Professional climber Magnus Midtbø is super fit, and he's made a point to take on physical challenges to prove just that. When he's not in the climbing gym training, he's attempted to break Guinness World Record for record for the most chinups with a clap between each rep, and also previously attempted to set an unofficial world record for weighted pullups.
For his latest challenge, he took on the Marine Corps Physical Fitness Test (PFT).
"We start with pullups, and then we do crunches, and then we're going to run 3 miles, and I think that is going to be the most challenging thing because I don't really run that much," Midtbø said of the challenge. (In the standard PFT, participants can do either dead hang pullups or pushups, the latter of which allows for a lower possible score.)
For the pullups, according to Midtbø's age and gender classification, his minimum score to pass is 5 reps in a minute, while 23 reps would garner a perfect score.
"The pullup is pretty strict," says Midtbø. "You have to start with straight arms, no kipping, chin above the bar, then all the way down. If you let go of the bar, you're finished."
After chalking up, he gets to it, and easily knocks out 23 pullups in 44 seconds.
Next up are abdominal crunches. Midtbø's minimum to pass here is 70 reps in 2 minutes, and with 115 the top of the range.
"It's 2 minutes, you're going to be gassed," says Midtbø.
He completes an impressive 103 crunches, and has gnarly floor burn on his back afterwards.
"I recommend you wear a t-shirt," he says, showing off his bright red and raw back.
"I was thinking about aborting, but then I was like 'Oh f*ck, I'm already 50 in, I'm not gonna abort now'."
They head outside to a track to complete the final stage, a 3-mile run. For Midtbø, the minimum time to pass is 28 minutes, and the perfect score is at 18 minutes.
"I have no idea what pace I'm going to run at. Let's just get this over with," he says before he starts. "My aim is 22.5 minutes."
He beats the time by a landslide, finishing in 16:40.
"I feel like I'm going to vomit. That was so hard," he says after the run.
But afterwards, he realizes he ran 400 meters less than he should have.
"Still, that was pretty fast," says Midtbø.
To calculate his final score for the entire test, he adds 2 minutes to his time, for a final of 18:40. His final score was 280 out of a max of 300.
"I could have done better on the crunches!" says Midtbø.
