engleski

Differences between army recruits and professional soldiers in functional and morphological characteristics

This research was conducted on a sample of 506 examinees, out of which 325 were Croatian army recruits and 181 were Croatian professional soldiers. Croatian army recruits group was consisted of infantry soldiers, navy soldiers and military police while the Croatian professional soldiers group was consisted of infantry soldiers and soldiers with special duties. The examinees were tested with 11 tests with a purpose of determining their morphological status and functional abilities. The main goal of this research was to determine the morphological and functional status of army recruits and professional soldiers and to compare their tests results in order to investigate the difference between those two groups of examinees. Statistical signifi cance of difference in arithmetic means between the two groups of examinees was tested with t-test for independent samples. Professional soldiers obtained signifi cantly better results in running on 3200 meters, body weight, upper arm circumference, forearm circumference and lower leg circumference. They also had significantly smaller lower leg skinfold. The army recruits are taller and they had smaller suprailiocristal skinfold but those differences were not found statistically significant. The results of the tests executed show that members of Croatian special military units are heavier than recruits and have less body fat. They also have better aerobic capacity. The differences can be attributed to the longer period of military service and more vigorous military duties.

army ; physical characteristics ; recruit

nije evidentirano