Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps Military Performance And Fitness Characteristics Across Academic Years

Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) prepares midshipmen (MIDN) for roles as military officers. To ensure maintenance of body composition and fitness standards, MIDN participate in weekly group physical training. PURPOSE: This analysis aimed to determine if there were any differences in MIDN performance across academic years as an estimation of progress during their four years in the NROTC program. METHODS: MIDN (n = 63, age = 19.8 ± 1.7) completed a battery of tests to assess their physical fitness. Waist-to-hip ratio was calculated from waist and hip circumferences and BMI was calculated from height and body mass. MIDN completed maximal countermovement vertical jumps (CMJ) with and without arm swing to determine peak anaerobic power via a digital contact mat. MIDN performed the 20-meter shuttle run test to estimate aerobic capacity. Military-specific assessments were done as a part of regular NROTC training. To determine changes across class years, a one-way ANOVA was run on each variable with significance set at p < 0.05. Cohen’s d (d) effect size assessed the magnitude of the difference between only the freshmen and senior academic years. RESULTS: No significant differences were found between the academic years for any of the variables assessed: BMI (p = 0.274; d = 0.259), waist-to-hip ratio (p = 0.4237; d = 0.629), CMJ with arm swing (p = 0.949; d = 0.130), CMJ with hands on hips (p = 0.927; d = 0.830), and aerobic capacity (p = 0.753; d = 0.063). In the Marine Corp NROTC physical readiness test (PRT), there were no significant differences found for pullups (p = 0.106) and 3-mile run times (p = 0.079). No significant differences were found in the Navy physical fitness test (PFT) pushups (p = 0.473) and 1.5-mile run times (p = 0.868). CONCLUSIONS: These findings show that for Fall 2021, the more senior MIDN did not have greater fitness than less senior MIDN and suggest the current NROTC training model may not effectively improve fitness over the course of a college career, as it would be expected that fitness measures increase throughout four years of training. However, it is possible anaerobic power improves, as shown by the large effect size, but a larger sample size is needed to investigate this further. These results warrant future studies with a larger sample size of NROTC and longitudinal studies to assess changes over time.