US army fights new battle of the bulge

DAWN breaks at the army's largest training post, with the reliable sound of fresh recruits marching to their morning exercise. But these days, something looks different.

That familiar standby, the sit-up, is gone, or almost gone. Exercises that look like Pilates or yoga routines are in. And the traditional bane of the new recruit, the long run, has been downgraded.

This is the US army's new physical-training programme, which has been rolled out this year at its five basic training posts handling 145,000 recruits a year. Nearly a decade in the making, its official goal is to reduce injuries and better prepare soldiers for the rigours of combat in rough terrain suchas Afghanistan.

But as much as anything, the programme was created to help address one of the most pressing issues facing the military today: overweight and unfit recruits.

"What we were finding was the soldiers we're getting in today's army are not in as good shape as they used to be," said Lt Gen Mark Hertling, who oversees basic training. "This is not just an army issue. This is a national issue."

Excess weight is the leading reason the army rejects potential recruits. And while that has been true for years, the problem has worsened as the waistlines of America's youth have expanded. This year, a group of retired generals and admirals released a report entitled Too Fat to Fight.

"Between 1995 and 2008, the proportion of potential recruits who failed their physicals each year because they were overweight rose nearly 70 per cent," the report concluded.

All this is the legacy of junk food and sedentary pastimes such as video gaming, compounded by a reduction in gym classes in many high schools, army officials claim.

As a result, it is harder for recruits to reach army fitness standards, and more are getting injured along the way. Hertling said the percentage of male recruits who failed the most basic fitness test at one training centre rose from four to over 20 per cent in 2000. The percentages were higher for women.

Another study found that at one training centre in 2002, three recruits suffered stress fractures of the pubic bone, but last year the number rose to 39. The reason, Hertling said: not enough weight-bearing exercise and a diet heavy on sugary carbonated drinks but light in calcium and iron.

The new fitness regime tries to deal with all these problems by incorporating more stretching, more exercises for the abdomen and lower back, instead of the traditional sit-ups, and more agility and balance training. It increases in difficulty more gradually. And it sets up a multi-week course of linked exercises, rather than offering discrete drills.

"We haven't eliminated running," Hertling said."But it's trying to get away from that being the only thing we do."

Some of the new routines would look familiar to a devotee of Pilates, yoga or even the latest home workout DVDs, with a variety of side twists, back bridges and rowing exercises.

The programme was largely the brainchild of two former gym teachers who now run the Army Physical Fitness School at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. One, Stephen Van Camp, is a former pro kick-boxer and the other, Frank Palkoska, is a former army officer and West Point fitness instructor.

As the pair started developing what became a 434-page manual, they began by considering what combat soldiers do and came up with a list of activities such as throwing grenades and dodging gunfire.

Then they matched those needs with exercises. Some of those are already in use by the army, but others are new and still others are drawn from century-old routines. There are drills that mimic climbing, that teach soldiers how to roll and that require swift lateral movements. Some are done in body armour.

The old style of physical training, he said, was less relevant to soldiers' tasks, which entail lots of jumping, crouching and climbing. "What we did in the morning had nothing to do with what we did the rest of the day," Palkoska said.

Under Hertling, the new regime will also include a makeover of the mess halls at its training bases. At Fort Jackson, there are more green leafy vegetables, less fried food, and milk instead of soft drinks The food line includes colour-coded messages to encourage recruits to eat low-fat dishes (marked green).

The trick now will be to push the programme into the rest of the army, where many soldiers are becoming overweight, during or soon after deployments.

The key, Palkoska says, will be to revamp the fitness test, taken twice a year. "We know kids today are less fit," Palkoska said. "We have to adjust."