Military studies nature of its ‘hyperfit’ women
Goal: Identifying what is behind their success
ARMY SOLDIER SYSTEMS CENTER, Mass. — In the nearly four years since the Pentagon announced it was opening all combat jobs to women, at least 30 have earned the Army Ranger tab, two have graduated Marine infantry school and three have passed the grueling initial assessment phase for Green Beret training.
Their numbers are small, but their completion of some of the military’s most arduous physical and mental courses has raised an intriguing scientific question: Who are these “hyperfit” women, and what makes them so competitive?
Army medical researchers hope to uncover answers in a justlaunched voluntary study.
“We’re really interested in those elite women that are the first to make it through physically demanding training,” said Holly Mcclung, a nutritional physiologist at the Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Massachusetts. “The real point of the study is to characterize this unique cohort of women that has made it through these traditionally male trainings.”
During early debate on the move to open all combat jobs to women, military leaders raised questions about whether women were up to the jobs or if putting them on the front lines would make units less capable. The Marine Corps sought an exemption to keep some combat jobs closed for precisely that reason, but they were overruled by then-defense Secretary Ash Carter.
Women have increasingly made it through the nine-week Ranger course, and the numbers of those trying out for other special operations jobs is inching up. The courses all encompass a number of phases and run from about nine weeks to a year or two for the most elite commando jobs.
They involve a wide array of grueling physical fitness tests, combat water survival, day and night land navigation, long road marches carrying heavy packs, extended patrols through various climates and extensive mental, psychological and leadership testing.
The goal, said Mcclung, is to identify the attributes — whether mental, physical or psychological — that help the women succeed. By unlocking those secrets, maybe they can help other women compete for the same jobs.
In a small basement office at this Army base in Natick, Massachusetts, Mcclung and Julie Hughes, a research physiologist, set up a treadmill that’s linked to a nearby computer. They planned to have women use a mask and breathing apparatus to calculate each participant’s vo2 Max score, a key fitness indicator. The score measures how many millimeters of oxygen are used per kilogram of body weight per minute — in other words, how much oxygen is being used at a person’s peak exercise rate.
An average sedentary person may have a score of about 30. Top athletes — runners and cyclists — can score in the 80s.
The plan, at this point, is to have the military women come to Natick, in groups of two or three, and go through a range of tests over three days to identify biological and physiological markers that help define them as hyperfit. Having several tested at the same time, Mcclung said, will make it more interesting and encourage competition.
The women will take three psychological exams that are designed to determine their grit, hardiness and resilience.