An Iowa State Professor is currently working on long-term research aimed at reducing bone stress for members of the Armed Forces.

Tim Derrick, a professor in Kinesiology, or the study of human movement, has been working with the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, examining the stress put on soldiers through basic training activities, such as carrying heavy backpacks.

“So you’re in basic training, you start out in pretty bad shape, your bones aren’t that strong. By the end of basic training, your bones are a lot stronger, but during that time there’s a high incidence of stress fractures,” said Derrick. “So the idea would be try to modify the training, so that you’re not getting as many stress fractures.”

Backpack loads between 33 and 121 pounds were tested on 31 soldiers using a force-sensing treadmill and sensors placed on the body, a system that Derrick describes as being “exactly the same” as motion capture, the technology used in entertainment to create realistic movement in CGI-generated characters.

Joseph Seay, a researcher at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, said that the research being done by Derrick is unique.

“Military life is composed of a few different facets that can put increased stress on the bone,” Seay said. “No one’s really looking at how load carriage may affect the stresses and strain on the bone.”

Derrick said that while the research could results in changes to the backpacks used in the Armed Forces, “The first step is just to quantify what the stresses are in the bones.”

“I see the biggest changes coming in the training rather than the equipment.”

Derrick said there are many advantages in decreasing the number of injuries inflicted on soldiers.

“These injuries are fairly expensive. When soldiers do not participate in basic training, they have to go to rehab and things like that, it’s not only cost but it’s the fact that the number of soldiers they have decreases.”

The research is still “several years” from completion, said Derrick. To date, the studies have only been performed on male soldiers. The next step in the research is a study on stress in female soldiers. “It’ll be in the future that this has a real impact on the training of the recruits,” said Derrick.