ACFT Scoring Guide: How to Max Every Event

1. From APFT to ACFT to AFT, and Why the Test Changed

For about forty years the Army measured fitness with the APFT: two minutes of push-ups, two minutes of sit-ups, and a two-mile run. It was cheap, it was simple, and it tested almost nothing that matters when you're carrying a casualty or a base plate up a hill. You could max the APFT and still be useless under a ruck. Everybody in the force knew it. The test rewarded skinny runners and punished strong soldiers, and it had nothing to say about the kind of strength and power combat actually demands.

The ACFT was the Army's answer to that. It brought in a deadlift, a power throw, a loaded shuttle, and a real core measure, because those things track much closer to what your body does in the field. The intent was right. The rollout was rough. The test got revised more than once, the leg tuck got replaced by the plank, the scoring got re-normed by age and sex, and soldiers got whiplash from the constant changes.

Then in 2025 the Army made the biggest change yet. The Army Fitness Test replaced the ACFT on 1 June 2025. The Standing Power Throw, the backward medicine-ball toss everybody loved to hate, got cut, dropping the test from six events to five. And the Army layered in a tougher, sex-neutral standard for combat roles, phasing in 1 January 2026 for the active component and 1 June 2026 for the Guard and Reserve. Old ACFT scores stopped counting on 30 September 2025.

Here's the part that matters to you: the five events that survived are the five that were always the backbone of the test. If you trained the ACFT honestly, you're already training the AFT. Nothing about the work below is wasted. The Army just trimmed the fat and raised the bar for the people who kick in doors.

2. How the AFT Is Scored Now

Five events. Each one is scored on a scale of 0 to 100 points. Sixty is the minimum passing score on every single event, and here's the rule that gets people killed: it's not just about your total. If you bomb one event below 60, you fail the whole test, even if every other event is maxed. A 440 total with a 55 on the run is a failure. Plan for the floor on your weak event before you chase points on your strong one.

Add your five event scores and that's your total out of 500. Where the bar sits depends on your job:

AFT Standards: General vs. Combat

Standard	Who it applies to	Minimum per event	Minimum total
General	Most soldiers	60	300
Combat (sex-neutral)	21 combat MOSs/AOCs (infantry, armor, combat engineer, and the like)	60	350

The general standard is scored by age band and sex. The combat standard is sex-neutral, meaning the same numbers for everyone, but it's still normed by age. That's the headline change of the new era: if you hold a combat MOS, a woman and a man are held to the exact same performance, and the total floor climbs from 300 to 350. The age bands run in five-year steps: 17–21, 22–26, 27–31, and up from there.

One honest word about scoring tables. The full point-by-point chart covers every age band and category, and it runs for pages. The single source of truth is the Army's official AFT Scoring Scales (effective 1 June 2025). Pull your exact age and category from the Army's official AFT page and the scoring scales PDF linked there. Throughout this guide I give you the 100-point max-out number for the youngest, hardest bracket, because if you can hit those, you max the event at every age. I'll flag the passing floor too, but verify your bracket against the official chart.

The Number to Max Each Event (100 points)

Event	Max-out performance (100 pts)
3-Rep Max Deadlift (MDL)	340 lb
Hand-Release Push-Up (HRP)	60 reps in 2:00
Sprint-Drag-Carry (SDC)	1:33
Plank (PLK)	3:40
Two-Mile Run (2MR)	13:22

Max-out figures reflect the toughest (17–21 / combat) scale. Older age bands reach 100 points at slightly easier numbers. Minimum passing performance varies by bracket, so confirm yours on the official AFT scoring scales.

3. The Five Events: Standards, Mistakes, and How to Max Each

Take these in the order you'll test them. Every event below gets the same treatment: what it's testing, the numbers, the mistakes that cost people points, and the training that fixes it.

3-Rep Max Deadlift (MDL)

You load a 60-pound hex bar and pull the heaviest three-rep set you can. Three clean reps, touch-and-go or reset, your call. This is the strength anchor of the whole test, and it's the event where the biggest, fastest point gains are hiding for most soldiers.

What it tests

Raw posterior-chain strength, meaning your hips, glutes, hamstrings, and back working as one unit, plus the bracing and grip to control a heavy load. This is the closest the test gets to measuring whether you can pick something heavy off the ground and not get hurt. A casualty, an ammo can, the back of a truck. It's the most transferable strength on the test.

MDL Scoring Benchmarks

Standard	Performance	Points
Max out	340 lb (3 reps)	100
Pass (floor)	~140 lb (general) / ~150 lb (combat)	60

Common mistakes

The number one mistake is rounding the back and turning a hip hinge into a back lift. It costs you weight and it's how people tweak their lower back the week before a test. The second is jerking the bar off the floor instead of taking the slack out and pulling smooth. Yank a heavy bar and it stops you cold. The third is grip: soldiers who can pull the weight drop the bar early because their hands give out. And the fourth is showing up to test day having never actually worked up to a true three-rep max, so they have no idea what they can do under the bar.

How to train it

Deadlift, and its cousins, two to three times a week with real intent. Build the pattern with conventional and trap-bar deadlifts, then add Romanian deadlifts for hamstring strength and hip thrusts for glute power. Train in low rep ranges, sets of 3 to 5, because that's where maximal strength lives. Fix your grip with heavy farmer's carries and dead hangs so your hands never become the limiter. And periodically work up to a heavy triple so test day isn't the first time you've seen the weight. Strength is the slowest quality to build but the most permanent. Start here, start early.

Hand-Release Push-Up (HRP)

Two minutes. As many reps as you can. But not a normal push-up. At the bottom of every rep your chest hits the deck and you lift both hands completely off the ground, then bring them back and press up. The hand release kills momentum and forces an honest rep every single time.

What it tests

Upper-body pushing strength and, more than that, muscular endurance: chest, shoulders, and triceps holding up over two minutes, plus the trunk control to keep your body in one rigid line. The hand release is what separates this from the old push-up. You can't bounce, you can't cheat the bottom, and a sloppy core makes every rep harder.

HRP Scoring Benchmarks

Standard	Performance	Points
Max out	60 reps in 2:00	100
Pass (floor)	~10+ reps (varies by bracket)	60

Common mistakes

Soldiers blow out of the gate, hit 25 fast, and then die at 40 with thirty seconds left on the clock and nothing in the tank. Pacing wins this event. The second mistake is a saggy or piked body line. Let your hips drop or your butt rise and you waste energy and risk a no-rep. The third is a lazy hand release that doesn't fully lift off the deck, which a strict grader will not count. Form breaks down when you're smoked, and smoked is exactly when the grader is watching.

How to train it

Frequency beats heroics here. Greasing the groove, with multiple short, sub-maximal sets of push-ups through the day several days a week, builds the endurance better than grinding to failure once. Train the hand-release version specifically so the movement is automatic. Add close-grip pressing and dips for triceps, and don't neglect rows and pulling work, because balanced shoulders hold form longer and stay healthy. Then practice the two-minute test itself and learn your pace: a steady rep every two to three seconds will carry you far past the soldier who sprints and stalls.

Sprint-Drag-Carry (SDC)

Five 50-meter shuttles back to back, for time: a sprint down and back, drag a 90-pound sled down and back, a lateral shuffle down and back, carry two 40-pound kettlebells down and back, then a final sprint. It's roughly a minute and a half of all-out misery, and it's the event that exposes whoever skipped their conditioning.

What it tests

Everything at once: anaerobic power, muscular strength, muscular endurance, grip, agility, and the mental willingness to keep moving when your legs and lungs are screaming. There is nowhere to hide in the SDC. It's the most "combat" event on the test because it stacks strength and speed under fatigue, exactly like real work does.

SDC Scoring Benchmarks

Standard	Performance	Points
Max out	1:33	100
Pass (floor)	~3:00 (varies by bracket)	60

Common mistakes

Standing too tall on the sled drag. You have to drop your hips, lean back, and drive with your legs like you're in a tug of war, not stroll backward upright. On the carry, soldiers let the kettlebells swing and lose their grip and their line; keep them tight to your sides and move. The biggest tactical mistake is the turns: long, lazy, rounded turns at each 25-meter line bleed seconds on every one of the ten changes of direction. Get low, plant, and snap around. And the universal one: going out so hard on the first sprint that you've got nothing left for the drag.

How to train it

You have to rehearse the actual event. Set up a sled and kettlebells and run the whole sequence, then rest fully and run it again. Quality over volume, because a sloppy tired rep just teaches you to be slow. Build the engine with short, hard intervals: 50- to 100-meter sprints, sled pushes and drags, and loaded carries. Train change-of-direction with shuttle drills so your turns get sharp. And practice the pace: controlled aggression on the opening sprint, then empty the tank on the back half. The SDC rewards the soldier who's done it a dozen times and punishes the one seeing it fresh on test day.

Plank (PLK)

Hold a proper plank, forearms down and body in a straight line from head to heels, for as long as you can. The plank replaced the leg tuck because graders can score it consistently and almost anyone can perform it safely. Simple to describe, brutal to max.

What it tests

Core and trunk endurance under sustained tension, specifically the ability to resist your hips sagging toward the ground. That anti-extension strength is what keeps your spine stable under a ruck, under body armor, and under a heavy bar. A strong plank quietly makes your deadlift, your carries, and your run more efficient.

PLK Scoring Benchmarks

Standard	Performance	Points
Max out	3:40	100
Pass (floor)	~1:30 (varies by bracket)	60

Common mistakes

Sagging hips is the classic. The moment your lower back dips, you're done, and a good grader calls it. The opposite sin is piking your hips up to take the load off your core, which is also a no-go. Soldiers also set up wrong: elbows too far forward, no tension through the glutes and quads, so they're just hanging on bone and willpower. And many treat it as pure pain tolerance instead of trained endurance. They never actually practice long holds, so their core fails before their mind does.

How to train it

Train the plank directly and progressively. Hold for time, add five to ten seconds a week, and accumulate volume across multiple sets. Then make your core actually strong, not just enduring: weighted carries (farmer's, suitcase, and front-rack) build the exact anti-extension stability the plank measures, and they carry straight over to the deadlift and SDC. Add hollow holds and ab-wheel rollouts for honest core strength. Squeeze your glutes and quads hard during the hold, because a tense plank is an efficient plank. This is a free 100 if you put in ten focused minutes a week.

Two-Mile Run (2MR)

Run two miles for time on a measured course. It's the oldest event in Army fitness and still the one that separates the conditioned from the hopeful. It comes last, after the deadlift, push-ups, sled, and plank have already taxed you, which is the whole point.

What it tests

Aerobic endurance, plain and simple: your engine. But on the AFT it also tests your endurance on tired legs, because you run it after four other events. Your raw mile time matters less than your ability to hold a hard pace when you're already smoked.

2MR Scoring Benchmarks

Standard	Performance	Points
Max out	13:22	100
Pass (floor)	~22:00 (varies by bracket)	60

Common mistakes

Going out too fast. Every runner who blows up does the same thing: a hot first half-mile fueled by adrenaline, then a death march to the finish. The second mistake is the opposite of what most soldiers think they need: they only ever run hard, never easy, so they're always a little broken and never actually build an aerobic base. The third is running on bad mechanics, like overstriding, heel-slamming, and arms flailing, which wastes energy you can't spare. And the fourth is treating the run as a standalone when it's the last event; if you never train it fatigued, test day is a nasty surprise.

How to train it

Most of your running should be slow and conversational. This is the part soldiers refuse to believe: easy aerobic volume is what builds the engine, and 80 percent of your mileage should feel easy. Then add one or two quality sessions a week: tempo runs at a comfortably-hard pace, and intervals like 400s and 800s at faster-than-race pace. Build your weekly mileage gradually; the run rewards consistency over months, not heroics over a weekend. Practice goal pace so your body knows what it feels like. And once in a while, run right after a hard lift or a conditioning circuit so you're rehearsing the fatigue you'll actually face.

What about the Standing Power Throw?

If you're reading an older ACFT guide, you'll see a sixth event: the Standing Power Throw, a backward heave of a 10-pound medicine ball. It's gone. The AFT removed it in 2025, so there's no SPT score, no SPT standard, and nothing to train for it. If a calculator or chart still lists six events and a 600-point max, it's out of date. You're on five events and 500 points now.

4. Passing vs. Competing, the Gap Nobody Talks About

Passing the AFT means clearing 60 on every event and hitting your total floor, which is 300 general and 350 combat. That's the bar to keep your job. It is not the bar to build a career, and it's nowhere near the bar that earns respect.

Here's the difference in plain numbers. A soldier scraping 60s across the board sits around 300. A soldier maxing every event sits at 500. That two-hundred-point spread is the entire distance between "didn't get flagged" and "is the standard everyone else gets measured against." When a board looks at two soldiers and one has a 540 and the other has a 360, that score is telling a story about discipline before anyone reads a single line of the file.

A genuinely competitive score, the kind that turns heads at a selection, a schoolhouse, or a promotion board, lives up in the high 400s and 500s, with real strength on the deadlift and a fast, honest run. Maxing one event and limping through the rest doesn't make you a high performer; it makes you a specialist with a hole in your game. The soldiers who compete are balanced and strong everywhere, and they treat the 60-point floor as an insult, not a target.

There's a practical reason to aim high, too. The combat standard is now sex-neutral and the floors are climbing. The force is getting more serious about fitness, not less. The soldier who built a real buffer above the minimum is the one who shrugs off a bad night of sleep, a deployment that wrecked their training, or an injury that set them back. Margin is everything.

5. How to Train for the Whole Test, Not One Event at a Time

Here's where most soldiers go wrong. They find their worst event, hammer it into the ground, watch another event slip while they're distracted, and end up chasing their tail for months. The AFT is five events that pull your body in different directions, from maximal strength on one end to aerobic endurance on the other, and you have to develop both without letting either one rob the other. That's a programming problem, not a willpower problem.

Strength and endurance can fight each other

Pure strength work and high-volume endurance work send your body conflicting signals. Run sixty miles a week and your deadlift will stall. Only lift heavy and never run, and your two-mile falls apart. The answer isn't to avoid one. It's to sequence and balance them so they coexist. You can absolutely build a strong deadlift and a fast run at the same time. You just can't peak both with maximum volume in the same week.

Periodize it

Think in blocks of a few weeks, each with a clear emphasis, rather than trying to do everything maximally all the time. A simple approach that works: start with a strength-leaning block where lifting is the priority and running stays mostly easy to maintain your base. Transition into a block that adds conditioning and event-specific work, like SDC rehearsals, run intervals, and plank progressions, while you hold onto the strength you built. Then, in the few weeks before a test, sharpen: practice the actual events at goal effort, cut the heavy volume, and show up fresh. Strength is the slowest to build, so it gets the early real estate; conditioning sharpens faster, so it peaks closer to the test.

A realistic week

For most soldiers, three to four strength sessions and three to four runs a week, with the event-specific work folded in, covers it. Lift heavy and low-rep for the deadlift and pressing. Keep the bulk of your running easy with one or two hard sessions. Train the plank and carries a couple of times a week, because they cost almost nothing and pay off across multiple events. Build push-up volume through frequent submaximal sets rather than one weekly grind. The carries are your secret weapon: they build grip, core, and the exact strength-endurance the SDC and plank reward, all at once.

How long it actually takes

Be honest with yourself about the timeline. A soldier who's currently passing can add meaningful points and clean up form in eight to twelve weeks. Going from passing to genuinely competitive, into the high 400s, is a six-month to one-year project, because real strength and a real aerobic base are built slowly and don't respond to cramming. A soldier who's failing can often get to passing in eight to twelve focused weeks if the training is consistent, but "consistent" is the whole game. Two good weeks followed by a skipped one is how people stay stuck for years. The body responds to the work you actually do, repeated over time. There's no hack. There's just the plan and the reps.

6. For the Soldiers Who Struggle Most: the Run and the SDC

If you're going to fail the AFT, the odds say it'll be the two-mile run or the sprint-drag-carry. They're the two events that punish poor conditioning the hardest, and they're where I see the most soldiers white-knuckle their way to a barely-passing score year after year. The good news: they're also the two most fixable, because the people struggling usually aren't training them correctly at all.

The run

Most soldiers who can't run have one of two problems, sometimes both. Either they only run hard, so every run is a gut-check and they're always sore and never building a base, or they barely run at all and show up to the test undertrained, hoping willpower covers the gap. The fix for both is the same and it feels counterintuitive: slow down and run more. Build a base of easy, conversational mileage where you can hold a conversation the whole way. That easy volume is what grows the aerobic engine. Then add a single weekly interval or tempo session for top-end speed. Within a couple of months of consistent easy mileage plus one hard day, soldiers who were stuck for years start dropping minutes. Body weight matters here too. If you're carrying extra weight that isn't helping your deadlift, the run is where it taxes you most. Losing dead weight is free speed.

The sprint-drag-carry

The SDC wrecks people for a different reason: it's a skill and a conditioning test at the same time, and most soldiers never practice the skill. They have the fitness to do it but they've never rehearsed the sled position, the turns, or the pacing, so they waste enormous energy fighting the event itself. The fix is rehearsal plus anaerobic conditioning. Run the actual sequence with the sled and kettlebells, rest, and run it again. Learn where to drop your hips, how to keep the bells tight, and how to snap your turns. Then build the anaerobic engine with short, hard intervals and loaded carries so you're not redlined halfway through. A soldier who's practiced the SDC ten times and trained the energy system will beat a fitter soldier who's seeing it cold every time.

One more thing about both events: they reward the soldier who built a buffer everywhere else. If your deadlift and plank are strong, you arrive at the SDC and the run with more in the tank. The events aren't separate islands. Strength in the early events leaves you fresher for the conditioning at the end. That's another reason to train the whole test as one system instead of five separate problems.