If you remain vigilant about training them, there’s no reason why you can’t do well.

Sit Up or Stand Down

The muscles used for the APFT are: rectus abdominals, hip flexors and transverse abdominals. The rectus abdominals and transverse abdominal are two stomach muscle groups that make up your core muscles.

To work those muscles, consider doing abdominal curls, lying leg drops and the air bike⁄bicycle abdominal exercises.

All these exercises will also develop your hip flexors. The cut and dry of the sit up is repetition — performing as many of the different exercises as you can in one session, four to five days per week.

The Lowdown on the Push Up

Muscles involved with the push-up are a bit more complicated. Several muscles are used for this exercise. The chest muscles, shoulders, triceps and the lats (muscles in the wide part along the sides of the back) are the primary muscles used for the push-up, along with the core muscles.

To train the chest, try the chest press exercises, varying the incline from doing flat bench, incline bench and decline bench. For the triceps, try the tricep pressdown. The pressdown hits all three heads of the tricep muscle, so you can develop your tricep muscles with greater intensity.

The lat pulldown is one of the best ways to train the lats⁄back, but if you can’t find a lat pulldown machine, try doing bent over rows with a dumbbell, or just do pull-ups on the pull-up bar. For the core muscles, use the same exercises as your sit ups, but add in a plank you can hold for up to a minute at a time.

For shoulders, try the military overhead press. Finally, though the rotator cuff muscles are not part of the primary muscle groups used for the push up, the important thing you want to remember is they can become fatigued quickly, and they can also injure easily.

To exercise the rotator cuff muscles, do a lateral side raise with dumbbells. Stand with the weights at your side, then lift the weights forwards and upwards, keeping your thumbs pointed upwards on the weight.

Use a light weight for this exercise, as this is an endurance exercise, not a muscle bulking exercise.

Run Army Run Strong

The muscles used for running are relatively basic. Again, the core muscles are important for posture and to keep yourself upright so you can prevent fatigue, so keep doing those abdominal exercises from the sit up and push up.

Since the legs are the major muscle groups used — the quads, hamstring, glutes and calves, the best exercise you can do to train all these muscles will be a squat. If you can come to the gym, the leg press will also work those same muscles.

The leg flexion machine will help you to target those hamstrings better if you have the extra time to isolate the hamstrings.

But the most important muscle worked while running is the heart, and it must be trained optimally to guarantee results. The best cardiovascular exercises you can do beyond your usual morning runs are interval training runs, where you alternate fast sprint work efforts with easy jog recovery efforts.

If you spend 45 minutes during your session, you should be able to push out 12- 15 interval efforts. Just be sure to give yourself at least a five minute warm up and a five minute cool down during your 45 minute session.

Finally, we have a full staff here at Fort Myer Fitness Center that can meet your fitness needs, as well as a full aerobics class schedule tailored for helping you to meet your fitness goals.

Try out a boot camp class sometime, or an indoor cycling class in the mornings. We also have a variety of selectorized and free weight machines, as well as cardiovascular machines. Stop in and see all we can offer you.

For more information on training, or for information about our aerobics classes offered at Fort Myer Fitness Center, contact Damara Ross, sports specialist at (703) 696-7867.