The Army's elite Ranger School, long regarded as one of the most grueling leadership courses in the military, is rolling out a new physical fitness assessment designed to better measure the endurance and strength required to complete the course.
The revised standards will debut with Ranger School class 06-25, beginning April 21, marking the culmination of years of development and refinement. Students will be assessed the first day of the course. While the previous assessment focused on individual graded events, the new version is structured as a continuous evaluation of a candidate's ability to sustain high-intensity physical exertion.
Instead of isolated graded events, Ranger School students will have a short time to execute two runs and various movement drills generally aligned with the physical fitness test for expert badges. The assessment concludes with a longer run and chin-ups.
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"The new [assessment] will allow Ranger course cadre to assess a potential Ranger candidate's ability to endure the physical intensity involved in the Ranger Course, thus reducing risk during the course," Jennifer Gunn, an Army spokesperson, told Military.com in a statement.
The new measurement of fitness will comprise the following events, with students wearing the standard Army Combat Uniform and boots, within 14 minutes:
- 800-meter run
- 30 dead-stop push-ups
- 100-meter sprint
- An event in which students lift 16 40-pound sandbags onto a 68-inch platform
- 50-meter farmer's carry consisting of two five-gallon water cans weighing 40 pounds each
- 50-meter movement drill consisting of a 25-meter high crawl and 25-meter 3-5 second rush
- Another 800-meter run
Once those events are complete, students will change into their physical fitness uniform and run four miles within 32 minutes. After the run, soldiers will perform six chin-ups.
Previously, Ranger School students went through a special fitness test that consisted of at least 49 push-ups in two minutes, 59 sit-ups in two minutes, six chin-ups, and a 5-mile run within 40 minutes -- effectively a more demanding version of the Army Physical Fitness Test, or APFT, the service's old universal fitness test that is now obsolete.
Meanwhile, the service is in the midst of revamping the Army Combat Fitness Test, or ACFT -- the universal fitness assessment all soldiers are graded on. The Army faces a congressionally mandated deadline to adjust the standards for the test for combat-arms soldiers by June.
Service planners are currently mulling various ways of shifting scoring standards and whether to add or take away events, multiple Army officials with direct knowledge of the planning have told Military.com.
Ranger School is a 62-day infantry leadership course based out of Fort Benning, Georgia, open to troops from each of the services.
Related: How Do You Measure Up? Here's How Soldiers Are Scoring on the Army Combat Fitness Test.
