My Plan For Boosting My PFT Score

The most obvious reason that I was not selected for Officer Candidate School (OCS) by the August selection board was that my Physical Fitness Test (PFT) score was 20 points below other applicants' scores. That is easy to fix. This post reveals the detailed plan I have designed to boost my PFT score so that it won't be a reason to pass over me when the November board meets to make selections for the January class. In short: disciplined daily routines and measurable milestones.

Also mentioned are some other things my Officer Selection Officer (OSO) told me that encourage me in my efforts to become an officer of Marines and, finally, some lessons I have learned about myself.

Discipline

The root reason I failed to have an acceptable PFT score was a lack of discipline. My workout routine was not regular; and when I worked out, I did not give max effort. My lack of giving "max effort" was revealed to me as I read Once a Marine¹. Having identified that I was not giving max effort, the fix is easy. Do I want to be a Marine or not? If so, work harder to earn it! Motivation and desire must be formed into discipline in order for me, personally, to succeed. I will increase discipline by maintaining a rigid daily morning routine, by maintaining a daily weight lifting routine, and by incorporating daily aerobic exercise.

Morning Routine

Discipline must be utilized in order to reach the required fitness levels. Discipline must be learned in order to utilize it. To help me learn discipline and utilize it to reach my goals, I have created a detailed morning routine as follows:

Morning Routine

Start	Event	End
0600	Alarm	0600
0600	Pushups2	0620
0620	Crunches3	0635
0635	Pull-ups2	0700
0700	Breakfast4	0730
0730	Prepare for work	0750
0750	Leave for work	0750

I have added these activities to my calendar so that my phone will alert me when I need to move to the next activity.

Weight Lifting

In addition to building and using discipline in the morning routine, I have a 5-day weight lifting regimen that my OSO created himself and has provided to me to build strength. It will take discipline to make sure that I follow this routine correctly and that I always give max effort to it. I put the routine into a Google Spreadsheet so that I can track my progress on each exercise, pushing myself to do more every time. Being online means that I can access it from my phone while at the gym both to see what weight I need to use in order to push myself and to easily submit the weights I am doing that day.

You can view my shared copy of this routine, which you are free to copy and use yourself, here: [USMC] 5-Day Split Workout Shared Copy. It is designed to be a Monday-Friday routine, so the dates automatically adjust based on that; you'll need to make some adjustments if you want to use it differently.

Aerobics

You may notice that the one aspect of the PFT that I have not addressed is the run. I have not yet devised an appropriate plan for improving my run times. As of this Monday, a coworker and I started the 5-day Split Workout over our lunch hour, so I haven't been going to the gym after work. If this continues, I will be able to add runs to my evenings quite easily; if it doesn't, I'll have more difficulty working runs into my daily schedule but would be an opportunity for the continued exercise of discipline to make it happen. Moreover, I need to decide upon a run program that I want to follow. I have a few options at this point.

I may also use swimming at the YMCA for this section.

Milestones

I have also added PFT milestones to my workout calendar. On certain Saturdays between now and the next selection board, I will be running a PFT on my own to evaluate my progress and compare that progress with the milestones I have set forth.

PFT Milestones

Date	Target PFT Score
20 AUG	250
03 SEP	260
17 SEP	270
08 OCT	280
22 OCT	285

A perfect score is 300. The score on my application was 252. The score when I ran another PFT to try to boost my score was 239. OSO says that a good competitive score now is 285. While I am trying to be aggressive in my goals, I want to maintain a realistic perspective. However, I hope I can outperform these targets.

Encouragements

It could go without saying that I was disappointed when my OSO told me that I was not selected, but there were other things he told me that encouraged me.

For most of the time while we were preparing my application, there were about 23 slots available for aviation candidates (aka, "air slots"). With only about 25-27 aviation candidates, my OSO was confident that I would be selected. But with only about 2 weeks to go before the board, he was told that there had been cuts to the number of slots; he was not told how many slots there would be. As it turned out, there were only 12 air slots, making it much more competitive and obviously reducing each candidate's chance of being selected.

The primary reason that I wasn't selected was that my PFT score was about 20 points below the other candidates' scores. That means if I had only done 2 more pull-ups, I would have been right up there with them. My OSO commented that he thought my run time was fine, and since I was scoring perfectly on the crunches, the main thing is to do more pull-ups, or, as he put it, "we just need to get you stronger." This is something that is easy to fix. And you've seen my plan for fixing it.

Incidentally, two of the guys I spent time with at NAMI were also not selected. We three are all going for the January class, so we have a shared motivation and dedication this time around. At least one other applicant showed interest in doing the 5-day Split Workout with me; we had PFT scores that were very similar. Hopefully, we'll all be able to encourage one another as we get things fixed for the next go-round.

The final remarks he made were about my motivation to become a Marine. I had lost some motivation to work out, and it was affecting my overall progress as evidenced by the drop in my PFT score from 252 to 239 between the times that I signed my contract and when I took the final PFT that should have boosted my score. I have got my mindset correct now, however, so I will be able to put my new plan into action and make the cut this next time around. This leads nicely into the final section…

Lesson Learned

"Everything is training." A phrase I picked up when I read One Bullet Away⁵ helped me look at the situation and find something to be learned. I've had an easy life. Like everybody, I've obviously gone through times that I did not believe were very easy, but things have been easy for me. With the Marine Corps, I finally have to work hard.

I seldom had to study hard to learn something at school because learning comes naturally to me. And when school finally got hard at Rose-Hulman, I made the conscious decision that I would rather graduate with Bs and Cs and my sanity than drive myself crazy trying to earn a 4.0 GPA. So formal schooling was therefore never an extraordinarily challenging thing to me. I never really had to push myself to achieve my goal.

I played sports in high school. I always made the team—partly because I went to small schools and partly because I do have some natural athletic abilities. When we had to run, I was always towards the front of the pack. It's easy to stay motivated when you've got a bunch of teammates counting on you not to slack off, which would earn us another Killer. I never really had to push myself to achieve my goal.

Now I have a new goal that is unlike anything I've attempted. For the first time, there is nobody else pushing me, and there is no way to coast through the process. I must push myself to achieve my goal. And I must push myself to achieve my goal. This is requiring a lot of motivation, determination, and discipline, let alone actual hard work. Now that I have recognized this about myself, I am even more determined to succeed. Until this point, I did not have that feeling of joining the military "just to see if I have what it takes," as we often hear from people, but that has become another of the many reasons I am going down this path. I want to be a man, and a man has certain qualities that I do not yet possess—qualities that will come by necessity with success in this area.

I have seen what I am. I know what I want to become. I have learned how much was not enough, so now I can give more—and I want it even more.

I see good things coming of this.



1. Amazon link. If you are interested in learning about the Marines, the warrior ethos, and the brotherhood within the Marine Corps, I highly recommend this book by GSgt Nick Popaditch covering his life experiences as a Terre Haute nerd, a Marine tank commander in the Iraq War, and finally, a civilian dealing with the serious injuries that forced him out of the Corps (he was hit in the head with an RPG). ↩

2. As dictated by the Armstrong Pull-up Program, a commonly used program for individuals preparing for OCS. ↩

3. As dictated by Killer's Crunch Workout, another commonly used program for individuals preparing for OCS. ↩

4. Breakfast is high in protein in accordance with advice from my OSO and general guidelines for muscle growth. ↩

5. Amazon link. The story of a Dartmouth graduate who joined the Corps right after college and was on a deployment overseas at the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks before serving two tours in the Middle East, Captain Fick's One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer is a must-read for any applicant to OCS. ↩