Balgarianovinite.com
Screenshot via X.
It sounds plausible to say that America has seen Pete Hegseth in a T-shirt and shorts more than any prior Secretary of Defense, but his technique in those workout videos he loves posting would get a flunking grade, according to several military fitness experts interviewed by The Atlantic.
The Secretary of Defense has made physical fitness and appearance a core part of his focus since making the transition from a Fox & Friends Weekend host to leading the world’s powerful military. He’s scolded older officers for getting “fat,” barred troops with facial hair from events, and posted numerous videos of himself working out with members of the military.
One recent video Hegseth posted showed him and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promoting what they called “The Pete and Bobby Challenge,” which consists of trying to do at least 50 pull-ups and 100 push-ups in under ten minutes.
Video clips of Hegseth and Kennedy went viral, with many commentators mocking Kennedy’s habit of working out in jeans and dissing the whole thing as cringy and awkward.
Hegseth’s form is so bad, multiple military fitness experts said he “fails on form” the service’s tests based on his videos, according to a report by The Atlantic’s Tom Bartlett headlined “Pete Hegseth, You Call That a Pull-Up?”
Bartlett noted that Hegseth and the agency he oversees are the ones recording, editing, posting, and heavily promoting these videos (which he mockingly refers to as “Boot Camp Pete” episodes), and he’s the one who declared strict and harsh judgment was the way to go on military fitness issues.
With each one of these videos, Bartlett wrote, “critics skewer his form and mock his endurance,” dissing him as “all flex and no fundamentals.”
In the video below declaring he “CRUSHED 44 reps” doing bench presses, Bartlett pointed out that Hegseth “doesn’t fully extend his arms, making the exercise far easier and inflating his total.”
“A few seconds into the clip, you can hear someone yell, ‘All the way down, all the way up!’” Bartlett continued. “Hegseth fails to heed that helpful cue.”
Bartlett researched the “hundreds of pages” in military exercise training manuals, including numerous “charts, bullet points, and illustrations” and described how these are “directives rather than suggestions” when it comes to the various branches’ fitness tests.
If you fail to meet the declared standards, it “results in a ‘no-go,’ in military parlance, meaning you haven’t passed that portion of the test,” wrote Bartlett, and “Hegseth’s push-ups wouldn’t pass muster in any branch.”
Hegseth’s trouble, the reporter explained, is that he sometimes displays “more or less textbook” form but struggles with “consistency” and can be seen not fully executing the required movements and ends up “flouting the rules and sacrificing form for speed”:
Hegseth’s push-ups are more like half-ups: In the ones captured on video, he doesn’t go through the full range of motion. His substandard technique is ironic because he’s on record ridiculing others for their lack of push-up prowess. In his 2024 book, The War on Warriors, Hegseth mocks women soldiers who can do only “ten push-ups at a pop” and refers to a transgender woman as a “ten-push-up kind of guy.”
To be fair, Hegseth’s pull-up form, at times, is more or less textbook. The issue is consistency: Hegseth can’t seem to maintain the standard for the duration of the competition, and raises his knees to his chest to give himself additional oomph. This is known as “kipping” and is forbidden in an eight-page pull-up guide published by the Marines. In one clip, Hegseth kips while using an underhand grip, which technically makes what he’s doing a chin-up—an exercise often considered less challenging than a pull-up. (The Marine guide permits both, though kipping is always forbidden.) According to the guide: “Poor quality work will prevent you from getting the most from your workout and can lead to injury.” Hegseth’s work is, by Marine standards, poor.
Former Navy SEAL Stew Smith has written a series of books about how to qualify for the Special Forces, and told The Atlantic he wouldn’t comment specifically on Hegseth’s videos because he “doesn’t evaluate the performance of people unless they ask, and so wouldn’t comment specifically on Hegseth’s approach and abilities,” wrote Bartlett. “But he said he stresses to his students the importance of going all the way up and all the way down, whether it’s a pull-up, push-up, or bench press.”
Retired Brigadier General Maureen LeBoeuf was “the first and only woman to head the physical-education department at West Point, a position known as ‘master of the sword,’” and was willing to give The Atlantic a frank assessment of Hegseth’s technique.
LeBoeuf would have failed him.
“She said that nothing she saw from the defense secretary in that video would have counted if she had been the grader, and she has graded thousands of such tests,” wrote Bartlett, and she honed in on how he was “kicking” his legs:
“His pull-ups or chin-ups and the kicking that he does—you would never allow that. You’d stop somebody; you’d say, ‘Okay, you’re done,’ ” LeBoeuf said. “He just keeps kicking, and it’s not a good look.” She allowed that he might have been exhausted in those clips, but the Army doesn’t usually recognize fatigue as an excuse. And it’s hard to forgive such lapses and corner-cutting from someone who, as LeBoeuf put it, is “real big on standards.”
Joel Valdez, the acting Pentagon press secretary, defended his boss when reached for comment by accusing The Atlantic of holding Hegseth to an unfairly high standard and taking some swipes at his predecessor during the Biden Administration.
“Have you ever seen Lloyd Austin’s form? Did the Atlantic ever ask about it?” Valdez wrote. “The answer to both of those questions is no.”
Austin, however, “was not known for posting self-promotional exercise content on social media,” Bartlett concluded with a snarky note. “He did, however, complete Ranger School and Airborne School, command the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan, lead the fight against the Islamic State, and earn a Silver Star.”
The post Military Fitness Experts Bash Hegseth’s Workout Videos — One Says NONE of His Push-Ups or Pull-Ups Were Done Right first appeared on Mediaite.
Military Fitness Experts Bash Hegseth’s Workout Videos — One Says NONE of His Push-Ups or Pull-Ups Were Done Right 2026 THE NEWS FROM BULGARIA – NEWS AGENCY 2009-2025 2026-07-21 04:16:01 Latest news World news Country news Most important news latest news most important latest of the day Justice Petar Nizamov Feathers Petar Nizamov- Feathers Justice bg iustitia.bg iustitia iusticia usticia investigation Burgas Bulgaria news news of the last hour news of the day news of today Bulgaria news The news from Bulgaria blitz news top news most important most commented latest news Boyko Borisov news weather coronavirus news news weather facebook youtube facebook instagram news today news of the last minutes news today today news news bg news leading news hot news bg news site for news all news news bg news of the last hour latest latest news bg news of today news today news today news of the last hour latest news today news bg news news 24 hours news vesti bg novini news world bird bg bivol bg bivol trud bg novini latest news today novinite bg news hello bulgaria political party coat of arms delyan peevski scandalous Bulgarian National Television Free Europe Television scandal exclusive live tv live right now tv tv online tv program bg live now tv news online tv online live court Burgas court Burgas district court Burgas court Burgas district court Burgas district court Burgas appellate court Burgas prosecutor Burgas prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev Prosecutor Geshev Tsatsarov Ministry of Internal Affairs Burgas ODMR Burgas ODPR Burgas police Burgas district police Burgas prosecutor Tsatsarov SGS cases Varna court chairman of the SGS court decisions on civil cases decisions on cases Plovdiv court decision of the court decisions cases Varna court criminal cases district district court decisions work in the court SGS chairman of the SGS judges Sofia court post judges Plovdiv court Plovdiv judges Plovdiv Supreme Court Inspectorate Supreme Court Supreme Judicial Council lawyer lawyer criminal cases lawyer civil cases lawyer marriage cases lawyer administrative criminal law criminal process civil law civil process administrative law constitutional law