News

Welcome HDR student | Jeremy Robinson

The TRU recently welcomed HDR student, coach Jeremy Robinson. Jeremy is the only full-time, Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Australia / New Zealand's Counter Terrorism Committee, where he works with the highly-skilled Police Tactical Groups. With extensive experience in policing, physically conditioning specialist police, and as a former NRL strength and conditioning coach, Jeremy will be investigating ways to optimise the selection and training of specialist police tactical group personnel.

Welcome HDR student | Nathan Andrews

Meet TRU's HDR student, Nathan Andrews. His research - Can competence achievability in Law Enforcement firearms training and assessment be defined and predicted, will examine key elements of law enforcement use of force training and assessing, including the methodology used by law enforcement organisations to determine the appropriate use of force standards used to determine member competency. 

California State University (Fullerton) Kinesiology Class Roundtable

Dr Rob Orr was an invited panellist discussing fitness and occupational testing. The session was presented to senior undergraduate and graduate students completing a kinesiology degree at California State University, Fullerton. Joining fellow panellists, Dr Jay Dawes (Oklahoma State University) and Matthew Moreno (US Marines Corps, CAMP Pendleton), Dr Rob Orr discussed how fitness testing varies across different occupational groups, why fitness testing is conducted, and how it differs from testing athletes.

Sports Medicine Australia (SMA) Conference 

This year the SMA Conference went remote with post-doctoral research fellow Dr Patrick Campbell presenting some side project work being undertaken by the TRU. Patrick presented on The variability of estimated VO2Max derived from 20m shuttle run scores in Australian law enforcement recruits: implications for occupational standards and Changes in Australian law enforcement recruits’ aerobic fitness, and the development of normative data following academy training. Both sessions were well-received and form part of a larger body of work assisting state police services to optimise their aerobic fitness assessments.

Partnership with LEGEAR

The TRU team teamed up with Jason Semple, the General Manager from LEGEAR, a division of Australian Defence Apparel (ADA), to further finetune future research which will be investigating the thermal impacts of law enforcement body armour on police officers. The research, which is scheduled to be undertaken early next year, is part of ongoing work to assist ADA with their research and development into police body armour – notably for agencies working in hotter climates.

Peer reviewed journal articles:

1. Hernandez, E., Dawes, J., Dulla, J., Orr, R., Lockie, R. (2021). Fitness percentile rank data for female law enforcement recruits in the USA. Facta Universitatis 19(1): 109-118. DOI: 10.22190/FUPES210609014H

2. Dawes, J., Lentine, T., Johnson, Q., Lockie, R., Orr, R. (2021). Strength and conditioning program design considerations for law enforcement officers. Strength and Conditioning Journal 43(6) doi: 10.1519/SSC.0000000000000680

3. Rodas, K., Moreno, M., Bloodgood, A., Dawes, J., Dulla, J., Orr, R., Lockie, R. (2021). The effects aerobic fitness has on heart rate responses for a custody assistant recruit class performing a formation run. International Journal of Exercise Science 14(4): 1219-1233.

4. Lentine, T., Johnson, Q., Lockie, R., Joyce, J., Orr, R., Dawes, J. (2021). Occupational challenges to the development and maintenance of physical fitness within law enforcement officers. Strength and Conditioning Journal. 43(6) doi: 10.1519/SSC.0000000000000679