The Army’s most valuable resource is its soldiers, and their leaders have an urgent duty to prepare them for the physical rigors of modern combat as the prospect of large-scale war looms. That requires proactive focus on ways the environment is changing.

While the new Army Fitness Test is a positive step in this endeavor, it does not adequately assess relative strength, which is critical for success in modern combat. Relative strength in this context refers to a soldier’s ability to lift their own body weight and is measured by events such as pullups, rope climbs and leg tucks. 

Regardless of Army fitness policy, commanders must understand the importance of relative strength and emphasize unit-level fitness programs that develop and assess it.

Changing Battlefield

Experts predict future combat increasingly will take place in urban centers as human activity coalesces around them.  These areas are logistical hubs as much as centers of gravity for combat forces, and they are defined by a prevalence of vertical obstacles that impede movement. Walls, tunnels, ladders and fences are ubiquitous, and soldiers must be able to lift their bodies up, through and over these obstacles.

Traversing these impediments requires sufficient pulling strength relative to a soldier’s own body weight and is critical for unit effectiveness. The Army tacitly acknowledges the importance of relative strength despite not assessing it in the Army Fitness Test. For example, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, requires cadets to pass the Indoor Obstacle Course Test, which includes obstacles acting as surrogates for a combat environment. Military Movement, a required applied gymnastics course, is designed in part to prepare cadets for this test. The course uses pullups—a relative strength exercise—as an accurate predictor of success for the Indoor Obstacle Course Test.

Assessing Readiness

The test is not novel; courses with tall vertical obstacles such as those in Ranger School, Air Assault School and at every Army installation have been ubiquitous in the Army for generations because of their predictive value in assessing soldiers’ combat readiness. Arguably, relative strength is more important now than ever, given the demands of modern combat.

Two frequent criticisms are leveled against relative strength assessments in the Army.

First, critics argue relative strength only matters for soldiers in a combat role, so it does not belong in an Army-wide fitness test. This argument ignores the changing nature of warfare. In modern combat, soldiers may need to climb abandoned buildings to emplace communications equipment or scale a wall to deliver critical logistics to an adjacent headquarters. They may need to quickly pull themselves out of a tunnel when a chemical threat is detected or climb a ladder into an overwatch position in a guard tower.

These activities represent actions across a variety of Army roles and underscore the blurry front lines of modern warfare. The idea of a static area in which soldiers fight and noncombat soldiers avoid is a relic of mid-20th century warfare. There are countless examples of this, but the 2003 ambush of unit-supply specialist Pfc. Jessica Lynch’s unit in Iraq is one of the most notable.

In the Russia-Ukraine conflict, command posts—integrating cells for diverse groups of noncombat soldiers—increase their survivability by residing in underground networks that use the existing infrastructure of tunnels and ladders, according to a 2024 Army article.   Given the ubiquity of these obstacles, an increased focus on relative strength, and the concomitant development of a soldier’s ability to move effectively across urban terrain, is in the best interests of soldiers, the Army and the nation.

A second criticism focuses on the perceived inequity an emphasis on relative strength creates. The process to remove the leg tuck—a relative strength exercise—from the Army Combat Fitness Test in 2022 began with an advocacy group that brought concerns to Congress that “nearly half the service’s women could not pass earlier standards for the test,” a Military.com article noted.

Outdated policies that arbitrarily exclude qualified people from participation should be examined and modified. However, this criticism does not directly address the most important point: deprioritizing relative-strength development puts soldiers and missions at risk in ground warfare.

Call to Action

The Army Combat Fitness Test, introduced in 2020, was a breakthrough for Army physical readiness. It shattered the parochial paradigm of recognizing soldier fitness only as a function of aerobic and muscular endurance, and it acknowledged the importance of specificity with events that relate directly to warrior tasks. One of its goals was to incite culture change, which it has done, according to the 2019 Physical Training and Readiness Survey Report, which noted soldiers were modifying their fitness habits ahead of the new test.

The new Army Fitness Test goes a step further by removing gender-normed performance scores for combat specialties.

However, both tests fall short. As combat moves increasingly toward urban environments, the Army Fitness Test must evolve with the addition of a relative-strength event. This evolution should not be unduly influenced by fears that soldiers might fail. American soldiers have risen to tough challenges since the nation’s inception.

Even more importantly, Army leaders bear the responsibility of preparing their organizations to execute battle drills in combat conditions. Policy should aid in that effort, yet its absence cannot be an excuse. Effective commanders will determine supplementary fitness requirements beyond the scope of official Army tests, implement them and recognize excellence.

For example, the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) conducts 12-mile foot march assessments, a task that recognizes its mission to be experts in helicopter insertion outside of enemy air-defense ranges. Similarly, the 75th Ranger Regiment conducts the Ranger Physical Assessment Test, which includes tasks like climbing ropes, ascending walls and dragging casualties while in combat gear. Human performance experts are trained to assist Army leaders in using assessments to incentivize and measure improvement.

Unless leaders take a proactive approach to their unit’s fitness programs, the omittance of a relative-strength event in the Army Fitness Test could lead to a combat scenario in which many soldiers are physically unprepared to navigate urban terrain. In lieu of an official assessment, leaders should prioritize physical development centered around their unit’s mission in an urban environment. When they do that, they will find relative strength is critical.

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Maj. John Baer is the regimental engineer with the 75th Ranger Regiment, Fort Benning, Georgia. Previously, he was an instructor in the Department of Physical Education, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York. He deployed to Iraq. He has a master’s in kinesiology from the University of Virginia and is a certified strength and conditioning coach.