McG
Army.ca Legend
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The Coopers test is not based on job requirements. It measures based on an arbitrary selection of physical tasks. While the Coopers Test does measure fitness, it it does not provide a measure of an individuals ability to perform military duties. The same can be said of the CF Express Test.Technoviking said:The [Coopers] test is non-discriminatory, and based on the requirements of the job, and it matters not if you're old or young, man or woman, there is one job, one standard.
I suspect that a proper fitness test will give us a good predictor of who is or is not likely to suffer heart failure under physical or emotional stress. Such a generic fitness test probably should make accommodation for age, gender, inseam length, etc. A general fitness test is nice, but we also need the job based fitness test.
The LFCPFS (AKA the BFT) is based on job requirements. It does provide some measure of an individual's ability to perform military duties (I'd argue that the test is fairly shallow as far as what it measures, but it does measure). It is one standard that does not discriminate, and that is how it needs to be. At the same time, IMO, it is a poor test of fitness as one can be well into obese and still pass.
I think we either need both the job-based and general fitness tests, or we need a better measure of cardio health in the existing job-based test.
Now, going back to the point being argued earlier -> should we demand a universal standard that expects 6 to 8 chin-ups for a woman to be found fit enough to serve? The only military thing that I've done that was really analogous to a chin-up was pulling parachute risers, and that is actually much easier than a real chin-up. With the Coopers Test being a non-job-based general fitness test, I would support MJPs assertion that a one size fits all standard is in appropriate. At the same time, maybe we want to adjust the Army Fitness standard so that (in addition to marching, dragging a casualty, and digging) all soldiers must be able to individually clear an obstacle of height X.
... in any case, this discussion of measuring physical fitness has come well of the topic of retaining medically unfit personnel. I suspect a thread split is about due.