'Hyperfit' women intrigue U.S. military

[corbe]

'Hyperfit' women intrigue U.S. military

By Lolita C. Baldor   - Associated Press - Sunday, July 21, 2019

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 just-launched 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.”

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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jul/21/hyperfit-women-intrigue-us-military/

[Maj. Bill Martin]

Perhaps they could look into why those hyperfit women couldn't pass all those courses as previously constructed, and why the standards had to be changed first.

Also, the bigger problem is not whether those or any other women can achieve a relatively short period of peak fitness where they can pass (albeit in the lowest percentiles) those courses.  It's whether they can maintain that level of fitness as they age, and whether their bodies can hold up physically/medically to the longer term demands of carrying extremely heavy weights, etc....