Marine officers probably have it the roughest PT wise. You essentially will be expected to nearly MAX your PFT. Max is 300, which for your age would be about 20 pullups in 2 min, 100 situps in 2 min, and a 18:00 3 mi run. You are expected to get at LEAST 275 by the time you go to OCS... In contrast, the other services are perfectly happy with passing scores from their officers. Except I guess Army combat branches.

If you have it mentally then getting yourself fit enough should not be a problem..

Clarification, there is no time limit on the pullups. Also these are dead-hang, in other words after each time you chin clears the bar, you have to drop back down to a straight-armed dead hang. Officers are expected to be able to outdo any enlisted personnel, not always true though....:)

A fit officer will find it much easier to command respect from grunts like me. Everything we enlisted grunts do, we expect the PC to do it with us and do it better.

is that underarm or overarm grip on the pullups? If it's overarm grip that is tough 18:00 for 3 miles shouldn't be too difficult if you're into running and aren't built like a brick outhouse. 100 situps in two minutes is quite tough, but will depend on the technique imposed by the PT instructor and whether a partner can kneel on your feet or hold your ankles. My advice is be as strong as you can, but be as light as you can like a gymnast. Avoid power lifting, work on muscular strength and particularly muscular endurance. Do you lots of running and cycling. People usually carry more fat on them than they realise. When I was going through training I was quite surprised that guys my height were the same height as me (6ft 1") but 12stone and I was 14stone, and they were stronger than me. I was never a popular catch when it came to pairing up for the firemans carry. Managed to grizz my way through and lose about 20pounds in weight.

You can do over or under, even a combination of the two as long as you dont drop from the bar. Yes over is tougher, but if you do them every day, you will get better then if you do under. I started out doing only 3 over and got up to 18 in 5 weeks. As far as size, some of our best runners are big, it really doesnt have alot to do with it. Situps are just like pullups, do them alot and they come easy after a few weeks. Its all about finding your pace and keeping it. A partner will sit on your feet, your arms will be crossed on your chest, your forerms must touch your thighs and you shoulderblades hit the ground to complete one correct crunch.

I'm pretty sure the pull up is an either or thing no combo both hands must face the same way, but it's not that hard. To work on it trying doing them with your arms spread far and palms facing out, you wont get as many at first but the potential for growth is huge.

MCO P6100.12 states that no restrictions are to be added to the contents of the order. The order says nothing about being able to change over or not, therefore you cannot add that restriction. The only restriction would be both hands must be facing the same way when you continue your pullups after changing from one grip to another.

>"Marine officers probably have it the roughest PT wise. You essentially will be expected to nearly MAX your PFT. Max is 300, which for your age would be about 20 pullups in 2 min, 100 situps in 2 min, and a 18:00 3 mi run. You are expected to get at LEAST 275 by the time you go to OCS..."< That is pretty easy. 20 pull ups in 2 mins? That sounds almost too easy..I am 6-0" and 185 lb, and I can do 12 dead hangs in 45 seconds. If I rested for 20 seconds after that I would easily get the other 8. The 100 situps isn't that bad, especially if you have a partner holding your ankles. I could probably get 90 in 2 minutes, but I don't do alot of sit-ups. The 18:00 3 mile run would be challenging, but I could already manage that one. I do have one question: I continue to get bigger, taller, and more muscular. Which means I put on more weight and it might slow me down. Should I quite working out with weights to avoid getting too big?

It's not about getting "big", you just have to make sure your muscles are toned, so you have enough upper body strength to deal with heavy loads. So long as you go running/cycling as well as weight training, your body should burn off excess muscle/fat reserves via anearobic respiration through your cells not getting enough oxygen for aerobic respiration. I don't remember the proper biological terminology really, but basically so long as you do well rounded exercise, and don't focus too much on any one, you should do fine... It is a common generalisation of American soldiers, that they focus far too much on upper body strength and so suffer on tabs.