With the SMA and Chief of Staff listening more and more, shouldn't we reopen the discussion to add pull-ups to the Army PFT?

LTC (Join to see) I would have max'd the crap out of that Sir!

SGT (Join to see) - Back strength indirectly improves pushups and directly improves physical health.

CPT Nick Bryan - I don't know if I agree. The two exercises work different muscle groups. I can still do 20 pull-ups, which is the max score on a PFT, but I struggle with push ups. When I had Marine buddies go to Army jump school, they all said the same thing. Doing a lot of pull-ups just means that you're good at doing pull-ups. Same with push-ups. It's what you train your body to be good at.

As a measure of physical fitness it's a better exercise. I agree you do well at what you focus on, but for purposes of measuring fitness as it repeats to job performance the pull-up is the better metric. While you maybe an exception I think most that object to pull-ups do so because they can't do them. And they can't do them because they don't train on them, and they don't train on them because they don't like to because they aren't good at it. Anyone who says a 270 and above or stud can't do pull-ups and can't ever do them is painting with a very broad brush. But you may see in one of my other comments that I outlined a change that would incorporate both pull-ups and push-ups, similar to the RPFT.

SGT Edward Wilcox - why? The mission is constantly changing why wouldn't the way we prepare for it change as well. Do you really think a change in the physical fitness program is an attempt to force soldiers out? If a change from push ups to pull ups causes that many to suddenly become failures there is a bigger with the unit readiness going on . I haven't done pull ups in over 8 yrs. But after reading this I went out and tried. At 43 and retired for 6 months I still did 14 dead hangs with no preperation time. So sounds more like excuses to me.

There will always be soldiers that can't meet the standard no matter how much time and energy is spent on them. Does that mean we should not keep pushing to improve the rest of the force?

In some situations I can agree with you on that statement. Because that's very true there are some Soldiers that just weren't built for this or don't have the self motivation to achieve current standards so no matter how much time or energy you spend for one reason or another they can't cut it . I guess in my personal opinion I don't feel pull ups will improve a forced , now I don't claim to be a know it all and I very well could be wrong , but at the same time there should be a solution for the problem we already have at hand as we consider moving forward just my thought

The BCT graduation standard isn't passing though. Which should change in my opinion, yes. But that's not been a problem for AIT instructors and Unit leaders.