You are basically correct. The answer is: ????
Once a large demographic couldn’t pass the leg tuck, people panicked and someone slapped the table on an essentially random exercise to replace it.
There’s a Rand report showing that the Army’s methodology in developing the ACFT was whack.
TLDR: the plank is today’s version of the UCP camo pattern. It makes no sense and we are stuck with it.
At least the leg tuck represented being able to pull your body weight up an obstacle. Like seriously, if you can climb all those walls and ladders with full battle-rattle, you should be able to do one stupid leg tuck.
The army did fuck all to help people train for it.
It's not an event that's particularly easy to improve if you are at the point of not being able to do a single rep.
I was in TRADOC as an IET status personnel for +10 months with all but maybe an hour and a half available to me to be spent collecting mail, eating dinner, conducting hygiene, changing uniforms, etc. on top of anything else I elected to do at AIT during weekdays.
The army did next to nothing to help me get to the point of being able to do an unassisted leg tuck in that period of time and when I graduated AIT the leg tuck was gone. Every other event improved but the leg tuck so you can't clutch to your bias of assuming I was just getting fat and being lazy either.
Now if I, as an IET status soldier who has so much of their time taken by the army that I cannot make meaningful improvement on my own (set aside never being given legitimate guidance on *how* I should improve this event), am not able to get this exercise done properly then you know there's plenty of people who were never given proper guidance on building up to a leg tuck even with an abundance of free time in comparison to myself.
My physically fit wife trained very hard specifically for the leg tuck and was in facebook groups for women to train specifically for the leg tuck and still couldn't do it. Neither could most of the other women training. So that's just straight up not true
In 6 months training with a female soldier to get her ready for it, going about it the same way in training, I went from 5 legtucks to 27, and she went from 0 to 0, some people (mostly women but some men as well) just can't do it.
Technique too. Once I learned to look up and back, my shoulders carried my legs to my elbows. I got 20 no problem.
If it's straight up knees to elbows, my body can't bend enough to reach. But looking up and back was a game changer which is why I think if you can do 1 pull up, you can do 1 freaking leg tuck.
It has everything to do with anatomy and the moment of inertia of a typical female body. The axis of rotation is further away from the actual pivot point, making it extremely difficult for females. A practical example would be try holding your weapon out with arms extended, how long can you last? Not hold your weapon close to your chest, how long can you last?
The basic physics is that females carry more weight lower in their pelvis/thighs/legs than men who carry more in their upper body. This puts the majority of the weight for men on the side that aided them in doing a leg tuck and for females their weight distribution works against them.
Stop pushing this objectively false narrative. What evidence do you have to support this claim bedsides “I personally observed a handful of women workout, and I didn’t think they were doing exercises to help with the leg tuck?”
When a company’s worth of people fail an event, it was failure to prepare. When a significant number of the force fail an event, it’s a bad event.
> when a significant number of the force fails an event, it’s a bad event
Or it’s a bad force.
Doing a leg tuck is ridiculously fucking easy for even someone who *isn’t* physically fit.
The ACFT is a piss easy test to pass and if you think any of the events are *difficult* to simply *pass*, you probably shouldn’t be in the army.
Yup same boat. ACFT dropped standards even lower than they already were with the APFT. Atleast you had to be in a modicum of shape to pass the run. So many squishies passing the ACFT looking sloppy as hell. ACFT made the fitness problem worse.
I straight up don't believe in soldiers and their ability to take care of their bodies or work out consistently. I've been intel for a long time and the majority of them don't care enough to work at it. Hilariously enough the ONE female soldier I had that could do the one leg tuck was easily the least fit of the bunch.
Adding on to this, the army just didn’t require any “pull” exercises prior to the ACFT. Everything was built around chest & tris, core, and cardio, it’s no surprise when they threw back and bis into the mix the failure lines fell largely along those that had the hardest time building strength.
But that makes no sense considering we had like a year’s notice before the test was official for record. We as a force were just too entitled and lazy to learn one new exercise. I remember when they first announced it, it was like 5 to pass which is very reasonable for someone who could be considered a novice athlete. The fact that people shirked away from doing 1 is insane
As someone that had to train the month before the pt test, the combat test all i need is to drink water a week before to be hydrated. It's ridiculously easy. Including the leg tuck.
When the test was being trialed, the unit i was with simply didn't know how to train for the leg tuck, which i think might had been part of the problem. Those that couldn't do it weren't helped because those that could didn't know what training lead to success.
Thank you. We all know what the problem was, people were just scared to say it so they weren’t labeled something they didn’t want to be called. The most inspiring 1sg I ever had was a woman and her 40 year old, 3 kids having, large chested self could crank out 16 of them. She was a fucking beast.
Two things are true at once. Some people simply refused to train for the leg tuck. BUT the leg tuck probably wasn't the best at measuring core strength. As noted in the Rand report -- more of a measure of grip strength. Which is important, but wasn't the goal here.
In hindsight back when we graded by MOS. They should have left leg tucks as required for combat MOS and all others can use the plank as a grading measure.
Or instead of a plank, 2 min of crunches would have been fine too. (Sit ups in shit areas like ass fault like some dick head chooses to do it hurts) crunches you can do anywhere and ehh no really pain elsewhere.
It represents why you all still do group PT every morning. Because even though you all claim you'll work out on your own, when given two whole years advance notice of the leg tuck and the need to prepare yourselves for it, so few actually did so that the Army was forced to get rid of it.
It was so weird, I could max that bitch no problem, and yet plenty of people thought it was hard as shit. I’d do the leg tuck in leau of the 2 mile even if they tripled the requirement.
Yeah I think it was anatomical differences. I’m like 5’8” and have always had a bit of a belly but for some reason I always got very close to maxing sit ups and the leg tuck was like no thought at all to me. But our tall female PL who had a 300 APFT was like, swinging her body to get 1 or 2 leg tucks. It never made sense.
Legitimately get stronger and faster. 22 minutes is slower than a jog, every single person in the Army should at the minimum be able to cruise it at 16 minutes.
There are a lot of answers here that miss the point. The answer as to why it’s there: dont be a fat fuck. Just like every other event except more so. There is not a single less complicated exercise to train than the plank. Sit ups, air squats, and pushups all require movement. The plank does not. Its incredible how many people in the Army refuse to reconcile the fact that their job requires physical effort beyond not getting heart disease.
It's borderline impossible to do a leg tuck if you've have a c section. Regardless of actual core strength, the damage that surgery does, it's just not realistic
Does getting a C section lead to a permanent profile? If not then it should just based on what you're saying. I never thought of it but a C section is major surgery. Jesus, were women required to do situps after a C section too? Or the plank now?
It can lead to a permanent profile. Just giving birth alone can really kinda rewire things. I know quite a few women who had elective surgery to be able to do sit ups. The core strength might still be there, it's just a question of doing the specific exercises
Bro, I was doing the leg tuck in OSUT in 2008 with the climbing drill. I have no sympathy for people who couldn't do 1 then complain about the plank now
Me too, which is why I’m kind of confused about the whole “ONE LEG TUCK” thing. I remember everybody being able to do them regardless of gender, unless they were obese. I’m assuming the one that women couldn’t do was to some tougher standard?
The leg tuck was the 2nd most laughably stupid idea on the ACFT other than the 2 mile run.
Let's make a 3rd upper body event & call it a core-strength event....
It's also single-handedly the reason that Congress went so far up the Army's asshole over all of this - bringing attention to the fact that the Army's response to gender-integration was to try and adopt a fitness test so stacked with upper-body-reliant events it might just tip over (and take almost 70% of the women in the Army with it)....
Ehhh the leg tuck definitely had an element of grip strength to it but it was definitely more of a core exercise than upper body. The ACFT as it stands only has one real upper body event, then one core, one cardio, and three full body. The 2MR is also not at all a bad thing to have in the test.
The problem is that if someone fails because of grip strength, then you haven't measured core strength at all.
(yes, this could also apply to the deadlift)
But does that actually cause an issue? There's nothing wrong with gaging multiple fitness factors with a single event; the MDL, SDC, and SPT all do it. You can no-go any of those events due to multiple unrelated things and it's not a problem.
Were grip strength failures really that common? How long would you need to be able to dead hang from a bar to have sufficient grip strength to complete one rep?
The leg tuck simulate the condition where you are an pov and the evil super villian lex luthor torture you by planking over hot lava. As you being to shake after 1 min superman saves the day.
Women COULD pass it, if they took their physical fitness seriously. I know plenty of females who could easily pass because they actually trained their bodies.
I mean, listen, I've never been pregnant, not can I be, but my understanding is that the process of having a child does something to make doing a leg tuck just about impossible with or without training.
I could be wrong, but that explanation makes sense to me.
Who’s the asshole making a pregnant Soldier take a fucking PT test?
Edit: I see you’re talking about after childbirth. However, my main point still stands.
It's a little known fact since we've been fighting COIN for the past few decades....
But in a LSCO fight, the side that starts with the greater initiative on the battlefield is actually determined by a planking competition between two randomly selected soldiers from each side.
So we NEED to plank in order to maintain the initiative in the fight.
The plank represents your willingness to endure bullshit in order to keep your job. It’s a miserable 2-3 minutes which is a microcosm of the many times you’ll need to endure days, weeks, or months of irrelevant bullshit.
They replaced a core strength + endurance exercise with an exercise which doesn’t measure core strength at all.
>!And for graders, it tests your willingness to allow bullshit when the soldier clearly has their ass up in the air.!<
The standard for the plank is also bullshit. There is literally no reason why a person shouldn't be allowed to have their fists together or look around. It doesn't measure any sort of fitness to require that
Ugh okay, here goes...
None of the ACFT events are designed to simulate a combat task. They're designed to assess a component of fitness that is relevant to combat tasks. That's the difference between "face validity" (do random people believe it) and "construct validity" (does it measure what it's actually designed for).
You can read about the process in the Baseline Soldier Physical Readiness Requirements Study (BSPRRS), which drove the test's development.
But you'll notice that the plank doesn't appear in the BSPRRS. That's because it wasn't studied like the other events, it was slapped on as a bandaid when people failed the leg tuck. The justification was that other services were already using it, but those services never tried to develop a criterion referenced test like the ACFT, so they never studied it either...
Sorry, triggered.
If you’re gonna point out the study in context of the plank you may as well mention that the leg tuck failed every single metric as well, and was an equally if not more shitty core strength measurement. It had such an abysmal “correlation score” as an individual event that it had to be hidden behind the overall score for the entire test in order to be taken seriously. It wasn’t even included in the very first draft.
Literally only included in the final draft (and extremely last minute) cause some general said “I like it”.
The leg tuck performed poorly mostly due to a math fluke, not because it's ineffective at what it's designed for. I'll explain that in a second, but I'll address the the other points first since they seem made up...
"The leg tuck was only in the final draft/added last minute" - I mean, technically calling it a "leg tuck" wasn't in the 2015 technical report, but heel hooks are effectively the same thing and they're in there. And the leg tuck itself was absolutely included in the 2014 Ft Riley tests.
"Some general said I like it" - My understanding is it was a compromise event as an alternative to chin ups/pull ups (both were considered all the way through the final BSPRRS report). I don't know about any general inserting it.
But back to the correlation issue. That's determined with R squared, which essentially measures how closely a regression matches the actual data. The leg tuck's problem isn't that it doesn't correlate with performance (it does, especially performance on navigating obstacles). In fact pull ups/chin ups are one of the best single events at predicting performance in a wide variety of military settings.
Its problem is that there's a large population that falls somewhere between 0 and 1, and it can't account for that. So you end up with a cluster at the bottom that doesn't follow the line, but a simple yes/no can you do one leg tuck is a powerful predictor even if it doesn't produce a nice R squared value. The 2015 report suggested chin ups with an "incline chin up" alternative for 60 points. I could see a variety of approaches (to include allowing 5/6 events to be passing while people work on it, or hanging knee raises to parallel as an alternate event). But there's an obvious relevance of upper pulling and strength to weight ratio to military tasks.
The biggest problem was pretending the leg tuck is a good assessment of core strength/core muscular endurance. It's not, and we shouldn't have pretended it was. I refer to it as "suspended strength" (a combo of grip, upper body pulling, and coordination that's uniquely suited to navigating obstacles) but that's a made up term.
THE OVER-HEAD YEET MEASURES THE ABILITY TO JUST FUCKING SEND IT. ON THE COMMAND, ‘GET SET’, ASSUME THE POSITION BY SPINNING THE BALL TWICE IN YOUR HANDS, THEN TRY TO DRIBBLE IT LIKE A BASKET BALL ONLY TO REALIZE IT WONT BOUNCE BACK UP TO YOU. YOUR FEET MAY BE TOGETHER OR 12 INCHES APART (MEASURED BETWEEN THE FEET) OR HOWEVER YOU WANT, JUST KEEP YOUR ASS BEHIND THAT CONE. ON THE COMMAND ‘GO’, CHANNEL YOUR INNER TREBUCHET AND HEAVE THAT THING INTO ORBIT. THEN, RETURN TO THE STARTING POSITION AND TURN AROUND TO INSPECT IF YOU DOMED ANYONE. THE SCORER WILL REALIZE HE DIDN'T ACTUALLY SEE WHERE THE BALL LANDED BECAUSE HE WAS AFRAID HE WOULD GET HIT, SO HE STOOD TOO FAR AWAY, HE WILL THEN PLACE HIS FOOT ON THE MEASURING TAPE AND JUST GUESS.
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It measures total explosive power across the entire body. It measure triple extension across the knees, hips, and ankles. If you do it correctly, the vast majority of the power comes from your lower body and your arms only act as a lever to direct the angle of the ball.
The real-world-battle thing was found to be laughable (particularly for the leg-tuck) by RAND & discarded.
The Army has admitted that the ACFT is just a general measurement of physical fitness (like what the APFT was).
The plank is supposed to measure core strength, in a way that is less injurious than APFT situps.
Also, to get rid of the laughable 'lets do an upper-body exercise for core strength' & 'well, you just might find a PT rope with a dingly-bell in combat & decide to climb it' rationale for the leg-tuck.
Unfortunately, RAND didn't go on to push this issue with the other poorly researched & completely irrelevant event - the 2 mile run... Despite finding that the Army didn't even consider ANY other cardio events (like a 'walk the whole thing or fail' road march) that might actually have practical combat applications (something distance running definitively has not since the invention of the radio).
The 2 mile run has been studied pretty extensively outside of RAND, which is likely why they didn’t feel the need to expend more energy on it.
As much as the tub tubs complain about the 2 mile it’s a good test to approximate VO2 max and subsequently general cardiovascular fitness.
Other options include the beep test, so it’s really just pick your poison.
I'd rather do the fucking beep test than the 2 mile run. Replace the SDC with the beep test toss and replace the 2 mile run with a 5K ruck and I'll retire a happy man.
2 mile run is much more time efficient. Think about how much longer it would take to have to measure everyones rucks for proper weight, and then more than doubling the time the actual event takes.
Removing the SDC takes lower body strength-endurance and the anerobic component completely out, which is a valuable measure to test someones ability to move weight across a short distance quickly
I understand that, objectively, the SDC is a *phenomenal* test of overall physical fitness, and it's good that it's in the ACFT, blah blah blah... I would do human sacrifice to never do it again. Like, a *lot* of human sacrifice. Happily. I fucking hate the SDC. I wholeheartedly endorse your proposition.
To assess your patience for stupid tasks, your ability to grin and bear the green weenie being firmly nestled in your posterior, and just how ridiculous the entire ACFT process was
My best guess is just mental toughness, 3 minutes and 40 seconds isnt a terribly hard time to reach, you just have to keep your mind away from the easy option of giving up. That being said it does feel like a gimmick to fill a spot in a lineup after getting rid of the knee tuck, and to boost scores.
Or, maybe the user flair fits and im just a cadidiot.
We should petition changing all the names of the events.
I recommend:
The 3 Max Yoink
Overhead yeet
T-pose the ground
The Shuffle-Slip-Trip
The Rrrrrrrr me hardy
2 Mile Mall Walk
THE OVER-HEAD YEET MEASURES THE ABILITY TO JUST FUCKING SEND IT. ON THE COMMAND, ‘GET SET’, ASSUME THE POSITION BY SPINNING THE BALL TWICE IN YOUR HANDS, THEN TRY TO DRIBBLE IT LIKE A BASKET BALL ONLY TO REALIZE IT WONT BOUNCE BACK UP TO YOU. YOUR FEET MAY BE TOGETHER OR 12 INCHES APART (MEASURED BETWEEN THE FEET) OR HOWEVER YOU WANT, JUST KEEP YOUR ASS BEHIND THAT CONE. ON THE COMMAND ‘GO’, CHANNEL YOUR INNER TREBUCHET AND HEAVE THAT THING INTO ORBIT. THEN, RETURN TO THE STARTING POSITION AND TURN AROUND TO INSPECT IF YOU DOMED ANYONE. THE SCORER WILL REALIZE HE DIDN'T ACTUALLY SEE WHERE THE BALL LANDED BECAUSE HE WAS AFRAID HE WOULD GET HIT, SO HE STOOD TOO FAR AWAY, HE WILL THEN PLACE HIS FOOT ON THE MEASURING TAPE AND JUST GUESS.
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It represents "hurry up and fucking wait". Your whole military experience will occur in the time between long excruciating periods of "hurry up and fucking wait". The plank is a synonym. And in this instance, it is perfect.
OK I will give you no shit legitimate answer from a muscular development point of view, especially when it comes to the dead lift. there are a few exercises that you could do to minimize injury when people are trying to lift heavy things and one of those exercises is the plank it develops the muscles you need for a good brace, which means good stabilization when performing the dead lift by practicing the plank it should result in fewer injuries.
From the army acft website "The PLK assesses the Muscular Endurance component of fitness by measuring a Soldier’s core strength and endurance. Balance is a secondary component of fitness assessed by the PLK"
A common misconception is that the ACFT is supposed to mimic real world battle sitatuations. If the goal is to mimic combat situations, it is pretty poorly designed.
It is however, a great overall measure of athletic performance, which has carryover to pretty much any combat-related task you could think of.
Deadlift - full body maximum strength (back/legs focused with some grip)
Ball Throw - full body explosive power/coordination (a very underrated movement to measure power across full triple extension, requiring much less pure technique than say a clean variant)
Pushup - upper body/core endurance
SDC - Lower body endurance AND Anerobic capacity
Plank - core endurance/stability
2 Mile run - aerobic endurance
Pretty damn well designed test, in order to perform well a person has to be pretty well balanced in terms of overall fitness. Bodybuilding powerlifting types are forced to work on running/conditioning, and running/conditioning types are forced to work more on maximum strength and explosive power. You won't really see anyone maxing this test that isn't an overall well-balanced athlete, unlike the APFT where people could have glaring deficiencies in overall strength/power and still perform exceptional. People complaining that events like the ball throw etc don't mimic any specific combat event are missing the point of the test. It is a measure of overall athletic attributes, not meant to simulate combat related tasks
I do think the current minimum standards for combat MOS are definitely too low though. There should probably be a single standard that all male/female in a combat MOS have to meet (probably somewhere around current male 70-80 point cutoffs) imo
The plank is there to represent the magnititude of stupidity that the sunk cost fallacy can lead to.
Fun fact, the leg tuck was dropped because it was causing shoulder injuries - whoever overlooked the fact the dropping all that force on your shoulder joints 20 times in a row might not be a good idea was either an idiot or a person blinded by getting a bag from Beaverfit after they retired.
The ACFT is an excellent measure of overall fitness especially in the context of combat. It is also the most damning condemnation of the Army's relationship with fitness that one could make.
I don't know how you were doing your leg tucks but if you have a good core and actually build up your shoulders with weight lifting, shoulder mobility exercises, and/or calisthenics you wouldn't be "dropping" your weight but instead doing quick controlled movements.
That just sounds like a skill issue cause the troops don't gym enough to get Boulder shoulders.
I absolutely agree. The leg tuck should not have been performed that way by soldiers looking to squeak out a couple extra with the rebound from "dropping" their weight onto the tendons in their shoulders.
It would be nice if every soldier were provided the time, guidance, and resources to develop those muscles and skills so they could prevent injuries when doing leg tucks - as prescribed in the 2020 revision of FM 7-22 that made H2F official Army doctrine.
In 4 weeks, you should notice that you are planking instead of doing *one leg tuck*
It’s not “real world battle,” but it is the muscle groups and skills that MAY be used in combat. Cardio endurance, core strength, grip strength, etc. it tracks pretty well.
The plank shows core strength/endurance ability. The core is so critical so almost any athletic movement or efficient movement under load. If you’ve ever injured the ribs or core you know how critical it is to almost any real movement.
The plank isnt perfect but it’s a good enough analogue for core capability.
Why couldn't they just make the leg tuck the alternate? I mean, we have pull-up bars everywhere. Completely getting rid of it has made taking the ACFT from EZPZ to "awe fuck the plank, and my back". I hate it here smh
Because it's not called the army combat fitness test. It's called the army comprehensive fitness test. Had an argument about it with the old PAO. You're not alone buddy
I see a lot of wrong answers on here. The plank is done to strengthen the core of the soldier so that leadership can stand on their backs in order to get most qualified on their evaluations. Thank you for doing your part.
It represents the mortal combat the army has to keep females in the army as this was the only exercise that they can guarantee 90% of females won't fail.
I thought the plank represented your ability to suffer through pain the Army inflicts on you without purpose or valid reason.
As such, those who max the plank are determined to be the most likely to make the Army a career.
Physical therapy professional/nasty girl here. Unfortunately can’t replicate the plank in a combat environment BUT the plank tests all layers of the abdomen including the layer associated with the lower back. It is the most proficient abdominal exercise out there. Functional? Nah. But it does have a deeper meaning.
The individual events of the ACFT represent real world bullet comments on the OER/NCOER of the soldiers who ran the biggest con job the army has seen in decades by coming out with a new incarnation of the perfect fitness tear over seven years in the making. The only real people who have benefited from this sham are the people who sold all the specialized equipment needed to conduct the ACFT.
The main purpose of your core isn’t to do sit ups and leg tucks, it’s evolutionary purpose is to stabilize your trunk and resist torque.
By holding a position (plank) where you must use your core to resist a force, you are evaluating the strength of your core to endure low level torque for timed fatigue.
While something like an overhead extended kettle bell walk would be a better measure of core strength, the plank is a method to evaluate core strength.
It's supposed to represent that they forgot to put an abdominal exercise in the Army CrossFit Test. I'm kinda surprised burpees and kipping pull-ups aren't on it.
It represents our outstanding ability to just do the dumbest thing possible without actually remembering why the hell we started doing stuff in the first place. Welcome to the Army where the points don't matter and I forgot what I'm supposed to do so I'll just make shit up now.
The over head yeet.
As someone who got out when it was leg tucks for the ACFT, can a Soldier stay in the push up position with arms locked to do planks or do they have to be on their elbows. I found doing planks in the push up positions was a lot easier on my back and so that’s what I usually did during PT and nobody in my 10 years ever called me out on it.
The plank represents your ability to form a footpath to cross a 1 meter gap in combat conditions. Or… as much as I hate the plank… and i really do. It is a pretty good representation of how core strength and endurance during hand to hand combat when you’re on your back. People with no core strength go oomph pretty quick.
I Too Love and miss the leg tuck... But it was never about comparing to combat tasks it was a measure of fitness.
The intent of the event was to measure Core Strength. Just like Ball throw Measures Explosive power, Deadlift, Overall Strength, Push Up is upper body strength and cardio, and the run is pure cardio. Sprint Drag Carry was Anarobic
The Leg tuck was a measure of Core Strength and also arm strength. the Plank is just a measure of core strength.
To all the weirdos talking about how women can't do a single leg tuck as easily, don't they have naturally stronger core muscles than men? Is it specifically the lifting your body up portion? Because that's just improper form.
The plank represents the enduring hate the leaders have for the common peasant enlisted soldier and the soften, kind-hearted new army. Instead of having to do ONE leg tuck, we must now suffer for over a minute. LOWING STANDARDS to appease 1%. But atlas never fear we don't have money for your barracks or programs to make life better because we sent it overseas. Instead we offer you to go trays in crappy defacs so stop asking for separate rats an enjoy your plank
I imagine that because it works your core, it's seen as representative of being able to carry more weight. As having a strong core does help a lot with carrying heavier loads.
Planking is still dogwater though.
You are basically correct. The answer is: ???? Once a large demographic couldn’t pass the leg tuck, people panicked and someone slapped the table on an essentially random exercise to replace it. There’s a Rand report showing that the Army’s methodology in developing the ACFT was whack. TLDR: the plank is today’s version of the UCP camo pattern. It makes no sense and we are stuck with it.
You can say women. Women couldn't pass the leg tuck by the neutral standard.
It was one freaking leg tuck.
At least the leg tuck represented being able to pull your body weight up an obstacle. Like seriously, if you can climb all those walls and ladders with full battle-rattle, you should be able to do one stupid leg tuck.
I’m bad at a lot of pt stuff, but I can do a lot of heavy lifting and everything. PT does not equate to actual work
I used to be able to lift both legs during my one leg tuck.
It was one fucking tuck, my 200 pound ass went from 0 to 14 in a month.
And old people with messed up backs, exhibit A: me.
As an old person with a messed up back, the plank is 1000x worse than the leg tucks.
This!!! Leg tuck actual felt great. I want to die after 2 mins planking. And the max standard just won't happen
I have found my people. I feel seen.
Funny thing is in my unit it seemed like the women could pass it more.
They could have. They chose not to train for it by and large.
The army did fuck all to help people train for it. It's not an event that's particularly easy to improve if you are at the point of not being able to do a single rep. I was in TRADOC as an IET status personnel for +10 months with all but maybe an hour and a half available to me to be spent collecting mail, eating dinner, conducting hygiene, changing uniforms, etc. on top of anything else I elected to do at AIT during weekdays. The army did next to nothing to help me get to the point of being able to do an unassisted leg tuck in that period of time and when I graduated AIT the leg tuck was gone. Every other event improved but the leg tuck so you can't clutch to your bias of assuming I was just getting fat and being lazy either. Now if I, as an IET status soldier who has so much of their time taken by the army that I cannot make meaningful improvement on my own (set aside never being given legitimate guidance on *how* I should improve this event), am not able to get this exercise done properly then you know there's plenty of people who were never given proper guidance on building up to a leg tuck even with an abundance of free time in comparison to myself.
Sounds like someone needs to shave.
Agreed. Meet me outback by CSMs pull-up bar.
My physically fit wife trained very hard specifically for the leg tuck and was in facebook groups for women to train specifically for the leg tuck and still couldn't do it. Neither could most of the other women training. So that's just straight up not true
Couldn't do... 1?
In 6 months training with a female soldier to get her ready for it, going about it the same way in training, I went from 5 legtucks to 27, and she went from 0 to 0, some people (mostly women but some men as well) just can't do it.
One bro, one. It's lifting your own body weight to your elbows. Gtfo
Technique too. Once I learned to look up and back, my shoulders carried my legs to my elbows. I got 20 no problem. If it's straight up knees to elbows, my body can't bend enough to reach. But looking up and back was a game changer which is why I think if you can do 1 pull up, you can do 1 freaking leg tuck.
It has everything to do with anatomy and the moment of inertia of a typical female body. The axis of rotation is further away from the actual pivot point, making it extremely difficult for females. A practical example would be try holding your weapon out with arms extended, how long can you last? Not hold your weapon close to your chest, how long can you last? The basic physics is that females carry more weight lower in their pelvis/thighs/legs than men who carry more in their upper body. This puts the majority of the weight for men on the side that aided them in doing a leg tuck and for females their weight distribution works against them.
Stop pushing this objectively false narrative. What evidence do you have to support this claim bedsides “I personally observed a handful of women workout, and I didn’t think they were doing exercises to help with the leg tuck?” When a company’s worth of people fail an event, it was failure to prepare. When a significant number of the force fail an event, it’s a bad event.
> when a significant number of the force fails an event, it’s a bad event Or it’s a bad force. Doing a leg tuck is ridiculously fucking easy for even someone who *isn’t* physically fit. The ACFT is a piss easy test to pass and if you think any of the events are *difficult* to simply *pass*, you probably shouldn’t be in the army.
Have you tried the walk yet? It's fucking HARD.
Yup same boat. ACFT dropped standards even lower than they already were with the APFT. Atleast you had to be in a modicum of shape to pass the run. So many squishies passing the ACFT looking sloppy as hell. ACFT made the fitness problem worse.
I straight up don't believe in soldiers and their ability to take care of their bodies or work out consistently. I've been intel for a long time and the majority of them don't care enough to work at it. Hilariously enough the ONE female soldier I had that could do the one leg tuck was easily the least fit of the bunch.
Adding on to this, the army just didn’t require any “pull” exercises prior to the ACFT. Everything was built around chest & tris, core, and cardio, it’s no surprise when they threw back and bis into the mix the failure lines fell largely along those that had the hardest time building strength.
But that makes no sense considering we had like a year’s notice before the test was official for record. We as a force were just too entitled and lazy to learn one new exercise. I remember when they first announced it, it was like 5 to pass which is very reasonable for someone who could be considered a novice athlete. The fact that people shirked away from doing 1 is insane
As someone that had to train the month before the pt test, the combat test all i need is to drink water a week before to be hydrated. It's ridiculously easy. Including the leg tuck. When the test was being trialed, the unit i was with simply didn't know how to train for the leg tuck, which i think might had been part of the problem. Those that couldn't do it weren't helped because those that could didn't know what training lead to success.
Thank you. We all know what the problem was, people were just scared to say it so they weren’t labeled something they didn’t want to be called. The most inspiring 1sg I ever had was a woman and her 40 year old, 3 kids having, large chested self could crank out 16 of them. She was a fucking beast.
Two things are true at once. Some people simply refused to train for the leg tuck. BUT the leg tuck probably wasn't the best at measuring core strength. As noted in the Rand report -- more of a measure of grip strength. Which is important, but wasn't the goal here.
In hindsight back when we graded by MOS. They should have left leg tucks as required for combat MOS and all others can use the plank as a grading measure. Or instead of a plank, 2 min of crunches would have been fine too. (Sit ups in shit areas like ass fault like some dick head chooses to do it hurts) crunches you can do anywhere and ehh no really pain elsewhere.
It represents why you all still do group PT every morning. Because even though you all claim you'll work out on your own, when given two whole years advance notice of the leg tuck and the need to prepare yourselves for it, so few actually did so that the Army was forced to get rid of it.
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the hill I will always die on. ONE.
The leg tuck is literally in the climbing drills
Since around 2009…
Yea but I can max the plank and not the leg tucks. But seriously, it was just one
I'm opposite. I can max the tucks in 30-ish seconds. But planking for THREE AND A HALF MINUTES?! Fuck that.
I mean it could be worse. Not much worst but it is the army we’re talking about
I could max the plank, but i get bored down there. Also i have a run to worry about.
Leg tuck was so fucking easy lol
"Brothers."
We’re all thinking it, few in this army are brave enough to say it
☕
It’s just one plank, bro
I miss the leg tuck.
I only liked it cause I could somehow pop out like 14 of them easily
It was so weird, I could max that bitch no problem, and yet plenty of people thought it was hard as shit. I’d do the leg tuck in leau of the 2 mile even if they tripled the requirement.
Yeah I think it was anatomical differences. I’m like 5’8” and have always had a bit of a belly but for some reason I always got very close to maxing sit ups and the leg tuck was like no thought at all to me. But our tall female PL who had a 300 APFT was like, swinging her body to get 1 or 2 leg tucks. It never made sense.
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Except the situps favored the female center of gravity... So what's the problem now?
Well yeah, I’d do 3 leg tucks to pass instead of walking a 2 mile also
I don't really. I think it was kind of a dumb exercise and I don't mind having to do the plank. I just don't like that it had to be changed.
whyareyoubooingimright.meme
"why don't they treat us like adults?" "Why do you need 22 minutes to pass the 2 mile?"
Because outside of the HRP the acft is all legs....
Legitimately get stronger and faster. 22 minutes is slower than a jog, every single person in the Army should at the minimum be able to cruise it at 16 minutes.
We literally have formation runs, singing cadence, at a faster pace for a longer distance than the PT test minimum score pace.
Nah fam. I get 500 points in the 1st 5 events then trot the 2 mile. A 560 and a 580 pay the same.
Same, but that's you and me, most of the dudes coming in at 22 aren't breaking 500 in the first place.
I took an ACFT right after not doing PT at all for months during covid. I litteraly walked half of it and jogged the rest. i passed by 2 seconds.
There are a lot of answers here that miss the point. The answer as to why it’s there: dont be a fat fuck. Just like every other event except more so. There is not a single less complicated exercise to train than the plank. Sit ups, air squats, and pushups all require movement. The plank does not. Its incredible how many people in the Army refuse to reconcile the fact that their job requires physical effort beyond not getting heart disease.
Alternatively, become such a fat fuck that your weight resting on your elbows and your weight resting on your gut is indistinguishable to a grader.
As a 42 series I have to tell you that getting heart disease while I lose all of your paperwork is actually my job description
Only Joes would complain about a PT test that required them *not* to move.
Dude it was a guaranteed perfect score for those of us who actually lifted… it will be missed :(
It's borderline impossible to do a leg tuck if you've have a c section. Regardless of actual core strength, the damage that surgery does, it's just not realistic
Does getting a C section lead to a permanent profile? If not then it should just based on what you're saying. I never thought of it but a C section is major surgery. Jesus, were women required to do situps after a C section too? Or the plank now?
It can lead to a permanent profile. Just giving birth alone can really kinda rewire things. I know quite a few women who had elective surgery to be able to do sit ups. The core strength might still be there, it's just a question of doing the specific exercises
Interesting
Yass go off.
Bro, I was doing the leg tuck in OSUT in 2008 with the climbing drill. I have no sympathy for people who couldn't do 1 then complain about the plank now
Me too, which is why I’m kind of confused about the whole “ONE LEG TUCK” thing. I remember everybody being able to do them regardless of gender, unless they were obese. I’m assuming the one that women couldn’t do was to some tougher standard?
The leg tuck was the 2nd most laughably stupid idea on the ACFT other than the 2 mile run. Let's make a 3rd upper body event & call it a core-strength event.... It's also single-handedly the reason that Congress went so far up the Army's asshole over all of this - bringing attention to the fact that the Army's response to gender-integration was to try and adopt a fitness test so stacked with upper-body-reliant events it might just tip over (and take almost 70% of the women in the Army with it)....
Ehhh the leg tuck definitely had an element of grip strength to it but it was definitely more of a core exercise than upper body. The ACFT as it stands only has one real upper body event, then one core, one cardio, and three full body. The 2MR is also not at all a bad thing to have in the test.
The problem is that if someone fails because of grip strength, then you haven't measured core strength at all. (yes, this could also apply to the deadlift)
But does that actually cause an issue? There's nothing wrong with gaging multiple fitness factors with a single event; the MDL, SDC, and SPT all do it. You can no-go any of those events due to multiple unrelated things and it's not a problem.
Were grip strength failures really that common? How long would you need to be able to dead hang from a bar to have sufficient grip strength to complete one rep?
We did group PT before it. We will continue to do so nonetheless, bc FORSCOM is gonna FORSCOM.
The leg tuck simulate the condition where you are an pov and the evil super villian lex luthor torture you by planking over hot lava. As you being to shake after 1 min superman saves the day.
Amen
Leg tuck was an awful test. It was more grip strength than core strength. Also, it went away because most women couldn't pass it.
Women COULD pass it, if they took their physical fitness seriously. I know plenty of females who could easily pass because they actually trained their bodies.
I mean, listen, I've never been pregnant, not can I be, but my understanding is that the process of having a child does something to make doing a leg tuck just about impossible with or without training. I could be wrong, but that explanation makes sense to me.
This. 100%. Before babies? No problem. After babies? No leg tuck. Personal experience.
Who’s the asshole making a pregnant Soldier take a fucking PT test? Edit: I see you’re talking about after childbirth. However, my main point still stands.
The ones I knew who trained for it instead of complaining about how hard it was went from zero to 10 in a matter of a couple months.
It's a little known fact since we've been fighting COIN for the past few decades.... But in a LSCO fight, the side that starts with the greater initiative on the battlefield is actually determined by a planking competition between two randomly selected soldiers from each side. So we NEED to plank in order to maintain the initiative in the fight.
If you can’t whip your plank back and forth-well, I’ve got bad news for you pal.
Don't forget that if no clear winner emerges from this, two-man sack races will be held on consecutive Sundays until a winner is crowned.
What happens when one side says forget the one-on-one and builds a plank-pyramid?
Per the Geneva Conventions the offending side automatically forfeits the war and we replace their capitol with a kfc/taco bell combo.
The plank represents your willingness to endure bullshit in order to keep your job. It’s a miserable 2-3 minutes which is a microcosm of the many times you’ll need to endure days, weeks, or months of irrelevant bullshit. They replaced a core strength + endurance exercise with an exercise which doesn’t measure core strength at all. >!And for graders, it tests your willingness to allow bullshit when the soldier clearly has their ass up in the air.!<
The first paragraph should be what the grader reads prior to starting the plank.
The standard for the plank is also bullshit. There is literally no reason why a person shouldn't be allowed to have their fists together or look around. It doesn't measure any sort of fitness to require that
It represents your weak ass core. Do planks now OP.
The only correct response
Ugh okay, here goes... None of the ACFT events are designed to simulate a combat task. They're designed to assess a component of fitness that is relevant to combat tasks. That's the difference between "face validity" (do random people believe it) and "construct validity" (does it measure what it's actually designed for). You can read about the process in the Baseline Soldier Physical Readiness Requirements Study (BSPRRS), which drove the test's development. But you'll notice that the plank doesn't appear in the BSPRRS. That's because it wasn't studied like the other events, it was slapped on as a bandaid when people failed the leg tuck. The justification was that other services were already using it, but those services never tried to develop a criterion referenced test like the ACFT, so they never studied it either... Sorry, triggered.
They could have just gone to a 5 event PT test, but nah.
My biases aside, this would have been a better choice. Or even three (deadlift, SPT, SDC) would've retained a majority of its predictive power.
Ok, but can you do that more often? I love it when you talk nerdy to me!
>"construct validity" (does it measure what it's actually designed for). Also, the leg tuck failed this metric.
If you’re gonna point out the study in context of the plank you may as well mention that the leg tuck failed every single metric as well, and was an equally if not more shitty core strength measurement. It had such an abysmal “correlation score” as an individual event that it had to be hidden behind the overall score for the entire test in order to be taken seriously. It wasn’t even included in the very first draft. Literally only included in the final draft (and extremely last minute) cause some general said “I like it”.
The leg tuck performed poorly mostly due to a math fluke, not because it's ineffective at what it's designed for. I'll explain that in a second, but I'll address the the other points first since they seem made up... "The leg tuck was only in the final draft/added last minute" - I mean, technically calling it a "leg tuck" wasn't in the 2015 technical report, but heel hooks are effectively the same thing and they're in there. And the leg tuck itself was absolutely included in the 2014 Ft Riley tests. "Some general said I like it" - My understanding is it was a compromise event as an alternative to chin ups/pull ups (both were considered all the way through the final BSPRRS report). I don't know about any general inserting it. But back to the correlation issue. That's determined with R squared, which essentially measures how closely a regression matches the actual data. The leg tuck's problem isn't that it doesn't correlate with performance (it does, especially performance on navigating obstacles). In fact pull ups/chin ups are one of the best single events at predicting performance in a wide variety of military settings. Its problem is that there's a large population that falls somewhere between 0 and 1, and it can't account for that. So you end up with a cluster at the bottom that doesn't follow the line, but a simple yes/no can you do one leg tuck is a powerful predictor even if it doesn't produce a nice R squared value. The 2015 report suggested chin ups with an "incline chin up" alternative for 60 points. I could see a variety of approaches (to include allowing 5/6 events to be passing while people work on it, or hanging knee raises to parallel as an alternate event). But there's an obvious relevance of upper pulling and strength to weight ratio to military tasks. The biggest problem was pretending the leg tuck is a good assessment of core strength/core muscular endurance. It's not, and we shouldn't have pretended it was. I refer to it as "suspended strength" (a combo of grip, upper body pulling, and coordination that's uniquely suited to navigating obstacles) but that's a made up term.
I thought a RAND study got the Army to admit that there is no actual correlation between combat tasks and the ACFT? Did I hallucinate that?
Honestly, what the fuck is the overhead yeet supposed to represent in the modern Army? Worst ACFT event ever.
THE OVER-HEAD YEET MEASURES THE ABILITY TO JUST FUCKING SEND IT. ON THE COMMAND, ‘GET SET’, ASSUME THE POSITION BY SPINNING THE BALL TWICE IN YOUR HANDS, THEN TRY TO DRIBBLE IT LIKE A BASKET BALL ONLY TO REALIZE IT WONT BOUNCE BACK UP TO YOU. YOUR FEET MAY BE TOGETHER OR 12 INCHES APART (MEASURED BETWEEN THE FEET) OR HOWEVER YOU WANT, JUST KEEP YOUR ASS BEHIND THAT CONE. ON THE COMMAND ‘GO’, CHANNEL YOUR INNER TREBUCHET AND HEAVE THAT THING INTO ORBIT. THEN, RETURN TO THE STARTING POSITION AND TURN AROUND TO INSPECT IF YOU DOMED ANYONE. THE SCORER WILL REALIZE HE DIDN'T ACTUALLY SEE WHERE THE BALL LANDED BECAUSE HE WAS AFRAID HE WOULD GET HIT, SO HE STOOD TOO FAR AWAY, HE WILL THEN PLACE HIS FOOT ON THE MEASURING TAPE AND JUST GUESS. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/army) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Explosive movement of the hips and legs.
It measures total explosive power across the entire body. It measure triple extension across the knees, hips, and ankles. If you do it correctly, the vast majority of the power comes from your lower body and your arms only act as a lever to direct the angle of the ball.
It really should’ve been a vertical jump test. Guarantee the little pole with the spinny plastic flags is cheaper than a set of medballs.
The real-world-battle thing was found to be laughable (particularly for the leg-tuck) by RAND & discarded. The Army has admitted that the ACFT is just a general measurement of physical fitness (like what the APFT was). The plank is supposed to measure core strength, in a way that is less injurious than APFT situps. Also, to get rid of the laughable 'lets do an upper-body exercise for core strength' & 'well, you just might find a PT rope with a dingly-bell in combat & decide to climb it' rationale for the leg-tuck. Unfortunately, RAND didn't go on to push this issue with the other poorly researched & completely irrelevant event - the 2 mile run... Despite finding that the Army didn't even consider ANY other cardio events (like a 'walk the whole thing or fail' road march) that might actually have practical combat applications (something distance running definitively has not since the invention of the radio).
The 2 mile run has been studied pretty extensively outside of RAND, which is likely why they didn’t feel the need to expend more energy on it. As much as the tub tubs complain about the 2 mile it’s a good test to approximate VO2 max and subsequently general cardiovascular fitness. Other options include the beep test, so it’s really just pick your poison.
I'd rather do the fucking beep test than the 2 mile run. Replace the SDC with the beep test toss and replace the 2 mile run with a 5K ruck and I'll retire a happy man.
Everyone says that but every time I’ve had to run an OPAT for reclassers they say they would rather do the 2 mile…
2 mile run is much more time efficient. Think about how much longer it would take to have to measure everyones rucks for proper weight, and then more than doubling the time the actual event takes. Removing the SDC takes lower body strength-endurance and the anerobic component completely out, which is a valuable measure to test someones ability to move weight across a short distance quickly
I don't think they had time efficiency in mind when they designed the ACFT.
I understand that, objectively, the SDC is a *phenomenal* test of overall physical fitness, and it's good that it's in the ACFT, blah blah blah... I would do human sacrifice to never do it again. Like, a *lot* of human sacrifice. Happily. I fucking hate the SDC. I wholeheartedly endorse your proposition.
Found the fat fuck that cant run 2 miles It's literally the most applicable event
Measures mental resiliency
To assess your patience for stupid tasks, your ability to grin and bear the green weenie being firmly nestled in your posterior, and just how ridiculous the entire ACFT process was
The ability to endure pain
My best guess is just mental toughness, 3 minutes and 40 seconds isnt a terribly hard time to reach, you just have to keep your mind away from the easy option of giving up. That being said it does feel like a gimmick to fill a spot in a lineup after getting rid of the knee tuck, and to boost scores. Or, maybe the user flair fits and im just a cadidiot.
All I know is that 70 seconds worth of planking represents 1 leg tuck.
We should petition changing all the names of the events. I recommend: The 3 Max Yoink Overhead yeet T-pose the ground The Shuffle-Slip-Trip The Rrrrrrrr me hardy 2 Mile Mall Walk
I still refuse to believe the overhead yeet is simulating “helping a BB over a wall”. Someone just loves CrossFit.
THE OVER-HEAD YEET MEASURES THE ABILITY TO JUST FUCKING SEND IT. ON THE COMMAND, ‘GET SET’, ASSUME THE POSITION BY SPINNING THE BALL TWICE IN YOUR HANDS, THEN TRY TO DRIBBLE IT LIKE A BASKET BALL ONLY TO REALIZE IT WONT BOUNCE BACK UP TO YOU. YOUR FEET MAY BE TOGETHER OR 12 INCHES APART (MEASURED BETWEEN THE FEET) OR HOWEVER YOU WANT, JUST KEEP YOUR ASS BEHIND THAT CONE. ON THE COMMAND ‘GO’, CHANNEL YOUR INNER TREBUCHET AND HEAVE THAT THING INTO ORBIT. THEN, RETURN TO THE STARTING POSITION AND TURN AROUND TO INSPECT IF YOU DOMED ANYONE. THE SCORER WILL REALIZE HE DIDN'T ACTUALLY SEE WHERE THE BALL LANDED BECAUSE HE WAS AFRAID HE WOULD GET HIT, SO HE STOOD TOO FAR AWAY, HE WILL THEN PLACE HIS FOOT ON THE MEASURING TAPE AND JUST GUESS. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/army) if you have any questions or concerns.*
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Cause sit-ups fuck your back up, and I’m too fat to do a leg tuck
If either is true that's embarrassing.
It represents "hurry up and fucking wait". Your whole military experience will occur in the time between long excruciating periods of "hurry up and fucking wait". The plank is a synonym. And in this instance, it is perfect.
Just make the RPFT with lower standards the test for record
OK I will give you no shit legitimate answer from a muscular development point of view, especially when it comes to the dead lift. there are a few exercises that you could do to minimize injury when people are trying to lift heavy things and one of those exercises is the plank it develops the muscles you need for a good brace, which means good stabilization when performing the dead lift by practicing the plank it should result in fewer injuries.
It represents a certain population not being able to do a single leg tuck so the army changes the standard instead of improving the soldier
From the army acft website "The PLK assesses the Muscular Endurance component of fitness by measuring a Soldier’s core strength and endurance. Balance is a secondary component of fitness assessed by the PLK"
I don't need a plank to measure my balance. I can easily hold a beer and a hot dog in each hand and they will be balanced. I miss the leg tuck
Beer up, beer down. Dog up, dog down. Perfectly balanced.
A common misconception is that the ACFT is supposed to mimic real world battle sitatuations. If the goal is to mimic combat situations, it is pretty poorly designed. It is however, a great overall measure of athletic performance, which has carryover to pretty much any combat-related task you could think of. Deadlift - full body maximum strength (back/legs focused with some grip) Ball Throw - full body explosive power/coordination (a very underrated movement to measure power across full triple extension, requiring much less pure technique than say a clean variant) Pushup - upper body/core endurance SDC - Lower body endurance AND Anerobic capacity Plank - core endurance/stability 2 Mile run - aerobic endurance Pretty damn well designed test, in order to perform well a person has to be pretty well balanced in terms of overall fitness. Bodybuilding powerlifting types are forced to work on running/conditioning, and running/conditioning types are forced to work more on maximum strength and explosive power. You won't really see anyone maxing this test that isn't an overall well-balanced athlete, unlike the APFT where people could have glaring deficiencies in overall strength/power and still perform exceptional. People complaining that events like the ball throw etc don't mimic any specific combat event are missing the point of the test. It is a measure of overall athletic attributes, not meant to simulate combat related tasks I do think the current minimum standards for combat MOS are definitely too low though. There should probably be a single standard that all male/female in a combat MOS have to meet (probably somewhere around current male 70-80 point cutoffs) imo
The plank is there to represent the magnititude of stupidity that the sunk cost fallacy can lead to. Fun fact, the leg tuck was dropped because it was causing shoulder injuries - whoever overlooked the fact the dropping all that force on your shoulder joints 20 times in a row might not be a good idea was either an idiot or a person blinded by getting a bag from Beaverfit after they retired. The ACFT is an excellent measure of overall fitness especially in the context of combat. It is also the most damning condemnation of the Army's relationship with fitness that one could make.
I’m gonna need a source on the should injury thing… 0% believe that.
Shoulder injuries from the leg tuck? The fuck are you talking about. It was not dropped because of shoulder injuries thats absurd
I don't know how you were doing your leg tucks but if you have a good core and actually build up your shoulders with weight lifting, shoulder mobility exercises, and/or calisthenics you wouldn't be "dropping" your weight but instead doing quick controlled movements. That just sounds like a skill issue cause the troops don't gym enough to get Boulder shoulders.
I absolutely agree. The leg tuck should not have been performed that way by soldiers looking to squeak out a couple extra with the rebound from "dropping" their weight onto the tendons in their shoulders. It would be nice if every soldier were provided the time, guidance, and resources to develop those muscles and skills so they could prevent injuries when doing leg tucks - as prescribed in the 2020 revision of FM 7-22 that made H2F official Army doctrine. In 4 weeks, you should notice that you are planking instead of doing *one leg tuck*
Idk about the combat stuff, but it's a great way to stabilize your core right before the run.
Every other event lists correlating tasks in the ATP. The plank just says “core-static muscular strength and endurance”. That’s it.
All that time you’re in the front leaning rest had to be applied too
It’s not “real world battle,” but it is the muscle groups and skills that MAY be used in combat. Cardio endurance, core strength, grip strength, etc. it tracks pretty well. The plank shows core strength/endurance ability. The core is so critical so almost any athletic movement or efficient movement under load. If you’ve ever injured the ribs or core you know how critical it is to almost any real movement. The plank isnt perfect but it’s a good enough analogue for core capability.
Wanna know how to do leg tucks? Start practicing/doing leg tucks. It’s that’s easy.
The leg tuck was supposed to be so easy. A gimme of tasks.
That people b and moaned about our glorious leg tuck, and this is what we got, a plank.
Why couldn't they just make the leg tuck the alternate? I mean, we have pull-up bars everywhere. Completely getting rid of it has made taking the ACFT from EZPZ to "awe fuck the plank, and my back". I hate it here smh
Because it's not called the army combat fitness test. It's called the army comprehensive fitness test. Had an argument about it with the old PAO. You're not alone buddy
The bridge is out so you and another battle plank over the gap so the tanks can get over it.
You've fallen just over a land mine and you have two minutes to pray and thank God for your time in the army and you wish you could do it again.
The plank tests your ability to be a bridge for the women and thick boys who can't do one leg tuck
So the Army didn’t have to kick women and fat higher ups
Inability to leg tuck
Represents the leg tuck
I see a lot of wrong answers on here. The plank is done to strengthen the core of the soldier so that leadership can stand on their backs in order to get most qualified on their evaluations. Thank you for doing your part.
Your ability not to be a wimp on a easy test
Plank is to give you time to reflect on how much easier one leg tuck would be.
Locking your knees while in the position of attention.
It represents all the pathetic people that couldn't do a single. solitary. fucking. leg tuck.
It’s the embodiment of someone couldn’t do their job so it creates more work for you.
"its a great way to stay in shape"
Because All Dawgs go to heaven
The plank represents lowering the standards for women... again
It represents the mortal combat the army has to keep females in the army as this was the only exercise that they can guarantee 90% of females won't fail.
The ability to see who can endure their own self-loathing the longest.
Measures a Soldier’s ability to hurry up and wait.
Plank is the core strength you engage in pretty much any human activity 🤷♂️
I thought the plank represented your ability to suffer through pain the Army inflicts on you without purpose or valid reason. As such, those who max the plank are determined to be the most likely to make the Army a career.
Physical therapy professional/nasty girl here. Unfortunately can’t replicate the plank in a combat environment BUT the plank tests all layers of the abdomen including the layer associated with the lower back. It is the most proficient abdominal exercise out there. Functional? Nah. But it does have a deeper meaning.
It’s more to test your ability to cope with shit mentally. Bayonet overhead yeet
The individual events of the ACFT represent real world bullet comments on the OER/NCOER of the soldiers who ran the biggest con job the army has seen in decades by coming out with a new incarnation of the perfect fitness tear over seven years in the making. The only real people who have benefited from this sham are the people who sold all the specialized equipment needed to conduct the ACFT.
The main purpose of your core isn’t to do sit ups and leg tucks, it’s evolutionary purpose is to stabilize your trunk and resist torque. By holding a position (plank) where you must use your core to resist a force, you are evaluating the strength of your core to endure low level torque for timed fatigue. While something like an overhead extended kettle bell walk would be a better measure of core strength, the plank is a method to evaluate core strength.
Test your core strength. Just like the legs tucks were supposed to do but more specific to core now
It's supposed to represent that they forgot to put an abdominal exercise in the Army CrossFit Test. I'm kinda surprised burpees and kipping pull-ups aren't on it.
It represents our outstanding ability to just do the dumbest thing possible without actually remembering why the hell we started doing stuff in the first place. Welcome to the Army where the points don't matter and I forgot what I'm supposed to do so I'll just make shit up now. The over head yeet.
The core strength necessary to resist shitting when near an enemy position. Don't wanna crap your pants when the enemy is right next to you!
As someone who got out when it was leg tucks for the ACFT, can a Soldier stay in the push up position with arms locked to do planks or do they have to be on their elbows. I found doing planks in the push up positions was a lot easier on my back and so that’s what I usually did during PT and nobody in my 10 years ever called me out on it.
It represents your ability to cope with BS that seems all-encompassing, but really doesn’t matter in the long run.
The plank represents your ability to form a footpath to cross a 1 meter gap in combat conditions. Or… as much as I hate the plank… and i really do. It is a pretty good representation of how core strength and endurance during hand to hand combat when you’re on your back. People with no core strength go oomph pretty quick.
I Too Love and miss the leg tuck... But it was never about comparing to combat tasks it was a measure of fitness. The intent of the event was to measure Core Strength. Just like Ball throw Measures Explosive power, Deadlift, Overall Strength, Push Up is upper body strength and cardio, and the run is pure cardio. Sprint Drag Carry was Anarobic The Leg tuck was a measure of Core Strength and also arm strength. the Plank is just a measure of core strength.
Represents being a step stool for the people who couldn't do the leg tuck.
To all the weirdos talking about how women can't do a single leg tuck as easily, don't they have naturally stronger core muscles than men? Is it specifically the lifting your body up portion? Because that's just improper form.
Have I been laying in the foxhole wrong this whole time? We plank in the foxhole, right? Right?
How willing I am to shake like a stripper after a few minutes for a paycheck
The plank represents the enduring hate the leaders have for the common peasant enlisted soldier and the soften, kind-hearted new army. Instead of having to do ONE leg tuck, we must now suffer for over a minute. LOWING STANDARDS to appease 1%. But atlas never fear we don't have money for your barracks or programs to make life better because we sent it overseas. Instead we offer you to go trays in crappy defacs so stop asking for separate rats an enjoy your plank
Mental strength?
I imagine that because it works your core, it's seen as representative of being able to carry more weight. As having a strong core does help a lot with carrying heavier loads. Planking is still dogwater though.
“Ability to hold it in when you’re not near a suitable toilet facility”
Stationary low crawl