H2F clinic helps Fort Leonard Wood community learn healthier habits

FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. — The 1st Engineer Brigade hosted a holistic health and fitness clinic Saturday in Cunningham Gym, where Fort Leonard Wood service members, civilians and their families had the opportunity to learn more about healthy eating and sleeping habits, along with physical and spiritual fitness.

According to Capt. Brandon Ferraz, the brigade’s Headquarters and Headquarters Company commander and one of the event organizers, Saturday’s clinic was the second the brigade has hosted to date — he said the goal is to provide clinics quarterly, with the next one projected to occur March 9.

Ferraz said the clinics, which are open to all Fort Leonard Wood service members, civilians and their families, are intended to provide “foundational knowledge” on all aspects of physical and mental fitness.

“It’s to provide that foundational knowledge to the service members and their families, so they can have a better fitness journey and hopefully have a lasting fitness journey that’s not as difficult,” Ferraz said.

With the Army’s investment in a holistic, or all-inclusive approach to health and fitness — which takes into account an individual’s mental and spiritual health, in addition to the physical — Ferraz said the brigade brought together many of the installation’s H2F experts, including chaplains, master fitness trainers and behavioral health professionals, experts from the Armed Forces Wellness Center, and dieticians and physical therapists with General Leonard Wood Army Community Hospital.

Ferraz said bringing all these entities to a single location allows “ease of access” to attendees.

“It also allows these entities to showcase the support they can provide, not only to the service members, but to their families on the installation as well,” Ferraz said.

With the coming holiday season, maintaining healthy sleeping habits and recognizing stress early is very important, said Lt. Col. Patricia Hall-Stevens, the brigade’s Behavioral Health officer, who was on hand to provide a stress and coping self-test, along with information on what she called “sleep hygiene.”

“Sleep hygiene is a big thing we talk a lot about,” Hall-Stevens said. “It’s a term used to describe good sleep habits. Sleep has so many domains — mental, physical and spiritual — and poor sleep affects your mood the next day. It makes you angry; it makes you irritable. You’re not engaging with people, and that can impact your ability to be productive at work. Because if you’re tired, you don’t work well.”

When it comes to stress, Hall-Stevens said she often helps both permanent party Soldiers and trainees in the brigade to recognize the stress in their lives.

“Our job is to help people recognize what stress is, how to identify stress, and how to identify when they’re getting burned out because that impacts so many areas of life,” she said.

Whether it’s poor sleeping habits or increased stress, Hall-Stevens noted it’s important to recognize these problems early.

“We want them to know that there are resources available,” she said. “It’s important to identify these early and get some mitigation strategies in place.”

Another important element to overall health is the spiritual aspects of a person’s life, said Chaplain (Capt.) John Hannah, with 169th Engineer Battalion, who equated faith to a foundation of resilience.

“You walked into this building today, but did you think about the foundation of this building?” he said. “Not too many people do, but if the foundation of this building is not working, some bad things are happening. So, from our foundation, our faith, our belief systems, we build up our views and values on top of that. Then, on top of that are thoughts, which influence decisions, which influence actions. You put actions together, you get habits, traditions and maybe even addictions. But it really starts with our faith system. If we can change our faith system, it will move up through the rest of it.”

In line with the physical element of H2F, the brigade brought in Soldiers certified by the Army as master fitness trainers to provide information on the science of physical exercise.

Master Sgt. Colin Kerr, with the Maneuver Support Center of Excellence Fielded Force Integration Directorate, attended the Army Master Fitness Trainer Course and is often called on here to assist Soldiers with their exercise form and technique to minimize injury while enhancing strength. Kerr was on hand to assist attendees with their technique on the standing power throw portion of the Army Combat Fitness Test, one of the events Soldiers often fail at first.

“When the Army transitioned to the ACFT, it is a full-body type of test, and the standing power throw is one of the most failed events,” he said. “So, we go through techniques on how to stand, how to hold it, how to throw, when to release, what that looks like, and then, you talk about some exercises they can do to enhance their upper-body strength to where they can use that to throw the ball farther.”

One of the attendees at the event, 1st Lt. Joshua Young, who is currently attending the Army Captains Career Course here, said having all these organizations in one location — and on a Saturday — is a great idea for service members and family members with busy schedules.

“I think it’s amazing,” he said. “I was already thinking about going and seeing a dietician, but it’s hard to plan that during CCC, so I thought this was a great opportunity for me to come out on a Saturday and talk to all these people because usually, they’re not open on weekends.”

Young said he works out every day but isn’t seeing the results he wants — getting to speak with experts in both the physical and mental side of fitness was eye opening.

“For me, I was more into the physical part of fitness,” he said. “But talking to these entities on the other half of this, there’s a whole other level of diet and other mental things to consider. I recommend this to all, and I was actually talking to the dietician about it. If I can link this with a CCC class, I would definitely do that for the inprocessing part because this is amazing.”