After canceling the previous two rounds of physical fitness assessments due to the pandemic, the Navy has plans to begin conducting them again beginning in January.
USNI News reports that Vice Adm. John Nowell encouraged sailors to keep in shape, with the knowledge that even temporarily canceling PFAs wouldn’t mean ending them altogether.
“I do absolutely understand that COVID has made that harder, and certainly we’ve lived through that personally here, and on a ship it can be even harder,” Nowell said. “But when we said we’re going to cancel the PFA, it didn’t mean that we were canceling staying healthy and staying fit. So there are a lot of ways that we’ll ask sailors to do that.”
Nowell suggested that even with fitness facilities being closed, sailors go for jogs and do planks on their own as a means of staying in shape.
The pandemic forced the cancelations of both the spring and fall 2020 PFAs. When they do resume, the Navy has said that it will institute new exercises: substituting planks for curl-ups, and allowing for rowing to be an option for cardio exercise. Nowell told USNI News that the new exercises will allow sailors to maintain physical distance from others.
