In every area of public safety, declining physical fitness has reached a point of crisis. When it comes to “tactical athletes” (firefighters, police and corrections officers, EMS personnel), “physical components such as cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular strength, and others are closely related to health parameters and improved quality of life and, consequently, enhanced job skills.” At the same time, the challenge of cardiovascular disease in first responders “calls for periodic medical and fitness screenings, early intervention, and expanded fitness initiatives across departments/agencies.”
Both military and civilian responders, the research shows, must maintain high levels of strength, endurance, and mobility to perform complex, high-stress physical tasks safely and effectively. It should come as no surprise that fitness has long been viewed as a matter of national security. This is why John F. Kennedy’s warning about “soft Americans” remains as urgent today as it was in 1960.
The ‘Soft American’
On Dec. 26, 1960, President-elect John F. Kennedy spoke out on a developing national crisis. In an editorial in Sports Illustrated titled “The Soft American,” Kennedy called attention to what he called “the general physical decline of American youth.” Citing a 15-year research study conducted by New York’s Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, Kennedy noted:
…[D]espite our unparalleled standard of living, despite our good food and our many playgrounds, despite our emphasis on school athletics, American youth lagged far behind Europeans in physical fitness. Six tests for muscular strength and flexibility were given; 57.9% of the American children failed one or more of these tests, while only 8.7% of the European youngsters failed.
Especially disheartening were the results of the five strength tests: 35.7% of American children failed one or more of these, while only 1.1% of the Europeans failed, and among Austrian and Swiss youth the rate of failure was as low as .5%.
The president-elect proposed a multi-pronged plan to help improve the physical fitness of America’s youth. This included a robust research program, a multi-department effort to encourage fitness in schools, and coordination among various federal agencies to keep “physical fitness in the forefront of the nation’s concerns.”
In his conclusion to “The Soft American,” Kennedy stated: “No matter how vigorous the leadership of government, we can fully restore the physical soundness of our nation only if every American is willing to assume responsibility for his own fitness and the fitness of his children” [emphasis added].
Read “The Soft American” here.
Fitness and the Federal Government
Kennedy was not the first U.S. president to express worries about strength and conditioning in rising generations. Four years earlier, President Dwight Eisenhower had created the President’s Council on Youth Fitness to improve fitness standards for American youth. After taking over from Eisenhower, Kennedy retooled the program, hoping to promote a culture of physical activity with new leadership and expanded public campaigns.
Kennedy’s successor, President Lyndon Johnson, added the Presidential Physical Fitness Awards program to recognize students who scored well on the tests. The next several decades saw even more changes — mostly in the specific skills being measured — but the competitive, percentile-based benchmarks (and the award patches) remained at the core of physical education well into the 21st century.
In 2012, the administration of President Barack Obama retired the long-running test, opting to focus more on health-related assessment and measuring individual progress rather than rank-ordering classmates.
Critics of the phased-out test argued that emphasizing competitive performance scores created anxiety and discouragement instead of fostering lasting, healthy fitness habits. As one former PE teacher told “The Hill” at the time, “We knew who was going to be last, and we were embarrassing them. We were pointing out their weakness.”
Then, in 2025, the pendulum swung back. On July 31, President Donald Trump signed an executive order restoring the Presidential Fitness Test and reviving the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition, with plans to reestablish a Presidential Fitness Award and reinstitute school-based testing under HHS leadership.
Fitness and the U.S. Military
A major reason Kennedy viewed the “softness” of American youth as a problem was because more and more young people were being deemed ineligible to serve in the U.S. armed forces. In the 65 years since “The Soft American” came out, this problem has become even more widespread. If the gap between American and European youth has narrowed at all, it is only because habits and standards overseas have declined, and not because those in the U.S. have improved.
Fitness in the U.S. armed forces has been a concern for most of living memory. During World War II, military recruits were evaluated by local draft boards, which determined who could serve and who could not. According to the National Park Service: “To provide consistency across exams, the military developed ‘objective’ qualification standards. These included basic measurements for height, weight, pulse rate, and blood pressure…. The standards provided a one-size-fits-all model. They inflated the importance of certain qualities and overlooked others.”
Even in the 1940s, these standards (which included physical, mental, and moral tests) led to a GI rejection rate of over 40%.
Throughout the Korean War, the conflict in Vietnam, and beyond, service-specific guidelines evolved into formal test batteries — for example, the Army’s three-event APFT that included push-ups, sit-ups, and a two-mile run. After years of criticism that the APFT measured performance too narrowly, the Army pivoted to the six-event ACFT starting in 2020, a shift that triggered an extended debate over how to score men and women with varying duties.
Across the armed forces, most services have long used sex- and age-adjusted standards. These can be seen in official Air Force PT scoring charts with separate male/female tables and age groups, and in the Marine Corps’ two-test system (PFT and CFT) that balances endurance events with combat-task movements.
Today, the Army is moving toward a “sex-neutral” approach, requiring the same minimums for men and women geared toward battlefield demands. At the same time, Pentagon leadership has ordered a broader review of physical standards across combat roles, aiming for common baselines tied directly to mission requirements.
That push was outlined in clear language by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who publicly argued for a single, uncompromising standard and sharper accountability — for both officers and enlisted troops. In remarks widely covered in the media, Hegseth lamented seeing “fat troops” and “fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon.” He directed military leaders to help remediate this perceived lack of physical fitness with tightened enforcement as part of a larger reset of warfighting readiness.
All this comes on the heels of a 2023 study highlighting serious readiness and cost issues arising from poor physical fitness among U.S. Army recruits. The research report found about 33% of the 99,335 trainees in 2017 sustained at least one musculoskeletal injury during basic training — with the injury rate for female recruits nearly double that of male recruits. The study noted the cost to treat those injuries totaled almost $15 million.
The study underscores how declining baseline fitness inhibits military recruiting, drains budgets, and weakens troop readiness — making fitness a national security concern.
Fitness and Public Safety
So, what does this all have to do with public safety?
In many ways, the challenges faced by the U.S. armed forces mirror those within law enforcement, corrections, and fire and emergency medical services. First responder agencies recruit from the same demographic pool as the military, mostly young men and women in their 20s. After all, the physical and mental demands of policing a city, fighting fires, or managing corrections populations are no less rigorous than those required of any given soldier, sailor, airman or Marine.
If fewer and fewer young Americans are fit for military service, it follows that many are also poorly prepared for careers as first responders. Rising rates of obesity, sedentary lifestyles, and preventable chronic conditions make it harder for agencies to find enough candidates who can pass basic physical fitness tests.
Some departments have lowered physical requirements just to fill vacancies, but this strategy inevitably degrades performance standards essential to public trust and responder safety. Both military and public safety personnel need to be physically strong and mentally resilient — qualities increasingly difficult to find in the growing population of “soft Americans.”
Addressing this problem requires action well before a young person enters the recruitment funnel. As Dr. Jordan Carlson, Professor of Pediatrics at Children’s Mercy Kansas City, said, “Human bodies were designed to move and be active, but modern society has made life more sedentary. We need to reengineer our environments and routines to build activity back in.” It seems uncontroversial to say encouraging youth fitness not only broadens the future pool of capable soldiers but also strengthens the next generation of firefighters, police and correctional officers, and EMTs.
“If fewer and fewer young Americans are fit for military service, it follows that many are also poorly prepared for careers as first responders.”
Fit for Duty, Fit for Life
But the challenge doesn’t end with recruitment. Just like in the armed forces, public safety professionals need ongoing support to maintain strength, endurance, and flexibility throughout long, stressful careers. Anyone who’s worked in public safety can attest to the fact that shift work, high stress, poor nutrition, and irregular sleep can have negative impacts on physical health. Departments should invest in structured wellness programs, access to gyms or fitness training, and policies that prioritize long-term conditioning over short-term compliance. Maintaining fitness shouldn’t be viewed as a box to check during the academy but rather as a lifelong professional responsibility.
Ultimately, leadership sets the tone. Secretary Hegseth’s comments about “fat generals and admirals” in the Pentagon may have ruffled feathers, but it has implications beyond the military. If physical fitness is a visible measure of discipline in the armed forces, the same could be said for those who lead first responder agencies. Public safety leaders are most effective when they model the standards they expect from their teams.
Prioritizing Functional Fitness
Fitness standards in public safety should be practical, defensible, and sustained. The goal should be to ensure responders can do the job their communities expect them to do.
Agencies should adopt a functional approach, aligning events with real duties and establishing clear policies so their employees can train with purpose. Below are some guidelines for establishing agency-level standards and requirements.
1. Testing should be functional.
Simple screening tools like BMI are blunt instruments at the individual level: They don’t distinguish between fat and muscle and tend to misclassify people who are bulky. While BMI can be useful for measuring populations, there is ample research showing it is impractical for assessing fitness on an individual level.
2. Testing should be scientific.
Physical ability testing must be based in science, not guesswork. Agencies should avoid designing their own tests without consulting experts for advice. To ensure fairness, legal defensibility, and validity, most public safety organizations will need to hire a qualified Physical Ability Test (PAT) validation company or exercise physiologist familiar with legal guidelines and regulations. Professional validation firms conduct job-task analyses, criterion-based test design, and legal defensibility reviews — all of which are critical if an agency’s fitness test is ever challenged in court.
3. Testing should match the job requirements.
Public safety fitness standards must be tied directly to essential job tasks. That’s not just good science, but also the legal standard under Title VII and the ADA. As mentioned above, agencies are well advised to implement duty-relevant measurements that have been professionally validated, typically by an outside company or organization. The tests themselves can take many different forms depending on region, call volumes, critical job tasks, and so on. In other words, the Presidential Fitness Test is not a good model for public safety fitness testing.
Many academies still include a distance run (often 1.5 to 2 miles), but agencies are increasingly requiring duty-gear simulations that better mirror real on-the-job tasks. Because responders often wear load-bearing equipment, tests should reflect the increased physiological cost of duty gear, vests, and personal protective equipment (PPE). Research and field studies show equipment carriage changes comfort, posture, and gait and can cause injuries — another reason to test with operational loads.
4. Testing should be regular and predictable.
Fitness isn’t a “set it and forget it” proposition, and a formal cadence is vastly preferable over surprise checks. Fire service standards (NFPA 1583) call for recurring assessments and an ongoing, policy-based approach (not one-off tests) so members can develop and maintain personal fitness. Law enforcement organizations such as the IACP similarly urge sustained, year-round fitness programming and agency-wide plans.
5. Testing should include a pathway to compliance.
When a responder falls short of agency standards, leaders should be generous with time, coaching, and formal remediation — during working hours — and also provide a clear timeline for retesting.
In the fire service, NFPA 1583 emphasizes individualized programming with qualified coordinators. For pre-employment tests, the CPAT model requires candidate orientations and practice sessions before the official attempt. This is a good model for in-service testing as well.
Law enforcement doesn’t have a “bright line” national standard for pre-service or in-service testing or retesting, but individual agencies should. Agencies also need clear, written policies outlining remediation as well as consequences if members do not comply. These policies should be based on clear functional requirements and aligned to EEOC guidance.
Assuming Responsibility
In public safety, as in the armed forces, fitness is more than a personal virtue; it’s an operational necessity. The capacity to sprint toward (or away from) danger, climb a fence or ladder, lift a heavy load, drag a fallen comrade, and sustain exertion under stress is critical for effective work as a first responder. That’s why major professional organizations and standards bodies encourage agencies to build fitness standards around validated, job-related tasks and ongoing conditioning rather than vague, one-off measures.
A renewed culture of fitness must start early and continue through retirement — supported by regular testing, on-duty training time, coaching, and leadership by example. Tests must also be job-related and consistently administered, with fair access to preparation and remediation.
As President-elect Kennedy said in 1960, “we can fully restore the physical soundness of our nation only if every American is willing to assume responsibility for his own fitness….” All first responders should follow Kennedy’s admonition to take personal responsibility for their own fitness, treating it as the safety issue it truly is.
When everyone in public safety works toward common, functional fitness standards, everyone benefits — communities, agencies, and the employees themselves.
