Sit-ups and push-ups are about to become history at army bases in the United States. Fort Campbell, Ky., home of the 101st Airborne Division have introduced Redcord core training as part of a standard training program to reduce injuries.
It is Dr. Scott Lephart and his team at the Neuromuscular Research Laboratory at the Department of Sports Medicine and Nutrition at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center that has introduced Redcord to the army base.
Dr. Lephart and his team have built a clone of their lab on the South Side at a gym at Fort Campbell, and they followed soldiers out into the field.
"We put oxygen masks on soldiers in the field to test the demands on them in simulated combat," Dr. Lephart said to post-gazette.com.
Their findings are revolutionizing the way the Army conducts physical training. Instead of exercising the traditional army-way, the soldiers exercise strength like professional atheletes do during off season. They emphasize speed, agility, balance, reaction, quickness and endurance.
"The strength exercises are very specific to the functions [soldiers] are going to do, like lifting ammo cans," Dr. Lephart said.
The balance exercises the soldiers are doing will be especially important in Afghanistan, where the 101st is scheduled to deploy next year, because "the terrain is so bad," Dr. Lephart said.
Read more from www.post-gazette.com.