Space Force Fitness Standards: HPA Scoring, Failures, and Appeals

To meet Space Force fitness standards, a Guardian must pass the Human Performance Assessment (HPA) twice a year with a composite score of at least 75 out of 100 and stay under a waist-to-height ratio of 0.55 on the separate Body Composition Assessment. The HPA has three scored components: push-ups, a core endurance exercise, and a 2-mile run. Fall short on either the fitness test or the body composition standard often enough, and you enter a mandatory improvement program that can end in administrative separation.

What the Human Performance Assessment Measures

The HPA has three components, and each carries a minimum score you have to hit on top of the 75-point composite.¹

Cardiorespiratory fitness (60 points max): A 2-mile run, a 20-meter High Aerobic Multi-Shuttle Run (HAMR), or a 2-kilometer walk for Guardians medically prohibited from running. At least one of your two annual HPAs has to use the 2-mile run.
Muscular strength (20 points max): One minute of push-ups, or two minutes of hand-release push-ups.
Muscular endurance (20 points max): One minute of sit-ups, two minutes of cross-leg reverse crunches, or a timed forearm plank.

Because cardiorespiratory fitness carries 60 of the 100 points, the run drives the test. A weak run time is hard to make up on push-ups and sit-ups even if you max both.

You test every six months. The test window opens no sooner than five months and closes no later than seven months after your last scored assessment. Guardians who fail, or who hold certain medical exemptions, move to a three-month cycle instead.¹

How Scores Are Categorized

Your composite score sorts you into one of three tiers, and the tier determines what happens next.¹

Fit to Fight (90 to 100): The top tier. Keeps your record clean and puts you back on the standard six-month cycle.
Health Maintenance (75 to 89.9): Passing. You test again in six months.
Health Concern (below 75, or any component minimum missed): Failing. Triggers mandatory enrollment in a fitness improvement program and moves your next test to three months out.

A missed component minimum drops you into Health Concern even if your composite total would otherwise pass. Guardians who test with one or more medical exemptions are scored on a simpler scale: Passing (75 to 100) or Health Concern (below 75 or component minimums not met), without the Fit to Fight distinction.

Body Composition Standards

The Body Composition Assessment is separate from the HPA and uses waist-to-height ratio. The standard replaced older height-and-weight tables under a Department of War directive effective January 1, 2026.²

You have to come in under a waist-to-height ratio of 0.55. If you don’t, you get a secondary evaluation using body fat percentage. The allowable body fat limits are no more stringent than 18 percent for men and 26 percent for women.²

A first BCA failure, on its own, does not authorize administrative action, as long as you enroll in the Body Composition Improvement Program. That protection ends on a second failure. After 12 months in the improvement program, a non-compliant Guardian goes before the commander and the Guardian Resilience Team for a discharge or retention recommendation, which includes a medical consultation to rule out conditions that prevent compliance.¹

Medical Exemptions and Pregnancy

Injuries or medical conditions that limit physical activity are documented on DAF Form 469, the Duty Limiting Condition Report. A medical provider decides which HPA components or specific exercises you cannot perform. Exemptions come in three forms:¹

A component exemption excuses you from an entire category, such as cardiorespiratory.
A modality exemption excuses you from a specific exercise. If you’re cleared for an alternative in the same category, you have to use it.
A composite exemption excuses you from all physical components.

Anyone with a composite exemption has the next HPA deferred until after an acclimatization period following the expiration of the medical profile. Pregnancy is treated as a composite exemption. You cannot take the HPA while pregnant. For pregnancies lasting 20 weeks or more, the post-partum HPA is not due until the 13th month after delivery, and the BCA follows in the 14th month. For pregnancies under 20 weeks, a medical provider sets the exemption length.

What Happens After a Failing Score

Within 10 duty days of a Health Concern score, you have to enroll in the Fitness Improvement Program and make initial contact with the Guardian Resilience Team. The FIP is a 12-week structured program built into the myFitness system, meant to close the gap before your three-month retest.¹

One protection worth knowing: commanders cannot impose non-judicial punishment under Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice solely because you failed an HPA. The regulation explicitly prohibits it. Commanders can, however, consider adverse administrative actions after a failure.¹

When Repeated Failures Lead to Separation

Administrative separation becomes a real possibility once you accumulate four Health Concern scores within a defined window. The threshold is either four non-consecutive failures in 24 months, or four consecutive failures in 12 months. Once you hit either, the unit commander must make a discharge or retention recommendation to the separation authority for enlisted members, or to the show-cause authority for officers.¹

Three conditions must all be met before separation can be initiated: you have accumulated the four qualifying Health Concern scores, the commander (in consultation with the Guardian Resilience Team) has determined you failed to demonstrate improvement, and a military medical provider has reviewed your records to rule out medical conditions that would prevent a passing score. The 24-month or 12-month window is counted backward from your most recent failure.¹

One bad test is not career-ending. Two or three will hurt your record and promotion prospects but do not force a discharge. The three-month retest cycle for failures does mean that four scores can pile up faster than you’d expect once the first one lands.

Appealing a Failing Score

If your HPA was administered incorrectly or your score contains an error, you can challenge it.¹

Submit the appeal through myFitness to your Unit Fitness Cell Manager, with a memorandum identifying the requested action, the basis for the claimed error or injustice, and any supporting documentation.
The UFCM routes it through your chain of command to the delta commander or equivalent, no lower than a squadron commander.
The reviewing commander approves or rejects the appeal in writing.
If rejected, you can escalate to the Fitness Assessment Appeals Board at the Air Force Personnel Center. The Air Force Board for Correction of Military Records is the final decision authority.

An escalated appeal needs the disapproval memorandum signed by the commander, the Fitness Screening Questionnaire, the completed HPA score sheet, and any relevant medical documentation such as a DAF Form 469 or a statement from your primary care manager.

The Continuous Fitness Assessment Study

The Space Force is running a separate research initiative called the Continuous Fitness Assessment, a study conducted with the Air Force Research Laboratory that uses wearable devices to track cardiovascular intensity minutes, monthly VO2 max estimates, and a monthly one-minute push-up test.³

Enrolling changes your testing cadence. Study participants take the HPA once a year instead of twice. Guardians not enrolled stay on the twice-yearly schedule.⁴ The study is not itself the HPA; the biannual assessment remains the official fitness evaluation for the force.⁵

1
Department of the Air Force E-Publishing. SPFMAN 36-2905 – Space Force Fitness Standards
2
Department of War. Additional Guidance on Military Fitness Standards
3
United States Space Force. Space Force Details Holistic Health Approach, Continuous Fitness Assessment Study
4
United States Space Force. US Space Force Releases New Human Performance and Readiness Manual
5
Air Force Materiel Command. Space Force Details Holistic Health Approach, Continuous Fitness Assessment Study