The Power Training Machine

The Power Training Machine (also known as 'the pull and push apparatus', 'body control simulator' or 'push-pull' machine), and its associated PTM products, are the foundation for numerous Physical Ability Testing protocols in use by law enforcement, corrections and sports bodies around the world.

PTM Equipment is the only source for the purchase of the patented Power Training Machine and other standardized BFOR Law Enforcement Physical Abilities Testing products designed by PTM for use within Law Enforcement Physical Abilities Testing protocols (E.g. Including: POPAT, COPAT, SOPAT, PARE (RCMP), PREP (Ontario), JST (NYPD), ORPAT (Oregon), and many others.

The PTM was born through the research and development of Law Enforcement Bona Fide Occupational Requirement (BFOR) Physical Abilities Standards in Canada and the United States. The foundation of the BFOR research includes the need to use content valid abilities to reflect directly on the physical activities that are performed during the course of resolving critical events often included in Law Enforcement Duties. The BFOR task of arresting, and sometimes physically controlling Offenders and/or Prisoners, is such a requirement.

Research completed by Douglas W. Farenholtz, MSc. and Dr. E.C. Rhodes included the measurement of Adult Male and Female and Male Youth prisoners’ abilities to apply and control resistive forces through the use of the first designs of the Power Training Machine. Research completed by Farenholtz and Rhodes in1984 through 1987 was the initial BROR Physical Abilities Standards that determined the physical abilities of prisoners to resist arrest and control. Further, these research projects set the physical abilities standards at the levels of the average prisoners and thus added further content validity to these protocols.

These research projects resulted in the development of protocols defining each of the POPAT, COPAT and SOPAT physical abilities standards for Police, Corrections and Sheriffs’ Officers’ Physical Abilities Tests in British Columbia. Following that research; these BFOR standards have been selectively applied and used in numerous research studies, programs and protocols of various test designs that meet the Bona Fide Occupational Requirements for physical abilities standards that are being required by many Countries.