A Preliminary Analysis of Self-Efficacy Relationships With General and Job-Specific Fitness in Law Enforcement Officers

General and job-specific fitness may decline in law enforcement officers during their careers. Exercise self-efficacy (individual’s belief in ability to perform exercise) may present as one reason why an officer’s fitness declines and could relate to the officer’s general and job-specific fitness. Archival data from 60 officers (48 men, 12 women) were analyzed. A 6-item questionnaire measured coping (ability to adapt) and scheduling (ability to manage and schedule) self-efficacy. The items were assessed on a scale of 0 (not confident) to 100 (completely confident). General fitness tests included resting heart rate, blood pressure, skeletal muscle mass and fat mass percentage (FM%), waist-to-
hip ratio (WHR), sit-and-reach, grip strength, 60-s push-ups, 60-s sit-ups, and YMCA step test recovery heart rate. Job-specific fitness was measured by a 99-yard obstacle course (99OC), body drag, 6-foot chain link fence climb (CLF), 6-foot solid wall climb (SW), and 500-yard run. Partial correlations controlling for sex and age calculated relationships between self-efficacy with fitness (p , 0.05). Coping self-efficacy had small-to-moderate negative relationships with FM%, WHR, 99OC, CLF, and SW (p # 0.047). Both coping and scheduling self-efficacy had small-to-large positive relationships with push-ups and sit-ups (p # 0.040). Higher confidence in the ability to overcome exercise participation challenges related to lower BF% and WHR, and faster 99OC, CLF, and SW performance in officers. Officers confident in their ability to overcome exercise participation challenges and schedule exercise performed more push-ups and sit-ups. Providing strategies for officers to overcome challenges and manage their exercise schedules could benefit body adiposity, muscular endurance, and select job tasks.