An Extra 1%

DEXA v Tape Test

Marines traditionally use a certain set of measurements to determine a person's physical ability to be a competent Marine. These measurements include:

The Marine body fat calculator uses the results of the first 2 measurements to determine if a person's body fat falls within the desirable range for a marine. However, recently administrators noticed that some participants, particularly women, are being ruled out by their body fat percentage despite excelling in the Physical Fitness Test.

The Marine Corps began investigating whether its current method of calculating body fat is accurate. To test this, they conducted a year-long study with male and female participants, comparing its body fat calculator to the results of a DEXA scan.

The results? Thanks to the DEXA scan, the military found that more than 6% of the female participants would have been wrongly ruled out by the Marine Corps's body fat calculator.

While the Marine Corps won't be conducting DEXA scans on all potential marines, starting in January of 2023 they will increase the acceptable body fat percentage by 1% for women in an attempt to correct this issue.

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