<p>This summer I'm headed to NASS (session 1), and I want to know what good scores are on the CFA. I'm not an iron-pumper, a football jock, or a track-god, but I'm in pretty good shape. I've gotten on a pretty intensive workout plan over the past 6 months, and want to see if I should possibly work harder in some areas than others. Right now I've got:</p>
<p>8:30 mile
60 pushups in two minutes
70 curl-ups in two minutes
7-pullups
60-foot basketball throw
??shuttle-run??</p>
<p>If I could get some advice that would be great. I'm working real hard on the curl-ups and the run, and I'm on the Armstrong Pull-up Program. </p>
<p>And for current midshipmen (or parents of current midshipmen), What would you have done differently in the application, nomination, preparation process for the Academy? </p>
<p>Work really hard at getting your run down. My BGO told me that if you have really good run times they may overlook a deficiency or two elsewhere. Your pushups look pretty good, as do your situps. Keep with your pull-up program since 7 is a fairly low score. 60 ft basketball throw is a little on the low side. </p>
<p>You are still have time though. Even if you take the CFA at NASS, you can take it again in the fall. Don't slack of this summer. Keep training hard and take it again in early fall. Biggest thing is just to have dedication to training, and your scores WILL go up....</p>
<p>they won't overlook a section that you failed just because you do well in another. you MUST pass EVERY section to pass the cfa. to put it bluntly, the scores you posted aren't stellar, so all you need to do is pass. one nice way to think about it (i didn't know 'til later in the process) is that the cfa is just another requirement, like DoDMERB, that you need to pass. if you do AMAZING (max several categories) you can get a few extra points on your WCS. if not, passing is all that's important. </p>
<p>with that said, you will need to get your mile down. think about working out with the track milers (even if it's too late to start competing). i'm a girl and i ran 7:15 which i would say (from what i hear) is a little below average (for girls).
another thing to keep in mind is that you'll be running the mile AFTER you've done everything else.</p>
<p>You have a great start. Push ups and sit ups are great and that basketball throw looks good. Get that mile down and you're good to go. My scores were worse except for the pull ups (yes, I know, I'm not proud of it), and I have been appointed. I wish I worked out more for the CFA so that I wouldn't have such a hard time now preparing for plebe summer.</p>
<p>Should've made myself clearer. I know you must pass every portion of the test. But if you do really well in the run you can afford to have weaker (but passing) portions. Not that you shouldn't train hard for all of it, you should. Although maxing out or getting high scores might not matter for some candidates, for others it can be the deciding factor between them and a comparitive (in other areas) candidate. So don't settle for just passing, train hard. Sure, some will get in with less than stellar scores, but others might be on the outside looking in because of less than stellar scores.</p>
<p>zanerdude09- your mile time needs to drop. I don't know if you have the time to knock it down to below a 6:30 before NASS but you should be able to drop it into the low 7s. you mentioned that you are going to be running in the fall, so you should talk to the coach and see if he can give you a workout. you can also check out Stew</a> Smith Navy SEAL CSCS - Military, Law Enforcement, and Basic Fitness Books - Download ebooks - Online Personal Training i found this really helpful and he actually came down to PT us at my SS session. there are a lot of running articles as well as articles dealing with training for the CFA. The biggest thing is don't overtrain and injury yourself, you can always retake the CFA if your scores dramatically improve. You are really close to maxing out the crunches, so if I were you I would train so I could max them out. Keep in mind, that at the academy they take the PRT every semester and when I was at NASS we also took it, so you might want to try and train so you at least meet the minimum requirements for that.</p>
<p>mid_13- the max for the girls mile in the CFA is 6:00</p>
<p>thanks! I know I won't put out anything stellar early this summer but I'm already planning on re-testing early fall. Ive got a month and change until the cfa at nass but ive got about six months until I need to have my final scores. my academics, ec's, and hopefully my medical stuff is up to par, but I'm playing catchup on the physical side.
Another Question: How far does my run need to be before the Academy? I know that's a long ways away, and even if i don't get in I'm going ROTC at Texas A&M who has a similar physical program (less, but still similar). I know "max" distances through plebe summer are 4-6 miles but I've heard more.
Thanks Again,
Z</p>
<p>Z- the guy I talked to at the academy (he was a firstie this year) said that they had the plebes do a 3-4 mile regiment run every few days at an 8:30 mile pace over plebe summer. He also said his class made them run a 10K race which is just over 6 miles, but I believe that was only once during the summer. Cross country should get you in excellent shape for this and you will be able to use the workouts from that to get ready for plebe summer. For now, hersheybear's suggestion is probably the way to go until cross country season starts. You want to build a base before you start training for speed and by simply running more will start to drop your times. However, if you want to add to this once you get a good distance base down, 400m repeats (1 lap around the track) is a really good way to build speed and endurance, aim to build up to 6-8 repeats before the summer ends. A good time to aim for is between 1:20 and 1:45 for each lap.</p>
<p>ooooo, 400m repeats! those are a great idea. i remember doing 16 repeats in xc practice once. definitely do those, but try to get someone to do them with you to keep you on pace. </p>
<p>and just to add to what i said before - i didn't mean only run for 70-90 minutes a week; that should be one of your workouts for the week, the rest of the days should be more focused on shorter distances and higher intensities like the workout eri690 suggested.</p>
<p>Another thing to remember about running @ the Academy is that the hot, humid weather adds difficulty for those from milder, drier climates. It took my son a good part of plebe summer to get his running time down to where it was when he left home.</p>
<p>Something that I did to prep for my CFA was do push-ups (5x15) and ab-work (8-minute abs or a 3x3 plank routine) at night five times a week for about 6 weeks on top of what I was doing during the day. Aside from running, I didn't practice just what is in the CFA. I did other supplemental things with weights, squats, running (long runs & workouts), yoga, etc.</p>
<p>I need to get back into that shape before I leave!</p>
<p>thanks for the advice. now how do i get that basketball throw longer? I just talked to someone who took it last year and he had a few good pointers. He said I could throw farther if my obliques got worked more so I'm hittin the machines and doing some tricep work and hopefully those will get better. And I'm not too worried about the humidity I do a lot of outdoors stuff in the summer in south texas so I'm pretty acclimated to that, but i've changed from running in the mornings and evenings to midday when it heats up a bit. </p>
<p>I can definitely see why working obliques may help the basketball throw to more forcefully push your body forward. I personally think that the basketball throw is pointless and isn't a very good indicator of anything. It's more technique than anything, but having big hands definitely helps.</p>
<p>Those workouts will help, but the basketball throw, despite being supposedly a test of upperbody strength is more about technique. When you throw, twist your upper body and release at the ball as you come back around to your orginal facing. Keep your eye and focus on a target straight in front of you on the other end of the court the entire time. It will help with your aim. Your throws will be longer if you throw in a straight line from you. Also, you want to release the ball at a 45 degree angle from the ground to get maximum distance.......these are just some things to think about. You should really just tkae these tips and go practice...practicing technique will help your score a lot. ...</p>
<p>honestly, I didn't really worry about the basketball throw, but my advice would be to use a medicine ball and practice throwing that instead of a basketball. the basketball throw is supposed to measure how much power, balance and coordination you have and unfortunately machines can only help you increase power. I think if you take a small medicine ball (like 5-10 lbs) and throw that, it would help build all three together not just one. If you really want to build the obliques though, I would try something that uses other muscles as well and not isolate them with machines to help balance everything out (I know of some really good exercises, let me know if you want them). The other thing is that you mentioned working on your triceps, which someone please correct me if I am wrong, but I don't really think you use your triceps that much when throwing the basketball. I am pretty sure the best form is more like that of throwing a shot put (which makes me wish I had picked up shot put during spring track last year) so I think working out your back muscles might be a better choice, because they are the ones that are going to generate the most power for you and they also pull you back and stabilize you after you release the ball (if you touch the floor it doesn't count). I hope this helps, as I said before, I didn't train at all for this so it wasn't the strongest section of my CFA, but if I were going to train for it now, this is how I would do it.
As far as everything else goes, I think the posts here are pretty solid and give some great suggestions on workouts. But just to give you some more options (doing the same routine gets really boring), you could try deck PT with either pushups or situps. All you do is take a deck of playing cards and the value of the card is how many reps of the excercise you do. I started out playing black cards were situps and red meant pushups, but there are endless possibilities and my current favorite is red-reverse crunches and black-regular crunches. Also a quick way to build up push-ups is to do 20 every ten minutes for a day. You can vary the reps and how often you do them from day to day. I did this about a week before I for NASS and went from barely being able to finish twenty to getting over 50 (I slacked a lot on this though, push-ups are not my favorite). It will definitely build strenght quickly, just be careful cause you can injury yourself easily by doing that program too long (I wouldn't do it for more than a week at most). Hope this helps and best of luck at NASS.</p>
<p>sry, i know I can be pretty long-winded, but jpr_fire2gold is dead on about the form. I would still build up muscle, but if you try to throw this like a regular ball, it won't go very far.</p>