The purpose
of this research was to investigate the effects of a physical training program
and semester break periods on the chosen physical abilities and basic body
composition indicators among police trainees. Body weight (BW), waist
circumference (WC), push-ups (PU), sit-ups (SU) and 2.4 km run (RUN) times of
420 male trainees attending the Abu Dhabi Police College were collected. The
testing was conducted by the police education centre during routine testing
periods (June, September, December, May) which bracketed the semesters and
could be used to investigate the impacts of the physical training program and
any potential detraining occurring over the semester break. A repeated measure
analysis of variance was performed to identify changes in results across the
time periods with a Bonferroni post-hoc adjustment to identify where
differences, if any, lay. The level of significance was set at 0.05 a priori. Following the semester break period from June to September,
BW, WC and RUN increased significantly (p<.01), while PU and SU decreased
significantly (p<.01). WC and RUN significantly decreased from September to
December and December to May (p<.01); BW significantly decreased from September
to December (p<.01), but did not change from December to May (p=.267); PU
and SU significantly increased from September to December (p<.01) and
December to May (p=.018 and p<.01, respectively).