Filed under: 1500m run, British Military Fitness, fitness assessment, running | Tags: 1500m run, British Military Fitness, burpees, fitness assessment, press-ups, shuttle runs, sit-ups
BMF runs fitness assessments every four weeks, on the final Wednesday of the month in Reading. They’re designed to put members into the right categories (blue for beginners, red for intermediate, green for uber-fit).The first one I did in October put me into the red category.
I couldn’t do November, there wasn’t one in December because of the Christmas break, and I felt a bit off-colour at the end of January. Yesterday, there was no avoiding it.
Here are the results as I remember them (official ones to follow):
1,500m run: 8:20mins
Press-ups: 52 in two mins
Sit-ups: 50 in two mins
Burpees: 42 in two mins
20m x15 shuttles: 1:36mins
All credit to Mick, my partner for the night, who provided a massive amount of encouragement – especially towards the end of my two-minute press-up and burpee stints, where it took all the strength I had in me to push out one or two more.
I’m actually a bit surprised, and pleased, to see the improvement in the press-up, sit-up and burpees – proof that the hard work is paying off in terms of strength. But I took only a few seconds off my 1,500m run and my shuttle run time was worse. Much room for improvement on the running front.
After the session, a few of us wandered along to the pub for a pint and a chat. They’re a really nice bunch, and there are moves afoot to make the pub a more regular fixture in the BMF Reading calendar. Amen to that.
Filed under: 1500m run, British Military Fitness, fitness assessment, running | Tags: 1500m run, British Military Fitness, fitness assessment, running
My fitness assessment results still hadn’t been posted on the British Military Fitness website this morning and – thinking I might have fallen off the bottom of the scale – I emailed them. A nice man called Keith emailed me back immediately, and sent the results back within an hour.
Hi Jo
Here are the results of your fitness test.
1.5km run 8min27sec 17 points
Press-ups 37 reps 54 points
Sit-ups 34 reps 33 points
Burpees 35 reps 76 points
Shuttle run 76 secs 100 points
——–
280 points
Good score Jo, that is definitely a red bib result.
Well done – see you in the park!
That was slightly surprising, I must admit – blue is for novices, red is intermediate and green is advanced. So when I reported for class this evening, it wasn’t without some apprehension. Iasked the instructor if there had been a mistake. He said not. So I donned a red bib – accepted a few congratulations from my friendly BMF classmates and jogged off in line getting gently soaked in the drizzle.
The instructor was a bit mean. After a hard “warm-up”, and some shuttle runs mixed up with various exercises, he split us into groups by colour, put us on three corners of a square in the middle of one of the football pitches – then told us to do 10/15/20 press-ups before moving onto the next corner to do 9/14/19 press-ups, then onto the next corner for 8/13/18, and so on. The idea was to catch the next group, at which point the group was out. We might have only been doing five more press-ups than the blues, but that’s five more EVERY SINGLE TIME. I could barely pick myself up off the floor by the end. Then we had to repeat the exercise with star jumps. Cue wobbly legs, and a funny looking recovery run to the other end of the pitch and back.
After a very short water break, we jogged off to the other side of the park in two lines. On a shout of “contact” we had to run away from the line and hit the deck; “reorg” run back into our lines; “sniper” hit the deck and commando crawl (elbows and knees, bum down); and – for greens only – run away from the lines and do five press-ups on the “enemy” call. Please let me never be a green.
We got to the edge of the park which has 10 trees lining the fence, did five press-ups/sit-ups/squat thrusts, ran to the next tree and repeated the process – until we got to the tenth tree. I really couldn’t move my shoulders now…but there was just time for a mini-game of touch rugby. I was utterly clueless. Didn’t understand the rules, took possession of the ball once and ran in completely the wrong direction, fannied around for a bit on the outskirts of the action, decided to try one more time for the ball, got a bit scared when it headed in my direction…and completely missed it. This is why I don’t play ball games.
The good news is that the pain is starting to pay off. I tackled a six-mile run on Sunday, and found the initial two miles uphill a little easier than I had done previously. I’ll try to keep going with the red team (one blue-bibbed bloke admitted he had passed the test to join the reds but found the red workout too much) and see if I can improve my test results next time. One of the interesting things is that my 1.5km run was actually my worst score – well within the blue parameters – yet I’ve been running for years. I need to learn to run faster than I ever have before.
Filed under: 1500m run, British Military Fitness, fitness assessment | Tags: British Military Fitness, fitness assessment
Shoulder recovered within a couple of days, but Thursday’s sore throat turned into a muzzy head on Friday, a streaming cold on Saturday and a cough on Sunday. The cough lingered and I had to be in London anyway, so I gave British Military Fitness a miss on Monday evening. By today, I’d gone a week without doing any exercise. 
The cough isn’t really getting any better, but I wanted to do the BMF fitness test tonight – which happens on the last Wednesday of every month. Theoretically I should improve over time, so I wanted to find out my base fitness level so I can see some progression. Let’s hope so anyway; I’m not paying £38 a month for evermore if I don’t see any improvement after a few months…
Only about ten people tonight (maybe last night’s snow put a few off) and not everyone wanted to do the test. Dan took those that didn’t want to. Steve took the four test victims candidates, and put us through the following paces:
- A timed 1,500 metre run
- Maximum repetitions over a two-minute period of press-ups
- Maximum repetitions over a two-minute period of sit-ups
- Maximum repetitions over a two-minute period of burpees
- 15x 20 metre shuttle sprints (timed)
Two of the boys (previously spotted wearing super-fit green bibs) took off across the field for the initial run, leaving me and another bloke trying to spot them in the dark. They finished a full two minutes ahead of us, and I was completely last by about seven seconds. I was then partnered with super-fit Ryan, who hails from across the pond, for subsequent exercises. I had to count while he did his press-ups for two minutes (no knees), then we swapped while he counted mine. He got to 80. I did 35 I think. Hmmm. He was jolly nice about it though.
Sit-ups were next (arms across the chest, from shoulder blades on the ground to sitting upright). Not even sure if I got to 30 of those. Mr America did 50.
Then burpees (double-leg squat thrust combined with jump up into the air), which proved to be a “great leveller” as Steve put it – we all did 30-odd of those.
Finally, I spluttered my way through the shuttle runs in 1 minute and 20-something seconds. I was struggling by that point – the temperature had dropped to 3 degrees and my chest was burning.
Nevermind, glad I did it. The scoring system is a complicated affair, but I’m pretty sure I’m firmly in the blue camp. I’m assured that my results will be online for me to look at tomorrow, with an indicator as to how far off the red group I am. Watch this space.
