Swizec Teller - a geek with a hatswizec.com

Senior Mindset Book

Get promoted, earn a bigger salary, work for top companies

Senior Engineer Mindset cover
Learn more

    Despite daily strength training I'm not fit enough for WW2

    This morning I took the Art of Manliness' World War 2 Fitness Test. The US military started using this test in 1942 to weed out soldiers who weren't fit enough for the rigors of combat.

    Pullups
    Pullups
    Squat jumps
    Squat jumps
    Pushups
    Pushups
    Situps
    Situps

    The test is designed around functional strength rather than looking pretty and puts a big emphasis on good form. There are five exercises:

    1. Pullups - front grip, full extension, chin above the bar
    2. Squat jumps - leaping into the air from a squat, hands clasped on your head
    3. Pushups - palms forward, elbows backward, full extension down to chests touching a palm (1.5cm above ground)
    4. Situps - extended knees, hands clasped behind head, right elbow to left knee and vice-versa
    5. Cardio - three different kinds depending on test conditions, all based on starting and stopping

    My attempt

    Those situps might be a bit outdated these days (something about the health of spines), but doing them for one test won't kill ya ;)

    After doing strength exercises every morning for two years and a solid year of boxing practice two to three times a week ... I scored abysmally low with an average score of just 40.4 - which is to say juuuuust under the line where poor turns into fair.

    • 7 pullups
    • 20 squat jumps
    • 33 pushups
    • 43 situps
    • 24 squat thrusts

    Going to use my cough as an excuse and say it's really difficult to do this stuff when you're also coughing and wheezing, but the reality is that I'm just not good enough. Yet.

    I knew I wasn't going to do well in the squats - I can do half squats forever because of longboarding, but deep squats have always been a problem. Just don't have any leg strength at the bottom of the motion. Never have.

    The biggest disappointment were the pushups, however. I do 150 of those every morning. On the test I only managed 28 ... and on a second try 33. Horrible! I probably focus too much on reps rather than good form in my morning routine. This should change.

    Plus it was a real bummer that as soon as you stop a bit to breathe, your try is over. It really is about continuous motion and that's hard.

    Oh and the situps aren't as bad as they seem at first. I managed to do 43, but I was coughing and wheezing through the last 10 of those. According to the score sheet this is on the bottom end of fair, but going into this test I didn't think I'd do more than ten.

    Despite the somewhat terrible result, I have to say I really like this test. Think I'm going to include it into my weekly routine, plot it on a graph somewhere and use it to track progress. Eventually I might even reach a perfect score ... maybe. Probably not.

    At least I might be able to break the plateau I've been on for the last six months or so! That'd be awesome.

    A guy who passed the test
    A guy who passed the test
    Published on August 7th, 2012 in Burpee, Cough, CrossFit, Pull-up (exercise), Push-up, Squat (exercise), Uncategorized

    Did you enjoy this article?

    Continue reading about Despite daily strength training I'm not fit enough for WW2

    Semantically similar articles hand-picked by GPT-4

    Senior Mindset Book

    Get promoted, earn a bigger salary, work for top companies

    Learn more

    Have a burning question that you think I can answer? Hit me up on twitter and I'll do my best.

    Who am I and who do I help? I'm Swizec Teller and I turn coders into engineers with "Raw and honest from the heart!" writing. No bullshit. Real insights into the career and skills of a modern software engineer.

    Want to become a true senior engineer? Take ownership, have autonomy, and be a force multiplier on your team. The Senior Engineer Mindset ebook can help 👉 swizec.com/senior-mindset. These are the shifts in mindset that unlocked my career.

    Curious about Serverless and the modern backend? Check out Serverless Handbook, for frontend engineers 👉 ServerlessHandbook.dev

    Want to Stop copy pasting D3 examples and create data visualizations of your own? Learn how to build scalable dataviz React components your whole team can understand with React for Data Visualization

    Want to get my best emails on JavaScript, React, Serverless, Fullstack Web, or Indie Hacking? Check out swizec.com/collections

    Did someone amazing share this letter with you? Wonderful! You can sign up for my weekly letters for software engineers on their path to greatness, here: swizec.com/blog

    Want to brush up on your modern JavaScript syntax? Check out my interactive cheatsheet: es6cheatsheet.com

    By the way, just in case no one has told you it yet today: I love and appreciate you for who you are ❤️

    Created by Swizec with ❤️