APFT and the lies it tells

So I'm going to steal the "K's" thunder here a little bit.  Note: As I am sitting here writing this people in the bay jumping around yelling about who got the better APFT score.

So today we woke up at 0 dark 30 to take the APFT (Army Physical Fitness Test), this consists of 2 min of pushups, 2 min of sit-ups, and a 2 mile run.  This is the story of what went down.........

So at 4:50 I wake up to get ready to go to the APFT test at the gym at 5:15.  I walk over to the gym where no-one is standing, trying to be the good soldier and arrive early.  Due to our leaders excellent recon of the site the gym doesn't open until 5:30 and latter we discover we don't have a way to measure our height, which is a pretty standard part of any APFT.   So during this time a crowd of people is gathering huddling together to stay warm as it sprinkles rain that seems more like sleet and a wicked wind flows through us.  When the doors finally open things go pretty smoothly set up for the test and begin the exercises starting with the pushups.  The pushup performance of the individuals being tested was horrible, "the K" actually walked around videotaping it to document the massacre of the Army pushup standard.  People were doing the worm, not going down all the way, not locking their elbows out, there were some people that shouldn't have had a single push up count.  I even heard one person say, "I will see what the grader will let me get away with and just go down that far".

Then we move on to the sit-up.  The sit-up is pretty hard to mess up but people still find a way.  A few people don't keep their figures interlocked behind their heads, others don't keep their legs at a 90 degree angle, trying to cheat the system, and again get away with it.  When that was completed it was time for the run which is hard to cheat on.

The point of all this is that the APFT is supposed to be a standard metrics that everyone can be compared with each other equally.  This metric is not only used as bragging rights, which is being demonstrated right now before me, but also a metrics for getting promoted, being battle ready, and for attendance in competitive army schools.  Because of the lack of the enforcement of the standard today no one can really say they were better than the other, and the validity of looking at an APFT score comes into question.  I can think of several circumstances off the top of my head of where today one person scored higher than his peer on the test because he did not do the exercises to the proper army standard; which means come promotion time it could be a weighing factor of choosing one over the other.

Note: Yes the graders are to blame as well!!!