The U. S. Army Future Concept for the Human Dimension

4-5. Fitness Training While Deployed

Frequent deployments to extended operations or training exercises are not a new situation for the Army. While each deployment is unique in both environment and mission, fitness training will aid in mission accomplishment as well as in helping Soldiers cope with the stress of deployment.

Commanders know that unit runs, combatives, intramural sports, and other opportunities to compete build cohesion and a sense of unit identity in a garrison environment. Such activities can be restorative and a break from routine when in a field environment or deployed on operations.
Because of the diversity of potential future missions, leaders need access to a variety of methods to maintain the fitness levels of their Soldiers. Methods must allow the leader to tailor exercise routines to the unit’s deployed mission as well as available time, and the physical conditions of the deployment location. Leaders should challenge unit fitness trainers to identify aspects of the training, which could double as “tactical fitness,” allowing the leader to consider incorporating a “functional fitness” into mission preparation.
Fitness training goals during a deployment include maintaining mission performance, reducing stress, and facilitating rapid acclimation. Unit fitness trainers will be invaluable in designing fitness programs that address all three goals.
While the conditions of some deployments may preclude the use of fitness equipment, commanders should include appropriate equipment in their loading plans for long duration deployments. By providing a variety of exercise options, Soldiers will be able maintain their individual fitness goals. Available equipment will further allow Soldiers to perform the greatest variety of fitness training, while also increasing options for mission specific training.
Implied in the Army’s capstone concept is a requirement for Soldiers to perform rapid acclimatization to a new AO. While bio-medical research will result in technology enablers that decrease the required time, the critical role of fitness training continues. Some acclimatization can occur prior to deployment, during deployment, or after arrival in the AO. Unit fitness trainers, in collaboration with the unit’s medical and operations staff, will utilize the deployable fitness program to expedite the unit’s acclimatization.

4-6. Conclusion

This chapter outlines some basic current principles of physical fitness and fitness training programs. It calls for changes in the Army’s approach to physical fitness to expand existing programs into a more complete or holistic approach that takes into account all aspects of the Soldier’s well-being. Thus, the physical domain of the human dimension links inextricably with the moral and cognitive domains. Soldiers who are healthy in body, mind, and spirit can function at their peak no matter what the challenge. To maintain an effective force in the demands of the future operating environment the Army must seek a balance in all three domains—holistic fitness. Only through such balance will the future Modular Force maintain a sharp edge of combat readiness and the agility that the future will demand.

Vignette

First Lieutenant Woodrow W. Millsaps, IV knew he was in trouble when his parachute failed to respond to the global positioning system guidance. He’d exited the sixth C-17 with his platoon aimed for the center of Pekanbaru International. The damned place had been lit up like a Christmas tree when they’d jumped, but Millsaps couldn’t see a single light when he looked down seconds before impact. Curious that his helmet mounted infrared and enhanced optics system wasn’t functioning, Millsaps braced for landing blind, cursing the power pack that must have either failed or snagged and disconnected on his exit.
Strapped to the lieutenant’s body were nearly seventy pounds of armor, his integrated body suit with its cooling system and health monitoring sensors, his M-19 weapon system and enough 5.56-millimeter ball ammunition for a pretty serious fight. He had a Camelback under the parachute harness that he would fill from two canteens in his drop bag that also carried more ammo, a variety of grenades and rations. He didn’t know when to cut the bag loose so he wouldn’t land with it, so he popped the quick release almost as soon as he knew he was going in blind.
Millsaps was a descendant of another Lieutenant by the same name, his great grandfather, a veteran of the 82^nd Airborne Division who had jumped into Normandy during World War II. His grandfather and father were also paratrooper officers who had distinguished themselves in combat in Vietnam and OIF respectively. Woody the Fourth, they called him, and he had a heckuva legacy to live up to. Like his ancestors, Millsaps was a superb athlete. He relished the challenges of jump and Ranger schools. Conditioning marches didn’t faze him, though he sometimes shared his contemporaries’ frustration with having to do forced marches with all the modern mobility the Army possessed. The airborne community was a competitive bunch. He fared well in push-up and pull-up contests. It had gotten hard maintaining the airborne edge now that all Infantry BCTs were essentially the same, but Millsaps was awfully proud to be able to follow in his forebears’ footsteps.
Woody the Fourth caught the flash of light reflecting off water. “Crap,” he thought, instantly tensing and running through the water landing procedures. As burdened as he was and blind at that, shedding his kit was not going to be fun. If the water was shallow he might be lucky, but the Mandau River splitting Pekanbaru from west to east was the only body of water he remembered from their studies, and it was a swollen mountain-fed torrent according to the terrain data.
He hit the water hard and went under immediately, his weapons bag floating up and dragging him under even further. He hadn’t had time to pop the harness shoulder releases before impact as they’d taught. He did that before the chute could fill with water and become an unwieldy anchor. Simultaneously, holding his breath he unsnapped his chin and facemask strap letting the helmet pull away in the current. He’d miss it, but that didn’t cross his nearly panic-stricken mind. Next he tried to cut loose the equipment bag, but the D-ring was so taut that he couldn’t get it free. He popped the snaps on his Kevlar vest and shrugged out of it swallowing a mouthful of the river in the process. Nearly blue and close to passing out, he kicked with all he could rolling to his back in the hopes the pull of the weapons bag would bring him to the surface. His face popped above the water and as he gulped for air he took on more of the river, gagged, and threw up.
Millsaps felt himself losing strength fast as his oxygen-starved brain began to shut down functions. He rolled again and reached for the bottom with his feet, his head now a foot under water. Touching bottom he flexed his legs and thrust with his whole might toward the surface, much as he’d learned in survival swimming. When his head cleared the surface he spit, thrashed his arms to stay above water and gasping for a breath of air. It was barely enough as he sank again, the current and his weapons bag pulling him under. He tried to plane his body forward in the blackness and execute another bob. It was one thing to do it in a pool with lifeguards and yet another in Sumatra at night.
The second bob bought him another gulp of sweet air. Somehow he had to get to the shore or catch flotation. He tugged at the weapons bag strap thinking about cutting it with his survival knife strapped to his leg. Not much chance of that. Instead, Woodrow tried to reel in the waterproof bag. If he could get to it, it just might hold him up.
As the lieutenant struggled for his life, his company cleared the runways at the international airport. Millsaps was not the only missing paratrooper, but his platoon sergeant sent a digital query to the network. Instantly, the system queried Millsap’s tracker, locking on a moving icon dead in the center of the Mandau River. “Not much hope for the lad,” the older sergeant thought remorsefully, “and one of the best I’ve trained,” he said looking at the screen with more than a little anguish before forwarding a message to the company that would initiate a search and rescue operation.
Millsaps’ strength was ebbing from all the kicking and pulling on the strap. He managed to get the cursed bag under his chest and passed out with his head barely above water. He wasn’t out long. A wave or wake washed over him, knocking him off the bag and running it out to the end of the strap again. The water roused him. He was angry now. Great-grandfather Millsaps was a hero at Saint Mère Eglise, and his grandfather won the Silver Star in action with the 82^nd in the Phu Bai, Hue region in Vietnam. Here he was about to drown ignominiously without firing a shot at the enemy!
He tugged the bag back and snapped it to his combat uniform with the D-ring on his integrated shoulder armor pad. He used his right arm and scissor kicks to work his way out of the main current toward one of the shores—he didn’t care which. As he struggled he began to see lights, lots of them, and realized he was getting close to the capital. With what seemed like his last ounce of energy Woody thrust his legs and arms in a half-coordinated sidestroke that propelled him out of the current for a brief second. His knee struck something, a rock or piling. He didn’t have the strength to stand, but he struggled to gain some footing, pushing, and thrashing with diminishing vigor. In minutes it would be over. He’d run out of reserves.
Millsaps last thought was of his wife, Sharon, and their two children. He didn’t give up, though, still kicking feebly until the weapons bag caught on something and the unconscious officer came to a stop face up in an eddy hidden from sight from the shore by tall reeds.
Lieutenant Woodrow W. Millsaps was a member of the 508^th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the fabled 82^nd Airborne Division during World War II. His awards for his actions during the D-Day landings include the Silver Star. Many of his compatriots landed in marshes and drowned in spite of their great physical condition. Woodrow W. Millsaps IV is a fictional character who will survive his ordeal to rejoin his unit. His story points up the incredible importance of not only physical fitness, but also training and determination. Millsaps drew on both conditioning, inner fortitude, pride, tradition, and ingrained training to save his life. Extrapolation to the larger force of this very individual example allows the force to get its full message. Leaders lead by example. Soldiers learn from each other and those they trust and admire. Woody the Fourth never gave up, and his fellow Soldiers would not give up on him either or leave him behind.