• spirometry
• bia
• special forces
• cpet
• comsubin
• italian navy
• war
• vo2 max
• fat mass
• lean mass
• aerobic performance
• body fat
• heart
• lung
• gas exchange

INTRODUCTION:
The evaluation of the cardiopulmonary exercise is done by means of the CPET (Cardio-Pulmonary Exercise Test), which tests how lungs and heart respond to exercise. By correlating the resulting data, we created a test of functional evaluation, which considers the following parameters: cardiovascular, ventilatory and metabolic response, acid-base equilibrium, and gas exchanges. In this study, the cardiopulmonary exercise was carried out on this year’s operational raiders (GOI: Gruppo Operativo Incursori) trainees at the COMSUBIN (COMando SUBacqueo INcursori), the Italian Navy Special Operation Forces Commando, in La Spezia (Italy). The duties of the GOI are technically challenging since they perform difficult civil protection operations as well as non-conventional warlike operations both in water and underwater environments.

AIMS:
Our study aims to evaluate the heart and lung efficiency after the first phase of the selection course of this group of high-level athletes and to correlate it with the results of their BIA (Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis) and their medical history questionnaire.

SUBJECTS AND INSTRUMENTS:
The subjects are 21 healthy young men in their twenties, formerly selected for the course itself, which consists of four stages: combat-on-ground, water combat, amphibious stage and operational management. The data collected at the end of the combat-on-ground phase were cross-analyzed with the medical history questionnaire and the CPET, BIA and spirometry.

RESULTS:
The study shows the high aerobic performances of the trainees, considering that the VO2 max mean is 45,2 ml/min/kg, which indicates an elevated level, suitable to cope with the hard training.
Then, the BIA shows their very low levels of fat mass, 7.2 %, and very high levels of lean mass, at 92.7%. Their mean total muscular mass, 69.2%, is also noteworthy.
We can also notice that there is a statistical significative correlation between body fat percentage and VO2 max.
Finally we compared VO2 max of Special Forces trainees with a control group of 16 people belonging to COMSUBIN but not patented: all the values of the trainee-raiders are superior to those of the control group and a two-tailed comparison was performed with statistically significant correlation with P value of 0.0089.

CONCLUSIONS:
We can conclude that the CPET can be used both on healthy subjects, to test their performance and improve it, and on heart and lung patients to make a diagnosis to determine a medical treatment.
Also, the trainees’ results show data which are by far superior to those of the healthy population of the same age and gender. However, there are some limitations in this study given by the low number of subjects tested and the lack of a follow-up phase.
It will be interesting to carry on the study by testing these trainees at the end of the following two selective phases, thus seeing their improvement. Another possible development of the study could be to compare the CPET values with those shown on the trainees' sport smartwatches.