Allied Health Faculty Publications

Evaluation of Possible Anthropometric Advantage in Sit-Up Test

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-31-2019

Journal Title

The Sport Journal

ISSN

1543-9518

Volume

20

Abstract

The U.S. Navy currently employs sit-ups as part of its semi-annual physical fitness in order to assess the abdominal muscular endurance of service-members. However, there is speculation that sit-up performance may be associated with anthropometric proportions thereby affording certain service-members with a biomechanical advantage. To test this theory, anthropometric measurements were taken at various sites (i.e., humerus, torso, femur, and tibia) across a convenience sample of 69 participants (37 male / 32 female), to include student, active duty, and retired military personnel from the United States Naval Academy. Humerus length (r = .297), tibia length (r = .385) and sex (r = .314) were all found to be moderately correlated with sit-up performance. These findings, coupled with well-documented concerns of the sit-ups in terms of safety and relevance in the literature, make a compelling argument for the identification and implementation of other potential field tests to assess abdominal muscular endurance.

Keywords

Military physical fitness test, sit up test, anthropometric measurements

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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