The Air Force Fitness Test: Creating New Fitness Assessment Charts Using Waist to Height Ratios
Abstract
The Air Force currently uses AFI 36-2905 for fitness standards and evaluation, but no study to our knowledge has evaluated these standards using large databases. Using a 5.38 million record database from the Air Force Fitness Management System, we evaluated how the abdominal circumference, body mass index (BMI), waist to height ratio (WtHR), and height to weight ratio correlated to fitness as assessed by the 1.5 mile aerobic run in the Air Force Fitness Test. Whether individually or adjusting for age group and gender, WtHR performed better that the rest with an average rank score of 1.1 with a relative improvement of 105 percent to the current metric of abdominal circumference. Additionally, we assessed how the current Fitness test adjusts for age and gender. We determined that the current test poorly adjusts for these variables at an alpha of 0.001. Because of this, we present a new scoring metric for the Air Force to consider with respect to incorporating WtHR in lieu of abdominal circumference as well adjusting for gender and age more appropriately
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 23, 2017
- Accession Number
- AD1051584
Entities
People
- John R. Griffith
Organizations
- Air Force Institute of Technology