It, would not have been a fair comparison to use grass at one location and concrete at another. The scientists are careful to eliminate as many variables as possible at each test site, and to re-create the testing scenarios as closely as possible from one installation to another.įor instance, the surface used to drag casualties at each site was constructed using portable fitness mats to ensure the same surface at all testing locations. "Soldiers walk around with a lot more load than in the past." "This is going to be very, very important for the future of the Army," said Frykman. The validation test is also being conducted at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., and Fort Benning, Ga., because they train infantry, armor, and combat engineers. Because there aren't enough females in the newly opened combat specialties to draw from, women volunteers training for other jobs also elected to be part of the study. We're validating that we have the right tests for the right positions."Ībout 12 of the five dozen Soldiers participating in the validation tests July 6-8, 2016, were women. We administered a set of predictive tests to find out, do those predictive tests predict their ability to do those high physically demanding tasks?"Ĭohen added, "We're doing the science end of it. The infantry school, the armor school, the artillery, combat engineers, they all said 'This is what we think is the most physically demanding stuff that we do.' We tested Soldiers in the real world doing those jobs and looked at their performance. Peter Frykman, of the Military Performance Division at ARIEM, said the OPAT and new HPDT studies drew on the experiences of Soldiers already in those ground combat jobs. He said he is interested in "making people mentally and physically tough without breaking them, so that they can be more resilient." They'll perform better, maybe have less injuries, and less turnover."Ĭohen, who has a doctorate in exercise health and sports psychology, has been with ARIEM for a decade. "So we'll put the right person in the right job. "It doesn't matter if you're male or female, you can either do the highest physical demand for your job, or you can't," he said. Bruce Cohen, one of the scientists administering the tests, said the standards will benefit all Soldiers. This year the team was back to see how well the predictive OPAT test translates into higher performance on the HPDT.ĭr. The initial HPDT studies were done here June 2013, as part of the Soldier 2020 Gender-Neutral Physical Standards Study to determine tasks that combat Soldiers would need to pass, depending on their MOS. Those AIT Soldiers were tested in the new High Physical Demands Tasks (HPDT) required for graduation from AIT in a specific combat MOS such as field artillery. A third group and final group was tested in August. One group was evaluated in June, and another in early July. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine (USARIEM), Military Performance Division in Natick, Mass., tested Soldiers in advanced individual training (AIT) who were given the new Occupational Physical Aptitude Test (OPAT) during basic combat training here 12 weeks earlier. 3, 2016) - Fort Sill is in the forefront of the Army's revision of physical fitness standards for military occupational specialties (MOS), and while the new standards will be rolled out at some point soon for incoming recruits, it would not have been possible without the work done at Fort Sill to validate those standards.
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