RAF Fitness Test - Soon to be twice a year!
 

Excellent news!:hmm: Allegedly from Oct 07, maybe some muscle-mechs can comment?

I'm all in favour of us being a fit fighting force, but we really don't need any extra admin burdens like this.

Not only do I have to CCS, IRT, PME, FMT600, Airfield Driving, Compulsory PT, Live fire, WHT but I've now got a second fitness test to do!

Now, I appreciate it's only half an hour down the gym, but in reality it's a whole sight more hassle than that. Especially given the three months (plus) a year in the sandpit and numerous other nights/days/weeks away during the year, it's just an extra pain in the arse...It's just another period of time when I can't be doing my primary or secondary duty, or when I need to be in work when I could be stood down following weekend tasking or an OOA. It's also another period of time that I have to programme the lads to be away from their primary/secondary duties, because you can bet your bottom dollar that they'll be on the CO's s**t list if they're not in date.

Bet you that the PTIs won't be in at weekends, or late nights to support our 24 hour ops (and no, I'm not moaning about PTI's as a group)

Now, given that our PTI cadre is being reduced and the fact that between them and SHQ noone can record the successful (or not) completion of the current RAFFT, this strikes me as another admin burden for the already busy Sqn to take on and another ill thought through retention-negative policy.

Given that last year, due to a randomly generated policy, I managed to do 3 fitness tests in a 4 month period and still be recorded as out of date on the system, will this mean I will need to do six next year in order to be recognised as fit? Our stn has an on arrival, as a Sqn and on Birthday policy, so frankly we might as well just do it every other week! Luckily, we'll be able to use our locally trained Sqn PT man, but wait: He can't do directed PT! Simply brilliant...

Anyone else spot a last minute attempt at branch justification by AMP?

Anyway, it's been a long day...:{

Cue the inevitable " Dry your eyes Princess and man up" from our brown colleagues who are oh so much fitter than us :rolleyes:

I like your OCT 07 deadline.

At ISK everyone does it before they deploy so we're on 2 or 3 or 4 times a year already, and have been since 2001. Ha! Ha!

Dry your eyes princess and man up :)

Surprised it took that long!;)

At our secret Oxonian aerodrome, it is being tacked on at the end of CCS.

rudekid: My source says something quite different to yours. The exact opposite in fact. I will go and recheck my understanding tomorrow.

With regard to PTIs working weekends, in my experience most of them are working most weekends - the ATI versions at least.

PCD
That would make some sense. Will make some enquiries and see what can be arranged. Hopefully, the new RAFFT won't be linked to a specific period (birth, joining etc) so you can actually just be 'in date'. Otherwise, we'll be doing CCS eight times a year as well!
Ideally, I'd like a sanctuary period so that, like our Army colleagues we could do all our admin requirements together as a formed unit, once a year. However along with the rest of the non F3 RAF(:E), we've been on continuous Ops since 2001!

Manning up...Pants still moist.

Stuff

Will re-check mine as well- wouldn't be wanting to spread unsubstantiated rumours.

Not slagging the PTIs, we've got a great set where I'm based, they're dealt as many crummy cards as the rest of us. Our guys, would I'm sure, work whenever we asked them to. What I'm frustrated by is the extra admin required at home base, when we're continually being asked to spend more and more time away from home base year on year. It's a bit like the directed PT irritation. We should all be fit for ops, but we will soon have the increased irritation of a requirement to visit the gym three times a week. It's just extra admin head ache. Fit people will still be fit, fatties will still weasel out of it any way they can. It's just extra admin and hassle for all, especially the fit guys.

Had a conversation with our PTIs a few weeks ago about this. I like to train evenings, run at the weekends and manage to occasionally play a representative sport for the RAF (increasingly on leave, not duty days!) How does this count against my mandated requirements. Sure, a swept up gym, or online system would enable me to enter my trg sessions and count them against my mandated PT. But typically, the RAF, depsite the majority of the teeth and support arms being heavily engaged on Ops rushes in a admin heavy policy without the correct infrastructure in place. Where does the admin burden fall? Not on PSF, not on 9-5 guys who can organise their daily rosters, but on the already over stretched and hectic front line units.

It's just another example of poorly executed and hurriedly introduced policy, of which we seem to have hundreds!

I need to relax...:{I'm sure there's more important things for me to worry about.

Plastic if they are tacking it on to the end of CCS does that mean you lucky chaps will get to do that twice a year. It is done during the force protection week at another base. It is not being implemented until Apr 2008 with the increases in the muscle fitness requirements. BMI checks are also being carried out but only as a data collection exercise.

Another waste of time. :mad:

I have collected over twice the number of fitness tests than I have had years in the service. The most irritating time was when I did a fitness test at a new station at the end of March only to be told that it would be out of date in two days because the new year rolled over in April. I then went on CCS the next week to be told that I had to re-do it again because they now tied the fitness tests with CCS. What a mess!

I'm hoping that when I fill the blue card with stamps, I can trade it in for something Green Shield style.

Don't get me started on IDT...including the one hour lesson with a lesson objective on how to fill a sandbag...:ugh:

This is purely poor management on behalf of the senior RAF managers. Without getting into a slanging match between forces in the RN the AFT is based around your report date. My OJAR gets written on 31 May and on 31 May I have to be in date for my AFT. You only need to do 1 a year (the clue is in the title). You can do it at any time of the year. For instance. If I did my AFT on 1 june 2007 then I'm not required to do another one until 31 May 2009.

You don't need to be in the UK to do your AFT, you can do it anywhere you are currently based. If there are no PT staff in or around your particular hole in the sand then thats not your fault. The RN manage to condy=uct the AFT when deployed.... how do submariners do it? (with bubbles)

VVHA

According to the stuff I have seen today, we are being mandated to undertake the RAFFT twice a year.

Note: It's not called an AFT, it's a RAFFT hence no annuality and no RN!

Policy seems to be the issue in this case, though I'll grant you the management leaves something to be desired on occasion.

Still, ever willing to engage in some off-topic inter-service slanging matches if you fancy!;)

If I'm ordered to the gym during my working hours to take a test (even for the 2nd or 3rd time in a month) then thats what I will do. I'm paid to do what I'm told. For the wages I get, it can't be bad. If it transpires that I'm being mis-managed or badly led, well, who gives a to$$? Its their loss, not mine.

I get so pi$$ed off with people in the RAF complaining that they are wasting their time doing what they are told to do. The fact is that they are not wasting their own time, they are wasting the RAF's time. Just get on with it, guys.

good your all fat bastards... :}:}:}

Can getting and staying fit be really such a bad thing? If nothing else, doing a collective impression of the fat wheezy boys with a note from Matron sitting it out on the sidelines only gives more ammo to our Army chums.

And anyway, having seen the LM from the AFBSC on the matter, if you really feel that strongly about it, it can be counted as one of your 3 so-called recommended / compulsory periods of phys each week. However, if instead of doing a fitness test you were told to go and play football/rugby/sport of choice for an hour, I would put money on the door being off its hinges in the stampede to get out and onto the pitch (and before you say anything, I'm in SH, so no I don't spend all my time doing sports afternoons!). So why should a bit of a jog up and down the gym be a huge problem. If it is, get a girlie to go with you - makes doing sit ups much more enjoyable ;)

If nothing else it should be a matter of personal pride. But if you want to spend the rest of your life trying to remember when you last saw your feet, please be my guest.

Fine if you work Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, but if you work shifts it's another matter - then it's an individual's time that's being taken up during a day's stand down.

Unless, of course, there's an option to carry out the RAFFT on a weekend, or at 2am during the week - now that's what I call equal opportunities! :}

.................?!

When has anyone in the Armed Forces worked Monday to Friday, 9 to 5....?

Dear ACM Torpy,
Please excuse Brian from the war today as he has a bad cough and an inconvenient shift pattern, and is therefore unable to be fit twice a year.

Regards,

Brian's Mum

PS. He will need to leave early today so he can meet me after school to buy some warm vests.

The primary question on fitness is fit for what? Fit for operational duty? Aren't you all doing that already?

Perhaps 'Their Airships' plan to enter you in a mass trot past at next year's London Marathon. :hmm:

Melchett

Like your namesake, you miss the point. This isn't about the fitness. It's about extra admin and trivia. Re-read the thread.

Comforting to see you have my welfare at heart Two's in but I don't wear vests (singlets we call em here). Never had a cough either, but the inconvenient shift pattern I could own up to in a previous life. :ok:;)

You dont have that much admin trivia to deal with. What with this and thread on wearing civvies on Ops, maybe some people are being naughty and pretending to be in the RAF because I cant believe anyone in the RAF could moan so much.....................could they?

No, of course not - but a second fitness test a year won't achieve this. As someone said earlier, the fit people will be able to pass it anyway, and the cholesterol brigade will now simply skip two tests a year instead of one, knowing full well that the RAF lacks the balls to actually punish them for it (leave cancellation? promotion bar?).

And Serf, the reason people are whining about this is not that this, on its own, is a major inconvenience - it's just the latest in a long line of badly-thought-out and (more to the point) futile directives which combine to lower the quality of servicemen's lives while not making the service any better.

It's all part of Robber Browns plan to have you looking the part when you are compelled to participate in the Gay Pride March.
"PARADE WILL MINCE PAST IN COLUMN OF ROUTE, FORWARD MARCH"

The previous thread was here http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...t=fitness+test

This concerned the plan for 3 physical periods per week.

In that thread to issue was not whether one should be fit but how it was to be administered and where the slack would come from in the programme>

It was all very well saying do it in your own time but many wives see hubbies non-working time as their value time. They would see mandatory, out-of-working hours exercise as an infringement on their already limited face time with the hubby (or other half).

Absolutely true. Many years ago in the kipper fleet it was 4 times per year. Racing snakes would just do the run no worries. The knockers would just do the walk and fail and no worries. There was no way you could sanction half a sqn or half 3 sqns in one wing.

Same as 'get yer haircut'. Any discipline in today's forces requires mutual compliance by the majority. If a sqn chose not to comply they would charge the whole sqn? No way.

Serf
I'd be interested to know what your acceptable level of trivia is and equally how you're able to comment on how much me and the rest of my sqn have got to deal with.

About six months ago, I heard CAS give a brief in which he encouraged us all to look to streamline process and identify any areas where we could streamline bureaucracy. The implication, from his own words, was that we would have his full support in attempts to change policy or process to achieve these aims.

Extra fitness tests won't make us more fit. Extra tests won't make us more deployable. Extra tests won't make our contribution to HERRICK/TELIC any more useful. All it does is increase the burden when we're at home unit. If you think that this is acceptable, then I suspect you're on a non-deployable unit and don't see the problems that ill-designed policy inflicts.

Incidentally, I count that I have 40 administrative and professional currencies with various periodicity, mostly annual. I'm sure other units have a whole lot more. When we're on Ops for the periods we are now, why-oh-why do we need any more hoops to jump through.

To all those saying "Just do what you're told" then again, you've missed the point. My CO gives me orders, I follow them, even if that's an order to do three fitness tests a year.:} That doesn't mean I can't question a POLICY direction from further up the chain.

Fully supportive of keeping us all fit and active, but don't support more rubbish initiatives.

Guys, Guys,

Just get on with it. A break from the office should be just the ticket:zzz:. If you don't go - what are they going to do - shave your head and send you to war? Hmmm.

As has been posted before - doesn't matter how many times you get tested it's the standard set for the test - which by the way is far too low.

Do you remember all those course citiques you filled in? 'Great course but we needed earlier starts and more PT'


RL

You really shouldn't worry, just skive and if they really want to throw you out, let them. I bet they won't say anything, never do now days!!!:ooh:

A fitness test twice a year is no burden at all.

No, I really don't think I missed the point at all, I just can't see how an extra 30 minutes a year in the gym is going to make the wheel fall off. Sorry to say this, but neither you nor I is so important that the world will come to a crashing halt if we aren't in work for half an hour whilst we go and do this.

If you really are so busy with duties that you really can't afford the extra half hour to get to the gym then maybe you should think again about the early Friday stack that everyone seems to take these days. And like I said, if it were AT or some other jolly they were trying to enforce, I don't think you would see to many people being too busy to do it then.

As for the extra admin - only if you're a PTI - all the rest of us have to do is turn up and beat the 20-somethings - hardly a difficult task. On both counts :E

Melchett

I would concur completely. However...

We both know that in the ten (?) years of its existence, the gym and SHQ have never been fully able to communicate between themselves as to whether you have completed the test or not, leading to the multitude of phone calls, emails and general time wasting that happens when the inevitably incorrect COs s**t-list is published.

Given that most gyms run about two sessions a week for the RAFFT and that they can hardly cope now with the numbers of failures/remedials/enforced PT/Sqn PT/RI duties, I really don't think it'll be a case of just pitch up anytime for a test.

30 mins down the gym would, as you correctly state, be a piece of cake. I just don't think it'll be that easy and I don't see what benefits it gives. As I mentioned earlier, there'll be more ways to avoid it than roundabouts in Swindon, but my (and 99% of the rests) personal pride won't allow us to appear on that s**t list. So we'll be stuck with the extra admin, programmers will inevitably lose some flexibility and the whole system doesn't get improved one iota.

I repeat; it's not about fitness, it's about unneccessary admin.

I stand by to eat my Trilby should it be an unqualified success.

If I thought that questioning policy would change anything I would have a different view of many things. I believe that most of these RAF wide policies have been drafted, discussed and endorsed by the airships, incl the Air force Board and there cannot be any reversals due to complaint alone. However, questioning a dodgy directive spawned by your boss on the squadron is definitely worthwhile and might have some effect, otherwise lets just do what we are told.

Not a problem in JHC.

We get enough exercise jumping through hoops, bending over backwards and chasing targets.
Besides, not really in the UK enough to do the AFT more than once a month.

WM

....unless you work a 25 hour duty shift on 15 minutes readiness to lift like......erm......oh yes, the SAR Force.

RK stop blubbing :{ IMHO you should do the tests at least once a week, you might just break out in a sweat then!!! ;)

Maths Lesson
 

Perhaps a simple maths lesson is in order for their Airships.

Working on a session of PT leading to about 1.5 hrs away from the desk, 3 times a week equals 4.5 hrs in total.

Now just for arguments sake let us say the working week is 40 hrs (I know this varies greatly but I'm trying to keep it simple).

That means that we are required to be away from our primary roles for 11.25% of the time. Therefore we should see a corresponding 11.25% increase in the trained strength of the RAF - simple really.

Perhaps if this simple rule was applied every time those who are supposed to run things think of new and interesting ways to keep us from our jobs (extra AFTs, JPA claims, Force Development added on to CCS, etc...) then we wouldn't be so overstretched. In fact we would probably be back at our pre 'Options for Change' manpower levels.:E

Seems like common sense to me.

Bear

Indeed it probably is.

Over a year ago a SNCO had a sore arm and could not do the pressups so he didn't do the fitness test. Not only did he not do the test he didn't tell anyone. PRAT.

But . . .

The PEd wrote to OC AW (1). OC AW gives list the staish (2). Staish writes to SNCO (3) and is told by PSF that his threat is illegal (4). I write to OC AW to say idiot is on leave and will be seen to (5). OC AW writes to me and says do it (6). I do it. Man says he is sick so is sent to the Doc. (n). 15 months later he is still unfit, has still not done the FT but at least the paper tiger is now asleep.

Let the sqn cdr be rsponsible for the total fitness of his men. Let the sqn cdr take the flak if he doesn't get his men fit. An the fitness test? If the sqn can do its job.

That is any sqn not just a badged sqn. If SFUFF is sent OOA and unable to fill sand bags or whatever then he should be immediately RTU and that unit provide a LFF in his place. The subsequent sh1t would be highly directional.

L=lean
S=short
F1=fat
F2=fit
u=unfit
F=:mad:

Fitness Tests
 

Perhaps some troublemaker should put in a FOI request for the fitness test records of the airships and where IS the gymnasium in Main Building - I think we should be told.