A fairly recent article in the Journal of Special Operations Medicine (JSOM)* examined the Musculoskeletal injuries from 5th group. The military is starting to catch onto the fact that their troops, in particular their special operations troops, would improve their operational effectiveness while reducing rates of injury by taking advantage of some of the training being used in the athletic world.

The authors decided to quantify the rates and types of these injuries in SF using the records from 5th group, “who treated numerous middle-aged team sergeants with shoulder, back, and knee overuse injuries”
The authors noted “Special Forces, and Ranger units are about 10 to 12 injuries per 100 Soldier-months, which is comparable to collegiate endurance athletes. Of all the types of units studied, Special Forces has the highest incidence of injury rate at 12.1 per 100 Soldier-months.”

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