that a fit that our equipment and equipment they need and that facility just like a training range where they can go sign, get in there and make sure they're physically fit and then the personnel. We're looking at what personnel do you need in order for to make sure that you have it at the need of where you at. For instance, if a soldier get injured when they're down in the battalion level, do they have that strength trainer or that dietician or the behavioral health specialist that's sitting there ready to take that individual and get that person back into the fight? That's what we want. We want it on the field. We don't need them on the sideline. And the last thing is how we educate them. You know, we want to make sure that we educate them through their whole entire education system, no matter if you're a one officer, or a soldier that all the way through your educational system, as you go through the military, you would have that. So basically it is a life cycle system that develops, improve every soldier's readiness. But we do this from pre-assessment training all the way through their army career as well as to the soldier for life. So bottom line up front, we don't need soldiers on the sideline. We need them on the field. We need you in the game. And the way you get into the game is by getting him, making sure we do this ACFT and change the culture. Thank you. Well, gentlemen, thanks for your opening comments. I say we get right to these questions. We get a lot. A couple of the main ones that keep coming up. On average, how long is it taking units to complete the ACFT and what are the approved alternate events and standards for each? I'll go ahead and talk about the approved alternate events. And I'll let Sergeant Mitchell talk about the standard times that it's taken for units to accomplish the ACFT administer it. The approved alternate events right now are the swim, the bike, and the swim, the row, and the bike. Each of those are approved to be alternate events for the two-mile run. Each of those events have to be completed within 25 minutes. And the distances vary between the three events. For the swim, you have to complete 1,000 meters within 25 minutes. For the row, you have to be able to complete 5,000 meters in 25 minutes. And for the bike, you have to be able to complete 15,000 meters in 25 minutes. Now, here's what I will tell you, is that the idea of the alternate events was mostly developed with the mindset that these weren't not going to be a cakewalk, that you were going to have to work hard at these, just like you have to work hard on everything else with the ACFT. It's imperative that, for instance, a soldier just doesn't roll out of bed in the morning thinking that they got to take the ACFT, and they're going to borrow somebody's bike and go jump on it and knock out 15,000 meters on the bike ride, because that's not going to happen. You will fail it if that's the preparation and the mindset that you have into this. The same thing goes within the pool and the water, and the same thing goes with the row. I very routinely use the row as a heart rate conditioner in between some of my exercises, and usually I'm trying to hit 500 meters as fast as I can. That's 500 meters. This is 5,000 meters in 25 minutes, and so this isn't something that soldiers should look at and take lightly if they are on permanent profile, and they're going to be taking one of these alternate events for the two-mile run. This is something that they have to work at and they have to prepare for. The idea was that these events would be just as difficult or more difficult to complete than the actual two-mile run itself. So if a soldier does have a permanent profile and they cannot perform any part of the two-mile run, that they would possibly consider doing the two-mile run and walk at their own pace, run at their own pace to get the two miles complete, because these other three exercises are going to be pretty tough. Again, you have to be able to work at those. Again, the pool and the bike, that's not anything that you can just assume that you're going to be on vacation and go and execute, having a good time on a bike and swimming in the pool. You have to work at these things. We got some of our senior leaders in the army who are pretty good at swimming in the pool, and they did it during college and other competitive arenas in their lifetime. It's tough for them. This is going to be something that soldiers are going to have to understand. Now is the time to get out there and start practicing on these things and start working on these things. That's to include all the events of the ACFT, not just necessarily the alternate events, but specifically the alternate events also if you fall into one of those categories. I'll pass it on to Sergeant Major Mitchell for the second part of that question. The second part of the question was, how long does it take you to actually go through and complete this test? Not killing the prep drill or the cool down. You're looking at roughly about 35 to 36 minutes of actual exercise time that you've been doing with about 16 minutes of rest time between it. Because you're going to look at it, when you start doing each one of these exercises, it's going to be a greater and four soldiers that's going to be going through it at one time. And it's actually based upon so every soldier can get the rest they need between each one of those exercises before they begin the next one. So if you look at all together, it's about 51 minutes to actually to complete the entire exercise. All right, thank you gentlemen. Let's talk about equipment right now. That's another big question out there. Especially with the garden reserve, how are we going to distribute the equipment among those units? And also the smaller installations, how are we going to field equipment with the smaller installations? Okay, I'll start off with the equipment for the garden and reserves. So we've had this conversation is, well, is it going to be at the reserve centers and all the reserve centers all the way down the country better true? We have to we've got a long way to go to figure out what is the sweet spot in the right areas for that. It's like the regulations. We don't we don't have the answers. That's why we have to start on one October to get some of the decision space to say where do we have the right mix at the equipment at the right locations to make sure that it doesn't hurt our compo two and three. And as we get the equipment, we're going to push that out. We had seven we have seven battalions in the garden reserves that are actually testing right now. So that they have the equipment, they're going through and that's going to inform us on how much equipment that we're going to need in each location. We don't have the perfect mix because it's going to be one per state. It's going to be somewhere else. So we're still working through to get the right exact number of equipment for our compo two and three. As many of you might not just want to add one piece on to that. When we started this right here last year, I had two saw majors that actually works in my it worked in my headquarters, Michael Schultz, who used to be the USA R saw major. And we have saw major Rogers, who is a national guard saw major both from works in my headquarters. And as we was coming up with these plans, how are we going to integrate compo two and three into this? We actually had them go out and talk to every last one of their counterparts across the entire army for that from compo two and three and came back with their concerns as we was looking at how we was going to implement this with them seven battalions that we have in each one. So we had somebody in our headquarters at this whole time to make sure we was doing it and had all three compos and monitors. I'll add something with the equipment. So the basis of issue for the ACFT equipment that's required for the test is 16 lanes of equipment per battalion headquarters. Obviously not everybody has that right now. And we as the SMA stated, we still have this this year to figure out exactly what is going to be the sweet spot and where they're put at. But I will tell you this is that a lot of this is going to come down to commander's decision, geographical locations, and the actual missions of certain units and where they're at. At the Army senior leadership cannot come out with a cookie cutter policy on how the equipment gets distributed within those organizations because that may not fit for every type of organization. Even within trade-off we have we have compo two and compo three like elements when we talk about US Army cadet command and US Army recruiting command. As we've got small groups of soldiers that are out there all over the place and they don't necessarily fall under a nice and neat battalion footprint. And so we have to figure out exactly where these lanes of equipment are going to be dispersed and you may not have all 16 lanes assembled at a battalion headquarters wherever that battalion headquarters is at. They may be dispersed however the battalion commander and the CSM feel that it's a best fit for soldiers to execute and use and train on those that those items of equipment. All right our next question is comes right off of our Facebook live feed. How will soldiers do a 30, 60, and 90 day ACFT prior to NCO yes when setting up different equipment is required considering it's onesies and twosies that need to test at different times depending on school locations. First of all that is not a it's not a trade-off requirement that is not an army requirement to do a 30, 60, 90 day APFT prior to a professional military education school NCO PDS. So that's a unit requirement that units are putting on them. The requirement is you're you're gonna have to pass the ACFT at the NCO PDS and that is the requirement. If units want to do that 30, 60, 90 days that's a that'll be a unit responsibility to determine how that will be implemented. All right thanks SMA. What is the plan to revamp postpartum timelines and I know that was going to come up we knew it was coming. I've received this question three times probably in the last week as a certain age of the army so that's the good news is that's we actually need the time again we're going to start this on one October to determine exactly what those policies are going to be. There's 60 policies that we need to look at and maybe we need to check change. However we still have to do the analysis. When you're on a temporary profile the current policy is that depending on the type of profile as long as you if it's for promotion points if you look at the promotion reg you you could get all the way up to two years depending on the type of profile that you're on that your promotion points would be valid as long as you have a PT test in that last 24 months. So in other words I take an APFT and for some reason become pregnant you get your nine months and then six months. Right now it's still going to be six months but we still have a year to actually determine what is that going to be? Does that regulation stay the same? It's just like the the standards have changed even in the last year we looked at what we were going to start with and we've made adjustments based off the data that we received. We're going to make adjustments again until we get to October of next year because we need the time to see. Do we have the right timeline? Currently the policy is six months. I'm not sure that needs to go longer or not until we do the data analysis to see. The other question is well you know it was really hard to to meet those timelines when it was the APFT but we haven't given you the enablers we haven't trained for this and we have some people haven't even taken the APFT yet so we maybe some people may be able to do it four months five months but we're going to need we need the time to get the analysis right the current policy is in effect you get six months if we need to adjust that I think the statistical data will help inform us on whether we need to extend that or not. Anyone else want to weigh in on that or are we good to go? That's good. I think we just need more data that's the bottom line and that's what this new validation phase that we're entering is all about is collecting more data to see where we need to shape this and make adjustments. Our next question offline is will the screening table for the height weight and body composition be reevaluated? I would imagine it's the same answer we're still looking at these things. Yes. We have concurrence across the table so that's the answer we're still looking at those things. The Army Combat Fitness Test is first of all it's very good for the Army and something that we need to do which is like Sergeant Major Mitchell said we need to look at the holistic health and fitness and how are we going to be highly trained discipline and fit soldiers and it's not just about the activity that we do it's also about the nutrition that we eat so as we look at the Army Combat Fitness Test the Army Body Composition Program is in correlation with that that's the second piece is am I in the right health in my my fitness in the weight that I carry so we've always looked at what we're going to do the Army Body Composition and I don't it's not necessarily tied to the Army Combat Fitness Test right now it's just like we've always looked at do we have the right mix of body weight versus how I take that that question is always available and it's always been reassessed or assessed it's come up in the past years and it's not actually tied to the Army Combat Fitness Test. Yes I mean do we have any numbers on the amount or percentage of injuries and profiles that resulted over the last year of the testing phase did you guys collect any of that data? I'll turn it over for this data but I will go back to what we were looking at from the Forces Command and what we found is as we looked at giving the proper enablers and doing the exercises properly we've seen muscular skeletal injuries go down when we looked at what we were doing for what was called the Soldier Readiness Test which is not the Army Combat Fitness Test that's why what Sergeant Major Mitchell was saying how important it is to get some of the exercises done correctly and how you do the exercises and giving you some of the enablers where you have a diet registered dietitian you have an occupational therapist or you have a strength and conditioning coach someone that can guide you through this and that's why that other data is still important too some of the folks don't even have those those things that we've given to those 63 battalions so when you look at doing those you may get stronger and you might find out because you've got some of the enablers you you can do this test actually easier because you got somebody to guide you with it that's been a resident expert but I'll give over to the the data from the CIMT well as of right now of the hundred of the 63 battalions we have been testing all the way up to today there has been no one injured or had a profile coming off taking the ACFT as of right now not one person so what I will tell you is it's because you know we do have five we have 16 MTT teams that goes around mobile training teams that goes around that train the 63 battalions that we have out there on the ACFT as well as training the rest of the army and what their goal was to go out there and show them just like the SMA say the standard how you need to do it how you need to execute and how you need to take this right here and once they made sure that all of the levels three two and ones was trained guess what that's why we have not seen any injuries or profile that came from it today that's outstanding news and I guess the next question kind of leads right into what you both have already talked about and that is what are the plans to help soldiers build up the ACFT what types of drills might train might change in in leading up to that I'll start off and I know that both SMA and Sarmadu Mitchell probably have quite a bit of information also but you know I talked about this initially with my opening comments and I remember I say this quite often when I'm in groups and I'm talking to them but I do remember I was a brigade Sarmadu when PRT was introduced to the army in 2009 and I will tell you that it was not received well throughout the army and I would tell you and this is my personal opinion I would tell you that as a result of that we have soldiers in the army today that are not properly equipped physically to take the ACFT with confidence that they're going to do well on it and primarily most of that comes from a lack of attention to the core of our bodies because as it is with the APFT a sit-up is not necessarily a great test event to measure out your core strength it might be able to tell how fast you can move up and down in a in a in a supine position but doesn't necessarily determine your core strength what I will tell you is that in in at least the first five events of the ACFT whether you're realizing or not if you're not engaging your core then you're probably going to get lower back pain and upper back pain and leg pain and that kind of those kinds of things that are going to be minor elements but you know proper you know I will tell you that there's lots of exercises out there a lot of really your imagination is only is the only thing that's going to limit you to what you can do I've seen all kinds of incredible ideas out there as I'm going around what soldiers have have put together things that they can do with or without pull-up bars with without drag bags with without hex bars any of the actual equipment there's still a lot of good training that you can do to work on preparing yourself for the ACFT and that's that's also why I said let's let's not just wait for the equipment let's start getting our using our imagination let's start getting after it you know you can keep with the military mindset and use ammo crates and ammo cans and sandbags and skidcodes and that kind of stuff but there's a lot of other stuff that you can do also I saw I saw the other day in place of the drag bag I saw just a standard rope that was pulling a 245 pound kettlebells around which came up to the 90 pounds and that's that's going to get you what you really need to do is you need to get in the practice of doing that backwards run when it comes to the the sprint drag carry piece of it that's what I see that the last the last 25 meters of the sprint drag carry is what seems to break off a lot of people because they can get the first half done they turn around and it's really hard slow going to get back but yeah again lean lean forward start doing those things and start working your body is going to be sore a good sore when you start doing these things because you're working muscle groups and parts your body that you haven't touched before so don't wait for the scheduled ACFT that's going to be a diagnostic for everybody during FY 20 don't wait for that to come around before you experiment and start training on some of these things well gentlemen over the last couple of days the next question has come up quite a bit with regard to the pass fail rate and the data that we've collected over the last year particularly with a fail rate did did you see anything in there that might make you want to change the scoring standard for any of the events I'll um excuse me I'll address this a little bit of a pass fail but and I'll use this as an example of what we've done in the past with the the current APFT we've adjusted the scale for the current APFT since I've been in the military I granted that I've been in the military for a couple days a little bit but we've we've adjusted those scales and I go go back to we've adjusted the scale in the last year and that's it's got to be an informed decision on what we're going to do so originally at some point what you don't really know is that we said do we even need a scale you know so let's just do the ACFT and let the information inform us on what the standard should be what's going to be the high and the low so and then we decided no we need a scale you know we just always got to grade ourselves on what the scale is going to be so there's got to be a standard so we implemented a standard and then everybody gets wrapped into that so we're going to we got to look at the information we got to open it up and then then we can determine exactly where the bar needs to be do we have it right but we've made adjustments and I'll let one of these two trade our major talk about the adjustments we've already made I'll talk uh real briefly about some of some of the things that we've seen with the pilot that went on with the 63 battalions the number one exercise the number one event that is is hurting the army right now as a whole is the leg tuck it is and it goes back to what I was talking about with the the core exercise it is the leg tuck it takes one leg tuck to pass one leg tuck to pass and we have a large number of soldiers that cannot pass the leg tuck a lot of this is and again it goes back to you know you can't compare this to the setup of the apft because it measures a completely different muscle group within your core but there's some other things that are measured with the leg tuck that we haven't measured before also such as hand grip such as arm strength we've always instituted pull-ups in a ad hoc type of exercise when it comes to physical fitness but it's never been part of our test with the apft and some people have not done push-up I'm sorry I have not done pull-ups and those are some of the exercises that some of the some of the muscle groups that are used in those exercises with the hand grip and with pull-ups that contribute to not being able to do a leg tuck so there's a lot of things that go into this but I'll tell you the leg tuck is is the biggest one so for for soldiers that are small in stature and don't have a upper body strength that can pull sustain themselves during one or two pull-ups consecutive pull-ups even three pull-ups the leg tuck is going to be a challenge and I would suggest that you get on the bar now and you start developing that arm strength and that grip strength in preparing for the leg tuck so I'm going to Mitchell all right thank you so I'll just want to add one one piece of this the six of three battalions that we have testing in the first phase of this right here you have to realize that the six of three battalion they all was untrained we just came out with our Ahmed combat fitness test because we know that it's trained the entire body to what you used to do push-ups sit us from two mile one and we came on we said hey two of the vets are the same push-ups in the run it's still there all we did we change added change one out and added three of them but the bottom line of fun is guess what there's an untrained force that we gave this test to for the first initial phase of it so guess what's going to happen or did we expect for some people to actually fail absolutely because nobody has trained on it just like some agent on me said and just like uh so much good and say you have to train for the test you want and you cannot go out and just say you can just do it like in two days and get ready for a PT test you have to continue to get in the gym or you had to get out there and use equipment if you don't have it I set up two two sessions with the most senior leaders across trade-off and that's every nominated song major and general officer in the session that I set up we did not use the equipment that we have for the ACFT to get after the same movements that you would have to do for the Ahmed combat fitness test and guess what every last one went through it and it was challenging but guess what you can do the same thing out there are we going to sit up and get better yes do I think that the data might change the score absolutely because today you got to understand we only test in 63 battalion we're going to start one on total and now we're going to start testing the rest of the army to where you're going to look at it act to do the arm is going to take two diagnostics and you're going to have the army reserves the national guard is going to take one diagnostic with all of that data coming in it's going to validate what we're doing and making sure that we got this scoring criteria correct so why we need the data to come in we need everybody out there to guess what hey I don't need to talk about the ACFT I just need you to talk about how you're getting out there and start training for it yeah I want to read read do one more read address on this is you know don't take what I said is you know the standards may become easier they may become more stringent let's look at what we've already looked at with the black it was 180 for the minimum for the uh the three rep max uh deadlift and over the data that we've received now we're saying it needs to be 200 at 200 pounds so we've increased the standards on some of those things based off the information that we've seen and we can see that this is going to be a hard combat fitness test we need to change fundamentally how we train our bodies for combat that's why it's called the army combat fitness test so when we when we say we're going to address those standards we are going to address them it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to become easier but we just need to evaluate where those standards going to be the goal the ultimate goal is actually over time we raise the standards because we've trained our bodies the appropriate way and we're seeing our fitness levels become better over time for everyone in the army talking about some of the events uh in the test we got a couple questions i'll try to put these together so we can get a good answer uh one why is the two mile run still a part of the test after adding additional exercises is there a reason we can't do a one mile run and with regard to the the deadlift is there uh any chance that we're going to be allowed to wear a lifting belt to prevent back injuries or gloves for better grip and finally is the walking 10 an alternate event no way walking what walking 10 i'm not sure they didn't clarify that but so hopefully they'll come back and uh clarify the walking to get to understand the question we can get you a good answer okay but on the first two yeah okay i'll i'll address the part about uh the two mile run could we do a one mile run yes we can also do you know half a mile but we're not going to we're going to do a two mile run and some people would say well scientifically you know i can test you know carter vesture endurance maybe with a one mile run and i acknowledge that but we're going to do two miles and because let's just let's see how we do let's let's gut check let's let's go out and assess ourselves and after those six event can i maintain a two mile endurance run and we're not going to go back to a one mile it's going to stay a two mile run and it's going to it's going to test your endurance and do you have the ability to kind of i think it's a little bit of a mental capacity to kind of force your body to get through that event so it's going to stay a two mile run uh the the second part of that question referred to uh equipment yeah the weight belt gloves uh well you know gloves gloves are going to be authorized based off of uh you know the physical fitness uniform so um that's not changing uh if somebody's asking if they can have specific like uh grip gloves or workout gloves or or uh you know the gloves that that most uh common uh weight lifters use with the fingertips cut off that's not part of the PT uniform so that wouldn't be authorized uh and as far as the belt goes there is no additional equipment that can be used when taking the uh ACFT other than what i just kind of described already with the with the approved army policy on uh on the on the fitness uniform uh as per temper temperate weather and and and so forth with gloves in in hatton and uh the uh improved physical fitness uniform um i'm sorry not ipfu apfu uh so that's basically what you have you're not going to there's not going to be anything else uh so um i you know i don't know i i never saw anybody wearing a weight belt yet or trying to wear it now one thing one thing that we can't address off of this is proper form and sir major mitchell did talk about this already also so somebody would somebody would think about having a weight belt so that they could prevent injury and and and that sort of thing so with with as we develop this as our nco's get more knowledgeable as as uh uh the formations out there uh get more reps uh uh under their their belts uh as they get more reps on on on administering it on nco's supervisory supervising it on administering the actual test itself um you are going to see soldiers become more uh comfortable with performing some of these events now uh you would use a weight belt and do in the max deadlift we have a hex bar i'm not going to say that the hex bar is a bar that is going to prevent injury it's dummy proof because you can still get hurt doing it however if you're doing the max deadlift with the hex bar it is it is a pretty safe and designed designed bar for making sure that you have the appropriate position when you're getting ready to do the deadlift itself and again that's what that's what the graders are there for that's what the instructors are there for that's why they've been they they they know to look at your knees to make sure that your knees are not going to buckle in when you're getting ready to exert the energy to lift up on the the weight of the max deadlift uh and there's other key things to look for also when it comes to that uh but you know the other thing too is the knowledge about how these things work uh and you know for instance the the max deadlift is not necessarily about lifting it's about pushing with your legs to get that weight up off the ground the minute that you think about lifting is when you can uh when when that uh that energy can get uh proportion to your lower back and that's when the injuries can happen so it's about understanding how to use your muscles to lift up on the weight uh i'm sorry to push down on the weight to lift it actually get it up off the ground versus using your lower back but yeah so no no weight belts good try the only thing i will add to it is it's almost the same thing you have for the army physical fitness you're on test is if a medical doctor prescribes something to you say you have to have like most people have these knee braces and ankle brace that they want to wear if a doctor say that's what you need then that's something that guess what you would you made the authorizer use but i guarantee you a doctor's not potato you're gonna need a weight belt they might give you something else but it won't be a weight belt next question if a soldier becomes delinquent during the 12 month period of non-record testing what's the way floored uh are they flagged are they barred from relistment i'm guessing the question is if they fail the diagnostic what's going to happen uh it's just a diagnostic that's what normally happens with a diagnostic apft is normally nothing happens so the army regulation says it's a diagnostic therefore there would be no flagging actions there's no guidance if a soldier doesn't pass the acft that's they still have to take the apft so everybody should take the apft one last time for record in october or november or when it's appropriate and that will last for one year while we're going through the test of taking the acft and if a soldier doesn't pass the acft then there'd be no action because the apft is your valid record for record a physical fitness test for the army well that makes total sense uh with the acft going live october 1st 2020 and the next master sergeant board being in november of 2020 will we have time to get a four record acft uploaded before the board convenes uh that normally depends on your unit so again if you've got a valid apft four record and then we go live on one october of 2020 all those records aren't immediately wiped clean that's we've never done the apft that we never just said okay you're good on one october and some people don't take it take it on that day if you have a valid apft there's going to be a period of time that you have to take the next four record apft just like in the past if that goes out of tolerance then whatever the tolerance is you need to be within the tolerance for in the guidance for that board but you know we're not going to immediately on one october 2020 just invalidate all the the apfts unless you get something and and when it comes to uh when it comes to the the window that you're referring to with the with the board and the start of uh f y uh this was this is for next year yes yeah so uh you know at the end of f y 20 uh the beginning of f y 21 um there's there's nothing that's going to stop unit leaders and commanders and for those those type of people that write reports there's nothing that's going to stop them from adding into an ncoer or an oer about how well you did uh on on that uh on that a cft that was a diagnostic uh if an s may already alluded that you know the the apft is already going to be on record and it's not going to be just completely wiped away because we started one october um so i mean there there is still a way if that's your concern is to you know how do you get uh i don't know maybe maybe you're going to be the next 600 and you want to make sure that that's annotated uh so you know it can always get put in your ncoer and uh we'll make sure you get kudos for that yeah and this this goes back to the same 60 regulations that we kind of have to update it because in the regulation and right now references you know are you getting a 300 apft it's a semi promotion point you gotta get and it goes back to that so we we we still have to update all that we have to get it out what's the system record system record currently use dtsms putting an a cft in the dtsms right now the scales i don't think they've got that updated yet so that's another one of those things that the regulations we got to work out so um you know more to follow it's gonna you know we're not going to flip the switch and everybody gets wiped clean you know one octo one november 2020 if you didn't take an a the new current a cft in that that 30 days is that going to prevent you from going to the board that's one of those things we're going to work out but i'm going to assume we're not going to just wipe your slate clean now what happens if a soldier fails in his or her group like black silver gold are they going to be allowed to test in a different group or how is that going to play out so again we're still working on what the policies are currently if you don't pass your asia apft you would be flag um if you do pass your apft and you have a permanent profile then and you're allowed but you can't do certain things within your ms you would have to reclass but again that goes back to those policies and regulations as and that's why we need the year to inform us on where we're going to have to go with the policies are we going to if you fail the apft you would be flagged if you fail the a cft at some point you're going to be flagged but you're saying if i don't meet the the gold black standard and but i still meet the gold standard you would just stay in your mls that's one of those policies that we're going to have to determine at some point are there any thoughts to adding instructions on how to grade the a cft into the nco pds curriculum that's a good question since nco's are the trainers of the army uh well honestly at this point no we have not uh we have not uh considered putting that into the poi for uh nco es at this point uh you know uh our focus right now is to make sure that uh this past f y's to make sure that the 63 battalions had as much instruction and information as they could to be as successful uh in getting us the data that we needed and likewise f y 20 is going to be a really busy year when it comes to the a cft piece of it uh as as everybody has alluded to already uh it's it's essential that uh that we lean forward and we get as much accurate data so that uh you know when sma and the secretary and the chief uh are um up to make decisions on some of these things with the policies that need to be adjusted uh that they are informed with the best uh up to date information that they can't um that's not to say that that that wouldn't happen in the future with implementing something like that into uh into nco es but uh you know we we don't we don't necessarily need to do everything all right now uh right now the focus is to make sure that every single soldier does their very best at doing performing two a cfts six months apart within f y 20 that's really all that the entire army needs to be focused on the leadership that's responsible for certain headquarters and and oversight and with the army senior leadership um they'll be the ones that make sure that uh you know all the right decisions are made uh and if need be uh you know uh with uh with the the common on out the non-commissioned officer leadership center of excellence and with the other centers of excellence with the nco academies uh we will come up with a process to implement uh instruction if need be into the nco es into the nco pds system so that uh all nco's that are going through there understand how to do it uh but again that's not our focus right now our focus right now is to make sure that we are setting up everybody in the army uh with the best success that they can uh to do the very best on their two a cfts that uh that they're required to do so major Mitchell can you go over how do you get certified at this yes okay right now how you get certified on sma is that we have an mtt that comes out and mtt will normally come to your installation and the team will get out there and then we have 16 individuals that they teach at level three level three is what we're looking for is like your mfts if you have an mft inside your organization we would teach them individuals how to go out there and actually create level twos is the ones that can be your nco ics and your ics and then your level ones is the ones that actually they watched them grade and test and then the ones who are actually be the ones that are your evaluators but just to add on to this you know we do have coming out of cimt we did give everybody a field testing guide that came out uh september on 2018 we also gave you a call manual that came out that also had the a cft and as well as we have the southern dash 22 that's right now it's dated one october 2012 we got a new one coming out that's going to be broken down to where you can actually grab that documentation up and it would teach you and show you exactly how you need to grade test and evaluate every soldier that you need to test on the a cft now all of that should be in place before one october before it goes out across the whole entire army why because we understand everything cannot go into the nco or pds we understand that but we as a initial military training is going to make sure since we are the proponent that you can have a documentation in your hand and you can use and you will see pictures you know a lot of people don't do anything with just words you need pictures so we're going to have pictures so you can sit up and say this is how you grade you coach them you teach them and you evaluate them so they can make sure you're taking the uh the a cft to standard and everybody will have that inside of their hands made to do that as well as you can also download it off of the cmt webpage so so three things to close out this one is number one you can get trained on the train the trainer as that rolls down you get your organizations you get your installation you get trained the trainer that's number one and then number two is do we actually need to take everybody in the nco pds and teach them as nco's how to give the army combat fitness test as we go forward we don't do that currently for the current apft we don't teach you how to grade the push up sit up or the run that's a unit responsibility and i believe as this becomes the the the four record apft in the next year we're going to have enough folks train the trainer and then it's a basic responsibility in nco over time that will have plenty of folks that go through this once you get one or two reps underneath your belt you'll understand how to do that and it may not be necessary to implement this in the nco pds cool got a couple a couple of questions coming in now uh online and they want to know what is the reasoning behind the six events why those six and how does it make the soldier more capable especially the two-mile run and why did the push-up change okay well first of all we had did a study um and the study that we did we actually went out and we used um the biz fur which is a baseline research study that we actually used and what that actually did it went out to test and see what we need to do but the test that we doing today is based off your warrior task and battle drills and your common soldiers test what we did we went out and found out what do a soldier need to do when they in combat when we started looking at that that is what we base these the six events that we have today and the reason being because the three event pt test was not doing it that's why you see a lot of individuals out there today that has a lot of back injuries and and so forth because that's what we set up and we do the push-ups and set up from three by one two by one but then we send you out to combat and we put you on with iotv almost 100 pounds on your back and you never did anything to train your back to train out your total your total body so that's what it was all based upon is actually what are the warrior tasks the warrior tasks that you would have to conduct in combat and what body parts that you would actually need to strengthen up in order for you to go out there and make sure that happened so that is where it came off and that's what we use so for the the the reason that we adjusted the push-up from the hand release push-up to the arm extension push-up was primarily because of really comes down to the core and the ability for soldiers to maintain one steady line from the base of their neck all the way down to their heels and it really again that goes back to the the strengthening of our core as it as it pertains to being in the front leading rest position what we did see is that either either because they were already tired at doing it but with the hand release push-up when the hands were directly underneath the shoulders and to raise them up a lot of times after they've been executing a few repetitions the soldiers would start to get a little lazy in that movement and instead of raising their hands up to their shoulders they would start arching their back at the lower back creating the gap that they needed in between the ground in their hands and and that automatically led to an improper push-up because then they would start leading with their shoulders versus a nice straight plank a nice straight line that we require and then another reason for eliminating and not doing the hand release push-up really came down to the ability of a grader to be able to see most of our most of our fitness tests are done in early morning hours throughout the most majority of the army and a lot of times those are in dark areas a lot of times it's on grass or whatever type of terrain and sometimes it's hard to see exactly how much space has been developed in between with the soldier raising their hand off the ground versus when they extend their hands out you can definitely see that their hands are off the ground because there's not any way that they're going to be able to maintain that moving their hands out with keeping their palms on the ground so that was that was pretty much the two main reasons why we went to the eliminated the hand release push-up and I just want to make sure I make one one correct I said this what it is is the baseline soldier physical readiness requirements study that we sent out for the army that would actually came back and we tested the warrior task and battle dress that you is commonly used inside of combat and that's what came up with the army combat fitness test of what you need to do which is based off your components of fitness that the SMA was talking about the 10 components of fitness that you actually use and which one did we actually need to use inside of this so that's what it was all based upon and that's what we got our research and our data from to saying this is what the defensive to come up with and specifically the last piece about the two mile run it's about cardio endurance and combat and sometimes you're going to need you need some speed and agility and other times you're going to need some endurance so we can't you know we could you know have you walk you know three hours and do a 12-mile foot march but there is a level of endurance that needs to be replicated and the two mile run is the replication that we're using for cardio endurance that replicates what you would need to be and do in combat SMA has there been any discussion on making the height weight standards gender neutral as well not as of yet okay got about five minutes left in our program so we're going to try to get through as many of these questions as we can the answers we're trying to get very detailed to make sure we give you the right information so if we don't get to all of your questions and answers we'll make sure that we've got folks posting online well after we're off the air so keep pumping your questions in we're I'm enjoying reading these these are fantastic questions I guess the next question would be is it true that soldiers with permanent profiles must at a minimum achieve the gold level for the three repetition max deadlift the sprint drag carry and two mile run does that mean you'll be on the gold standard regardless of MOS so yes we well I'll talk about the three events can we talked about the alternate events for the run but the if you have a valid permanent profile that prevents you from taking an event you must take the three events that you just mentioned you must do the three rep max deadlift you must do sprint drag carry and you have to do either the two mile run the row the bike or the swim that you have to do those three events if you can't do those three events you're not taking the ACFT and that's not a valid ACFT and as for the gold or the permanent profile standards I believe that is correct okay they're telling me we're just about out of time for one last question I'll direct that to you SMA in your opinion ACFT good for the army yes I think that's fairly easy question I think it's great for the army I had to take it to be the sergeant of the army so you know that that doesn't really define the question whether it's good for the army not just because I took it you know it was a requirement to become the sergeant major of the army this is really good for the army and I look at every one of those events that I do for the army combat fitness test and I can have a direct correlation to some event that happened to me in combat I've had to lift heavy things sometimes more than three times I usually ended up in some kind of sprint at some point I was on the ground sometimes because somebody might be shooting at me I had to push myself off the ground and then go and sprint and then sometimes I drug some things along the ground and I had to pull or lift myself up to get over obstacles so I look and I definitely had to have some endurance and some of the heat and some of the equipment that we have so so I really believe this is where we need to go for the army this is great for the army it's not just good it's great for the army to make sure that we have highly trained disciplined and fit soldiers that are going to win on today's modern battlefield I think as as you all know if you want to maintain your level of being the greatest army in the world everybody wants to knock you off and so I think doing the same thing we've always done is not the right answer in order to be the greatest army in the world to maintain that level we're going to need to change how we do our fitness and I think this is great for the United States Army. SMA want to thank you for that that's a great way to close this out Sergeant Major Gooden Sergeant Major Mitchell thank you both for being here thank the three of you for participating this afternoon right here on the army's Facebook live we're going to continue to stay online even though we're not broadcasting anymore we'll stay online to answer as many questions as we can and before we go I'd just like to say thank you to the United States Army Band Pershing Zone and their production staff for helping us this afternoon with the Army's Facebook live from Washington I'm Hank Minitrez thanks for watching