Comprehensive fitness director outlines resilience

  • Published
  • By Luke Waack
  • JBER Public Affairs
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska --  More than 100 Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson community members learned the fundamentals of Army Comprehensive Soldier Fitness first-hand from program director, Army Brig. Gen. (Dr.) Rhonda Cornum at the Arctic Warrior Event Center Wednesday.
As part of a leadership development program guest-lecture series, sponsored by Army Maj. Gen. Raymond Palumbo, U.S. Army Alaska commanding general, Soldiers, Airmen and civilians listened as Cornum shared her thoughts on resilience and its importance to the military, as well as her experiences and reactions to being a prisoner of war to Iraqis during the Gulf War.

"I've asked her to share her experience back in Iraq, back in 1991," Palumbo said, "when her helicopter was shot down ... because it talks about resilience. What she's going to talk about to you today is trainable."

The most recent guest lectures have covered resilience, Palumbo said, because building strong families and ready units includes resilience.

"We get units ready to go and we get the families ready to stay here," Palumbo said. "While the units are in harm's way we take care of them and then we bring our units back, we reset and get them ready to go again."

The Army has invested heavily in Cornum's Master Resilience Trainer program, Palumbo said, and the MRT principles can and will be applied to USARAK's current and future missions.

Resilience is trainable, Palumbo said, and Cornum - being a distinguished Soldier and doctor - has a lot to teach about coping with adversity.

The Army now gives resilience training in basic enlisted and officer training, Cornum said, to build up psychological fitness for Soldiers, and the other services have adopted comprehensive fitness programs as well.

"We started doing resilience training in basic training and BOLC (Basic Officer Leadership Course)," Cornum said. "Because we really believe the time to do it is not when the adverse event is watching your friend get killed, but when the adverse event is something like, 'I'm afraid to go into the gas chamber,' something manageable that you can practice the skills with each other, you can see it work."

None of the resilience skills the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program teaches are unique to being in the military, Cornum told the audience.

To better prepare service and family members for deployments and other adversity it is important to start training before something bad happens, Cornum said.

"Who here has run a race," Cornum asked. "The time to train is not after you have run it. If you look at a deployment as I often do as a mental marathon - it's boring, it's hot and cold and a lot of other things but mostly, it just goes on forever."

The time to mentally prepare for a deployment is before you leave, Cornum said.
Cornum cited a study of a deployed unit to prove the relationship between psychological fitness and positive responses to deployment.

"The people who started off with low psychological capital, they had more anxiety even if they didn't see much combat," Cornum said.

"These are things everybody should have," Cornum said.

So now the Army is teaching noncommissioned officers to be Master Resilience Trainers.

"We are not trying to make noncommissioned officers into psychologists, we're trying to make them into better leaders," Cornum said.

This trained cadre of resilience specialists should increase the overall strength of service members and their families, Cornum said.

Military comprehensive fitness programs are open to spouses.