The British Army is remodelling its fitness standards after it changed to “woke” assessment methods.

In 2019, the army radically changed its annual fitness tests, with many mocking the new approach as being “woke” due to the removal of pass or fail grades.

The introduction of the Soldier Conditioning Review (SCR) was designed to take a scientific approach to soldiers’ fitness, with tests designed to measure strength, explosive speed, and endurance. However, the SCR was criticised for being “easier” than the test it replaced.

Under the new measures, new minimum standards will be introduced, and those who fail to meet them will be forced to conduct remedial physical training every day.

An army Physical Training Instructor who regularly runs SCR assessments told the Express.co.uk: “I understand the principle of the SCR and the scientific approach,h but you can’t deny it has been made easier.

“Before, you had to complete a mile and a half run in 10 and a half minutes for men, whereas now, with the SCR, you run a shorter distance but get given more time, and because it is an ‘assessment’, you technically can’t fail.

“We do remedial training for those that take more than 13 minutes, but this happens rarely.”

Before the SCR, soldiers were required to do best-effort press-ups, sit-ups and a 1.5-mile run with clear pass-or-fail criteria.

The impetus for increased fitness standards comes as the UK faces threats of Russian aggression. Some believe that the army’s lack of warfare in the last decade has made some soldiers complacent about their fitness.

A sergeant major who deployed twice to Afghanistan as a combat engineer believes that some young soldiers are blind to the importance of fitness to their ability to do their job.

He said: “I know people often say ‘it was tougher in my day’, but when I was a young soldier, we knew we were going to Afghanistan, and if we weren’t fit, we were literally putting our lives at risk.

“Back then, the fitter you were, the easier you were able to deal with or prevent niggles, but nowadays, people have been able to get by with average fitness. I worry how they would cope if they deployed into a hostile theatre.”

The proposed changes to the SCR come as the Commander Field Army, the person responsible for generating and preparing forces for current and contingency operations across the globe, believes that “some soldiers are not as fit as they should be.”

An Army orders document seen by the Mail said: “Commander Field Army has instituted changes to the Soldier Conditioning Review following his finding that soldiers are not as fit as they should be, including that some of our soldiers are overweight and that we have lost some of our ability to carry weight over distance.

“These observations, combined with the failure rates for Risk Reduction Exercises across the Army, have resulted in a clear direction that the SCR will change and that we must start to take physical fitness and robustness more seriously.

“Once the standards are confirmed, a failure to reach them will result in individuals attending remedial PT daily until they have reached the minimum standards required. The minimum standards are just that, the baseline.”

An Army spokesman said: “Physical fitness and resilience have always been, and will remain, a core part of being a soldier. We routinely test and adjust our approach to physical conditioning to ensure personnel remain fit to fight whilst avoiding injury.

“The Soldier Conditioning Review is just one way we assess and improve the conditioning of personnel as part of a comprehensive approach to fitness and resilience.”