Beginning as only one phase of the Grant Study's research on the neglected "normal man," Dr. Lucien Brouha's attempts to determine the ability of the average person to perform hard muscular work have been so successful that he has developed a test which has already been given to 2200 students here and to 2800 Yale students and which shows promise of seeing still wider application in the near future.

Dr. Brouha is the physiologist of the seven specialists who have been working since 1938 in the low structure next to the Hygiene Building on Holyoke Street. Founded by the William T. Grant Foundation, the Grant Study has made some valuable contributions to science's understanding of normal man; the Step Test is one of the most outstanding of them.

Brouha Finds Basic Law

From the tests on Harvard and Yale students plus many more at Andover, Dr. Brouha has found good reason to believe that there is a fundamental physiological law which determines the ability of boys around 20 years of age to sustain and recover from hard work. The average of the College population at large here, irrespective of training conditions and based on the scores of the 2200 students, is 76, according to the scoring system of the test. This figure includes the June Freshmen who were the first full Class to be tested upon entering College. These Freshmen were tested again at the end of the summer to find the effect of the conditioning program on their efficiency. The same thing was done on 100 students taken from regular conditioning classes this spring who were tested before and after a six week interval.

Both results showed that those with a physical efficiency rating under 60 in the first test shot right up with an 8 to 20 point improvement when re-checked. Boys whose first test was 75 or better didn't show such marked improvement, leading the physiologists to say that the conditioning program wasn't tough enough for these students. Previous tests on a group of about 20 crewmen who started out with very high scores but nevertheless showed a marked improvement under rigorous training conditions, led them to this belief.

The Hygiene Department and the Athletic Association have adopted the Step Test's determination of the average student's fitness, and this fall all Freshmen whose rating was 75 or below, just under the College average, have been required to attend conditioning classes four times a week. The physical efficiency index has thus replaced the posture grade of recent years as the sign of the need for special exercise. Dr. Brouha expressed the difference in the two different methods this way: "It's just like a car; you can't tell whether it has the power by just looking at it. You have to press all the way down on the accelerator."

Both the June and September Freshmen are scheduled for a re-check tomorrow through the seventeenth, which will make the third reading on the June '46 Class, and the second on the September '46 Class. The results will enable Norman Fradd, assistant director of athletics, to decide whether or not the new training program is adequate and also to eliminate from compulsory conditioning classes those who can achieve a score better than 75.

Athletic Teams Tested

Dr. Brouha has concentrated his tests on athletes especially, to discover the most valuable type of exercise to increase fitness. Here are some of the figures he got:

Average of Varsity and Jayvee crewmen before training 87

Average of Varsity and Jayvee crewmen after training 100

Average of Varsity and Jayvee cross country runners before training 86

Average of Varsity and Jayvee cross country runners after training 97

Average of football players after training 90

It is evident from these that crew and running are the most valuable for increasing physical fitness. The reason is that the test measures mainly the efficiency of the circulatory system, and any kind of training like crew, track, or swimming, that puts a stress on the heart, lungs and large muscle masses, will better one's score more than another kind of exercise.