The effect of physical training modality on exercise performance with police-related personal protective equipment

To investigate the influence of aerobic capacity, muscle strength, and body composition on performance and metabolic demands of men wearing personal protective equipment (PPE).

45 men were assigned to one of four groups which significantly differed in upright pull isometric strength (MVC ≤ 1325 N or ≥ 1531 N) and maximum oxygen uptake (VO₂max ≤ 51.9 mL min^-1·kg^-1 or ≥ 56.0 mL min^-1·kg^-1): endurance-trained (low MVC, high VO₂max), strength-trained (high MVC, low VO₂max), endurance- and strength-trained (high MVC, high VO₂max), and untrained (low MVC, low VO₂max). Each participant underwent two test series consisting of a repeated 10 m dummy drag and a graded exercise test wearing either sportswear or PPE of a German riot police unit weighing 20.9 kg (statistics: two-way repeated measures ANOVA, stepwise multiple linear regressions).

With PPE, dummy drag and running performance were impaired by 14 ± 9% and 58 ± 7%. Groups with high MVC dragged the dummy significantly faster than groups with low MVC (17.5 ± 1.8 s/17.6 ± 1.4 s vs. 23.4 ± 5.6 s/22.3 ± 3.5 s). Running distance was significantly higher in groups with high VO₂max (4.5 ± 0.8 km/4.4 ± 0.7 km vs. 3.1 ± 0.5 km/2.8 ± 0.5 km). Body composition variables partially correlated with performance (R ranging from -0.70 to 0.41), but were not significant predictors of the regression models in PPE.

Individuals who showed a certain degree of aerobic endurance, as well as muscle strength, performed consistently well during the test series. Therefore, none of these variables should be trained in isolation but optimized in combination to be capable in a variety of operational tasks.