Effect of body fat on endurance performance in professional soldiers from Slovakia

BACKGROUND: The aim of the cross sectional study was to determine the effect of body fat on the endurance performance of professional soldiers. Endurance is a key determinant of physical fitness, cardiometabolic profile and overall health in professional soldiers. In the Slovak army, a 12-min run is most often used to test endurance skills. In our study, we investigated the effect of the percentage of body fat on the results of the Cooper test.METHODS: During the years 2021-2024, we deliberately selected and tested 430 male cadets (MC) (age: 21.30±1.54 years; height: 1.81±0.07 m; weight: 80.9±9.9 kg) and 131 female cadets (FC) (age: 20.80±1.30 years ; height: 1.68±0.06 m; weight: 63.7±8.0 kg), who are cadets at the Academy of the Armed Forces of Milan Rastislav Štefánik (AFA) in Liptovský Mikuláš (Slovakia). We divided the set into four groups according to the percentage of subcutaneous fat in men and three groups in women, in which we compared performance in the Cooper Test. For evaluation, we used an unpaired parametric t-test for the normal distribution of the file, we set the level of significance to P≤0.01. We used Cohen’s d to verify significance.RESULTS: MC with a level of body fat of 10-15% achieved an average performance of 2766.33 m compared to cadets who had more than 20% body fat, whose performance was lower at the level of 2626.94 m, this difference 139.29 m (5.30%) we confirmed by statistically (P=0.0003-E03), which we verified effect size d=0.63 (medium effect). FC with a level of body fat up to 20% achieved an average performance of 2374.17 m compared to FC who had more than 25% body fat, whose performance was lower at the level of 2229.63 m, this difference 144.55 m (6.48%) we confirmed by statistically (P=0.0001), which we verified effect size d=0.98.CONCLUSIONS: The research showed a negative effect of excess body fat on endurance performance of cadets. Maintaining body fat at the level of 10-15% for male soldiers and below the level of 20% for female soldiers predisposes professional soldiers to meet performance standards in endurance skills.