Workout groups at Camp Robinson and Little Rock AFB help members pass their tests

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/JOHN SYKES JR. - A program at Little Rock Air Force Base called Vital 90 combines elements of several fitness routines to keep the base personnel in shape. Program participants do a warmup exercise
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/JOHN SYKES JR. - A program at Little Rock Air Force Base called Vital 90 combines elements of several fitness routines to keep the base personnel in shape. Program participants do a warmup exercise

It's 5 a.m. and Redo Reed is reporting for duty.

Well, not duty precisely, if defined strictly by the tasks that fill his day at Little Rock Air Force Base. Senior Master Sgt. Reed is a couple of hours from those responsibilities.

In the much broader sense, of course, Reed is never off duty and hasn't been for almost 30 years. No military person really is, and it's that degree of standing readiness Reed hones as he dutifully turns out for pre-dawn runs and weightlifting, sometimes alone, other times joined by his comrades, morning after morning.

"I use it as a relaxation tool," said the Crossett native. "I enjoy exercising, so I'll come out here every morning, usually six days a week, and put in usually about an hour each morning." The predawn workout is "a way of relaxation or a way of getting my adrenaline going. It's my coffee, I guess."

Despite advances in technology, in the United States Armed Forces, "strength" is fundamental, and military members are expected to take the initiative to maintain their fitness.

In central Arkansas, a wealth of resources are at their disposal, from classes on proper pushups and running technique to aerobics.

Among these resources are trainers at Little Rock Air Force Base and Camp Robinson, who say they are constantly developing strategies to help servicemen and women meet their branches' minimum requirements for conditioning or reach higher fitness goals. Among these new tactics is an understanding of what it means to be in fighting shape, on and off the battlefield.

Personal fitness "has become more in-depth," says Reed, 51. "It's becoming more of a state of mind, of us making it a routine, making it part of our daily life."

VITAL 90

When the Air Force stiffened its physical testing requirements in July 2010, the failure rate among Little Rock airmen started rising, sending base leadership to Jeff Vaughn, a full-time civilian employee of the service who is flight chief with the 19th Aerospace Medicine Squadron Health and Wellness Center.

"Leadership came to me and said, 'Hey Jeff, we need to do something to fix this,'" he says.

His marching orders were to come up with a program for those who failed fitness testing that, in the interim allowed before retesting, would get them up to speed. And do it quickly. Vaughn dusted off a workout regimen he'd seen at a fitness industry convention, added a tweak or two and set up shop.

"To be honest with you, when we decided we were going to do it, we just did it, and we said we would learn as we go," Vaughn said. "The biggest step in any program or anything you do is just to start and not worry about making mistakes. Mistakes will happen, you just fix those and you move forward."

Vaughn dubbed the program Vital 90, but he might as well have called it "detention gym" at first. It caught the attention of other base personnel, no doubt accelerated by holding most classes outside.

"What we found was as people started seeing it, they wanted to get involved," Vaughn said. "So we allowed the more fit folks to come aboard, and it actually helped the program because, No. 1, it took the stigma away and No. 2, the fit guys pushed the unfit guys. Actually, it was a big help."

It's easy to draw comparisons between Vital 90 and CrossFit, but the base program uses a mash-up of exercises from a wide range of source material. Those who give it an honest try blow the physical fitness test out of the water, Vaughn says.

"People try to put a label on it," said Aaron Leach, exercise physiologist and director of the Little Rock Air Force Base Fitness Center. "We've actually pulled stuff from Insanity, P90X, CrossFit. There's a lot of good seminars that come out of CrossFit, gymnastics seminars, kettlebell seminars. We talk to the experts and pull from their knowledge base, and we apply it to what we do."

This keeps variety at a maximum, but it has also helped the team stay on top of Vital 90's growth to three classes per day, five days a week. Military training programs aren't known for customization -- you either get over that wall or you don't. But the Jacksonville team exercised latitude to scale Vital 90 to fit a variety of audiences based on individual fitness levels, sex, age or even health, in the case of people dealing with injuries. This has resulted in faster results and allowed Vital 90 to accommodate a range of participants, such as members' spouses and kids.

"What we did was modify different movements to make them easier or harder. You can allow heavier or lighter weight; you can modify a burpee, like, five different ways," Leach said. "That's not only for fit or unfit, but that also works for people recovering from injuries."

Another big step forward was the addition of nutrition guidance. Jill Hinsley, base dietitian, regularly provides quick-hit nutritional talks, posts recipes on the Health and Wellness Center Facebook page and also works one-on-one with individuals.

"One of our guys lives in the dormitory, and he didn't know how to cook," Vaughn said. "Jill basically showed him how to cook healthy only using the microwave.

"A lot of our nutrition comes down to what a certain individual needs. And we break that out and work that area."

CAMP ROBINSON'S PUMPED UP PREACHER

Maj. Jeremy Miller, Army National Guard chaplain, isn't your typical man of the cloth. The Greenbrier native signed up for the military on Sept. 12, 2001 -- the day after the terrorist attacks -- with one thing on his mind.

"I joined because I wanted to fight," he said. "We've got a lot of chaplains that are pretty passive. I'm a physical guy."

Miller eventually got his wish to be on the ground in the Middle East, being deployed to Afghanistan in 2012, but intermittent downtime there left him bored and restless. He used CrossFit to fill the void.

"Kandahar CrossFit was fantastic," he said, the excitement rising in his voice. "Their thing was, 'Workouts so intense you'd wish a rocket would stop it,' though it's never a good thing to be working out while actual rockets are coming in."

A year ago, Miller found himself back home from Afghanistan, and it wasn't long before the itch for intense physical challenge began to work under the skin.

"I saw then that some of the training for our soldiers wasn't enough to push them, and there were soldiers who wanted to do more," he said. "Myself and several others started to look at functional fitness here at home. We wanted to be able to push ourselves in ways the standard Army physical fitness test may not."

What followed was the establishment of a licensed CrossFit affiliate at Camp Robinson which, to Miller's knowledge, is the only one on a National Guard post in the country. The process took months and was accomplished without base funding.

"I found a guy to build us the boxes that we currently jump on and a few of us threw in a couple of dollars and bought the rings," he said. "Anything that's ever given to us is donated."

He's the base's lone CrossFit trainer (a second is nearly certified), leading three afternoon classes and one morning class per week. Classes average 30 individuals, most of whom attend three of the four weekly workouts.

Typical of CrossFit groups, the exercises focus on short, intense bursts of activity. Troops need to be ready for a little bit of anything and so that's what Miller throws at them: jumping onto and over things, swinging sledgehammers, sprinting, Olympic weightlifting and even elements of gymnastics. In any given class, there's a mix of active and retired military, whom Miller takes equal delight in exhausting to the point of collapse.

"I'm trying to prepare troops literally for the unknown and unknowable. We not only have to prepare to serve in combat but also be able to respond to tornadoes, flood, search and rescue," he said. "My vehicle was actually the first into Vilonia the night of the tornado, and when most of my troops went to work that morning they didn't expect to be going to Vilonia and Mayflower that night."

Unlike a typical CrossFit experience, he uses the endless buzz of the workout and lectures on nutrition as important components to his responsibilities as chaplain.

"I don't want to be seen as, 'That's a chaplain, he sits in church all day and reads his Bible,'" he said. "I want to connect with the troops on as many levels as possible, so whenever that wall is crashing down around them they can easily come to me for support because they've come to me in other areas of their life."

Miller calls this side of the class "physical discipleship" and it helps some soldiers purge emotional baggage for which they might not otherwise find an outlet.

"I can't help everyone, but what I can do is train my troops as they fight through their past," he said. "Whatever they have seen, done or experienced, they can work through it. They can honor, maybe, some of the men who served and fell beside them in combat. They can prepare for the future by preparing their own bodies for whatever may come. And they can enjoy the day. So you've got that past, future and present moment that you have that soldier fully embracing and living."

ActiveStyle on 09/15/2014

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