Question for USMC PFT at OCS for 2021

[davidc1220]

Per MARADMIN 630/19, The option for planks was implemented into the PFT at OCS along with planks. For some reason my OSO keeps having me do planks for my inventory PFTs, stating that OCS is moving away from the crunches and more towards Planks. Is this true? Currently I can hold up to 3:00- 3:30 but can max crunches easily and it affects my score significantly. If anyone from recent OCS classes can shed some light on this I would be very appreciative. Is there a reason why he keeps having me do planks?

 

[davidc1220]

Per MARADMIN 630/19, The option for planks was implemented into the PFT at OCS along with planks. For some reason my OSO keeps having me do planks for my inventory PFTs, stating that OCS is moving away from the crunches and more towards Planks. Is this true? Currently I can hold up to 3:00- 3:30 but can max crunches easily and it affects my score significantly. If anyone from recent OCS classes can shed some light on this I would be very appreciative. Is there a reason why he keeps having me do planks?

To add to my statement, I saw somewhere online the switch from crunches to plank was to comply with social distancing. I don't know if this is a permanent move but the MARADMIN is still active And I haven't seen an amendment to it

 

[Swanee]

Just continue to work to max both.

You may not know what you'll have to do until the morning of. Put yourself in the best place to be able perform no matter what task you're told to do.

 

[0621 Hertz]

Currently the Marines have no plans to switch to planks permanently, its just an option, like how you can do push ups instead of pull-ups.

However there are a bunch of OCSisms when it came to the PFT, like needing a 24 minute run, regardless of running a 1st Class or not. The CO has his own standard, and if he prefers candidates to do planks than that's the way it is. I'm pretty sure you weren't allowed to tape either if you were overweight, that's why I dropped 10 pounds before both PLC summers.

That being said a 4:20 plank is ridiculously harder than doing 110 crunches, but you just got to have to plank more dude. It took me forever to run a 24 minute 3 mile because I was hurt but patience and persistence got me there.

Get that 6 pack for Quantico, so you can get that beer belly in Pensacola.

 

[davidc1220]

I hear you there, im still working on my 3 mile but its gotten down from 28 to about 23-22. I'll keep doing the plank since im already at 3-3:30 and not much further from 4:20.

I guess we'll have to wait and see after the summer class that's going on now to see whats been implemented with the new CO they have. Planning to hopefully go to the fall class

 

[Highlander51]

Currently the Marines have no plans to switch to planks permanently, its just an option

This is now incorrect,

"Effective 1 January 2023, the plank will be mandatory for the PFT and the abdominal crunch will no longer be an alternative to the plank." (MARADMIN 404/21). The MARADMIN came out in August of 2021 so Hertz you were correct at the time, just trying to provide more up to date info.

Also, "starting 1 January 2022, the time required to achieve the maximum points will be 3 minutes, 45 seconds." so David if you're hitting 3:30 you're only 15 seconds away from being able to score 100 points on the plank portion of the PFT. However I would caution you about focusing too heavily on the planks, your big money maker for the PFT is your pullups. The way the scoring system is structured is that your last 8-10 pullups are worth more points than the others meaning that pullups 1-5 may be worth 1-2 points a piece, whereas pullups 18-23 may be worth 2-3 points a piece. It use to be more simple when we just did 20 pullups and they were all worth five points but that was too simple apparently.

Good luck and keep working hard.

 

[dav246]

It use to be more simple when we just did 20 pullups and they were all worth five points but that was too simple apparently.

Ha, how much you wanna bet they changed it because too many guys were maxing?