CHALLENGE 3: Focus your military workout to improve your fitness
Now that you’ve tracked your habits in Challenge 1, it’s time to get moving! For this challenge, aim to do 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity per week, 75 minutes of vigorous activity per week, or a combination. Start with writing out your exercise-related smart goals.
Then, you’ll want to read about what counts as physical activity—if you’re not getting your heart rate up enough, it won’t count towards your activity minutes. See our article on physical activity to learn more.
Finally, build your workout plan. Making progress every day and week is hard if you have no real plan. You want to make exercise a habit, and learn about habit-building strategies to make working out part of your routine so you stick with it. Remember to log your workout using the cardio and workout planner worksheets. You can’t progress if you don’t remember what you did last week.
TASKS to achieve Challenge 3:
- You know regular exercise is important for health and weight loss. Here’s why.
- Review your SMART goals for weight loss—and tweak them or add more.
- Create a new SMART goals worksheet specifically for physical fitness.
- Military workout planning for beginners
- Use this worksheet to plan your cardio workouts and burn those calories!
- Plan your weight-training workout using this worksheet.
- Learn how nutrient timing can help improve your performance—and weight loss.
Additional resources: Challenge 3
Find more resources on how you can make sure you’re getting enough exercise and fueling properly.
Benefits of group exercise
Creatine: Just the facts
Find your fitness battle buddy
How to fuel your post-workout recovery
Physical fitness training Series: Army Combat Fitness Test
Physical fitness training series: Air Force Physical Fitness Assessment
Physical fitness training series: USCG Physical Fitness Test
Physical fitness training series: Navy Physical Readiness Test
Physical fitness training series: USMC Physical Fitness Test & Combat Fitness Test
Pre-workouts: What to look out for
Stay active and maintain military fitness through cold, snowy winters
A PDF version of the full Get into Fighting Weight: A Total Force Fitness Guide (PDF) is available for download.
