A Ranger student in 2017 executes a low crawl through water and under barbed-wire at an obstacle course at Fort Benning, Ga. (U.S. Army)
ATLANTA — The first day of the Army’s famously grueling Ranger School will get a little tougher next month, according to the service’s infantry commandant.
The Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade at Fort Benning, Ga., will drop its long-held Day 1 Ranger Physical Fitness Assessment of pushups, situps, chinups and a five-mile run for a new, nine-event test meant to better mimic the demands of combat, said Brig. Gen. Phil Kiniery, the Infantry School leader. The test determines who will continue in the three-phase, 61-day leadership course that is known for challenging its students to complete combat-focused missions on little sleep and with little food.
“Pushups and situps are no longer the Army standard,” Kiniery said. “Our new assessment is better aligned with the Army’s focus on training functional fitness and is tailored to help our cadre better assess student potential to successfully complete the Ranger course safely.”
Fort Benning officials said the new Ranger Physical Fitness Assessment will be administered with the Ranger School class scheduled to begin April 21.
Officials said the new test consists of two parts. In the first part, Ranger students have 14 minutes to complete an 800-meter run, 30 dead-stop pushups, a 100-meter sprint, 16 lifts of a 40-pound sandbag onto a 68-inch high platform, a 50-meter farmer’s carry of 40 pounds in each hand, a 50-meter “movement drill,” which will include a high crawl and brief sprints, and a second 800-meter run. That effort must be completed in combat boots and utility uniforms.
Ranger students will then change into physical fitness uniforms to conduct a 4-mile run in less than 32 minutes and finish the test with six chinups, according to Fort Benning.
The new test is meant to better align with the Army’s recent focus on functional training based on the kind of tasks soldiers might face in battle, in a similar way to how the Army Combat Fitness Test was designed. It replaces the old Day 1 Ranger School assessment of 49 pushups, 59 situps, a 5-mile run in less than 40 minutes, and six chinups.
“The first part of the [new] assessment mimics an operation in that students are moving toward a set of objectives, completing the objectives, and then maneuvering away from the objective,” Kiniery said. “This supports functional fitness and echoes the intensity of the events Ranger candidates will complete during the course.”
