
Franklin Bell, the commandant of the General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, gave a speech with Bell at the school.

Roosevelt, after losing a Muldoon run challenge (a seven-mile jog after an eight-mile walk) to Brig. A ride on a bicycle at a distance of 100 miles within three consecutive days.Ģ.A ride on horseback at a distance of 90 miles within three consecutive days or.A 50-mile walk within three consecutive days and in a total of 20 hours.The result was a fitness test for the Army, Navy and Marine Corps that consisted of three areas: The last thing you want as a naval officer is Theodore Roosevelt calling you out. He suggested they be held to the fitness standards of the coastal artillery, an Army unit that had been restructured and upgraded during his tenure. He even wrote to the Secretary of the Navy Truman Newberry that he was "unpleasantly struck by the lack of physical condition" of naval officers, old and young. Wright, asking if he could implement a fitness test. Toward the end of his second term, he wrote to Secretary of War Luke E.

During his tenure in office, he noticed that some of the higher-ranking officers in the Army and the Navy seemed too corpulent for their roles as military leaders. Roosevelt first rose to the presidency after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901. So it's kind of a mystery why the United States Army and Navy would decide to question or argue with the 26th commander in chief's policies on military fitness - but they did. Roosevelt was a renowned athlete, fitness buff and lover of all things vigorous, and everyone, even back then, knew it.
