Get your bases covered first. If they're solid, and you're in range to max a PT test, then go for it. But I wouldn't break out a ton of time in your schedule to make that happen. MODS says 50% determined by military show of commitment - either that means USUHS or it's just fabricated BS to over-emphasize the importance of military bearing. It would not surprise me at all to find out it was the latter. So unless someone can tell you how they measured that, I wouldn't put much stock in it.
the "show of commitment" or whatever the "future potential" angle is allows the PDs some wiggle room/fudge points for those people who they really want but on paper due to the number assignments may not have scored as high as someone else. it can help if things are close. I can tell you for fellowships no one cared about APFTs unless you had a history of recent failure-- in which case you're flagged and can't do a fellowship anyway.
The only good piece of advice I ever got from any leadership in the Army (not including advice directly involving the application of medicine) was that you should always work to try to keep as many doors open as possible, even if you think it's unlikely that you'll need to use them. So even if you're 99% sure you want to do family medicine, you should work to get the scores to be a viable candidate for dermatology. Even if you think you want to do Neurosurgery, you should pay attention during your IM rotation and make sure you do well. Even if you think you're never going to stay in the military, you should try to stay in shape, pass your PT test, and go to the ridiculous training courses. Because you never know exactly what the future holds, and you don't want to end up in a situation where it would have helped had you just done "X, Y, or Z" five years ago. Sometimes necessity makes it so that you can't be great at everything, and then you have to focus a bit more. But try not to eliminate possibilities because of an assumption that you won't do something in the future.
@HighPriest preaching from the pulpit. this needs to be enlarged, bolded, italicized and chiseled into the wall.
the army can be large and corporate with little regards toward human needs. on the other hand, it can be extraordinarily small. the .mil medical world, likely due to the winnowing down of docs due to ADSO attrition, will tend to lead to small clusters of people who have "been around" and interacted with a peer group that progresses along with them. the upshot of this is things are less "insulated" than the civilian world. piss off an ER doc calling for a consult, or blow off an FP calling for advice, or throw anesthesia under the bus, etc and you may find your self needing that person later on in your career. even colleagues who are lazy, non-deployable wastes of space could be a division chief, PD, or your boss. I'd argue they may even be more likely to hold some power, since many of these people have no impetus to leave the military since they don't have to deal with deployment/operational tours and couldn't hack it outside the .mil anyway.
even with my current level of saltiness, i've done my best not to burn any bridges, and I'm probably 70% getting out next summer. I have many bridges wired up and ready to blow, but in the .mil there are so many "7 degrees of kevin bacon" ness that blowing one may inadvertently impact another, or create a situation where that bridge, as distasteful to use as it might be, might be the only way off your island. plus, as
@HighPriest stated, you never know how things will turn out.
--your friendly neighborhood metaphorical caveman
