“Recognizing the foreseeable conditions to include continued pandemic, PRIMS-2 rollout and modality validation, there will be a single PFA cycle for calendar year 2022,” Vice Adm. John B. Nowell, Jr., the chief of naval personnel, wrote in the message.  “All medically cleared Sailors must participate in the CY2022 Physical Fitness Assessment (PFA) cycle.”

Though a single testing cycle meets all military members’ annual Department of Defense fitness testing requirement, it will not allow the Navy to offer exemptions to those who had scored overall excellent or above performance on their 2021 assessment. That incentive will only be possible again when the Navy can safely return to testing twice a year.

However, commanders are authorized to use appropriate incentives at the local level to reward performance.

The message highlighted that planks will count in 2022, whereas in 2021 the planks were only there to further baseline the performance standards and were not calculated in the overall total. Sailors who take the fitness test in 2022 will be scored in all three events - push-ups, forearm plank and cardio or alternate cardio.

To help commands navigate both the 2021 and 2022 cycles, the Navy has updated Navy Physical Readiness Program Guide 10, which is available on the Navy Physical Readiness Program Website.

The update includes details on how to manually calculate their overall score without planks, using only scores from the push-ups and cardio or alternate-cardio events. The update also details the use of the Official Navy Physical Fitness mobile app to score stationary bike events.

The recent message also provides guidance to Command Fitness Leaders on maintaining hard-copy fitness records since the Physical Readiness Information Management System Two (PRIMS-2) is delayed. Performance scores will be documented on Fitness Reports and Evaluations. Y

CFLs were also instructed to manually track and monitor Sailors assigned to the Fitness Enhancement Program.

More information is available in NAVADMIN 264/21. 

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