COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Army News Service, May 16, 2013) -- A former Soldier and Navy physical therapist said he's very passionate about working with wounded warriors from all the services.
This week, however, Navy Cmdr. Dale Jensen is working with the wounded warrior Navy teams here at the 2013 Warrior Games. This is his second year at the games.
He said despite their wounds or injuries, the athletes are proving to themselves and others that they can succeed in sports and in life.
"They inspire me to do better in my own workouts," he said. "In turn, I want to set an example."
But he admitted that it's sometimes hard to keep up with them because of their high motivation and energy levels.
As department head for physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, Va., Jensen works with wounded warriors as well as those without disabilities from all of the services. But coming here, he admits, is a treat.
He said the Navy team has several amputees, others with multiple trauma injuries and still others who've had strokes or other neurological disorders. Many of them have returned from last year's games and he said their progress was noticeable.
Jensen's job at the games is to ensure the athletes are functioning at their best. He works to help prevent them from getting injured while participating, but also treats them if they do.
His work involves taping their injuries, ensuring they're taking their prescribed medications, and making them as comfortable as possible before a game by seeing to it that they get massage therapy or assistance in stretching.
Jensen's own background is in physical therapy and he hold a doctorate degree in sports medicine.
The athletes actually don't require a lot of help, he said. Physical therapists have already designed their programs and most have gone to excellent medical centers across the country where they've been set up with some pretty good training and fitness programs.
"We just fine-tune things for them when they get here so they can function at their best," he explained. That might mean correcting imbalances in certain areas of their body which require devoting special attention to exercising those muscles more or getting massaged in those areas.
The athletes are usually competing in multiple events, he said. Some might be doing swimming, shooting and track all in the same week. That's a lot to do, he said, and as with athletes in any sport, the wounded warriors sometimes get injured during the games.
Fortunately, he said, their injuries are usually minor and they dust themselves off and "get back into the game where they want to be or we fix them up and get them ready for their next event."
Jensen is not the alone at the games. He has working with him a team of experts who also support the athletes.
There are other experts on Navy teams who specialize in sports medicine and internal medicine. There's also a team doctor and three corpsmen. They coordinate their activities to see who needs what and who needs to get it done, he said.
FITNESS PROGRAMS IMPROVING
In the early 1980s, Jensen spent five years in the Army as a weapons specialist.
Although he wasn't yet into sports medicine, he said that even then he observed society changing from being somewhat sedentary to taking an interest in running and fitness.
Since then, he said, sports medicine and psychology have become increasingly important. At the same time, the knowledge base for those disciplines has expanded. The military took notice of those advances and has incorporated new fitness research into its own training regimens.
Today, each service has its own training programs based on experience and good research. The wounded warrior programs from each of the branches have piggybacked on that, he said.
What's really interesting, Jensen said, is how the military not only incorporated that knowledge into its own use, but actually exported it to other militaries around the world.
Three years ago, Jensen deployed to Afghanistan as part of an embedded medical training. Then, his team worked with Afghans to develop their own medical and fitness program. He and others not only trained the Afghan trainers, they also trained the leadership at the national military medical center in Kabul on how to run a hospital, keep things moving and bring things up to snuff.
In 2012, Jensen attended his first Warrior Games and got hooked. But he said he was sad about it because he initially thought it would be just a one-time event for him, as he stays pretty busy in Portsmouth. Then the call came.
"They told me I was needed at Warrior Games again," he said. "It was totally unexpected. I was a replacement therapist because the other guy got pulled back to his unit. When I was notified I had the paperwork done and turned in within 15 minutes."
As for the future of the wounded warriors here, he said, "they're productive, competitive people. They want to have a life that's as normal as possible. And they are making it happen."
Social Sharing