How you could improve your ACFT score

The podcast episode discusses how to increase your ACFT (Army Combat Fitness Test) score. The test consists of six events: Repetition Strength Deadlift, Standing Power Throw, Arm Extension Pushup, 250-meter Sprint Drag Carry, Plank, and 2-Mile Run. The episode provides tips on how to improve in each event, including understanding the Movement Lethality Model, training for muscular strength, speed, and endurance, and using supplements like creatine for strength. It emphasizes the importance of analyzing the events and training accordingly to achieve a better score. Good morning listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Wait Thanks. We typically like to keep it light hearted on this channel, but today we're going to be helping out my army people. This episode today is going to be all about how to increase your ACFT score. Before improving your score, we must understand what ACFT stands for. ACFT is an acronym for Army Combat Fitness Test. The test is broken down into six separate events. The first event is the Repetition Strength Deadlift. The second event is the Standing Power Throw. The third event is the Arm Extension Pushup, otherwise known as the T-Pushup. The fourth event is the 250-meter Sprint Drag Carry. The fifth event is the Plank. And lastly, the 2-Mile Run. To improve yourself on the ACFT, I'm going to explain in depth what you need to understand physically to excel in each event, what workouts you can do to advance yourself in these events further. Lastly, I will explain what beneficial natural supplements you can take to help your athletic advance. First, before I start this podcast, I would like to introduce to you a brand that I love. FightFuel is a sports drink proven to get you ready for any fight. FightFuel is fueled with your daily recommended amount of vitamins, caffeine, and electrolytes. FightFuel has been in the Army since 2005, supporting our special forces conduct their mission against terror at the EV level. Get your bottle and become the soldier you've always wanted to be. Okay, so getting back to the topic on how to increase your ACFT score, we'll first learn each event. The best way of thinking about each event is with the Movement Lethality Model. The model takes the shape of a triangle, and there is muscular speed, strength, or endurance on each end of the triangle. Each of the events on the ACFT falls into one or more of the categories and allows you to picture what the event is physically targeting and how to improve it. For example, if you and your friend decide to race 150 meters to the end of the street, the physical activity would be located on the axis connecting speed and endurance. So for this example, if you want to improve your sprinting ability and beat your friend in the next race, you must train primarily muscular speed and endurance. Starting with the most important of the three, muscular strength is used in four of the six events, one being strictly strength. The first event is the Repetition Strength Deadlift. This event only uses strength, while the other three use a mix of strength and either speed or endurance. The other three events are Power Throw, Extension Push-Up, and the 250-meter Sprint Drag Carry. To explain the proper ways to improve your muscular strength, I will talk to Cadet Scott. Cadet Scott is an O-Lineman for Army West Point and trains primarily strength for his sport. Thank you for coming on. So how long have you been an O-Lineman? I've played football competitively for over six years and have recently improved. That's great to hear. What do you believe has allowed you to make these recent strength improvements? Previously, I believed that working hard would allow me to lift more weight. But even in such a simple workout, it's essential to analyze your actions. I spent years doing sets with moderately heavy weights and getting more reps. That affects more than just strength. What you're doing would be considered hypertrophy, correct? Yes, hypertrophy is the correct term. In your model, hypertrophy is on the strength and endurance axis. If I wanted to target muscle strength strictly, increasing the weights and doing that for fewer reps is essential to becoming stronger. So by doing fewer reps and increasing the weight, you believe that your overall muscular strength has improved? Yes, but only working muscular strength will only directly impact one of the six events. Learning how to use your strength to your advantage is very important. Raw strength will help build the base for improvement in the other events. But you will only get a perfect score with speed and strength. Is it simply because not all of the events are strength-focused? Okay, so if I was a beginner for training for the ACFT, you would advise for beginning with weightlifting because it builds a base to work off of, right? I'd advise to begin lifting and spend the first week with little to no weight. I would eventually build into heavier weights. Also, for beginners, I suggest hypertrophy over straight strength. This allows the beginner to build muscle that is strong and resistant to fatigue. That's great to know, Scott. Lastly, are there any supplements that would help improve strength, primarily the strength events during the test? The only supplement proven to help muscular strength is creatine. Though it would increase strength, I don't believe it would help overall on the test. Creatine is known for dehydrating. By the last mile of the test, the possibility of cramping significantly increases taking the supplements. Well, Scott, thank you for your knowledge about strength, and good luck against Navy next weekend. Thank you. So, if you want to start improving yourself physically, starting with a strength-based workout is best until you are comfortable progressing into your endurance or speed. Next on the model is speed. Speed affects four of the events and is possibly the most difficult to train. Speed is difficult to train because it is much more than simply running fast. If you want speed to help you improve your ACFT score, you have to be fast in every motion. This includes the standing power throw, where you must throw a heavy ball as fast as possible in an awkward motion over your head. The extension push-up measures how many push-ups you can do in 120 seconds, the sprint-drag carry, and the two-mile. These events are under the model speed section because they measure how fast you can make a motion, how many reps you can do in a certain amount of time, or how long it takes you to finish a particular event. These events fall into two categories, speed and strength, or speed and endurance. Speed and strength is also known as power. Power is when you have a medium weight and move it as fast as possible. The idea of moving a medium weight at an intense rate is exactly what the standing power throw and the sprint-drag carry events are testing. Luckily, there is a way for anybody to train power. If you have a gym, Olympic lifts like hang clean and power snatch are the best way to increase your power. But training power can be as simple as doing squat jumps or clap push-ups if the gym is not available to you. But the best way to improve the standing ball throw is to simply do it. This is because the standing ball throw is already one of the leading exercises for power. But when training power, the key is to never put too much weight on the bar because a slow motion will not help increase your power. Personally, I do not know much about speed and endurance, so I asked one of my friends, Cadet Hernandez, on the Army Track and Field Team, who has spent many years perfecting this trait, to explain it. Thank you for coming on to talk about your experiences. Of course, I've been running for seven years, and it's been a difficult journey, but I've enjoyed most of it. So have you prepared for some of your races like the 400 or 800-meter dash? One of my typical workouts for these events would be to run a shorter distance, but as fast as possible. For example, for the 400-meter, a typical workout would be a 300-meter, 250-meter, 200-meter, and 150-meter all-out sprint. So by doing less distance at a higher intensity multiple times, you successfully train speed and endurance. Okay, so how would you train speed and endurance for an event like the push-up for the ATFT? I would train for it in the same way I just stated. I would do as many push-ups as possible in one minute, and then 45 seconds later, and 30 seconds later. Also, for the two-mile, it's on the same plan. The main idea is just to divide the end goal up into smaller sets and do them at higher intensities. Finally, are there any beneficial supplements you recommend for the ATFT to improve your speed? For speed, most of our supplements are a form of stimulant-like pre-workout. So if you are having a slow morning, a cup of coffee would do the trick. That's simple enough. Thank you for your time. Always. Last is endurance. I left it for last because it will affect your ATFT score the least. While it does partially affect events such as the plank, two-mile, sprint-drag-carry, and the extension push-up, it is not nearly as vital as the other two. The reason that the two-mile is primarily a speed event is that the event is asking for how fast you can run two miles. If the event was asking how far you could run at a certain pace, then it would be testing endurance. A perfect way to test endurance is the infamous pacer test that haunted me every time I took the PE class in 5th grade. It is still very important to build your endurance. You will naturally be building your endurance from the other two. By lifting with hypertrophy, you are working the axis connecting strength and endurance. And by sprinting these shorter sets of the two-mile, your endurance will become better. So, if you want to get a better score the next time you take the ATFT, you now know how to properly break down the event and analyze what the event is testing. By understanding what is being tested, you now know how to train in order to better yourself for that event. Thank all of y'all for listening to my podcast, and that is how you increase your ATFT score. Have a Merry Christmas.