Introduction

The U.S. Army continues to invest heavily in the fitness domain of its new Holistic Health and Fitness (H2F) program. Fitness within H2F is governed by doctrine—Field Manual (FM) 7-22—and executed in major part by outside strength, conditioning and health coaches in the “largest personnel contract in Training and Doctrine Command history.”^[1] H2F, while well-intentioned, well-resourced and a welcome focus topic for our Army, is unfortunately beholden to insufficient doctrine and ill-conceived expertise models, not ideally suited to improving the long-term fitness of our force. The Army must refocus H2F’s physical domain energy and resources on reclaiming ownership of its fitness expertise.

At present, the Army’s H2F initiative lacks a standardized physical training program accessible to everyday Soldiers and leaders. Despite extensive doctrine, there is no clear, scalable template for building effective unit-level training. In practice, leaders are left to develop plans independently, often relying on commercial programs or examples submitted by other units. This decentralized approach reflects a broader absence of doctrinal leadership and sets the stage for the challenges explored in the sections that follow—challenges rooted in unclear guidance, technical overreach and a reliance on external support.

A History of Messy Fitness

To understand how we can improve H2F, we must first understand the changes that have occurred to Army fitness over the last 20 years. The Army’s H2F system has been in a state of overhaul for nearly two decades. In 2010, the Army introduced Physical Readiness Training (PRT), the first modern attempt to define a comprehensive fitness philosophy for the U.S. Army since the 1980s.^[2] PRT identified fitness components such as muscular strength and endurance, anaerobic and aerobic capacity, agility, balance, coordination, flexibility, posture, stability, speed and power.^[3] PRT was implemented as a rigid series of drills to be conducted in formation, in cadence, with little variation. The drills were rote, uninspired, difficult to scale and offered no means to assess or demonstrate progress. They lacked creativity and failed to reflect how actual training occurs outside of a garrison setting. As a result, Soldiers disliked PRT, and it was widely abandoned.^[4] Rather than iterate on that foundation, the Army returned to the drawing board. Starting in 2012, it began the Baseline Soldier Physical Readiness Requirements Study (BSPRRS) in an attempt to define the fitness requirements of a Soldier.^[5] The aim was not merely to improve general physical traits, but to identify future combat tasks, isolate the most physically demanding ones and determine which components of fitness would contribute to success in those tasks. This marked a philosophical shift. Fitness would no longer be built from first principles like strength or endurance, but instead reverse-engineered from projected battlefield scenarios. Test events were selected that correlated with those combat demands. While the BSPRRS ultimately supported the replacement of the Army Physical Fitness Test with the Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT), it did not generate a coherent program to support this change.^[6] When FM 7-22 was published in 2020, it was still filled with much of the legacy PRT content that was disliked, including in-formation movement drills and calisthenics—content that did not match the logic or goals of the new ACFT.^[7]

To resolve this mismatch between testing and training, the Army heavily invested in one of the largest contracted personnel staffing models to exist in the DoD.^[8] Each brigade was assigned about 27 civilian coaches and 12 military personnel to conduct physical training, manage recovery and serve as subject matter experts.^[9] This staffing solution centralized expertise, but it was scaled poorly. With 39 personnel responsible for 3,000 to 4,500 Soldiers, the model was simply unworkable. As early as 1945, Colonel Ted Bank—one of the first architects of Army fitness doctrine—identified the same problem: Reliance on centralized instruction cannot sustainably meet the needs of the entire force.^[10] In such scenarios, units are left dependent on a small number of experts they have not cultivated themselves and are often forced to compete for their limited availability.

Perhaps the most glaring failure of the H2F initiative is its lack of a unified, accessible training program for everyday Soldiers. FM 7-22 and its supplements—Army Techniques Publication (ATP) 7-22.01 and ATP 7-22.02—span nearly 700 pages, yet only 22 of those pages focus on building a weekly training plan. These tangible references are spread throughout the doctrine in graphics typically referencing a single drill or physical fitness domain. By far, the most instructive fitness programming content covers basic training and the future Soldier Preparation Course—content of little utility to operational brigade Soldiers.^[11] The remainder is dense and overly technical, filled with discussions of neuroendocrine responses, energy systems and muscle fiber types—content more appropriate for a pre-med physiology course than a practical military manual.^[12] This tendency toward academic abstraction is not new. Even the 1969 edition of FM 21-20 reads like a graduate-level text, with its analysis of isotonic and isometric principles likely to confuse even students of exercise science.^[13] Rather than empowering Soldiers to take ownership of their fitness, these documents reinforce the notion that physical training is too complex to understand without the help of H2F contractors. They alienate rather than educate. Compounding this problem is the Army’s decision to delegate program design to individual units and civilian coaches, describing the result as “individualized.”^[14] In reality, this reflects a lack of doctrinal leadership. Given the inadequate staffing model, many junior leaders who take it upon themselves to plan physical training are left to navigate a patchwork of unit-specific workouts—some uploaded by brigades like the 10th Mountain Division or the 18th Field Artillery Brigade—without any clear, scalable or translatable philosophy to guide them.^[15] This is more than a procedural gap; it reflects an institutional reluctance to develop and invest in internal fitness expertise.

Clearly, then, the content that does exist in the Army’s H2F doctrine is scattered, overly technical and largely irrelevant to operational Soldiers. More critically, it fails to educate. The H2F contractor staffing model, while a heavy investment in Soldiers, creates a vacuum of internal expertise and is unfortunately still inadequate in preparing Soldiers to train themselves and others. With these faults, H2F doctrine and its execution method provide neither quality nor sustainability—leaving the force dependent, fragmented and unprepared. The way ahead for improving H2F must involve owning our fitness expertise.

Owning Our Expertise

To build and sustain fitness in preparation to win the wars of our nation, the Army must own its own physical fitness expertise. Just as units must be able to troubleshoot communications systems, manage their own sick calls and repair complex machinery, they must also have an internal capacity for physical training and health maintenance. Soldiers must be able to train themselves, leaders must be able to train others, and the entire force must be capable of sustaining fitness after service ends.

Soldiers must be self-sufficient in maintaining their physical readiness, especially given the unpredictable and decentralized nature of Army life. Whether deployed, on leave, pulled for staff duty or working irregular shifts, Soldiers often miss organized PT and must train independently. In practice, most Soldiers only attend eight to 12 organized sessions each month, with the remainder lost to taskings, meetings and competing priorities. Further fitness is lost in collective unit training that can cumulatively account for months out of a Soldier’s year. This results in a “fitness seesaw effect,” with Soldiers cyclically making and losing fitness gains because of only exercising within the bounds of a unit’s H2F fitness plan or with H2F coaches.^[16] This reality makes it essential that Soldiers understand how to build and adapt their own training—just as they would maintain a weapon or conduct maintenance on a vehicle. But unfortunately, foundational knowledge, such as the points of performance for a barbell deadlift, is not in our fitness doctrine to proper depth, nor is it readily taught to all Soldiers. And these are not ancillary skills. They are core competencies that directly impact performance and longevity.

Every Soldier is instructed on fundamental warrior tasks and drills. Soldiers are expected to learn them, to train them and, when they become a junior leader, to be able to train others and evaluate their completion. Tasks like operating weapons, treating a casualty or calling for indirect fire are in fact tested to standard across the Army in Expert Soldier/Infantry/Medical Badge events.^[17] NCOs are expected to first teach and then evaluate Soldiers’ ability to perform tasks as complex as the several dozen steps in employing a mine, but could they teach or evaluate a Soldier’s chin-up form to a standard? Not from H2F doctrine, nor from widely attended training.

Empowering our sergeants to be the primary trainers and experts of core competencies is foundational to our Army. NCO expertise is also significantly more cost-efficient than bringing in outside contractor support. Junior leaders learning, studying and then eventually training other Soldiers is the way our military does aircraft repair, network maintenance and emergency medicine. Why is fitness different? Additionally, external coaches lack the authority and cultural understanding to shape a unit’s PT culture. That responsibility rests with the leaders in uniform. Room for improvement here lies in training our trainers, which is why H2F developed an additional course they are calling “H2F Integrator,” which replaced Master Fitness Trainer.^[18] While the H2F Integrator course is a welcome improvement from the MFT course, notably because it expands to discuss more health domains than just physical fitness, it falls flat because, although it added more content, it reduced class time to only two weeks.

Finally, holistic fitness must account for the long-term. With over 18 million veterans and only 2 million active duty Soldiers, the Army has a strategic obligation to prepare its members for life beyond the uniform. Nearly half of all veterans report some form of disability—many of which are tied to musculoskeletal injuries, poor movement patterns or chronic neglect of recovery.^[19] If Soldiers leave service without the knowledge of how to care for themselves, the system has failed. Education in sleep hygiene, fueling, injury prevention and foundational programming principles like progressive overload and periodization is not a luxury—it is a requirement. H2F has done a great job of recognizing that these elements must be included in our discussions on fitness, but has yet to effectively inject them into military culture or Army-wide education.

If H2F is to succeed, it must shift from a contractor-led, doctrine-dense initiative to a Soldier-driven system rooted in utility, clarity and internal ownership. The Army cannot rely on civilian staff to teach a fundamental military competency, nor can it expect change from a doctrine that overwhelms more than it educates. H2F’s current content is too complex, and its implementation is too detached from the realities of operational life. The solution is not to abandon H2F, but to streamline its doctrine, to invest in the training of our leaders and to leverage the immense intellectual capital of H2F coaches across the Army to embed physical readiness education into every level of Army professional development. Fitness must return to being a core military skill, owned and taught by Soldiers themselves. That is how we scale the program, sustain its impact and ensure that holistic readiness becomes a lived reality across the force.

The Holistic Path Forward

Wicked problems require difficult decisions, and for decades, the Army has avoided the one decision that arguably matters most: teaching fitness as a core military competency. H2F has been well-meaning but ultimately insufficient, outsourcing programming to civilian experts, overloading doctrine with irrelevant scientific detail and failing to educate Soldiers in a manner that scales. The Army must make a deliberate shift. It must educate every Soldier in fitness and not just passively expose them to it. This shift will require fresh doctrine, a retooling of the method in which we leverage outside fitness expertise and an investment in the education of holistic health.

It begins with a doctrinal reset. The foundation documents for H2F, released in 2020, are due for revision. For Soldiers to truly use their H2F doctrine to train themselves and others, the doctrine must omit outdated PRT schedules and press delete on the volumes of nonutilitarian complexity in our Holistic Health FM. H2F doctrine must concisely state what fitness demands are required of a Soldier and how Soldiers can achieve those standards—in the same way it articulates all other individual, small unit and key collective tasks our nation needs us to accomplish. For example: “The Army’s fitness program should focus on cardiorespiratory endurance, lower body stamina and strength. Soldiers should regularly perform foundational gymnastic and strength movements and incorporate field-based sports when possible. Enjoyment will drive adherence, and a training journal will show evidence of improvement.”

To operationalize this philosophy, the Army must develop a practical, scalable and adaptable training program that Soldiers can execute, resource and evaluate themselves. This includes designing template workouts and mock-ups that serve as models of what “right looks like.” These examples would not replace initiative but instead guide Soldiers and units, particularly those with limited access to coaches. They must also be of utility for Soldiers to execute by themselves on a tasking, with a small team in the field or with limited time. In today’s digital environment, Soldiers are already consuming fitness programming from the commercial world. The Army must compete with that market by offering high-quality alternatives that are rooted in military tasks and combat applications. There are dozens of consumer-purchasable fitness services geared specifically toward servicemembers. Virtually all of these offer scalable plans and a mobile application, tailored to different resource constraints, and include instruction and education resources. The Army has the resources and expertise to create these products as well. Only recently has H2F published a video exercise library of 62 foundational movements.^[20] This is, again, a step in the right direction, but the fact that the library has had fewer than 4,000 views proves that a better implementation plan is needed.

However, no amount of written programming will matter unless Soldiers know how to use it. Therefore, the Army must create a comprehensive, tiered fitness education plan embedded across all levels of professional development. This education must be mandatory for all Soldiers—officers and enlisted alike—and structured by rank and experience. It must be sequenced from simple to complex, focused on practical outcomes and aligned with the real demands of Army life.

In what follows, we propose a basic outline of what this could look like across four levels of expertise.

Level 1: Foundational Execution

This would be the education for enlisted Soldiers at Initial Entry Training and One-Station Unit Training and for officers at their commissioning source. The focus of this level would be the proper execution of 20–30 primary exercises and foundational workouts. It would also introduce Soldiers to the concept of “scaling” as a founding concept of small-group exercise that involves modifying the exercise to the needs of individual Soldiers based on fitness, skill or injury. The Periods of Instruction (POIs) might be five to seven hour-long lessons on foundational movements like bodyweight gymnastic exercises (push-up, dip, lunge, squat, pull-up, etc.) and weighted gym exercises (weighted squat, deadlift, bench press, etc.). Just like a Soldier understands and trains on basic Soldier tasks like putting a rifle into operation, so too must they be instructed on the mechanics of fitness.

Level 2: Basic Education

This would be the education for enlisted Soldiers at Basic Leader Course and for officers at Basic Officer Leadership Course. The focus of this level would be “cueing,” common faults and advanced scaling techniques. Cueing is verbal, nonverbal or tactile corrections used to instruct athletes on how to correct form, posture and range of motion (common cues like “head up” or “chest up” are fairly common in fitness classes).^[21] A set of cues for each of the foundational exercises would need to be in the primary source documents and training circular. Common faults are those errors that athletes typically make when exercising. These are common insofar that there are typically five to 10 of them per exercise, which a trained coach can be taught to look out for. Right now in the Army’s Basic Leader Course, Physical Fitness has only 19 dedicated training hours devoted to it, slightly more than map reading and land navigation. Something that Soldiers do every day across our Army must receive further investment.^[22] These recommendations might seem simple, but increased performance or even a minor reduction in the rate of injury could have a profound effect based on this instruction. Data presented by H2F at AUSA’s March 2025 Hot Topic showed that over half of Soldiers experience a musculoskeletal injury every year.^[23] If just 1 percent of these injuries were avoided, the Army could save 10 million dollars annually, according to Brigadier General Deydre Teyhen, Commanding General of Medical Readiness Command, Pacific.^[24] The Athletic Trainer position within H2F is a great candidate for educating and improving on Level 2 “injury prevention” down at the individual unit.

Level 3: Advanced Education

This would be the education for enlisted Soldiers at Advanced Leader Course and Senior Leader Course and for officers at Captains Career Course. The focus on this level would be small group coaching and program methodology. Small group coaching would be a series of educational and practical exercises for teaching how to coach small groups and how to plan fitness for small elements. This educational level must be robust and must draw from all previous education levels in order to succeed. It would also introduce the formal instruction of Army programming methodology and require students to build five-day workout plans, which would be reviewed and graded by instructors. Currently at this echelon of course, junior officers and NCOs spend dozens of hours on tactical, maintenance and unit training management, yet no specific training is focused on fitness at, for example, the Maneuver Captain’s Career Course.^[25] The POI could range from eight to 10 hour-long lessons on programming methodology, program methodology practical exercise, small group coaching and small group coaching practical exercises. The importance of practicing in front of your peers cannot be overstated, and nothing educates quite like a graded practical exercise within the Army’s education system.

Level 4: Senior Education

This would be the education for enlisted Soldiers at Master Leader Course and Sergeant Major Academy and for officers at Intermediate Level Education. The focus on this level would be advanced programming, periodization and recovery. This educational level would be focused on leaders in positions of influence who could provide guidance to lower-level leaders and shape training calendars, recovery schedules and work hours. This level would draw upon all previous education and would provide instruction on programming for deployed troops, for those without resources, on how to share resources across battalions and brigades, and on some physiological recovery principles. The POI might be four to six hour-long lessons on advanced programming methodology, periodization models within an Army training calendar and recovery scheduling within an Army training cycle.

Institutional Support

This tiered approach must be codified in Army education policy and supported by U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command and the Center for Initial Military Training. Each level should be integrated into the appropriate schoolhouse and enforced as part of leader development pipelines. The Army must expand the credentialing and skill identifier system, like the one associated with the H2F Integrator course, to denote Soldiers who complete this training—so that their expertise can be recognized in performance evaluations and promotion boards.

This investment will pay long-term dividends. Soldiers who understand training principles can adapt to resource constraints, adjust to operational demands and sustain health throughout a career. Training led by our Army’s junior leaders increases cohesion and reduces the Army’s dependence on external staff—and this education follows them into senior leadership roles where they manage physical training at larger echelons. Finally, this education follows Soldiers into civilian life. Veterans leave with the tools to maintain fitness, reduce injury and lower long-term healthcare costs—strengthening national resilience. This is truly the “hard right” to which the Army needs to turn the wheel of H2F.

Conclusion

During one of the panels of the March 2025 AUSA H2F Hot Topic, Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston, USA, Ret., explained how he “began deadlifting at the age of 40 because it was added to the ACFT.” Just imagine for a moment if he and all of his peers had been taught barbell strength training since the late ’90s and throughout their NCO education. The people and materials were available to rewrite Army fitness manuals back then; they just weren’t implemented. Immediately following SMA Grinston’s comments, fellow panelist Brett Fischer, the Director of Player Health and Performance for the Detroit Lions, lamented that “we have to get physical fitness back into our schools, starting with first grade.” We cannot, in good faith, ask first grade teachers to handle a task—fitness education—that we ourselves, as an Army, outsource.^[26]

The responsibility for holistic health cannot be imposed or tacitly absorbed. It must be intentionally taught, internalized and passed on. Long-term readiness and resilience require investment in Soldiers as trainers—not just trainees. Teaching Soldiers to train is an investment in institutional strength, in individual well-being and in the enduring health of the force. The Army must make a deliberate, systematic shift toward embedding fitness education within its core training institutions. Fitness—its doctrine and its execution in our Army—is just a single domain within the Army’s Holistic Health program. The other domains of Soldier health are equally worth investing in, and AUSA will discuss these further in upcoming papers and events. Note that this is not a takedown attempt of H2F, as it has been widely positive and continues to pay dividends. Leaders at the highest echelons are talking about Soldier health in a tangible way, and civilian leaders are investing in the service’s resources. With this momentum, we must take a hard look at where H2F can be improved and how this wealth of knowledge can be codified in doctrine and in our schools; looking just at annual contracting expenditures won’t get the job done. The Army must reclaim ownership of its health and fitness expertise by equipping Soldiers and leaders with the tools, education and doctrine to lead from within. Only then can H2F become not just a program, but a sustainable foundation for the profession of arms.

• [1] Chief of Staff of the Army General Randy George, remarks at the Maneuver Warfighting Conference, Fort Moore, GA, September 2023.
• [2] Department of the Army (DA), TC 3‑22X20, Army Physical Readiness Training (Washington, DC: DA, 20 August 2010), https://apftscore.com/TC3_22x20_(20100820).pdf.
• [3] TC 3‑22.20, 2-4–2-5.
• [4] NCO Journal Staff Report, “SMA: ‘PRT Is Not the Problem; 6:30 to 9 Is the Problem,’” NCO Journal, 23 July 2015, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/NCO-Journal/Archives/2015/July/PRT-is-not-the-problem/.
• [5] Whitfield B. East, Fit to Serve: A History of US Army Physical Readiness (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Army University Press, US Army Combined Arms Center, 2024), 219.
• [6] East, Fit to Serve: A History of US Army Physical Readiness, 241.
• [7] DA, Field Manual (FM) 7‑22.001, Holistic Health and Fitness (Washington, DC: DA, April 2020), 12–13, https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN30964-FM_7-22-001-WEB-4.pdf.
• [8] Serco Inc., “Serco Awarded $247 M U.S. Army Holistic Health and Fitness (H2F) Contract,” Serco (press release), 15 January 2025, https://www.serco.com/na/media-and-news/2025/serco-awarded-247m-us-army-holistic-health-and-fitness-h2f-contract.
• [9] FM 7‑22.001, 1–7.
• [10]East, Fit to Serve: A History of US Army Physical Readiness, 105.
• [11] FM 7‑22.001, 4–2.
• [12] FM 7‑22.001, 14–1.
• [13] DA, FM 21-20, Physical Readiness Training(Washington, DC: DA, 1969), 9.
• [14] FM 7‑22.001, xi.
• [15] DA, Holistic Health and Fitness Physical Domain Resources, Holistic Health and Fitness (H2F), https://h2f.army.mil/Domains/Physical-Domain/#phydomres.
• [16] Matt Clark, “The Army Has a Physical Fitness Problem, Part 2: Toward a More Combat‑Ready Force,” Modern War Institute, 31 January 2020, https://mwi.westpoint.edu/army-physical-fitness-problem-part-2-toward-combat‑ready‑force/.
• [17] U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), TRADOC Pamphlet 672‑9: Expert Soldier Badge Tasks (Fort Eustis, VA: TRADOC, 21 June 2022), https://adminpubs.tradoc.army.mil/pamphlets/TP672-9.pdf.
• [18] Jonathan Dahms, “Academy at Fort Jackson Plays Key Role in Implementing Army’s H2F System,” Army News Service, 6 February 2024, https://www.army.mil/article/273513/academy_at_fort_jackson_plays_key_role_in_implementing_armys_h2f_system.
• [19] Jonathan Vespa and Caitlin Carter, Trends in Veteran Disability Status and Service‑Connected Disability: 2008–2022 (American Community Survey Reports ACS‑58, U.S. Census Bureau, November 2024), 5, https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/acs-58.pdf.
• [20] U.S. Army Center for Initial Military Training, “U.S. Army H2F (Holistic Health & Fitness) Playlist,” YouTube playlist, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLr_5M5FiwX8jDP_Y6N91h1pbWPiR2vUdc.
• [21] Brittany Todd, “Cued Up for Success,” ACE Fitness Insights Blog, 6 October 2023, https://www.acefitness.org/resources/everyone/blog/8484/cued-up-for-success/.
• [22] U.S. Army Combined Arms Center – Training, Basic Leader Course (BLC) Course Map, https://www.ncoworldwide.army.mil/Academics/Basic-Leader-Course/BLC-Course-Map/.
• [23] Association of the United States Army, Holistic Health and Fitness (H2F) Update to AUSA, 27 February 2025, https://www.ausa.org/sites/default/files/5-MAR-H2F-Update-to-AUSA_27-FEB-V2_002_.pdf.
• [24] Brigadier General Deydre Teyhen, interview by Army Matters Podcast, Podbean, July 2024, https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-3hesr-18dd656.
• [25] U.S. Army Infantry School, Maneuver Captain’s Career Course (MCCC) Student Information, Fort Benning, GA, https://www.benning.army.mil/infantry/199th/CATD/MCCC/Student-Information.html.
• [26] U.S. Army, “Building Resilience Through Holistic Health & Fitness,” YouTube video, 4:23, 15 March 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g41Ij3PqCiQ&list=PLdbqwk2rR2XI8NKAoINpirh9QIDuTLNkE&index=6.