Special Uses

The Fitness Score application can be effectively employed for several additional special uses, including the selection of personnel or monitoring and testing for individuals in safety-critical professions such as the Army, Navy, Police, Air Force, and others.  

Application of the Fitness Score system for the purpose of personnel selection is based on its unique capacity to reveal an individual’s underlying functional ability or impairment.

An individual’s fitness level can range from “Top achiever” if they score within the blue zone in the top left-hand corner to the “Lowest achiever” if they score within the red zone in the bottom right-hand corner of the Fitness Chart. Most commonly, individuals found to be in the red zone are suffering from an acute state secondary to one or many underlying external factors. These factors may include: 

• Extreme overexertion
• Psycho-emotional stress
• Rapidly developing infections and intoxications

These factors, as well as others that may result in the development of the “acute state,” exhibit a similar wave portrait. 

The Fitness Score system opens new possibilities for the functional testing of personnel in safety-critical professions such as pilots, air traffic controllers, and military personnel. Much higher standards of safety assurance can be achieved through the implementation of Fitness Score testing of “critical” personnel before the performance of a “critical task.” Such testing is highly sensitive in detecting intoxication, excessive fatigue, infection, or any other deviation from their normal fitness state. Even more importantly, such testing cannot be misled by any human deception, as it measures objective physiological parameters that are beyond conscious human control.  

For testing to be accurate, it is necessary to establish an initial baseline for each person by testing him or her three to five times across different days. The best result should be considered his/her “normal” fitness score. The additional tests can also be used to determine permissible deviations from the individual’s “normal” baseline. For example, the baseline of an individual is determined to be a score of 7.2, as shown in the image below. All deviations from an individual norm are shown as pink dots on the diagram, defining the range of fitness scores of this employee before the beginning of his working shift. A trained professional who knows the medical and psycho-emotional condition of the employees should supervise and interpret all tests. 

All subsequent tests can serve to monitor the individual’s fitness state. Once the range of the individual’s deviations is established, special attention should be paid to all scores that lie outside the range. The charts below show the difference between this individual’s normal fitness score (7.2) and after they have consumed alcoholic beverages over eight hours (12.6). A clear and significant deviation from the individual’s normal baseline can be easily observed.