Here’s the deal… you aren’t in the Special Forces. You don’t need to run 3 miles back to back in 20 minutes tomorrow or you’re fired or put on some remedial career path. Their standards are meaningless to you. If you exceed them you’re not going to find yourself in Delta. They may be goals to direct your training, but they are not a measure of you or what you should be, how far short of that you fall, or your overall worth or worthiness. Even if in 2 years of consistent effort you can’t do it, that’s fine, you’re still far better off than you were.
Progress is the standard. Action is the standard.
You are falling short if you are not doing anything.
A severe problem in the United States and maybe Western culture generally: if you don’t have a shot at being the best - now - then just don’t even try. That it’s sadder to find oneself an also-ran than never showing up. If you can’t meet some military (special forces) standard, police test, mile time (often coming from elite competition, or a high school number that selects for elite training and competition), lift whatever hundred pounds in some movement (because grandpa claims he just benched 600 pounds off the street one day and showed up all those gym bros and could do it today, but he tweaked his back), run time or lift you had in high school, aren’t a certain bodyweight dictated by something… just don’t even start, don’t try, because you can’t… it’s too far away or it’s just not for you. Sit down feel bad about yourself and open another bag of Doritos, because that’s what you are.
Immediate success is part the issue here. Most of us are not genetically endowed to the point that we’ll reach elite levels of performance, ever. Some of us may have the genetics in one area and far less so in another. Some of us are extreme generalists, pretty good at everything but not amazing at anything. Competitions are won on amazing. Day to day life is on everything. None of us are good right off the bat. Certainly not good enough. There’s quite some time one must be okay with the thing being enough, improvement alone is the goal, and doing something still makes you faster, stronger, better than those that do nothing. Certainly better than yourself if you did nothing. What’s “good” anyway? How close to world record is good? Who decided that?
Expected or guaranteed success is another issue. If you do show up for a consistent program, that is wise, you do the things, and put in the effort… but plateu out then why did you do it in the first place? If you stall out before that level, which is very likely to happen, why? Most of the athletes we see or that are famous have an incredible recovery potential and work capacity, they earned some of that, parents gave the rest - most of it. Truth is if you even get to 50% of what these people can do you’re still awesome. You don’t know what you’ll get until you do it, you don’t know about your genetic endowment until you start bumping against it.
The actual idea of standards themselves are somewhat a problem here. First part is the insinuation that if you’re worthy these standards should be achieved the moment you get up off the couch, and be maintained with little to no work. That’s the first big ego hit that causes people to not do what’s needed to make that goal or decide it’s already over. Some of these standards are more akin to a competitive event. The expectation is the participant will peak for it. There’s a belief that if you don’t meet the standard the problem is you just didn’t try hard enough, work hard enough. That any decently capable person can do this thing, so if you can’t, well… how much of a failure are you? Finally there’s the nature of one’s life. It’s a special forces guy’s job to work out and train to exceed those standards. It’s a professional athlete’s job to arrange their life around training and peaking for their next event. Pretty sure that’s not your job. I know I can’t bust out a nap the afternoon after a hard run or lift, I’m busy at work. I’m also not 23. What I get considering what I have to work with is pretty great.
Standards themselves are part of a cutoff team picking exercise. On one hand they’re a bit arbitrary to winnow down the selection pool to make it more manageable with some quantitative “oh sorry, nothing I can do”. There are some things outside of your control here too (genetic endowment shows up again). Sometimes the standard is looking for a particular set of genes that allow one to maintain certain physical parameters with little input so that guy can do other things too. You might be able to meet that standard with 20 hours a week of consistent work, but they’re looking for the guy that has the genetics to do it with 2. It’s not that any given human “should” be able to do these things and only some slug can’t. To take it a bit further in their arbitrary nature they remove guys that accepted a weakness to gain a massive perk that would be very applicable. Strongmen for example on a police test. Their mile times are going to be terrible to the point they may fail or DNF, but absolutely everything else they are going to dominate. In practice their very size is going to prevent fights and allow them to do the physical things we really want cops to do: pull people to safety, gain entry to structures, restrain violent people, handle the weight of their equipment on them daily. Yep. That mile is real important for the foot pursuits that don’t really happen very often and are mostly optional and are NEVER a mile and a half.
Are these standards pop quizzes where your boss can come up and say “25 minute 5k right now or consequences”, or is this a test you know about or do regularly? Is that scenario even a thing in your life at all?! For nearly all of us being out there attempting to improve on something important to you and making progress on is what needs to happen. You’re running a 45 minute 5k now, so you keep running consistently and wisely and in a few weeks it might be a 36 min 5k. Maybe next year it’ll be sub 30. You might find out that those short distances you’re not very fast, or just aren’t fast generally, yet you can tick off mile after mile for hours. Not fast but you’re still going when others are a heap on the ground. Maybe you don’t like to run but lifting is your thing, or rowing, or biking, or pulling a sled, or strongman stuff, whatever. Any of it puts you way ahead of those that couldn’t/wouldn’t find time to even try or do anything at all. I like to run, I think it’s important, but as a society and culture we put WAY too much emphasis on running. Mile times and marathons in particular. I even notice it showing up a lot in this post! Where really I care more about your squat and deadlift. How much over your bodyweight of a chin up can you do. How big of a rock can you lift up and carry around. Way more interesting than your velocity on street or track.
Another thought is we judge on PR times, not what one can do as a matter of course, consistently as needed. I’m more proud of the amount of run or row I can do sub 150 heart rate than whatever my PR time is. Or that I can run around on a mountain for 5-8 hours and not die. I like that I see a 31K rowing challenge and think “sweet. No problem.” None of that shows up on standards, yet that IS the guy (or gal) I want to come with me on adventures.