I know someone who was MAA'd for failing his fitness test. He failed it a week after finishing the New York marathon.
The thing is, as I see it, we're all assuming here that the Service is
wanting us to be a fit workforce and to demonstrate a good level of fitness via the fitness test.
The truth though is very very far from that.
Station execs and above, through Group and up to Command are not in the slightest bit impressed that SAC X has achieved a dark blue standard, nor yet concerned that Jnr Tech Y has failed the test and perhaps needs help and encouragement. What they are concerned with is
statistics - what impresses them is that 99.5% of RAF XYZ are current and (in their eyes) fit.
Why else would situation such as that quoted occur without anybody being able to apply even the tiniest bit of common sense to the situation? Incidentally, it's certainly not the first such example I've heard of.
The fitness
test should be abolished. There is no need for it, it serves (despite the propaganda which judging by numerous posts on this site many of us have swallowed) no
useful purpose, it is discriminatory, it is rigidly enforced in black and white (one size does
notfit all) on some Units and completely arbitrarily on others, despite so-called policy; it is hated by physiotherapists across the Service and even by the more enlightened PTI's (yes there are some - those that bother to engage in CPD and gain civilian qualifications). We didn't need such thing when we were seeing off the Kaiser, we saw off the Luftwaffe and coped perfectly well in the Western Desert without one, and managed to provide effective air power projection in Malaya, Borneo and the South Atlantic all without a fitness test.
The Royal Air Force has not needed, does not need and probably won't ever need a fitness
test.
This is not the same, though, as saying that fitness and healthy living should not be encouraged amongst our personnel. Of course it should - this should be a self-evident truth. What I believe should replace it is compulsory sport, which does not necessarily mean compulsory PT, which is interpreted certainly where I work as nothing more than a once a fortnight gym beasting. Wednesday afternoons should be returned to us for such organised sport and games - footy, rugger, cricket, volleyball - it doesn't matter what it is we should all be
compelled to do
something. Lack of sporting prowess should not be accepted as an excuse - there is nobody in NATO more uncoordinated than me yet I don't mind being forced to play 5-a-side or whatever every week. It's not about, or it certainly
shouldn't be about being any good, it's about getting out, getting some air in your lungs, and stetching the old legs a bit.
Of course to implement this would take leadership and in the current financial and therefore political climate, with all the internecine squabbling amongst the Services which will come in the next 18 months (SDSR, as if you needed telling), there will be no appetite for a more enlightened approach which will have to be managed, funded and
led - at
all levels, from Cpl to Air Chf Mshl. They'll just stick with the current situation with all it's unfairness, anomalies and unpopularity purely because it is the easy option.
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
DT_Xtremez_34: !