All You Need to Know About Training for Police Physical Fitness Test

If you want to clear the police department’s fitness test, you must physically and mentally prepare yourself. While every police department throughout the country uses their version of the test, they’re more or less the same. The physical test is made to test your body strength, endurance, agility, and mental determination. Here are a few tips aspiring police officers can use to pass and exceed expectations in a physical test.

Running Segment 

The running segment is the most critical challenge in a physical fitness test. The 1.5-mile-long run must be completed within 15 minutes 54 seconds. For men, finishing the run between 10 minutes, 30 seconds, and 12 minutes is considered average. If you want to excel in this test element, you must finish the laps in under 9 minutes 44 seconds.

For women, a time that’s considered average to above average is between 13 minutes 30 seconds and 16 minutes. To be considered a top candidate, you must strive to finish the lap under 12 minutes 30 seconds.

The NYPD has a 2-minute difference in lap completion timings for both men and women. If you want more details about the percentile and age factor, you can check out the NYPD website.

Suggested Running Regimen

If you want to ace the physical test, you should start training for it well in advance. Start with short distance runs and work your way up by running 1.5 miles and more. When you gradually increase your distance, you strengthen your cardiovascular system, which helps you run faster and farther without exhaustion.

Putting on an elevation training mask can help you when you train. It can strengthen your diaphragm and enables you to breathe more forcefully, increasing your lung capacity. This training mask can leverage your lung capacity as it forces you to inhale and exhale deeply, increasing your oxygen and blood flow.

Likewise, putting on a training vest during your run can also help you build your stamina. The training vest adds weight and increases resistance in your cardio activities, making you use more energy in your running regimen.

By adding more weight to your vest every week, you can strengthen your legs. Removing the vest can make you feel lighter, increasing your running speed. Alternating your sprints with the vest on and off is good practice.

If you’re an aspiring officer, a training vest will help simulate the weight of a bulletproof vest and active-duty belt.

The physical test also needs you to finish a 300-meter run within 78 seconds. Therefore, you must incorporate sprint and interval runs in your running routine to focus on small strides, posture, and breathing.

Push-ups: Increasing Body Strength 

Push-ups are the second part of the fitness test. A single rep of push-up is counted when the candidate performs its proper form, briefly touching their chest on the floor. The NYPD physical test requires the male and female candidates to perform 30 and 18 push-ups, respectively, on average. To be considered as one of the top candidates and be counted under the 70th percentile, men and women must perform 41 and 24 push-ups, respectively. Visit the push-up section on the NYPD website for more information about the ages and corresponding percentiles.

To acquire proper form when performing push-ups, you must hold your arms close to your body and tighten your core muscles. Here’s a range of different push-ups that can leverage your chest and arm strength:

Incline push-ups

They’re performed when you place your hands on an elevated platform. Start in a conventional push-up position and slowly lean on the platform until your chest is around 6 inches from the surface. Then push back.

Wide push-ups 

In this variation, you hold your hands in a position that’s wider than your shoulder’s width.

Weighted push-ups

These are standard push-ups you do while putting on a weighted vest.

Diamond push-ups 

Put your hands close to each other and form a diamond shape between your thumb and index finger. Once in the position, continue performing the push-up regularly. This variation targets your triceps.

All the variations of push-ups can strengthen your lower and upper body, especially your core and chest area.

As an aspiring candidate, you must try to perform 100 push-ups every day. To achieve this, you must perform the maximum number of push-ups you can perform every day and work your way up. With time, your body will adapt to the number of reps you perform daily, and you’ll be able to perform push-ups on the test day very easily.

Train for Sit-Ups

Sit-ups are the third and final part of the fitness test. They test the endurance and strength of your abdominal muscles. To pass the test, men and women must perform 40 and 35 sit-ups, respectively. They must perform 45 and 41 push-ups, respectively, if they want to be considered top of the class.

The sit-up test requires you to interlace your fingers behind your head and bring your torso up into a sitting position from a lying position. For one complete rep of a sit-up, your elbows should touch your knees when you’re in the upright position, and your back should touch the floor when you’re reclining.

You must strengthen your abdominal muscles with time to improve your technique and increase the number of reps. You can improve your abdominal muscle’s strength by practicing core-strengthening exercises and stability movements like planks, reverse crunches, and Russian twists.

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