While police work is primarily sedentary, police officers are required to frequently engage in near maximal workloads for short periods of time during incidents of a critical nature (Anderson et al., 2001). Critical incidents are often extremely physically challenging while the failure of officers to perform in such situations could clearly endanger themselves, their fellow officers, and the general public. For this reason many police organizations around the world have introduced bona fide occupational requirement or fitness testing procedures (IACP, 1988).
