Knight versus Soldier versus Firefighter: The Obstacle Course



It looks like the soldier and the firefighter are really a soldier and a firefighter (Swiss, in both cases), whereas the 'knight' is a martial artist. That may have had an impact on the final results, although they track the weight of the gear very closely.

4 comments:

MikeD said...

The knight was also 10 years older than either of the other two. Not bad.

douglas said...

Interesting. A few things of interest:
-The knight benefits from his load being very well distributed across his entire body and being well secured.
-The firefighter has the slight height disadvantage of the O2 tank, and the significant disadvantage of the dangling pouches on either side.
-The soldier had a significant height disadvantage with the ruck, especially in the low crawl.
-Both the firefighter and soldiers loads were more concentrated on the torso, and with the cantilevered load off the back, had their loads less centered around their natural center of mass relative to the knight.
-In all cases, the fact that their kit was designed to be used by a man running, crawling, fighting, etc. and requiring a natural range of movement and a limit to the amount of disadvantage of an increased load, translates into effective designs that allow most natural movement to occur and for the man to perform the job efficaciously.

Ultimately, this points out the similarities of the needs of the three jobs more than anything else, although to many, I'm sure it's quite enlightening to see a man in armor running around so easily..

Tom said...

Interesting video. And interesting observations, douglas.

Eric Blair said...

One thing I'd point out is that the ruck on the soldier would be dropped at contact, and so I'm not really sure it should count as part of the equipment.

But it's an interesting comparison all the same.