Effect of Prolonged Military Exercises With High Load Carriage, on Neuromuscular Fatigue and Physiological/Biomechanical Responses

Land military missions generally combine prolonged walking/moderate-pace-running and other physical actions such as creeping, jumping, shooting,… which are associated with the direct carrying of high to severe loads of equipment and supplies (20-30 to 50 kg) by soldiers. For an infantry section, "typical" intervention phases last about 20-24 h and combine variable intensity grades. Consequently, military mission characteristics are an interesting investigation field of human fatigue. Previous studies have investigated human neuromuscular alterations after prolonged "normal" locomotion exercises \[Millet et al., 2004, 2009\], thus the aim of this study is to characterize the neuromuscular determinants of fatigue induced by a 24-h Simulated Military Effort (SME) and a 4-h Military Road March (MM), both performed with high load carriage. Additionally, the consequences of fatigue on physiological and biomechanical parameters of locomotion will be investigated.