Originally Posted by usmc-sgt

The Corps didn't use waist measurement. If I recall, if you were overweight they'd have a metric that used waist and neck size as well as weight. This accounted for heavy lifters that were low body fat pct but heavy weight. If it still didn't work then you could get calipered for body fat. We had a few folks who needed that, mostly those under 6' tall, over 200# but benching 400+.

In all it was a good program. Weight was the basic metric but there were fail safes in place for those in great shape (with body fat/bmi to prove it) who were over the "standard".

Originally Posted by navigatro

i think it would be worth the low cost to do underwater weight (most accurate body fat composition test) to keep the most valuable soldiers in the military. Just set a max body fat %, and if you fail the tape test, then your last resort is the body fat test.

It is a lot cheaper to give a $250 body fat test versus the $50,000 it costs to recruit, train, and retain an new soldier.