The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects on leg muscular performance from whole-body vibration exercise. Literature search was performed on the databases Pubmed, Cinahl, ISI web of science (Sci-expanded, SSCI) and Embase (Rehab & Physical Med). Rating of 19 relevant studies was performed (14 on long-term exercise and five on short-term exercise) using a score system for the methodological quality. Several randomized-controlled trial studies of high to moderate quality show similar improvements from long-term regimen on muscular performance in the legs after a period of whole-body vibration exercise. As there were few studies on short-term exercise and as they had no control groups, the same convincing improvements regarding muscular performance were not achieved. Preliminarily, there is strong to moderate evidence that long-term whole-body vibration exercise can have positive effects on the leg muscular performance among untrained people and elderly women. There is no clear evidence for effects on muscular performance after short-term vibration stimuli.

The objective of this study was to examine the content validity of commonly used muscle performance tests in military personnel and to investigate the reliability of a proposed test battery. For the content validity investigation, thirty selected tests were those described in the literature and/or commonly used in the Nordic and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries. Nine selected experts rated, on a four-point Likert scale, the relevance of these tests in relation to five different work tasks: lifting, carrying equipment on the body or in the hands, climbing, and digging. Thereafter, a content validity index (CVI) was calculated for each work task. The result showed excellent CVI (≥0.78) for sixteen tests, which comprised of one or more of the military work tasks. Three of the tests; the functional lower-limb loading test (the Ranger test), dead-lift with kettlebells, and back extension, showed excellent content validity for four of the work tasks. For the development of a new muscle strength/endurance test battery, these three tests were further supplemented with two other tests, namely, the chins and side-bridge test. The inter-rater reliability was high (intraclass correlation coefficient, ICC2,1 0.99) for all five tests. The intra-rater reliability was good to high (ICC3,1 0.82–0.96) with an acceptable standard error of mean (SEM), except for the side-bridge test (SEM%>15). Thus, the final suggested test battery for a valid and reliable evaluation of soldiers’ muscle performance comprised the following four tests; the Ranger test, dead-lift with kettlebells, chins, and back extension test. The criterion-related validity of the test battery should be further evaluated for soldiers exposed to varying physical workload.