Watch an Olympian Get Crushed by the Army Combat Fitness Test
Pro runner and two-time Olympic medalist Nick Symmonds has taken on all kinds of fitness challenges since pivoting to his newest career stage as a fitness YouTuber, including trying to join the "1,000 club" and taking on several of the grueling military fitness tests that have proven to be a popular challenge among athletes and influencers. These included the U.S. Army's existing physical fitness test (PFT), which has been a standard of measuring recruits' fitness since the Eighties.
While for decades, the PFT was considered a fine way of assessing both cardiovascular fitness and muscular endurance with its 2-mile run and rounds of pushups and situps, it has since been found unfit for purpose in terms of the other physical challenges that soldiers face in modern warfare.
So in his most recent YouTube video, shot during a visit to Camp Withycombe in Portland, Oregon, Symmonds (who crushed the running portion of the PFT on a previous attempt, naturally) takes on the more recently designed U.S. Army Combat Fitness Test which is currently in the process of being rolled out. Created as a means of more accurately gaging the upper body strength and overall fitness required of soldiers today, the Combat Fitness Test consists of:
3-rep max deadlift
Standing medicine ball throws
Hand release pushups
Sprint, drag, carry drill
Leg tucks or planks
2-mile run
Watch the full video above to see how Symmonds fared in the combination of cardio, strength and endurance exercise, which he described as "a hell of a workout." While he doesn't perform as well in some of the tests as he would have liked, he enjoys the variety in the challenge, and vows to train and come back again to try and achieve a perfect score in the CFT next year.
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