ERIC BRADY The Roanoke Times

Cadets Shu-Hui He (left) and Anna DeFrank do pull-ups during class Wednesday at Virginia Military Institute.

ERIC BRADY The Roanoke Times

Virginia Military Institute has relaxed the standards for its fitness test, which requires cadets to do sit-ups, pull-ups and a 1.5-mile run. The pull-up component for female cadets, which has been a stumbling block for many of them, was reduced from five to one.

LEXINGTON -- Anna DeFrank wants to do a pull-up.

Just one.

And she really is pushing herself to make it happen.

The Virginia Military Institute third-class cadet, or sophomore, from Long Island, N.Y., faces a challenge many female cadets before her have struggled with: the pull-up component of the VMI fitness test.

Until recently the minimum pull-up requirement for male cadets and female cadets was the same -- five pull-ups.

VMI decided to relax the fitness standards earlier this academic year -- and not just for women. Still, the standards actually are higher in some cases than in the military service branches about half of the cadets in each graduating class will enter.

Female cadets who can do at least one pull-up can pass the test under the revised standards, and doing eight pull-ups is worth the maximum 100 points.

"I'll be working hard over the summer for it," DeFrank said.

The pull-up has been a stumbling block for female cadets since the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996 granted women access to the traditionally all-male institute.

Col. James Coale, head of the physical education department, said about 20 percent of female cadets have passed the test in the past decade, compared with about 80 percent of males. Aside from the pull-up, female cadets have been able to hold their own on the fitness test. But failing either the pull-ups, sit-ups or 1.5-mile run means failing the entire test.

"The bottom line was that a much greater percentage of males were passing the test because it wasn't gender-normed," Coale said.

The new standards may enable many female cadets, such as DeFrank, to improve their grades.

Cadets do not have to pass the fitness test to graduate, but it is an integral part of their physical education grade each semester and is worth 25 percent of the final class grade.

Coale said there was a small group of female cadets who opposed the changes for the sake of maintaining tradition, but the fitness standards have been revised to reflect what scientists long ago identified as inherent physiological differences between the male and female bodies.

Pull-ups are a telling example.

"When five was the limit, they [female cadets] didn't even try it," Coale said. "What we found with doing the one is they are really working hard. It's an attainable goal."

DeFrank is one of about 90 cadets participating in a remedial physical education course that meets once a week to work on pull-ups, as well as the other pieces of the fitness test. There are 100 possible points each for sit-ups, pull-ups and the 1.5-mile run, and the results are averaged.

"I can never get an A," DeFrank said. "That's kind of a bummer, because I am trying to keep my grades up to a 3.5 [grade-point average]."

She expects to graduate in 2011. She plans to commission into the U.S. Navy and eventually hopes to attend medical school.

The Navy's fitness tests should be a breeze for DeFrank because there is no pull-up requirement. The U.S. Army does not require pull-ups either.

"Women don't do pull-ups for us," said Lt. Josh Diddams, a U.S. Marine Corps spokesman. "They do a flexed-arm hang."

That exercise starts with the individual's chin above the bar, and the hang is timed until her arms straighten.

All three branches of the military have separate fitness standards for males and females.

Cadets at VMI are required to take a physical education course every semester of all four years, except the first semester of the freshman, or rat, year. The reprieve that first semester is because of the physical rigors of the rat line and getting acquainted to life at the institute.

When the standards were changed this year, the number of sit-ups remained the same. Male cadets and female cadets still are expected to complete a minimum of 60 sit-ups in two minutes. To get the maximum 100 points, they must complete 92.

The times for the 1.5-mile run increased for both sexes. For females cadets to get 100 points, they must complete the run in 9 minutes, 46 seconds. The maximum passing time is 14 minutes, 20 seconds. Male cadets gained an extra 30 seconds to the minimum and maximum passing times.

The additional seconds are the result of a societal shift in the fitness of incoming cadets. VMI physician David Copeland said the biggest changes in recent decades are the results of fewer young people playing outdoors and leading active lifestyles. That way of life has been replaced with the stationary consumption of electronic entertainment, such as computers and video games.

"Ninety percent [of cadets] come in good shape," Copeland said. "Ten percent should have spent more time preparing."

Those students usually are weeded out within the first days or weeks of the rat line, including "Hell Week," the intense matriculation week for freshman cadets.

Capt. Jackie Tugman, assistant director of admissions and a 2002 VMI graduate, said she could do 13 pull-ups when she was a cadet. Even at that rate, she never got an A in her physical education classes. Her highest score on the fitness test was 88 percent, a B.

From her standpoint as a recruiter Tugman said she expects the fitness standards changes to be very beneficial. Often when she talks to potential female cadets, she asks whether they can do a pull-up. Most can't, she said, and that made discussing the fitness test somewhat uncomfortable.

"I didn't talk about the VFT [VMI fitness test] a lot because I didn't want them to get the message that we don't want them here," Tugman said. "It was just a really intimidating goal, I think."

There are 101 female cadets in the corps currently. The institute's goal is to maintain between 150 and 200 women once renovations on the barracks are complete and the size of the corps is expanded to 1,500 cadets.