Comprehensive Soldier Fitness: New Tool for Soldiers, Families, and Army Civilians

By LTC Jeanette Griffin, WTC Stratcom

The Army recently launched Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF), a new tool to help Soldiers, Families, and Army civilians face the physical and psychological challenges of sustained operations. CSF’s mission is to develop and institute a holistic fitness program in order to enhance performance and build resilience. The program focuses on five areas of fitness:

• Physical
• Emotional
• Social
• Family
• Spiritual

Participants complete the Global Assessment Tool (GAT) survey which rates their emotional, social, Family, and spiritual fitness. They are then directed to training modules that match their fitness levels on each of the different areas.

I took the GAT a few weeks ago and realized that an AKO log-in is required. The GAT took me about 15 minutes, and I was satisfied with the balance of my scores.

After completing the survey, I was intrigued, and I completed one of the Emotional modules called “Put It In Perspective”. This module also took about 15 minutes and helped me walk through an exercise where I avoided “catastrophic thinking”, or focusing on the worst-case scenario, and instead developed a plan for the more realistic possibilities. In the exercise, I was told that my senior leadership wanted to see me by the end of the day.

1. First, I had to write out the “worst case” possibilities – that I might be fired, reprimanded, or given an impossibly difficult assignment.
2. Then, I wrote out the “best case” possibilities, such as being promoted or given a raise or award.
3. Finally, the module helped me look at the more realistic ideas – that my supervisor might be giving me feedback on a specific assignment or tasking me with a specific project, and I developed a plan for addressing the issue.

AW2 Soldiers, Veterans, and Families are an incredibly resilient group of people who have overcome so much. This tool won’t solve the wide range of problems wounded warriors face during recovery and transition, but it may provide some tools to address the challenges that continue to surface. I encourage AW2 Soldiers, Veterans, and Family members to give it a try.

CSF emphasizes that the GAT scores are confidential, and individual scores will not be reported to Commanders or Leadership. CSF is not a screening tool for any physical or psychological disease or dysfunction. It is instead a self-assessment tool to help individual Soldiers, Family members, and Army civilians to evaluate their balance of their fitness levels on each of these dimensions.