Modeling the Metabolic Costs of Heavy Military Backpacking

This study aimed to develop and validate an equation for estimating metabolic rates during heavy backpacking for the US Army Load Carriage Decision Aid (LCDA), an integrated software mission planning tool. Methods Thirty healthy, active military-age adults (3 women, 27 men; age, 25 ± 7 yr; height, 1.74 ± 0.07 m; body mass, 77 ± 15 kg) walked for 6–21 min while carrying backpacks loaded up to 66% body mass at speeds between 0.45 and 1.97 m·s−1. A new predictive model, the LCDA backpacking equation, was developed on metabolic rate data calculated from indirect calorimetry. Model estimation performance was evaluated internally by k-fold cross-validation and externally against seven historical reference data sets. We tested if the 90% confidence interval of the mean paired difference was within equivalence limits equal to 10% of the measured metabolic rate. Estimation accuracy and level of agreement were also evaluated by the bias and concordance correlation coefficient (CCC), respectively. Results Estimates from the LCDA backpacking equation were statistically equivalent (P
Source: Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise - Category: Sports Medicine Tags: APPLIED SCIENCES Source Type: research