On April 17, 2025, the Army introduced the five-event Army Fitness Test (AFT), removing the Standing Power Throw (SPT) as an event for the Army’s physical fitness test of record (Department of the Army, 2025). The Army stated that it removed the SPT due to its technical nature and risk of injuring service members and cited RAND analysis in support of its decision (Department of the Army, 2025). The Army overstates both the SPT’s technical execution requirements and the SPT’s injury risk, however. By correctly analyzing what made the SPT a poor event, the Army can better select events in the future. The SPT was a poor fitness test event as it tested non-trainable characteristics such as limb length and explosiveness, which in turn created poor incentives for soldiers to train for improved physical fitness.

The Army Incorrectly Assesses the Risk of the Standing Power Throw

In stating that the SPT was too technically demanding and too much of an injury risk, the Army cited a 2025 study by Hicks et al. The study analyzed scores from 1,344,301 Army Combat Fitness Tests (ACFTs) (Hicks et al., 2025). As to injury risk and the SPT specifically, they found that “performance on the SPT event is significantly associated with subsequent injury across multiple tiers of performance” (Hicks et al., 2025, p. 45). While Hicks et al. (2025) do not provide what number or percentage of total injuries arose from the SPT, they found that injuries increased from 0.2% to 0.5% of male soldiers, and 0.3% to 1.0 % for female soldiers, following an ACFT.

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All physical activity carries risk of injury. This is especially true of strenuous activity that tests a person’s physical limits, like a military fitness test where superior performance can help career advancement (Department of the Army, 2026). Hicks et al. (2025) agree, opining, “given the motivation incurred during high-stakes testing, it is entirely possible that soldiers may push themselves to the limit to achieve the highest score possible on each of the sequence of events” (p. 4). While the Army intended for the ACFT to reduce injuries through creating a culture of fitness, total mitigation of injury is not an overriding factor in evaluating a soldier’s physical fitness (Hicks et al., 2025). This acceptance of injury risk is inherent in the Army’s other physical training programs.

In the Army, running, marching, and other repetitive activities represent the leading cause of soldier injuries (Hauschild, 2022). Despite this fact, the Army recommends a four-week ruck marching program that culminates in a soldier carrying up to eighty pounds for eight miles (Department of the Army, 2020). In addition, three ACFT events feature repetitive exercises designed to test a soldier’s endurance: the hand-release push-up, the plank, and the two-mile run. Despite repetitive movements being the leading cause of injury, the Army decided to remove the SPT, the only event that requires a single repetition to complete (Department of the Army, 2022).

Ignoring repetitive use injuries over the entire Army to focus exclusively on the ACFT is the fundamental error of its conclusion from their cited study (Hicks et al., 2025). The ACFT, across all six events combined, only produces injuries in .3% to .7% of those tested, depending on the soldier’s age and gender (Hicks et al., 2025). A unit with strenuous physical training requirements, such as the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Division, has injury rates approaching 30% (Lovalekar et al, 2018). Despite this high injury rate, the Army does not eliminate its air assault division, despite injuring soldiers at a rate sixty times higher than the ACFT, much less the SPT individually. If the Army looked at the broader picture of injury causation, it would realize that the SPT is not a significant cause of injury to the force.

There is No Evidence that the Standing Power Throw is Technically Demanding

The Department of the Army stated also cited the technical nature of the SPT to justify its removal, again referencing Hicks et al. (2025) to support that analysis. Hicks et al. (2025), however, do not opine on the technical performance of the SPT. Robson et al. (2024) and Hardison et al. (2022), the two other ACFT studies performed by the RAND Corporation, similarly do not discuss the technical execution of the SPT. Instead, Hicks et al. (2025) criticize the outsized impact a soldier’s height has on the SPT, finding that it creates such an advantage it is difficult to assess the SPT’s ability to measure a soldier’s explosiveness. As a result, there is no foundation for the Army’s assertion that technical expertise is a flaw in the SPT.

A soldier can improve in all ACFT events, and decrease their injury risk, through better technical execution. Hicks et al. (2025) opine to the same effect, writing, “like any exercise event for which it is possible to train, it is possible to experience injuries because of improper form” (p. 4). The Army, therefore, is singling out the SPT for a flaw inherent in all six ACFT events. Instead of pointing to distracting issues like injury risk and technical execution, a deeper analysis of the event itself reveals why it is a poor event for physical fitness assessment.

Power Responds Poorly to Training when Compared to Strength and Endurance

Further discussion of the SPT requires a more thorough analysis of the event itself. To begin, “the (SPT) is a backward overhead throw for distance that measures explosive power” (Department of the Army, 2022, p. 2-17). A soldier grasps a ten-pound medicine ball with two hands, sinks into a partial squat with the ball going between the soldier’s legs, and then the soldier explodes upwards, launching the ball through the air as far behind him as he can. As the SPT is a test that measures explosive power, it is an event that can only be marginally improved through training.

The ACFT and AFT measure, among other fitness components, a soldier’s strength, power, and endurance (Department of the Army, 2022). Strength is the ability of a person to produce force against external resistance (Rippetoe, 2019). When a soldier performs the three-repetition maximum deadlift (MDL), they are displaying strength as they are exerting force against the external resistance of gravity pulling down on the loaded bar. In the deadlift, a soldier can perform a deadlift repetition in a half-second or five seconds. Both ways of performing the exercise result in the same score (Department of the Army, 2022).

Endurance, on the other hand, is the ability of the soldier to produce that force for many repetitions or over a length of time (Rippetoe, 2019). Demonstration of endurance is largely dependent on different pathways which fuel different kinds of activity. For example, the oxidative phosphorylation pathway provides energy for low intensity sustained exercise, commonly referred to as aerobic training (Department of the Army, 2020). The two-mile run, for example, tests soldiers’ muscular and aerobic endurance whereas the MDL and SPT do not.

Finally, power is the ability to exert force on an external resistance over a short amount of time, or the ability to display strength quickly (Rippetoe, 2019). When a soldier performs the SPT, they are displaying power as the soldier must impart force onto the ball quickly. A slow SPT will fail to launch from the soldier’s hands. Instead, it will simply fall straight down on the soldier’s head. In that way, the SPT does not measure strength aside from the relatively small amount it takes to raise the ball from below the Soldier’s waist to above their head.

As there are limited studies available regarding the SPT, another test to measure explosive power must be used to understand how training affects explosiveness. The standing vertical jump (SVJ) is a measure of a person’s explosive power (Ma et al., 2025). Average SVJ varies widely based on demographic. In the study Sharma et al. (2017) conducted of 54 Indian national players, they found an average male SVJ of approximately 16 inches and an average female SVJ is approximately 13 inches. Patterson and Peterson (2004) conducted a study of 724 American medical students and their spouses and found an average male SVJ of approximately 22 inches and female SVJ of approximately 14 inches. In elite athletes, the difference in SVJ performance compared to studies of more general populations is stark. At the 2022 National Football League Combine, the average SVJ was approximately 33 inches (Tucker et al., 2024).

Ma et al. (2025) conducted a meta-analysis of studies on various training effects on an athlete’s SVJ, reviewing 1342 subjects. They found that training on average increased SVJ performance by 2.2 inches (Ma et al., 2025). This is an approximately 10% to 15% increase for the male trainee. While not a perfect correlation, an improvement to SVJ performance can be inferred to cause a benefit to a soldier’s SPT as both events primarily measure power. Using this framework, a twenty-two-year-old male soldier who has a SPT throw distance of 6.3 meters (a 60 score) that achieved a 15% increase in power through training would have a 7.3-meter throw (a 62 score), a two-point improvement.

In comparison, a soldier can train their strength or endurance to much greater effect. Pamart et al. conducted a study on the effect of a 20-week high-intensity strength training program on muscle strength gain in untrained men (2023). They found increases between 40% to 106% in various strength measures after 20 weeks of training (Pamart et al., 2023). Hardison et al. (2022) found similar dramatic improvement with endurance training, finding that the 2MR saw the greatest single-event improvement in pass rates from a soldier’s first and last ACFT in basic combat training.

As strength and endurance are more trainable aspects of physical fitness, the events that rely on those two aspects are more receptive to training. Soldiers who train for power will find a relatively modest improvement. A soldier should instead focus on strength training. Of note, Ma et al. (2025) found strength training had the greatest effect on a soldier’s SVJ in their meta-analysis.

Arm Length and Height Provide an Untrainable Mechanical Advantage to the Standing Power Throw

As cited earlier, Hicks et al. cited a soldier’s height as a fault with the SPT (2025). The event, in their opinion, tested how tall a soldier was and not how fit the soldier was (Hicks et al., 2025). It is true that height does provide an advantage. This view is incomplete, however. Arm length, and by extension technique as correct technique requires as long arms as possible, provide the rest of that anthropomorphic advantage.

This section requires a brief review of moment force and levers. In the SPT, the human arm becomes a class one lever with the legs producing the force, the shoulder as the fulcrum, and the ball in the hands as the load. The rotation of the ball around the shoulder is moment force. The longer a lever is, the faster the end of that lever moves as the fulcrum rotates. For example, the end of a longer wrench moves faster around the object it is turning than the end of a shorter wrench. This is why a throwing machine such as a trebuchet has a long arm. The end of the long arm, loaded with a projectile, moves more quickly around the fulcrum than a short arm, and launches a projectile further through the air.

In the SPT, the human arm and shoulder work in a similar way to a trebuchet. Force is transmitted through the hips and legs exploding upwards which causes the arms to swing like a chain with the ball in the hands. At the apex of the soldier’s jump the ball releases from the hands, sailing through the air to as great a distance as possible. The longer the soldier’s arms are, the faster the ball will be moving. The faster the ball is moving, the more momentum it has. The more momentum it has, the longer it will take for gravity to bring the ball to the ground. This is why a service member should perform the SPT with straight arms; throwing with bent elbows creates artificially shorter arms which results in a slower ball.

There is no training that would lengthen a soldier’s arm, and soldiers born with longer arms have an advantage over shorter-armed soldiers. This is not a problem exclusive to the SPT, as anthropometry impacts all six ACFT events. A shorter armed soldier has a benefit in the hand-release push-up event, for example. That soldier exerts less energy when moving the shorter push-up distance granted by his shorter arms. This mechanical advantage is akin to the one possessed by the longer-armed soldier in the SPT.

This paper’s position is not that the Army should eliminate the hand-release push-up like it did the SPT, or that all physical fitness test events should be normed to a soldier’s anthropometry like they are to gender and height (Department of the Army, 2022). It is the combination of the power-training problem with the arm length and height problem that make the SPT a uniquely poor test. The insult and injury combined made the SPT a frustrating experience for soldiers who felt that they could not achieve a high score regardless of their training regimen. The positive reinforcement of discipline and hard work leading to satisfying results should be a factor in the selection of physical fitness test events.

The Army’s Physical Fitness Test Should Foster a Competitive Environment

Humans are naturally competitive and perform better in competitive environments. For example, DiMenichi and Tricomi (2015) found that placing people in a competitive environment improved both reaction time and memory. The Army recognizes this as well, fostering healthy competition to renew intensity and motivation in its soldiers (Department of the Army, 2019). The Army credits a physical fitness test as a specific example of creating this competitive environment, stating, “Everyone wants their efforts to be appreciated by others. Leaders can use healthy competition to renew intensity, such as recognition for the most improved fitness test score” (Department of the Army, 2019, p. 5-5).

Putting an event before a soldier that they cannot meaningfully improve at does not create competition. Instead, it stifles it. Only two outcomes are possible for the soldier who is not naturally gifted at the SPT. They either become disillusioned with their unsuccessful training (creating a negative conclusion that training is worthless), or they do not bother training at all. Neither are desired outcomes for the Army, which seeks to create a more physically fit force through its holistic health and fitness program (Department of the Army, 2022).

This lack of competition provided by the SPT is the reason the Army was correct to eliminate it as a tested event. There are realms where this type of test is appropriate. The National Football League combine, for example, uses the SVJ to assess athletes to determine who is explosive enough to be on a 53-man roster of one of 32 teams in the entire league (Tucker et al., 2024). The Army, both figuratively and literally, is playing a different game altogether. It has approximately one million soldiers across the active and reserve components (Defense Manpower Data Center, 2026). Despite the physically demanding requirements to perform its warfighting function, the Army is not in a position to select only the long-armed or naturally explosive athletes to meet its manpower requirements. As a result, the SPT is a poor event to put soldiers in competition over, akin to having an event to determine who could jump the highest or throw a shot put the furthest.

Conclusion

The SPT was a poor fitness test event as it tested non-trainable characteristics such as limb length and explosiveness. As a result, the Army incorrectly analyzed its faults when it decided to remove the event for its new AFT. By correctly understanding why the SPT was flawed and, by extension, what makes a good AFT event, the Army can better design fitness test events in the future. These future events should focus on potential for individual soldier improvement, which will in turn foster a competitive environment and drive improved physical fitness throughout the Army.

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