Navy PRT Bike, Row and Swim — Alternate Cardio 2026

What counts as an alternate, and who gets one

The PRT cardio event defaults to the 1.5-mile run. Guide-5A also recognises the 1.5-mile treadmill run, the 2,000-metre row, the 500-yard and 450-metre swim, and the 12-minute stationary bike.

An alternate is not a preference you exercise on the morning of the test. Command Fitness Leaders need authorisation from the CO or OIC for the current PFA cycle before a sailor can be tested on one, and the equipment is specified rather than generic — the 2,000-metre row must be done on an approved Concept2 rower, models D and E only.

Confirm the modality before you build a plan around it. Training for eight weeks on a rower and discovering in week nine that your command did not authorise the row for this cycle is a wholly avoidable way to lose a cycle.

The same score on four different events

The alternates are separate scoring tables, not conversions. A run time is never turned into a row time; each event is measured against its own ladder. That means the honest way to compare them is to line up the performance each one demands for the same score.

Below is every performance level for a male sailor aged 20–24, on all four events the calculator scores. Read across a row and you are looking at four different ways to earn the same points.

Male, 20–24 — the performance that earns each score, by event
Score	1.5-mile run	2,000 m row	500 yd swim	450 m swim
100 · Outstanding High	8:30	7:05	6:30	6:20
95 · Outstanding Medium	9:00	7:15	7:00	6:50
90 · Outstanding Low	9:15	7:25	7:30	7:20
85 · Excellent High	9:45	7:35	8:00	7:50
80 · Excellent Medium	10:00	7:45	8:15	8:05
75 · Excellent Low	10:30	7:55	8:45	8:35
70 · Good High	10:45	8:15	9:30	9:20
65 · Good Medium	11:30	8:35	10:30	10:20
60 · Good Low	12:00	8:55	11:30	11:20
55 · Satisfactory High	12:45	9:05	12:00	11:50
50 · Satisfactory Medium	13:15	9:15	12:15	12:05
45 · Probationary	13:30	9:25	13:00	12:50

Every other age band and both sexes are scored by the Navy PRT calculator; the pass floor for each event at every age is on the Navy PRT standards page. This table is one band in full rather than every band at one level, because the shape of a single ladder is what the next section is about.

The row is the tightest ladder on the test

Look again at the row column above. It runs from 9:25 at Probationary to 7:05 at Outstanding High — a span of 2 minutes 20 seconds covering the entire 55-point scale. The run column covers the same 55 points across five minutes.

Divide it out and you get the number that should actually shape your training: how many seconds of improvement buy one point. Every figure in the table below is calculated from the scoring tables rather than read off them — it is (Probationary time − Outstanding High time) ÷ 55.

Seconds of improvement per point earned, by event and age band
Age band	Run — M	Row — M	500 yd swim — M	Run — F	Row — F	500 yd swim — F
17–19	4.9	2.5	6.8	6.0	2.9	8.2
20–24	5.5	2.5	7.1	6.2	2.9	7.9
25–29	5.5	2.5	7.1	6.4	2.9	8.0
30–34	5.6	2.5	7.1	6.5	2.9	8.2
35–39	6.1	2.5	7.1	6.7	2.9	8.2
40–44	6.5	2.5	7.1	6.9	2.9	8.2
45–49	7.2	2.5	7.1	7.0	2.9	8.1
50–54	7.8	2.5	7.1	7.1	2.9	7.9
55–59	7.0	2.5	7.2	6.7	2.9	7.9
60–64	8.2	2.5	7.4	6.7	2.9	7.9
65–99	9.7	2.5	7.5	6.7	2.9	7.9

The row column does not move

Every male age band costs 2.5 seconds per point on the row. Every female band costs the same as every other female band. The Navy built the row as a single fixed ladder of 140 seconds for men and 160 for women and simply slides it up the clock as sailors get older — the width never changes.

The run does the opposite. Its ladder is 4:30 wide for a 17–19 male and 8:54 wide at 65 and over, so a second of run improvement is worth roughly twice as much to a young sailor as to an older one.

Two practical consequences, and they point in opposite directions. On the row, small improvements move your score fast — a sailor who takes ten seconds off a 2,000-metre time gains about four points, which no ten seconds on the run will ever do. But the same compression works against you: on the row there is very little room between a comfortable pass and a failure, and a bad day costs more than it would on any other cardio event.

The swim is the loosest ladder of the three, which makes it the most forgiving of a bad day and the slowest to reward training. None of this makes one event easier than another — it makes them differently shaped, and worth choosing deliberately.

The stationary bike, and why there is no chart here

This is the one alternate this site does not score, and the reason is not an oversight.

The bike is a 12-minute test scored on caloric output: you ride for exactly twelve minutes and the calorie figure is read off the console at the mark. It is not a distance and it is not a time, which is already unlike every other event on the PRT.

The Navy does not publish a bike table

Guide-5A directs the calculation to software rather than to a chart, in terms it is worth quoting: “The official PFA mobile application provides calculation of PFA standards for the stationary bicycle modality based upon bike model and calorie burn.”

The standard therefore depends on which machine you are sitting on. A calorie counted by one console is not the same physical work as a calorie counted by another, which is exactly why the Navy resolved it in an application that knows the model rather than in a printed table that cannot.

So a “Navy PRT bike calories chart” that gives you one number for your age and sex is answering a question the Navy did not ask. Without the bike model it is not incomplete — it is unanswerable. This site will not print one, and you should treat any site that does as guessing.

What to do instead: use the official PFA mobile application, or ask your Command Fitness Leader to run the figure for the specific machine your command tests on. If you want a number you can train against today, score the row or the swim in the calculator — both have real published tables, and both are authorised alternates.

Choosing between them

There is no dominant option, and anyone telling you the row is the easy way through has not looked at the tables. What there is instead is a set of trade-offs you can actually reason about:

The row rewards training fastest and punishes a bad day hardest. Its 140-second ladder means every second counts roughly twice what it does on the run — in both directions.
The swim is the most forgiving and the slowest to move. It has the widest spread of the three, so a poor day costs less and a good block of training shows up more slowly.
The run is the only one you can rehearse anywhere. Technique on an erg and technique in the water are real variables; running technique is a much smaller one, and no equipment has to be authorised or available.
Technique transfers less than fitness does. A sailor who is fit but has never rowed 2,000 metres will not row to their fitness on the first attempt, and the scored test is the wrong place to find that out.

Score all four with performances you can genuinely produce today. The calculator does each on its own table, so the comparison is real rather than a conversion.

Common questions

Is there a Navy PRT bike calculator?

Not one that can be honest. Guide-5A states that the official PFA mobile application calculates the stationary bicycle standard based on bike model and calorie burn, which means the standard depends on the specific machine. No published table gives calories by age and sex, so any chart offering one is guessing. Use the official PFA application or ask your Command Fitness Leader.