Air Force announces physical fitness enhancements Published Aug. 21, 2013 By Jared Whitecar 17th Training Wing Public Affairs GOODFELLOW AFB, Texas -- Air Force senior leadership has announced several enhancements to the Air Force fitness program after performing a comprehensive review in response to concerns voiced by the Air Force community. Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh III explained the results of the review in a letter to Airmen Aug 20, highlighting the strength of the program and the improvements they plan to make. "The one thing that was crystal clear to us when we finished is that we have a tremendous program that has fundamentally changed the AF's overall fitness level over the past few years," said Gen Welsh. "So I'll tell you right up front that the physical fitness test (PFT) itself is not going to change. But even the best program can be improved upon, so we are making changes in four different areas to enhance the overall program." The changes include: realigning the fitness appeal process back to Wing Commanders; adjusting passing standards for Airmen who can only test on one component of the Fitness Assessment and simplifying the walking portion of the test. The biggest change however concerns the abdominal circumference (AC) portion of the test. "One of the two concerns Chief Cody and I hear most is that there are Airmen who pass every component of the PFT except the AC..." said Welsh. "To put this in perspective, since we implemented the PFT, only 348 of the approximately 1.3 million Airmen tested resulted in an Airman failing the AC portion and passing all the others with a passing composite score of 75 or higher. That's point zero-three percent...so this is an unusual occurrence. But, in the future, if an Airman fails the AC portion of the test, and passes each of the other three components, we'll measure that Airman using the Body Mass Index (BMI) taping guidance in DoD instructions. If the Airman meets the DoD BMI standard, they pass the test." General Welsh says the second concern is the need to rethink how raters document fitness in performance reports. He says they will address this concern as part of a larger effort to examine the performance report itself and the promotion systems it supports. Senior leadership plans to release the results of this study in the near future.
