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The association between obesity related health risk and fitness test results in the British Army personnel

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posted on 2018-10-17, 10:32 authored by Paul SandersonPaul Sanderson, Stacy ClemesStacy Clemes, Karl E. Friedl, Stuart J.H. Biddle
Objective: In the British Army, fitness is assessed by a load carriage test (Annual Fitness Test, AFT) and by a three event Personal Fitness Assessment (PFA). Body composition based on body mass index (BMI) and abdominal circumference (AC) is also part of a mandatory annual assessment. This study examined the influence of BMI and AC on fitness test results within a comprehensive sample of British Army personnel. Design: Secondary analyse were carried out on data obtained from the 2011 Defence Analytical Services and Advice (DASA) database for 50,635 soldiers (47,173 men and 3,462 women). Methods: Comparisons using loglinear analysis were made between groups of individuals classified by body mass index as obese (≥30 kg/m2) and not obese (<30 kg/m2), and further classified using combined BMI and AC for obesity-related health risks to compare “no risk” with “increased risk.” Results: Not obese or “no risk” soldiers had a significant relationship with success in the AFT (p < 0.01) and PFA (p < 0.01). Of those soldiers who attempted the AFT, 99% of men and 92% of women passed; for the PFA, 92% of men and 91% of women passed. Obese or “at risk” soldiers were more likely to fail and far less likely to take both tests (p < 0.05). Compared to older obese soldiers, young obese soldiers were more likely to attempt the tests. Conclusions: We conclude that BMI and AC are useful indicators of fitness test outcome in the British Army.

Funding

The support of the UK MoD, for funding the first author’s PhD is acknowledged.

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport

Citation

SANDERSON, P.W. ... et al, 2018. The association between obesity related health risk and fitness test results in the British Army personnel. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 21 (11), pp.1173-1177.

Publisher

Elsevier © Sports Medicine Australia

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2018-08-05

Publication date

2018

Notes

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

ISSN

1440-2440

Language

  • en

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