Off Duty, Military Health and Fitness - Marine Corps Times

Elliptical trainer approved for PRT

For many sailors, the cardio score on their next fitness test will be determined by how many calories they burn on a fitness machine, not how fast they run a 1.5-mile course.

Navy officials have approved the popular elliptical training machine as a new alternative for the 1.5-mile run portion of the semiannual Physical Readiness Test. A stationary bike could also be approved in the very near future.

The elliptical trainer was approved Friday by Rear Adm. Edward “Sonny” Masso and will be authorized for use in the spring 2007 testing cycle.

What’s not included in the just-released NavAdmin 293/06 — the formal message authorizing the machine — is that a stationary bicycle could also be approved in time for the spring cycle, officials said, assuming it passes a final testing phase now underway.

The news comes just as Navy officials contend their 16-month-old get-tough policy on fitness failures is having a positive effect on the fleet. Overall numbers of sailors failing the test is now on the decline, though percentage of discharges due to failures has skyrocketed.

Still, it will be up to commanding officers to authorize the new options based on equipment available at their commands, said Heather Pouncey, who handles fitness policy at Navy Personnel Command in Millington, Tenn. Navy Times spoke to Pouncey Oct.17, just days before formal approval was given.

Elliptical trainers “reduce the shocks associated with ground contact and decrease the risk of further musculoskeletal damage to those with previous injuries,” the new message states.

“The 1.5-mile run remains the Navy standard,” unless the CO authorizes an alternative cardio option for the test, the message states.

“We want to provide more options, so to allow people to test the way they train,” she said. “People perform better overall when they are conditioned to the event they are being tested on.”

The message contains a list of brands and models approved for the test:

•Life Fitness models 9500 HR, 95 XI, 91 XI and 91 X.

•Precor model EFX-Navy.

•Nautilus model E9 16.

The stationary cycle is currently in the final testing process. Work is expected to wrap up in the next month or two, Pouncey said.

Officials will then evaluate the data and determine if the stationary bike should join the elliptical and other cardio options this spring.

If approved, it would join the elliptical, the 1.5-mile run, a 1.5-mile run on a treadmill and a 500-yard swim as cardio options for the spring 2007 cycle..

Fixed-time assessment

Officials at the Navy Health Research Center in San Diego have studied the elliptical trainer for more than two years to see if it provided a good assessment of fitness. In the process, they developed a different concept of how the machine will be used to test a sailor’s cardio capabilities.

Unlike the run and swim or the proposed stationary cycle test — where sailors’ scores are determined by how fast they can traverse a distance — the elliptical will focus on number of calories burned.

“This is a completely different concept for a test,” she said. “It’s a fixed-time test of 12 minutes, and the goal is to burn as many calories as possible.”

Conversion tables have been prepared, but not yet released, that convert the numbers of calories burned in those 12 minutes to an equivalent run score. Those tables will be sent out with the exact test procedures once the stationary bike’s fate has been decided.

In order to determine how many calories are burned, the command’s fitness leader will be required to program the sailor’s weight into the computer, Pouncey said. The machine’s computer then calculates the calories burned, based on how much resistance has been dialed in.

The higher the resistance, the more calories burned and the better the equivalent run time.

Still, Pouncey cautions that the fixed time of 12 minutes doesn’t mean the elliptical will be an easier route to a passing score. Only those who regularly work out on the machines should even attempt the new option, she said.

“It’s not something a member is going to be able to get on the first time and expect to achieve great results,” she said. “They really need to be familiar with the machines and how they operate.”

Because the elliptical and stationary cycle are “low-impact” exercise machines, they are easier on the joints and muscles while still giving a healthy cardio workout, Pouncey said.

The addition of these machines should help the Navy reduce the number of sailors who can’t participate in the cardio portion of the test because of medical issues for skeletal or muscular injuries or disorders.

When that type of waiver is given, the member only participates in the push-ups and sit-ups and is excused from the run by a doctor. As long as the member completes those portions successfully, he gets a “pass” on the readiness test but is not given a specific score, such as satisfactory, excellent our outstanding.

Discharges increase

While officials are expanding options for the PRT, they point to progress they’ve made in the last few cycles, thanks to the tough new fitness policy.

Sailors with three or more failures in the past four years who have not shown any signs of making mandatory improvements on either the PRT or the body composition assessment are being booted.

“We are seeing an overall drop in failures over the past two cycles,” Pouncey said.

Still, the number of unfit or flabby sailors is troubling. In the spring 2006 cycle, 15,000 active and reserve sailors failed to pass their assessment. Nearly 13,000 of those failed due to body composition while 8,500 failed to pass the physical readiness test.

“There’s some overlap in the numbers because many have failed both parts of the [two-part] PFA,” Pouncey said. Exact breakouts were unavailable.

Still, failure numbers are down roughly 1,000 — or nearly 7 percent — from the fall 2005 cycle, causing Navy officials to believe that their new, tougher policies are having an effect.

Since 2004, officials say that there has been a 31 percent drop in the numbers of PFA failures. But there are 11,591 sailors with three or more failures in the past four years who still could face administrative separation if they fail another test. Some 17,370 have two failures on the books and 45,262 have one.

For some, the hammer has already begun to fall. There have been 1,913 sailors booted from the ranks in fiscal 2006 as a direct result of PFA failure, either by administrative separation or simply not being allowed to reenlist or extend due to lack of improvement.

That’s 28 times more sailors than were kicked out in 2005, when just 65 were given pink slips. Interestingly, only enlisted sailors have been discharged or barred from re-upping. No officers have yet been separated under this program, officials said.

Of those who have left, the majority, 1,367, have been asked to leave before their tours are up, with another 456 leaving at the end of their service obligation because their failures did not allow them to extend or re-enlist.

The numbers of discharges could be far worse, officials admit, were it not for the second chances given sailors who are making what the Navy’s describes as “measurable” improvement. When the “get tough” policies went into effect, they came with a policy that said commanders can put off the administrative separation of members who are improving in the areas they have failed or who are critical to the command’s ability to complete its missions.

“We are just in the beginning stages of tracking waivers in our database, but it is something we plan to keep track of,” Pouncey said.

The number of separations to date is slightly below projections officials made last spring when they estimated that as many as 2,000 sailors could get a ticket home by the end of 2007 because of their failures.