I were (and still am) a cuddly ground bod. I couldn't get round an army assault course even when I were a sprog, and haven't deliberately run anywhere since I walked past Henderson/Groves gate for the last time. But I have always been able to do my job and that includes taking up arms. At my peak I could hit you in a vital area from twelve hundred yards away, ten times out of ten and I'd still have no difficulty in taking your head off at a quarter of a mile. So whats all this being fit to take up arms nonsense then? As long as you can run from 600 yards to 100 yards, firing as you go, that's all that the RAF needs. The army's need for physical fitness is different. For most of them, the job involves walking vast distances carrying everything including the kitchen sink. Not to mention the ammunition. But the Air Force are specialists not infantrymen.
Churchill once slagged us off when Our Airships asked for army units to provide airfield defence as he quite rightly saw that the problem was merely one of arming the airmen. But we don't need to march hundreds of miles, we only need to be able to dig in and shoot. So sign up for shooting and get down the range, and I'm not talking aout that piffling little station twenty five yard range either. That's a more appropriate way to get fit to do our jobs than running round in circles training a cardio-vascular system to do things it will never be called upon to do in real life.
Escape and evasion is another matter, but it involves a different kind of fitness. Mental fitness and perserverance. Many men made it back to their own lines despite being wounded and thus grossly unfit, while others much fitter than they were taken prisoner. Leave physical fitness to the fanatics and get on with the job.
**********************************. .Through difficulties to the cinema