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由于新兵体重超重和体能不达标等原因，美军今年的新兵训练计划取消了仰卧起坐等传统项目，引入了类似瑜伽或普拉提的训练方式，同时，让新兵胆寒的长跑项目也被缩减。据悉，这一新的训练计划已经策划了十年之久，今年将在全部五个新兵训练点实施，目的是减少训练给士兵带来的身体损伤，同时使士兵更好地为适应战场做准备。该计划更重要的一个目标则是解决美国军队目前面临的一个重大问题：士兵体重超标以及体能不合格。由美军退休将领组成的调查小组今年呈递的报告显示，在1995年至2008年期间美国青年未能入伍的原因调查中，体重超标占将近70%。有美军军官称，垃圾食品、视频游戏的流行以及高中体育锻炼课程的减少都是导致这一现象的原因。
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Soldiers at Fort Jackson, like Pvt. Alyssa Leggat, work on push-ups. The fitness regime involves more agility and balance training. |
"Army Strong" may be the recruiting slogan, but these days the US Army seems less focused on new recruits' strength than on their excess weight.
In fact, the Army has just rejiggered its basic physical training program, making allowances for recruits who are fat and out of shape when they show up for basic training.
That familiar standby, the situp, is gone, or almost gone. Exercises that look like pilates or yoga routines are in. And the traditional bane of the new private, the long run, has been downgraded.
This is the Army’s new physical-training program, which has been rolled out this year at its five basic training posts that handle 145,000 recruits a year. Nearly a decade in the making, its official goal is to reduce injuries and better prepare soldiers for the rigors of combat.
But as much as anything, the program was created to help address one of the most pressing issues facing the military today: overweight and unfit recruits.
"What we were finding was that the soldiers we're getting in today's Army are not in as good shape as they used to be," said Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, who oversees basic training for the Army, told the Times.
The Army has long rejected potential recruits who are overweight. But the number of potential recruits deemed too fat to fight has been growing in recent years, the result of America's obesity epidemic, says the Times.
Between 1995 and 2008, the proportion of potential recruits who failed their physicals each year because they were overweight rose nearly 70 percent, according to a recent report issued by a blue-ribbon panel of retired generals and admirals.
The report found that 27 percent of young adults between the ages of 17 and 24 were too fat for military service, according to Scripps News.
Even those the Army deems slim enough to serve tend to be weaker and to have less stamina than recruits of previous generations - the result of years spent indulging in junk food and video games, according to Army officials who spoke with the Times.
"Kids are just not able to do push-ups," Curt Gilroy, the Pentagon's director of accessions, told the Army Times last year. "And they can't do pull-ups. And they can't run."
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(Agencies)
（中国日报网英语点津 Helen 编辑）
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