Smoking status and physical fitness during initial military training

<span class="paragraphSection"><div class="boxTitle">Abstract</div><div class="boxTitle">Background</div>Habitual smoking is prevalent in military populations, but whether smoking status influences physical fitness development during training is not clear.<div class="boxTitle">Aims</div>To investigate the effect of smoking status on physical fitness parameters during initial British Army infantry training.<div class="boxTitle">Methods</div>Routine measures of physical fitness (2.4-km run time and maximum number of press ups and sit ups in 2 min) were obtained in male recruits at weeks 1, 14 and 24 of initial military training. A linear mixed model was used to identify differences in performance between smokers and non-smokers over time.<div class="boxTitle">Results</div>Among 1182 study subjects (mean ± SD: age 20 ± 3, body mass 70.6 ± 9.8 kg, height 1.77 ± 0.07 m; 58% smokers), non-smokers performed significantly better than smokers in all performance tests (<span style="font-style:italic;">P</span> < 0.01), but rates of improvement during training were similar (<span style="font-style:italic;">P</span> > 0.05). Run performance improved by 7% in non-smokers (estimated marginal means 612–567 s) and 8% in smokers (622–571 s). Press up performance improved by 18% in non-smokers (48.3–57.0) and 23% in smokers (44.1–54.5) and sit up performance by 15% in non-smokers (57.3–66.0) and 18% in smokers (53.8–63.3).<div class="boxTitle">Conclusions</div>Smokers exhibited lower muscular and cardiorespiratory endurance performance than non-smokers. Unexpectedly, however, no significant differences in improvement in performance indices were demonstrated between smokers and non-smokers during military training.</span>

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