What can we do to motivate our troops to stay fit and pass the PT besides the normal punishment?

I had this issue as a platoon Sergeant and I realized that my joes wanted to be like me. I got into the best shape of my life and challenged them. I offered 3 day passes for PT scores. I made it cool to be a PT stud and they bought in. You're gonna have those rebels that don't listen but the Army will weed them out. I made PT fun and became what I wanted them to be.

Stop treating Health as something that needs to be Rewarded or Punished.

- We don't punish people for being unhealthy (Which is what the Physical FITNESS Test is about). We "punish" them for failing to maintain a regulatory standard. The regulatory standard for failure to pass PFTs (et al) is explicitly defined, but it isn't "punishment" it's "administration."

Stop Training for the Test.

- If you know all the answers to a test before you walk in, you'll pass the test. You'll never truly excel at it though. To do that, you need to understand the underlying concepts regarding the Subject Material, and APPLY it to the Test. Fitness is the Subject Material. Run, Push-up, Sit-up are the "questions." Make people Experts at their own Health and Fitness and they will excel at the stupid test.

This gets into Philosophy of Fitness. If your folks "dread" PT they won't PT, and they will be bad at it. If you make PT something that shouldn't be dreaded, you're on the right track.

CC MAJ (Join to see)

Do engaging PT.
My section doesn't always do PT together, because of schedules and physical limitations. But when we do, we are in the gym, doing core, working machines, jump roping, Tabata, etc.
PRT and running every other day are fine and dandy, if you want half the group to burn out.
We get our cardio with rowing, biking, and those who can run go on 1-2 runs a week.
we literally finish an entire workout in 20-30min, that at our unit would take 90min. Then we go and challenge ourselves individually for an additional 10-20 min, and are exhausted and well worked.
I am in better shape now (doing maybe 1-2 sessions as a group each week) than I was doing 5xwk with my last unit, or even 5xmorning-4xafternoon when I was recovering from my knee injury.