The test you’ve been training for? It officially doesn’t exist anymore.

Yep. The Army Combat Fitness Test — that six-event monster that had soldiers deadlifting, throwing medicine balls, and hanging from pull-up bars — got quietly replaced on June 1, 2025. It’s now called the Army Fitness Test. The AFT. Different name, fewer events, same high stakes.

But here’s the wild part. Most people searching “ACFT score chart” right now are still prepping for standards that expired months ago. So let’s cut through the noise and talk about what’s actually on the table — where the scoring stands today, what it really means for your career, and why this test has been a political lightning rod since the moment it launched.

Quick Facts

Item	Detail
Current test name	The Army Fitness Test (AFT) will go into force on June 1st, 2025.
Events	5 (deadlift, hand-release push-up, sprint-drag-carry, plank, 2-mile run)
Minimum per event	60 points
Total to pass (general)	300 points
Total to pass (combat MOS)	350 points (sex-neutral standard)
Max possible score	500 points
Old ACFT max	600 points (six events)
Dropped event	Standing Power Throw (ball yeet gone forever)
No flagging until	January 1, 2026
Old ACFT scores valid until	September 30, 2025

A Test Born From a Problem Nobody Wanted to Admit

Let’s rewind to 1983. That’s when the Army Physical Fitness Test — the APFT — became the law of the land. Three events. Push-ups, sit-ups, two-mile run. Different standards for men and women, different standards by age group. Simple. Portable. Zero equipment required.

For forty years, that test ran the show. Forty years. You could set it up in a parking lot. A field sergeant could score it with a stopwatch and a clipboard.

But then something shifted. By the 2010s, the Army brass started noticing a real problem. The APFT measured endurance. It did basically nothing to measure the kind of functional strength you actually need in combat — dragging a wounded buddy out of a firefight, hoisting yourself over a wall with full kit, carrying ammunition across broken terrain. Running fast and doing sit-ups doesn’t prepare you for any of that.

So in 2018, the Army announced something new. Something bigger. The ACFT.

The vision was ambitious. Six events, all tied to real combat tasks. A hex bar deadlift for lower-body power. A medicine ball thrown for explosive force. Hand-release push-ups that prevent cheating. A sprint-drag-carry course simulating battlefield movement. A plank — or originally, a leg tuck — for core strength. And the classic two-mile run.

And here’s the part that made it genuinely controversial from day one: the original plan was gender-neutral. Same standards. Men, women, didn’t matter. If combat doesn’t discriminate, why should the fitness test?

Sounds great in theory. Reality had other ideas.

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The 84% Problem That Broke Everything

October 2019. Leaked slides hit the internet. The numbers inside were brutal.

In initial testing, 84% of women were failing the ACFT. Eighty-four percent. That’s not a gap — that’s a wall.

The leg tuck was the primary culprit. To complete it, you had to hang from a pull-up bar and curl your knees up to your elbows. Sounds straightforward. But doing it properly required serious grip strength, upper body endurance, AND core power — all at the same time. Women who trained their cores diligently were still getting zeroed out because their grip gave out first.

The Army Sergeant Major at the time said it plainly: you can have all the core strength in the world, but if your hands can’t hold the bar, you can’t do the movement. Measuring core strength through grip failure is just bad science.

Meanwhile, RAND Corporation — the independent think tank Congress brought in to study the mess — found something even more uncomfortable. Women were scoring up to 110 points lower on average than men. Not a little lower. A lot lower.

And that 84% failure rate? It came from a test that was designed, developed, and validated on data that included 414 men and just 62 women. The Army built a test for everyone using almost no data from half the force.

That’s not a controversy. That’s a design flaw.

The Gender-Norming Wars

What followed was pure political chaos. Years of it.

Congress got involved. The House version of the defense budget wanted to force gender-neutral standards specifically for combat arms soldiers. The Senate version wanted to scrap the ACFT entirely and bring back the APFT. Some lawmakers thought the Army bent the knee to political pressure. Others thought the Army hadn’t bent far enough.

The Army quietly dropped the leg tuck in March 2022 and replaced it permanently with the plank. The “Good Idea Fairy” — to use actual Army slang — was declared officially over. Soldiers were told to stop debating and just take the test.

Age-and-gender normed scoring came back. Not unlike the old APFT. Different standards for men and women, adjusted by age bracket. Hardcore critics called it lowering the bar. Supporters called it basic physiological common sense.

And here’s the counterpoint worth sitting with: research later showed that men were scoring in the “highly fit” category at three times the rate under the ACFT compared to the old APFT. So who was really getting an advantage under a supposedly neutral standard? The data gets complicated fast.

What the Score Chart Actually Looks Like Now

The AFT operates on a clean structure. Five events, 100 points each, 500-point maximum.

Deadlift (MDL): Three-rep max with a hex bar. The minimum to pass — 60 points — sits around 140 lbs for most age groups. The exact weight shifts depending on your age bracket. Older soldiers get some accommodation on the weight threshold, which makes sense because tendons don’t recover the way they did at 22.

Hand-Release Push-Up (HRP): You go all the way down, lift your hands off the ground, then push back up. No half-reps. No bouncing. Minimum reps vary by age and gender. Scoring for this event explicitly rewards full-range-of-motion reps.

Sprint-Drag-Carry (SDC): This one simulates combat movement with eerie accuracy. Five 50-meter laps. Sprint one, drag a 90-lb sled back, shuffle sideways, carry two 40-lb kettlebells, then sprint again. It hits speed, power, and grip in one brutal package. Faster times equal more points.

Plank (PLK): Hold it until you can’t. Longer is better. No timer is set — you go until your form breaks. The scoring rewards sustained endurance. 1 minute 20 seconds gets you the minimum; push past 3 and a half minutes and you’re maxing it out for most female age groups.

Two-Mile Run (2MR): Still the hardest event to max for most soldiers. And still the most failed. Always has been. Probably always will be.

Now here’s the key split that defines the current scoring era.

General standard: 300 points minimum. Scoring uses sex-and-age-normed tables. This applies to most soldiers.

Combat MOS standard: 350 points minimum. This uses sex-neutral, age-normed tables. Same number required for men and women who hold combat specialties — infantry, armor, field artillery, special forces, and about 17 others. If you’re in one of those 21 MOSs and can’t hit 350, you may get reclassified. Involuntarily.

That deadline for the active component kicked in January 1, 2026. Not a suggestion.

The Promotion Points Game

Here’s where the score chart gets personal for enlisted soldiers.

Every ACFT or AFT score feeds directly into the promotion point system for E-5 and E-6 promotions. Physical fitness falls under the “Military Training” category in Army Regulation 600-8-19.

The old formula was simple: divide your score by 600, multiply by 180, and that’s your promotion points. Max score meant 180 points toward your promotion packet.

With the AFT now on a 500-point scale, the math has shifted, and ACFT scores stopped counting for promotion after September 30, 2025. If your last test was old-format, and it expired, those points are gone.

A score of 450 on the AFT puts you in genuinely competitive territory. But the calculation also depends on your MOS. A 450 might make you stand out in an administrative field. In infantry, surrounded by other high-performing soldiers, that same score barely gets you noticed.

ACFT scores also expire for promotion purposes — the clock runs 12 months from the test date. Miss that window, and you’re leaving points on the table.

The Standing Power Throw — Nobody’s Going to Miss It

Let’s talk about the event that vanished.

The Standing Power Throw was a medicine ball you launched backwards over your head. Max distance wins. It tested explosive power in a movement pattern that looks nothing like anything you do in modern combat.

RAND’s analysis of nearly a million ACFT tests found it also caused the highest injury rate of any event. Shoulders, backs, and elbows paid the price.

It got cut. June 2025. Gone. Most soldiers — honestly — breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

The injury argument alone justified removing it. Soldiers tearing rotator cuffs in peacetime to throw a ball nobody throws in combat is not physical readiness. It’s just pain with extra steps.

What a “Good” Score Actually Means

People love chasing the number. Fine. Here’s some real-world context.

• 300: You passed. Minimum. Don’t celebrate too hard.
• 350: Combat MOS requirement. Also a decent score for anyone who isn’t in a fitness-heavy role.
• 400+: You’re above average. You’ll get noticed.
• 450+: Competitive for promotion. Physically in the top tier for most units.
• 500: Near-perfect or perfect score. Rare. Genuinely impressive.

The word “good” always depends on context. 420 in a medical field unit? Outstanding. 420 in a special forces support element? You might be the slowest one in the room.

And keep this in mind: physical fitness is just one piece of the promotion puzzle. Awards, military education, weapons qualification, and time in service all feed the same calculation. Maxing the AFT won’t save a weak packet. A perfect packet with a middling fitness score can still get beaten.

The Leg Tuck Lives On as a Symbol

There’s a small but real subculture in Army fitness circles that still mourns the leg tuck.

Stickers. Patches. Actual conversations in Pentagon hallways. The “#LegTuckNation” crowd treats the event’s removal as a symbol of standards erosion. One Army blogger called it the equivalent of Obi-Wan Kenobi getting cut down — removed from the test, but more powerful as a symbol.

Whether you agree with them or not, they’re asking a fair question: when a test reveals widespread failure, does the right move involve fixing the training — or fixing the test?

The Army chose the test. RAND said the leg tuck wasn’t measuring what it claimed to measure. And that’s a legitimate scientific defense. But the cultural debate hasn’t stopped. Probably never will.

Where Things Stand in 2026

The transition is now well underway. The test of records is the AFT. The ACFT is history.

No administrative action for failing the AFT happened before January 2026 — the Army gave soldiers a grace period to adjust. That window is now closed for active duty.

Reserve and National Guard soldiers running combat MOS have until June 1, 2026 to meet the 350-point combat standard. That deadline is coming fast.

The Army is also watching data closely. An HQDA convening board tracks scores, injury rates, and readiness metrics. Future reviews may expand combat standards to additional MOSs. Nothing confirmed — but don’t assume the 21 MOSs is a permanent ceiling.

And somewhere in the background, there’s a new Combat Field Test for combat arms soldiers that exists alongside the AFT. That’s a whole other article.

Final Words

Here’s the honest take.

The AFT is a better-designed test than what launched in 2018. That original ACFT — built on data from 62 women and sold as the great equalizer — was a case study in which good intentions run through bad methodology. The leg tuck was a genuinely poor core strength measurement. The Standing Power Throw was injuring people for no tactical reason. Fixing those things wasn’t political capitulation. It was just competence.

But the Army also took seven years and a congressional mandate to get here. That’s not fast. That’s not decisive. That’s the bureaucratic version of “eventually.”

The gender neutrality debate will keep going. That’s fine. It should. The question of what physical standards actually correlate with combat effectiveness is genuinely hard, and the data is genuinely contested. Anyone who tells you it’s simple is selling something.

What matters most for the individual soldier is this: know your current standard, know your MOS category, track your test date, and don’t let your score expire before it helps you get promoted.

The chart is just numbers. What you do with them is the actual test.

FAQs

1. Is the ACFT still the Army’s fitness test in 2025? 

No. As of June 1, 2025, it was officially replaced by the Army Fitness Test (AFT). Five events, 500-point maximum. The ACFT is retired.

2. What is the minimum passing score on the AFT? 

You need at least 60 points per event and a minimum total of 300 points (general standard) or 350 points (combat MOS standard).

3. What events are on the AFT? 

Three-rep max deadlift, hand-release push-ups, sprint-drag-carry, plank, and two-mile run.

4. What event was removed in the 2025 change? 

The Standing Power Throw was eliminated due to high injury rates and limited combat relevance.

5. Does scoring differ for men and women? 

For most soldiers, yes — the general standard uses age-and-sex-normed scoring tables. For combat MOS soldiers (21 specific specialties), the standard is sex-neutral — same numbers for men and women.

6. What happens if a combat MOS soldier can’t hit 350? 

They may be counseled, offered voluntary reclassification, or subject to mandatory reclassification after the enforcement deadline. No administrative separation during the grace period.

7. How is promotion impacted by the AFT score? 

Physical fitness falls under the Military Training category in the promotion points system. Higher scores yield more promotion points, up to a set maximum. Scores expire after 12 months for promotion purposes.

8. Are old ACFT scores still valid? 

Only through September 30, 2025. After that date, only AFT scores count for promotion and compliance.

9. Why was the leg tuck removed from the ACFT? 

RAND Corporation’s analysis concluded it was a poor predictor of core strength because it required significant grip and upper body strength to complete, regardless of actual core capability. The plank replaced it permanently.

10. What is a “good” AFT score? 

Contextually, 400+ is above average. 450+ is competitive for promotion. 500 is near-perfect. The answer depends on your unit, MOS, and peer comparison.

11. Can soldiers with medical profiles take alternate events? 

Yes. Soldiers with permanent profiles affecting the two-mile run can substitute a 2.5-mile walk, 5,000-meter row, 12,000-meter stationary bike, or 1,000-meter swim. These are scored as Go/No-Go by age band.

12. When do combat MOS standards kick in for the National Guard? 

June 1, 2026. Reserve and Guard components with combat MOSs have until that date to meet the 350-point sex-neutral standard.

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