July 18, 2005Fit or fired
COs can kick out or halt advancement of sailors who fail PFA
By Mark D. Faram
Times staff writer
The Navy’s putting teeth back into the Physical Fitness Assessment, allowing commanding officers to kick out sailors who fail three of the semiannual cycles in four years.
COs also can hold up advancements and promotions for anyone who fails just once.
And it’s not just individuals who will be held more accountable for fitness failures. Leaders will be, too. Chiefs and officers face possible setbacks on their own fitness reports if sailors in their charge flunk the test.
Officials clearly believe that mandatory discharges — or simply the threat of such a move — will be enough to spur sloppy sailors into action.
But before you think the Navy’s gone gung-ho Army or Marine, take solace. Even under these new rules, unfit sailors can still buy themselves time and avoid the ax so long as they show “reasonable progress” in correcting their failures.
“Reasonable progress,” officials said, is now defined as a one percentage point body-fat improvement per month or about a 10 percent monthly improvement in scores for runs, swims, push-ups or sit-ups.
As before, a struggling sailor’s progress will be tracked in a master log and monitored by his command’s fitness leader.
This tougher new plan — expected to be announced soon in a Naval Administrative message — would take effect immediately, and any failures in the fall 2005 cycle will count.
As a result, officials have rewritten the Navy’s physical fitness instruction, tightening up the administrative consequences for failing — a change fleet leaders have been asking for.
“We have been ready to implement this for the last two years,” said Fleet Master Chief (AW/SW) Jon Thompson, the senior enlisted sailor at Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk, Va. Thompson was part of a working group set up by Vice Adm. Gerry Hoewing, the Navy’s chief of personnel, to address the problem of fleet PFA failures and overhaul the Navy’s instruction.
“This is not a force reduction tool,” Thompson was quick to say. “Being fit is an obligation that we have as sailors and we need to enforce those standards. Fitness is part of the job, not an optional program.”
It was clear to Hoewing, Thompson and other leaders that too many sailors don’t take fitness seriously.
“We have people that are not within body-fat standards, people who are failing the fitness test and we want to turn that around,” Hoewing told Navy Times on July 6.
Like Thompson, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy (SS/AW) Terry Scott said the new policy is about creating a culture of fitness in the Navy, not about shedding more sailors from the ranks.
“I would be very happy if we didn’t lose anyone to this policy. If they start today to improve, that is good enough for me,” he said. “But we are not going to zero out the counters either. We need to instill fitness as part of the Navy’s culture and we must hold people accountable to the standards.”
A rundown of changes
Effective immediately:
• Commands may now discharge sailors who have failed either the Physical Readiness Test or the body-composition portions of the PFA three times in the past four years. COs and officers in charge must justify those discharges to their superiors.
“With their superior’s approval, commanders can immediately start to process for discharge anyone they feel is not making progress or who says they don’t want to,” Hoewing said.
Beginning in July 2006, however, mandatory separations become effective, though commanders can still apply for waivers for struggling sailors.
“If they continue to improve, they are good to go,” Scott said.
• Those selected for higher rank can be denied advancement or promotion if they fail their most recent assessment.
“We have people competing for those promotion and advancement opportunities, and it is not fair to those meeting standards for us to promote people who are not meeting standards,” Hoewing said.
• Sailors will be allowed to retest during the same cycle to try to improve their PRT score or reverse a body-composition failure.
“Sometimes people just have a bad day and don’t perform properly and we recognize that,” Hoewing said.
Under previous instruction, no retesting was allowed. Now, failures will only count if a sailor cannot pass by the end of the fitness cycle.
• Chiefs and officers can be held accountable for a sailor’s fitness failure via a negative annotation on their fitness reports.
“We must treat this as a leadership issue,” Hoewing said. “Just as we did when [Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern] Clark did with attrition and retention when he took the job, fleet leaders were asked to fix the problem and are now held accountable, and we have the best retention in years and the lowest attrition numbers I have ever seen. I believe it is those same fleet leaders that will find a way to fix this, too.”
“I expect that responsibility to be felt all down the chain of command,” Thompson said. “Anyone who is responsible for sailors is also responsible for their health and fitness.”
• Commands are directed — but not required — to provide sailors the time to do physical training three times a week, during the workday.
• Body-fat percentages will be eased. The Navy now will adhere to higher Defense Department maximums for those sailors who score excellent or outstanding on their PRT and present a “professional military appearance” in uniform.
On the way
Hoewing said these latest changes are “just the start,” intimating more changes are being debated and could be implemented as early as next summer.
He would not characterize those possible changes.
Along with policy changes, data collection efforts also are being addressed. The Physical Readiness Information Management System, known in the fleet as PRIMS, will be overhauled, Hoewing said. Eventually, all data will migrate into the new Navy Standard Integrated Personnel system, the database that will house a sailor’s entire record.
“We know PRIMS has limitations, and we know it needs to be improved,” he said. “We also want to be able to include a sailor’s fitness into their five-vector model because it is part of their résumé.”
Such a change could happen as early as next July, Hoewing said.
“We will also continue to look at fitness programs across the fleet to see if we need to allocate more resources to this,” he said.
This could result in more gyms ashore and afloat, as well as more fitness experts to operate them.
Another thing that he said is being eyed is adopting an elliptical trainer as an alternate to the run and swim portion of the PRT.
Scott said that while some critics may see these changes as administrative, he considers it operational.
“We are now asked to deploy on a moment’s notice under the Fleet Response Plan, and part of being ready is being physically ready to deploy and take on the hours and heavy work that can entail,” he said. “That said, we can’t just release a NavAdmin and expect to change the culture. That just won’t happen. Those changes will come, but they will take time.”
Fuzzy math
Navy officials can’t say exactly how many sailors are in peril of discharge under the new guidelines because only 75 percent of commands have been properly reporting their results to the Navy’s Physical Readiness Information Management System database, maintained at Navy Personnel Command in Millington, Tenn.
Still, as of March 3, 11,530 active-duty sailors were reported to have three or more failures on the books in the last four years. Some 15,946 have two failures and 40,447 have one.
But the truth is, no one knows the exact numbers. Vice Adm. Gerry Hoewing, the Navy’s chief of personnel, said stricter monitoring will now take place.
“We’re going to get with those commands that have not reported and bring the database up to date,” he said.
— Mark D. Faram
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