National Guard NCOs, how do we fix our APFT numbers? We can not force soldiers to PT outside of IDT status. How can we fix it?

There is no way to improve guard or reserve standards while not on drill status or on orders. There should be given a free gym membership to all guard & reservists no matter what of a gym of their choosing. Which might help out a bit.
In order to re-enlist for 1 year you do not need a passing pt score. For anything longer you do. So a guardsman or reservist could do their full 20years without passing a pt test passed their initial contract. Now for schools you have to pass pt tests so unless they are a career specialist then they have to work on pt in some form or fashion on their own.
Just like marksmanship. We only get 2-4 days a year to zero & qualify. No other range time except for crew serve weapons. Then we have all these mandatory classes. Then we have pha. Then we have this or that or other stuff that must be accomplished all while having time to conduct unit training. This new acft will take most of these unit multiple drills to complete cause of time & required certified graders. So there is less training now replaced by pt testing. Now they add more drill days to the schedule & now it's impacting work. Which pisses off employers. Cause by law it's 1 weekend a month (sat & sun) & 2 weeks during the summer. Not 3-4 day weekends (Thurs-sun) and full month summer AT. The bad part about the AT, is that Ppl have licenses that are required by state or federal that in order to remain active they have to physically work 1 day out of 30. So now AT is affecting solider civilian job licenses. Which can cost several hundred to get reactive or have to be certified.

So in summary the military has caused its own problem blem in pt for guard & reservists by failing to give them the support they need. If a solider just wants his 20 but doesn't care to go to a school's or promoted then there isn't anything the army can do honestly. Cause as long as they pass everything besides pt after their initial contract they can extend every year for a year til they retire. There's no incentive to want them to push hard except you won't get promoted or go to schools if you don't. I'm at 14 years I can't get a bonus so all I have is schools & promotions for incentives. Some days I don't even consider them those. Army truly doesn't know what retain means. Means giving an incentive or bonus or added feature to an employee to keep their loyalty to that organization. That's why so many good ncos get out after a few contracts or after their 1st. They don't see the point anymore.

Pay for their membership to a ymca with trainer. If unable to pass after nine months and a written warning every month the it will be so long

I am a old retired active duty guy. I never understood how the guard and reserves functioned

We have a culture issue. Only 25% of military age kids are eligible to join the military. The rest are too fat, have criminal records, or drug issues. There is also a huge group that feels entitled and thinks they should get stuff without the effort. We can discharge APFT failures and reduce the force or find a carrot that would appeal to new soldiers.

The only thing we can do is give them a PT test, if they fail, counsel them and make them do remedial PT during drill, if they fail the next PT test, then UCMJ and flag them. This is taking into account that the Soldier does not have any medical reasons/injuries, if this is the case, get them to a military doctor and get it fixed, or get them a permanent profile for alternate events. Being physically fit enough to pass a PT test and do your job is a BASIC soldier function. Also most armory's have gyms in them. NCO's also need to communicate and check in with their soldiers frequently during the month, and motivate them to stay in shape. Remember, even if we only wear the uniform one weekend a month, we don't stop being soldiers the other 28/29 days. If it comes down to it, put them on RMA's a couple days a week of you have to. A last resort before either reducing them or separating them is the fitness camp... we have had several PT failures from my unit go through this camp, on orders, and they got back into shape. I can understand us older soldiers slacking and slipping, but what gets me is most of the PT failures in my unit are the younger soldiers who haven't been out of Basic/AIT for very long. We had one soldier who hasn't even been out a month, reported to the unit, and failed the PT test his first drill. They get home, go back to their old life and lose motivation... once again that s where us NCO'S, from the Battery/company 1SG, down to the SGT level need to step in and provide that motivation

Hey set the standard that’s to be maintained by everyone no exceptions if you want to stay in the Guard There has to be consequences for not maintaining the standards

This is a leadership problem. Our leaders are not held accountable enough for their subordinates fitness level. I have sat on promotion boards and it is rare to see that our Senior NCO’s or Junior NCO’sh have anything on their NCOER about their Soldiers fitness levels. However, they get a “Far Exceed”, because they can score 90 in each event. If their upward progression depended on getting results from their Soldiers then it would be important to our leaders. It needs to be a part of the baseline . The NCOER is how you fix the problem. I am all for other creative ways to help lower level Soldiers. Outside the box thinking is nessassary and I think we should consider gym membership reimbursement, having full time staff run PT sessions at local armories 2-3 days a week, challenges that involve reward.

The new PT we are transitioning to will get Reserves into shape if not have infantry drill SGT’s square them away the infantry part would lite a fire under there ass and the Drill SGT part would humiliate and humble them

Simple. After failing a PT test you get a retake and if you fail the retake then you get discharged. I'm in the reserves and we have a big problem with this. People dont care about passing because they know nothing will happen if they fail. If people got kicked out then they would have motivation to pass the PT test

See some people have a shallow thinking ability. It is not that black and white. I don’t know the fix either but it is not just as simple as we will kick you out. You have to remember that some soldiers work 60 to 70 hours a week between traveling and work. I do, and no I have never failed. I am fortunate that way but I don’t set the world on fire either. But I have deployed 4 times and many of my counterparts and fellow guardsmen have too. Yes even the ones that didn’t pass night and weight or the APFT. They still performed to a high standard. And now that they were being afforded the time to workout properly lost the weight and most all passed the pt test. There is no simple answer to fix it. I do however agree it is on the shoulders of the soldier.