REPORTER
›› Photos: Fort Bliss training
FORT BLISS GT;GT; For air defense soldiers, doing their job can consist of "hours of sheer boredom followed by a few minutes of sheer terror."
That's how Lt. Col. Glenn Henke, commander of the 1st Battalion, 43rd Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, describes what soldiers operating the Patriot air-defense system can go through when deployed.
Henke's battalion, nicknamed Cobra Strike, is starting its train-up leading to a fall deployment to the Middle East. But his soldiers will be doing something a little different though during the next five months.
Starting last week, they began to work with trainers from the Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness program, an Army program designed to develop resilience and increase performance in soldiers, family members and Army civilian employees.
Cobra Strike soldiers will learn "sports psychology skills, mental skills that high-performing athletes and high-performing teams have been using for 30 years," Henke said.
These skills include how to breathe and visualizing success.
But what it's all about is increasing readiness, Henke added.
Since the last time the battalion deployed two years ago, it has had about 80 percent turnover so it has a lot of junior soldiers who don't have a lot of experience, Henke said.
"Anything we can do to give them an advantage is going to be useful," he said.
About 30 Patriot system operators went through an initial three-day kickoff to the training last week. They went through a Challenge Course that combined physical exercise with mental challenges designed to mimic the stress they would feel while deployed, said McKenzie Rath, a master resilience trainer-performance expert who is working with the battalion. The soldiers then did three days of classroom work to learn new skills incorporating sports psychology and then did the course again.
Trainers with the Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness program, often called CSF2, have worked with other units before but the next five months will be the longest they have worked with a particular group of soldiers, said Sean Lewis, training center manager for the CSF2 program at Fort Bliss.
Lewis' team of trainers all have backgrounds in sports psychology and will work with the battalion to teach soldiers the mental skills that can help them do their jobs better, especially when deployed, he said.
They will learn to use cue words to begin their preparation before a mission or get into a certain frame of mind, Rath said. They will also learn things like deliberative breathing and visualizing doing their mission successfully, she said.
Air defense soldiers often have long periods of waiting while in the field and then have to react at a moment's notice, Rath said.
"That stress brings about certain chemicals in the your body that deteriorate your ability to cognitively function, your ability to regulate your energy," she said. "What we will teach them are skills that can help them in those moments."
The trainers will eventually work with all 600 members of the battalion but will place a special emphasis on Patriot system operators, said Adam Skoranski, another trainer who is working with the battalion.
The three-day training last week served as a crash course in the curriculum and the trainers will then work with them over the next five months to refresh and practice the skills they have learned, Skoranski said.
"It is an extremely highly stressful performance that they do," Skoranski said. "So using 30-plus years of sports and performance psychology research and applying it to the soldier population will help them perform under highly stressful situations."
Capt. Jason Leung-VanHassel is the commander of the battalion's Charlie Battery. He said he is excited about the training he and his soldiers are going to go through during the next five months.
"It is very promising," Leung-VanHassel said. "I think it will do the trick and give us that edge as we move forward. The bottom line (this training) will improve the performance of the soldiers in my battery so we can make mission later this year."
Spc. Jacob Kenning, a communications specialist with the battalion, said he has been using some of these skills on his own on an intuitive basis, things like prioritizing tasks so "what needs to get done gets done."
"I think this is very good practice for newer soldiers," Kenning said.
Chief Warrant Officer 2 Rich Burton, a tactical director with the battalion, said air defenders often have "seconds to decide if we are going to engage a target or not."
"The techniques we've learned here will help us come to a decision in a timely manner and make the correct decision," Burton said.
Open all references in tabs: [1 - 3]