Evaluation Of Physical Fitness Characteristics Of Officers And Men Of The Armed Forces In Lagos, Nigeria

ABSTRACT The physical fitness of members of the Nigerian armed forces is of great importance to their mobility and health. Available studies have centred on growth, development and combat readiness of the Nigerian Armed Forces (NAF) but have not critically examined their Physical Fitness Characteristics (PFC) as recommended by the United Nations Military Fitness Established Norms (UNMFNs). Therefore, this study evaluated Resting Heart Rate (RHR), Systolic Blood Pressure (SBP), Diastolic Blood Pressure (DBP), Agility, Speed, Leg Power, Flexibility, Muscular Endurance, Maximum Oxygen Consumption (MaxV02), Percent Body Fat (%BF) and Body Mass Index (BMI) characteristics of officers and men (OM) of the armed forces in Lagos, Nigeria. The ex-post facto research design was employed. Purposive sampling technique was adopted to select 186 participants from officers (n=49) and men (n=137) of the Nigerian Army (n=64), Navy (n=64) and Air force (n=58). Data were collected using Skin-fold Callipers (r=0.99), Sphygmomanometer (r= 0.97), Illinois Agility Run (r=0.93), 1.5mile RunWalk (r= 0.72), Sit-Up (r= 0.92), Sergeant Jump (r= 0.70), BMI (r=0.69) and Flex box (r= 0.90). Three research questions were answered, and nine hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance. Data were analysed using paired t-test, Analysis of Variance and Scheffe post-hoc test. There were significant differences between the RHR (t=4.167, p