Any one heard of a military P.A.S.T. Test?

[USAF PJ]

military physical ability and stamina test http://www.specialtactics.com/past.shtml

 

trying to set new record on times and would like to know if anyone has advise from their experience on how to prepare yourself mentally and physically. I am trying exceed all of these minumum requirements by outstanding achievements. Anyways if you have any tricks please feel free to share.

[Shorin Ryuu]

Hi USAF PJ. You are more hardcore than I am. My first assignment is going to grad school, so I've got it pretty easy.

 

As for a lot of these requirements, if you look at them, they are not that hard individually. As usual, the hard thing is getting them all done one after another. What's your height and build? I'm not as big, so it's easier for me to do a lot of these body weight things.

 

I've found the 20m underwater thing to be entirely mental. Just focus on keep swimming forward underneath the water and you should find achieving this limit rather simple. I've found jumping in and streamling under the water with a flutter kick and then doing a frog stroke works the best, but I suppose it will vary from individual to individual.

 

For the 500m swim, the best thing is not to burn out, but to pace yourself. Therefore the best way to do this is to see first what's the best time you can get at a reasonably fast, but not necessarily uncomfortable pace and start there. I'm not sure what swimming experience you have, but if you want to get decent time in the water, it all comes down to form. If you don't have that much experience (I had several years in swim team, which helped me a lot), I recommend finding someone who does who can help you on your form.

 

Running is pretty much self-explanatory. Staying loose and having days where you do distance and days where you go for speed is pretty essential. I'm not a big runner since my knee injury, but I can still go out randomly and run a 9 minute mile and a half should the occasion arise due to how much other aerobic stuff I do (lots of kata and other things). I was considering PJ for a while, but my knee injury sort of put an end to that (and I'm not very huge...). Since you have to take into account the test over a long period, I recommend incorporating distance runs to help you keep up the endurance as well as lifting weights with your legs in order to ensure your muscles won't simply die.

 

As for the chin-ups, the best way to get better at them is simply to practice them very often. It kind of sounds lame, but that really is the best way. Supplementary exercises won't simply prepare you as much as simply doing them. If you notice on the chart, you get much less return later on for every extra chinup you do, so take that into account depending how tired you are. Like I said, I'm lighter, so I can knock out at least 21 if needed, but I don't do these on a regular basis (but I should...).

 

Pushups. Well, as a fellow military member, I'm sure you've had your fill of these. I recommend doing sets of widearms, regular and diamond pushups to really help work out a full range of pushup muscles. During the test, don't worry about easing yourself downwards, use gravity to fall down and spring back upwards. It also helps to slightly shift your hand positions to work out different muscle areas. This includes turning them more in or out or increasing and decreasing their horizontal separation. This helps in shifting the shoulder configuration as well which aids the burden sharing among your muscles. And of course, remember to breathe. Working out the muscles in your small back also really help maintain stability of your pushups when you're really hitting fatigue.

 

Situps. Since you have flutter kicks right afterwards, I would recommend you use your abs as much as possible (meaning you don't pull with your legs). I've always been naturally good at abs, so I've never had to focus on them too much per se (although I've often had to, if you know what I mean). The best way to focus on using only your abs during situps is to practice doing them with good form without anyone holding your feet. A good diet helps as well, to get rid of fat and all that (although with that running and swimming, you probably don't have that much...). All the same, it gives you better grade fuel for your work. I recommend checking out the diet threads here. Once again, repetition is key.

 

Flutter kicks. Once again, just doing them is pretty essential, but you can supplement using leg machines at the gym. Being in the military, you really know all the supplementary ab/leg exercises, so it would be kind of redundant for me to list them here.

 

The best advice on all the repetition exercises is to really gauge out how much you need at first, since you get less and less return on your effort the more you do after a certain point.

 

As far as the mental preparation goes, I've found simple confidence and firm decision to keep going works rather well. The confidence comes from knowing how hard you've worked, and the firm decision comes from knowing how much you wanted it. I remember years back (yes, I was a JROTC nerd) they were about to change the male physical fitness standards for the standard army test. I wanted to max out the test before it changed (after it did, we would get obscene scores, like 450+ out of a 300 point test) Back then, the old standard for maxing out the test was 11:54 for the two mile, 82 pushups in two minutes and 92 situps in two minutes. I could always exceed the pushups and the situps very easily, as I had put a lot of training into them. The two mile got easier after I joined track, but back then, I wasn't as good. Anyway, it got down to the two mile run, and as dumb as this sounds, I never let myself slow down. Whenever I felt I was or thought about it (thinking about makes you unconsciously slow down), I told myself to speed up. I ended up getting an 11:25. Not necessarily track-quality, but good after the other exercises.

 

I've found when having to do a certain number of repetitions for situps, pushups and flutter kicks, a trick that works for me (may not for you) is to count them in sets of ten. That way your body is kind of tricked into thinking it is doing much less. (As in 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 "1". 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 "2", etc.) It's a good way to do it without juggling numbers really high in your brain, giving your body the impression that you've done a whole lot and it is exhausted. Just a simple trick.

 

As for all the other long distance things, I normally have a song going in my head or it is completely and utterly blank. For some people, they need to think about something motivating or whatever. I normally just don't think and unconsciously regulate my time/pace/repetitions. I've found meditating to be quite useful in turning it off and on. Of course, if you need to go balls to the wall, then you can always rely on that adrenaline. I usually make it a non-issue by doing well enough not to have to rely on it.

 

Your other post leads me to believe you're pretty flexible and do lots of stretching, so I won't belabor that point.

 

Best of luck to you, and if you have any more specifics to ask, please do, as I don't know that much about you, your build, etc. that would help me offer better advice.

Edited January 19, 2007 by Shorin Ryuu

[aefibird]

Good luck to you for the test USAF PJ!