The further decline of personal accountability...

[Gatordev]

So my initial argument was why stick with the P/WS? Instead of wasting space in the write up, just put the actual score on the eval. That blaring number on your FitRep would be your incentive to do better than 12:45...

On that, we agree. Which was the original intent (or so I thought) when they changed the rules for what gets put on an Eval. By the way, it's not P/WS anymore.

Few Marine squadrons do scheduled PT more than maybe once or twice a month. Maybe a shop sneaks out a couple more times when it can, but that's it. Simply put, Marines live in a culture where physical fitness is more valued. More of them go to the gym or run on their own time before/after work or during their lunch hours. It's not really about operational commitments; it's about personal commitment. Most Marines don't want to be the last guy crossing the line on the PFT.

Which is an interesting data point. It's actually a pretty regular thing for Navy squadrons to PT as a group in the morning. More regular for some than others, no doubt, but it happens. But according to many here, the Navy doesn't advocate a healthy lifestyle.

If we're directing this conversation towards the command, I have a question: What does the Navy do in the morning? Do you really not PT as a unit in the morning? I can't even imagine being on an Army base at 6:30 and not seeing people running around all over the place. I'm a little surprised to hear phrogdriver state that the Marines rarely do organized PT as well.

If it's really up to the individual to PT on their own, and it's Navy wide, I don't see how the command can be blamed. That said, if there's also little repercussion for the individual failing PT tests, then the entire system is broken.

Don't believe everything you read here. There are repercussions if you don't pass, they're just not immediate.

I'd also point out that Army aviation does morning PT and manages just fine.

It sounds like the Army makes it happen because they're doing it before working hours. Again, this is not how the Navy's instruction is written, which is what causes the issues for those that have to manage bodies and production.

Define "unit." It's one thing for a division (<20) to PT together every day.

Coordinating daily command PT with 150+ bodies (avg turnout for CRUDES PT accounting for duty sections) gets ridiculous.
There are only so many gyms/fields, and way too many tenant commands on a typical naval base.

And I would pay to watch the inevitable clusterfuck if every ship on the NOB Norfolk waterfront went for PT runs....thousands of people running up and down the waterfront at once.

I know it's smaller, but it's a regular occurrence to see multiple ships PT'ing along with multiple squadrons at the Mayport gym in the morning. Well, they don't PT together, but they're there at the same time.

 

[wlawr005]

That's actually interesting because I haven't had a real eval in 3+ years. Here in ROTC land we write weird FitReps that don't have any real meaning. What exactly goes on the eval these days?

 

[The Chief]

... never anything formal after book camp. I tried to have a semi-formal program but got so much flak it was not worth it. So many excuses - hurt my knee, I have a bad back, etc.....

It does appear as if nothing has changed in the last 40+ years. Same old lame excuses with some newer, more comical ones thrown in.

 

[bert]

Just curious, but I will throw this out there. I'm 40 years old, both my knees are wrecked and while I am technically in standards (thanks to being able to swim the PRT), I will never max a PRT again or even score much beyond sat. In fact, my flight surgeon only gave me an up-chit after my latest operation when I promised him I couldn't be deployed anytime prior to my retirement.

Having said that, I've spent 17 of my 19 years in the cockpit, with thousands of hours in multiple different airframes in both the operational and test world and I've earned just about every qual you can think of.

With all that in mind, who would you rather fly with: me, or a guy maxing out his PRT?



I'm with A4's - give me a guy good at his job.

 

[helolumpy]

If we're directing this conversation towards the command, I have a question: What does the Navy do in the morning? Do you really not PT as a unit in the morning? I can't even imagine being on an Army base at 6:30 and not seeing people running around all over the place. I'm a little surprised to hear phrogdriver state that the Marines rarely do organized PT as well.

If it's really up to the individual to PT on their own, and it's Navy wide, I don't see how the command can be blamed. That said, if there's also little repercussion for the individual failing PT tests, then the entire system is broken.

First off, you have to consider the culture of the Navy. The Navy does not have a tradition of doing PT in the morning. Why? For the vast majority of personnel in the Navy, we fight sitting down. Pilots sit in the cockpit... TAOs fight their ship from a nice comfy seat...

Combine that with the fact that most units in the Navy split their manning into two or three sections to allow for 24 hour manning. You almost never have the entire crew available at one time while on the beach (in garrison). Therefore some units will do a morning PT for the overnight and day crews and and afternoon PT for the late day crew. Some units will say, it's up to the individual to maintain standards and then hold them accountable.

So before you start to compare apples to oranges (how the Navy fights a war vice how the Army fights a war) you must consider the fact that Naval Warfare and land warfare are two completely different animals, therefore the culture of the two services will be different.

Now, I'm not condoning being out of standards, but when you ask what the Navy does in the morning, we go to work. We are on our ships doing maintenance or we are keeping up the systems on our aircraft.

In the Navy we fight from our house (our ship) so taking care of our house comes first. In the land services, the individual is the weapon, therefore your culture promotes maintenance on your weapon system (the physical body)

The Navy has made huge strides in the last 10 years. When I first came in (19+ years ago) there was no real repercussions for failing the PRT. Since then I've seen guys lose an EP since they were out of standards, I know of a sailor who was going to be sailor of the year until he failed the tape, and I know of dozens of sailors who lost out on orders because the failed the PRT.

There may be room to improve and I'll be the first to agree, but you can't compare the culture of the Army or the Marines to the Navy; it's a different organization with different values.

Commands are not held accountable if folks fail the PRT, unless they try to cover them up.
Individuals are held accountable when they are not allowed to promote, reenlist or transfer to a new command if they are out of fitness standards.

 

[fattestfoot]

I didn't mean to make it seem like I'm attacking the Navy's culture. I also know it's not fair to compare the two services. But since I'm coming from an Army background, I'm interested in hearing how the Navy conducts its physical readiness (especially since I will be in the Navy in a few months). The past few posts have been enlightening in that regard.

They also are more similar than you'd imagine. When I said the entire Army conducts PT at 0630, it's generally in small units (platoon, generally 20-40). You'll rarely have company or brigade PT (which is 100-1000+). That said, it's common in the Army for several roads to be blocked during PT hours, and there literally be people running in both directions for miles (since someone mentioned a bunch of people running down the road). But since the Navy does 24 hour operations CONUS, it makes more sense that PT isn't organized like in the Army.

As far as accountability in the Navy, I wonder if the point someone mentioned earlier regarding the scoring in the Marines isn't a major culprit. I'm not sure a scale where pretty much the entire scale is passing (e.g. Navy) is the best option. The Army scores every single push up or sit up you do, so if you score a 10, you're incredibly far from a passing score, but at least you're still scored. In the Navy if you're absolutely pathetic or just barely failing, you're in the same category.

 

[exhelodrvr]

Just curious, but I will throw this out there. I'm 40 years old, both my knees are wrecked and while I am technically in standards (thanks to being able to swim the PRT), I will never max a PRT again or even score much beyond sat. In fact, my flight surgeon only gave me an up-chit after my latest operation when I promised him I couldn't be deployed anytime prior to my retirement.

Having said that, I've spent 17 of my 19 years in the cockpit, with thousands of hours in multiple different airframes in both the operational and test world and I've earned just about every qual you can think of.

With all that in mind, who would you rather fly with: me, or a guy maxing out his PRT?



I'm with A4's - give me a guy good at his job.

The point is that the same guy would be better at his job if he were in shape.

 

[bert]

The point is that the same guy would be better at his job if he were in shape.

Nope. I'm asking a specific question here. I'm never going to run a sub 3:00 hour marathon again like I could in my 20's (no amount of desire is going to change that). But would you rather fly with with my old, admittedly broken down self as I am now or a LT who can max out the PRT?

Do you seriously think that (assuming I could get an up-chit afterwards) knee replacement surgery would make me a better pilot?

Personally, I couldn't give a rat's ass what somebody looks like in uniform, or how many sit ups they can do, or whether or not they can touch their toes. Show me how well they can do their assigned jobs and that I will care about.

 

[A4sForever]

The point is that the same guy would be better at his job if he were in shape.

Naaaaaaaahhh ... you have absolutely NO way of knowing that ... and the 'proof was in the puddin' as the guys I'm talkin' about were 4.0 sailors (on the job). How can you get any 'better' than that ... ??? THEY are just the kine' sailor I want to arm me, shoot me off the pointy end, and brush, water & feed my mount when I return.

Gosh. I think this is the first time we've disagreed on something. I think I hate myself.

 

[Spekkio]

My thoughts on this:

1) The Navy PRT is a poor assessment of physical fitness. Someone who passes with anything less than an excellent-low average is not in physical shape. The standards are set laughably low, particularly if you are female. I won't even go into the culture of magic counting and sucking in on rope and chokes. So on the end of ensuring that Sailors are fit, it fails miserably.

2) The Navy PRT is a poor assessment of a Sailor's ability to do his/her job in almost all cases. Sailors don't have to run a mile and a half straight to fight a fire or ghetto-rig a vital piece of equipment to stay on station. So in this regard, the PRT fails miserably. Btw, whatever happened to the practical PT exam the USMC was experimenting with a couple years ago?

Along those lines, though, being a PT stud and a stellar Sailor are not mutually exclusive. People keep presenting it like they are. Yea, if it's between a PT stud an a stellar Sailor, I'd want the stellar Sailo. But if it's the choice between a fat stellar Sailor and a PT stud stellr Sailor, all else being equal, I'll take the PT stud.

3) The Navy requires Sailors to pass the PRT, or else the Navy will kick that Sailor out or withhold promotion. That means that the Navy should make time for people to PT during the Navy's time. But between mandatory training on everything in life except how to actually fight a war, ever-growing work control requirements everytime a message comes out where someone did something exceptionally stupid, and shrinking upkeep periods to meet higher optempo demands, the Navy is realistically not able to afford Sailors this time.

4) Group PT doesn't take 30 minutes. You have to get everyone together. Then you have to do warmups. Then you have to give people time to change, shower, and get back to the ship. At the end of it all, you use about 1.5 hours of the day to do a 45 min PT session. In fact, it's amazing how much you can get 100 people who take showers once a week while underway on a 360' tube that recirculates farts will bitch if the command doesn't give them ample shower time after group PT.

So, either get rid of it and stop wasting everyone's time, or actually take measures to take it seriously and find a way to make time for it without adding to the pile of crap that routinely gets in the way of Sailors doing their jobs of getting our ships underway and planes in air.

 

[The Chief]

.... I couldn't give a rat's ass what somebody looks like in uniform, or how many sit ups they can do, or whether or not they can touch their toes. Show me how well they can do their assigned jobs and that I will care about.

Understand, different approach. Nothing more important to me. I would have never ever be without military creases (I envy the built in creases of today), spit shined shoes, gig line intact, no irish pennants, always. I expected similar from my men, but was not fanatical. But I did want the sailor to be able to drag a firehose to that buring a/c and be able to run back for a second hose. The 20 something sailor filling his pie hole with garbage and 30 to 40 pounds over weight always got my attention, and the CNO did not have to tell me that the kid was killing himself and that I should do my best to rectify. There was no PT, no PT standards and lo, not even PT uniforms.

And I would fly with you anyday, anywhere, if you would accept an old MC with a bum right knee.

 

[Swanee]

2) Btw, whatever happened to the practical PT exam the USMC was experimenting with a couple years ago?

If you are referring to the combat fitness test (CFT) we run in the 2nd half of the calender year, with the traditional PFT in the first half of the year.

 

[Alpha_Echo_606]

I know sailors that could pass the PRT twice a day back to back; yet that physically fit young man couldn't troubleshoot his way out of a wet paper sack if the aircraft broke. Being able to drag 2 fire hoses to the fire doesn't mean jack sh*% if the young man doesn't know how to use them.

Don't get me wrong; the Navy needs to maintain weight standards but I think the current method sucks.

Just my .02¢

 

[parrothead08]

Define "unit." It's one thing for a division (<20) to PT together every day.

Coordinating daily command PT with 150+ bodies (avg turnout for CRUDES PT accounting for duty sections) gets ridiculous.
There are only so many gyms/fields, and way too many tenant commands on a typical naval base.

And I would pay to watch the inevitable clusterfuck if every ship on the NOB Norfolk waterfront went for PT runs....thousands of people running up and down the waterfront at once.

I was on a Coast Guard ship in Portsmouth prior to flight school. We had 6 ships (crew of 100) stationed there. At one point, four of the ships instituted mandatory morning PT. All hell broke lose; the gym was overcrowded, security complained about the people running all around, etc. That's on a small-scale. I can only imagine what NOB would look like.

Another point to add: The CG doesn't have a service-wide PT test. We only use weigh-ins. Certain groups have a PT test; pilots, boarding team members, boarding officers, and so on.

 

[BigRed389]

I know it's smaller, but it's a regular occurrence to see multiple ships PT'ing along with multiple squadrons at the Mayport gym in the morning. Well, they don't PT together, but they're there at the same time.

Yup, and group PT is pretty common at JEBLC too.

But the major FCAs like Norfolk, Yoko or SD? No way.

Norfolk's only got 3 gyms on the entire base. Their combined max occupancy can't be much over 1000. Just one of the few carriers stationed there would max capacity.

Obviously you don't need a gym to PT, but literally THOUSANDS of people running up and down a <2mi waterfront probably wouldn't make security, ships in workups/inspections very happy either. And traffic/parking already sucks on that base.