What reg says a Soldier cannot bulk up their neck or suck in their gut during a unit weigh-in?

Good Question! The answer is not so black and white or clear cut. That’s where expe­ri­ence comes into play.

For the abdomen mea­sure­ment, AR 600–9 clearly addresses the indi­vid­ual is to be relaxed and when the mea­sure­ment is to be taken (para B-4 applies to males and B-5 to females).

B–4. Circumference sites and land­marks for males

a. Abdomen. Measure abdom­i­nal cir­cum­fer­ence against the skin at the navel (belly but­ton), level and par­al­lel to the floor. Arms are at the sides. Record the mea­sure­ment at the end of Soldier’s nor­mal, relaxed exha­la­tion. Round abdom­i­nal mea­sure­ment down to the near­est 1⁄2 inch and record (for exam­ple, round 343⁄4 to 341⁄2).

I trained and cer­ti­fied all my NCOs who con­ducted weigh-ins to watch for cer­tain indi­ca­tors and react appropriately. When tak­ing stom­ach mea­sure­ments I had the NCOs talk to the Soldier, ask­ing ques­tions that required answers and did not allow the indi­vid­ual time to con­cen­trate on the mea­sure­ments being taken. This caused Soldiers to relax and we usu­ally got a good mea­sure­ment. If it was appar­ent the Soldier was “suck­ing in” we would have the Soldier take a series of deep breathes and have them exhale, then take the mea­sure­ment at the end of the exhale.

When tak­ing height we would have a sec­ond per­son stand to the side of the indi­vid­ual whose height was being taken to see if they were attempt­ing to raise up on their feet to gain a height advantage.

With regard to bulk­ing up the neck, it is a way to game the sys­tem and no sys­tem is per­fect. If an indi­vid­ual desires to exer­cise to beat the sys­tem there is really noth­ing you can do. If they how­ever are hunch­ing their shoul­ders and engag­ing their neck mus­cles, they are in vio­la­tion of the regulation.

B-4, b. Neck. Measure the neck cir­cum­fer­ence at a point just below the lar­ynx (Adam’s apple) and per­pen­dic­u­lar to the long axis of the neck. Do not place the tape mea­sure over the Adam’s apple. Soldier will look straight ahead dur­ing mea­sure­ment, with shoul­ders down (not hunched). The tape will be as close to hor­i­zon­tal as anatom­i­cally fea­si­ble (the tape line in the front of the neck will be at the same height as the tape line in the back of the neck). Care will be taken so as not to involve the shoulder/neck mus­cles (trapez­ius) in the mea­sure­ment. Round neck mea­sure­ment up to the near­est 1⁄2 inch and record (for exam­ple, round 16 1⁄4 inches to 16 1⁄2 inches).

Here is my sug­ges­tion. Anyone try­ing to game the sys­tem is clearly not meet­ing the stan­dards of per­for­mance. If it is some­thing that is dif­fi­cult to prove, let it go. If they are sub­stan­dard it will come up in other areas of per­for­mance that you can ade­quately doc­u­ment and take action against them in a pro­fes­sional man­ner. There are a few options you have avail­able but I would only use them in extreme sit­u­a­tions and I highly rec­om­mend a wit­ness be present:

1. If you sin­cerely believe the Soldier is suck­ing in or bulk­ing up you could coun­sel them about it and dis­cuss a val­ues vio­la­tion and include that their actions vio­late the spirit of an order.
2. You could give them a “NO” rat­ing in a val­ues block on their draft or work­ing copy of their eval­u­a­tion report. I’m not so sure I would use it on the final­ized report, though.
3. You can give them an order to relax or not bulk up before the weigh in.

The best method of action is to have a pro­fes­sional con­ver­sa­tion with the Soldier and explain that you believe they are in vio­la­tion of the reg­u­la­tion. After that I would apply the stan­dard to the best of my ability.

Keep in mind from a reg­u­la­tory per­spec­tive there is noth­ing wrong with the Soldier bulk­ing up their neck. You could stretch to say they are vio­lat­ing the spirit of the order but any time you have to stretch for a solu­tion, it’s best to let it go.

Last but not least I encour­age you to have a pro­fes­sional one-on-one con­ver­sa­tion with the Soldier and doc­u­ment it as a coun­sel­ing ses­sion. Find out why they are over­weight or bor­der­line. Be proac­tive. Send them to nutri­tion class, out­line a PT pro­gram, work with a Master Fitness trainer, etc. By being proac­tive you show you care and have the best inter­est of the Soldier and unit at heart. If the Soldier shows a gen­uine desire to improve you have made a Soldier bet­ter. If the Soldier chooses not to be proac­tive, his apa­thy will work against him when he later becomes enrolled in the weight con­trol program.