A recent Herald report has some people saying the police college fitness exam is too easy. Hayden Donnell put their theories to the test.
Plenty of searing questions have been asked over Michael Morrah’s recent Herald report revealing recruits who failed their fitness tests were admitted to police college. Labour wants to know whether the government may have been putting political pressure on the police to take shortcuts. The police union wants to know whether officer safety is being sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. But the most troubling queries are emanating from the direction of the internet. Its denizens have seen the fitness test requirements listed in Morrah’s article, and they’re asking why the bar for police college admission is so low that even an inept toddler could make it onto the force with barely a drop of sweat dripping down its chubby baby cheeks.
While other media organisations may probe the matter of political interference in police decisions, The Spinoff is the only one willing to go the extra journalistic mile and test these theories by making some poor sucker complete the police fitness tests to check whether they’re actually too easy.
Usually Madeleine Chapman would be the obvious choice for this task, having biked to Huntly and given herself meat poisoning in previous physical challenges carried out in the name of content creation. However in pitching this story to me, she explained that four years of editing The Spinoff has eroded her will to live and, more importantly, undertake physical challenges.
Even in her weakened state, Chapman is also literally a New Zealand champion athlete. I on the other hand am almost perfectly average, standing at exactly the national mean height for a male, boasting a fitness level that could only be described as “medium”, and looking uncannily like the default character model you get in an RPG before making interesting adjustments. If I can make it into the New Zealand police, roughly 50% of people can, and that’s way too many.
I started off with the vertical jump. This was one of my higher confidence categories, having won an interschool high jump competition for Sunnynook Primary at age nine after officials banned the fosbury flop and forced everyone to compete in my favoured discipline, the scissor jump. Though I’d never tested vertical jumps before, I devised what I thought to be a foolproof method.
First, I measured my bed.
Then I jumped onto my bed.
However when I sent this to Chapman as an update on my progress, she sent a dispiriting reply.
Armed with new information, I stole some of my children’s chalk, and went outside to try again. What took place was a triumph that will be remembered by my neighbours for years to come.
With three points secured, I transferred to my clean and architecturally inviting basement to complete the push ups section of the challenge. This was also a massive success.
On a high, I decided to go straight into the run section of the entry exam. Once again I was brimming with confidence. In my 20s, I ran half marathons, achieving a best time of 1h 40m on a Kerikeri course which is famously 70% downhill. Despite that elite-level talent, I retired from the sport 13 years ago after beating my cousins and uncle at the Whangamatā half marathon, in what I regarded as a friendly family jog and not at all as a high stakes war for blood supremacy.
Unfortunately it seems quite a lot can happen to a body in 13 years. For instance, your leg muscles can atrophy into a fine paste and your lungs can turn into overfull vacuum cleaner dust bags. About 1km into the run, I realised both of those physical phenomena had taken place inside my person. I wheezed to Birkenhead RSA, and heaved my way back toward Mahara Ave making a face broadly similar to Mel Gibson’s just before he shouted “freedom” in Braveheart.
By the end of the run, I was mentally, if not physically, deceased. My time of 10m 48s was only good enough for three points. I’d have had to run more than 30 seconds faster to get the maximum six. Adding insult to injury I missed out on the extra point I’d have got for completing the race at 30+ BMI thanks to an uncharacteristic recent bout of not drinking that much beer.
As I lay on the grass trying to remember how to breathe, I began to suspect the people saying the test was easy were exaggerating. With three categories complete, my police entry was on a knife edge. I had nine points, two short of the 11 required to turn on the wee woo sirens and tell drunk people to always blow on the pie. I’d need a combined grip strength of between 105 and 119.9kg to achieve the lifelong dream I’d acquired roughly four hours earlier. However, disaster struck. I realised I didn’t have the dynamometer I needed to measure grip strength.
Despite exhaustively scouring a local gym and physio’s office, I was unable to source one. Instead I came up with a different, even more scientific test. I reached for a jar of jalapenos.
Sign me up commissioner Richard Chambers, I’m ready to join the force. And just so you know, there are some other amazing prospects on Reddit you might want to headhunt as well.
