Pete Hegseth has spent months criticizing service members’ appearance, pushing to project a more battle-ready image.
However, if troops are nearby, the Pentagon chief has been advised to sit this one out. Physical fitness has become part of Hegseth’s carefully cultivated tough-guy image, even if no one buys into the image he’s selling.
But his latest attempt to prove he can hang with the people serving under him came with an unfortunate problem.
On Oct. 7, the 46-year-old Army National Guard veteran joined service members for morning physical training in San Diego.
According to the California Insider, Hegseth traveled there to welcome home the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln. His visit included PT, lunch with military personnel and remarks to returning sailors and Marines.
The vessel left San Diego on Nov. 21, 2025, to support U.S. operations in the Middle East, going 286 days without a port call before stopping in Thailand in September.
Roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines returned home 320 days after the deployment began.
However, before welcoming them home, Hegseth decided to work up a sweat of his own and perform what many believe was a publicity stunt.
A video circulating online shows the cabinet member struggling with pull-ups, lunges, and push-ups.
X users did not let him finish the run in peace.
“I can just imagine the guys saying, ‘Go faster!! We’ve almost lost him!’” one person joked.
“He’s such a wimp. I’ve never seen a picture of him working out that he didn’t look inept and ridiculous in,” another user wondered. A third further questioned, “What’s wrong with his feet… ankles? They are failing him.”
Eagle-eyed users who zoomed in wondered if he was under the influence. In response to the clip of him crawling, one person said, “he’s taking ‘bar crawl’ to a new level.”
Another clip showed Hegseth running with troops before the pack of younger people began pulling farther ahead.
“He is eating his words, I see lol. Looks like he is struggling. Is this the type of men he wants serving the country?” another joked.
Hegseth has practically invited the scrutiny.
The former Fox News host served in the Army National Guard. His military résumé includes deployments to Guantánamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan. Since taking over at the Pentagon, he has made toughness and physical readiness major parts of his public persona.
Just a week earlier, on Sept. 30, Hegseth worked out with roughly 600 midcareer enlisted service members and officers on the Pentagon parade field.
The session came before his “State of the Force” address. However, just like the new footage, the video of Hegseth exercising made him look winded.
The optics are particularly unforgiving because Hegseth has been very vocal about other people’s fitness.
“We’re going to be fit, not fat,” he declared during the “Pete & Bobby Challenge” with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The workout called for 100 push-ups and 50 pull-ups.
Hegseth has also blasted “fat generals and admirals.” He has pushed tougher physical fitness tests along with stricter height, weight and body-fat standards across the military.
Naturally, the internet began inspecting the inspector.
Photos from his earlier appearance, around the same time of the workout in September, prompted critics to claim Hegseth looked a lot chubbier.
Some zeroed in on the snug fit of his suit. Similar jokes erupted in June after a photo with Kyle Rittenhouse circulated online. Hegseth wore a green suit that appeared tight around his midsection and arms.
Photos and tailoring alone cannot establish whether Hegseth actually gained weight. That didn’t stop critics from throwing his “fit, not fat” rhetoric back at him.
His workout demonstrations haven’t always helped.
Last January, Hegseth joined ROTC cadets at UCLA for another camera-ready fitness session. An awkward kettlebell swing ended up stealing the show.
Viewers mocked his form, with some comparing the movement to a drunken swing.
Months later, Hegseth is still determined to show that the man demanding a fitter military can keep up with the people serving in it.
Unfortunately for him, the cameras keep running when the pack does.
New footage of Pete Hegseth working out with troops https://t.co/ugDNaFvaT2
— FactPost (@factpostnews) October 7, 2026
