ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, January 30, 1996 TAG: 9601310004
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NATICK, MASS.
SOURCE: Associated Press
ALL THAT THEY CAN BE is enough, an Army study has found, to schlep heavy packs and load trucks, jobs previously reserved for men.
With enough strength training, women can load trucks, fix heavy equipment and march under the weight of a loaded backpack as well as many men, according to a study by Army researchers.
Seventy-eight percent of the women tested could qualify for Army jobs considered ``very heavy,'' involving the occasional lifting of 100-pound loads, said Everett Harman, the Army scientist who headed the study.
The results prove that ``women are capable of being trained to perform most very heavy military tasks,'' Harman said.
Before the training study began at the Army's Natick Labs, only 24 percent of the women tested could lift 100 pounds.
The volunteers - all but one of them civilians - were lawyers, bartenders, mothers and students. Many had never exercised before. Each earned $500 for participating.
``When people think of this study, they probably think we're bodybuilding, steroid-taking, weightlifting women,'' said Jean Haertl, 30, who said she lost 35 pounds over the six months of training. ``We range from being very thin and lean to not so thin and lean.''
For 24 weeks beginning in May, 41 women spent 90 minutes a day, five days a week, performing strength tests designed to simulate specific military tasks.
The women lifted 40-pound boxes to heights of 52 inches - the average height of an Army flatbed truck - jogged through a 2-mile wooded course wearing a 75-pound backpack, and performed dozens of squats holding a 100-pound barbell on their shoulders.
Harman measured the women's success against previous Army studies of men on active duty.
In earlier tests, an average Army man could lift a box of 128.5 pounds to a height of 52 inches. Before the study, the women volunteers could lift 70 percent of that. After, they averaged 91 percent of what the men lifted.
On average, Harman said, women tend to have about 70 percent of the lower body strength of men, and 55 percent to 60 percent of men's upper body strength.
Lori Gilstrap, a strength and conditioning coordinator with the U.S. Olympic Committee in San Diego, said she wasn't surprised the women improved
But, she said, women can't be expected to match men's strength because they have much lower levels of testosterone.
Critics charged last year that the study, conducted by the Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, was a prelude to plans to allow women to engage in hand-to-hand combat. Because of that, the $140,000 study was placed on hold for about five weeks until the controversy subsided.
Harman believes it's worth the investment to strengthen military women.
``Some people say, `Why should you spend money training women when you can get men off the street?''' he said.
Harman argues that Army women tend to have more education than Army men, and that it's less expensive and time-consuming to increase a woman's strength than it is to teach an illiterate male to read.
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Jean Haertl lifts a steel box onto a shelf at anby CNBArmy laboratory.