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You are here: Home Total Force Fitness Total Force Fitness Programs Comprehensive Soldier Fitness

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HPRC's human performance optimization (HPO) website is for U.S. Warfighters, their families, and those in the field of HPO who support them. The goal is Total Force Fitness: Warfighters optimized to carry out their mission as safely and effectively as possible.

Comprehensive Soldier Fitness

A structured, long-term assessment and development program to build the resilience and enhance the performance of every Warfighter, family member, and Army civilian.

Comprehensive Soldier Fitness—or CSF—is an integrated Total Force Fitness (TFF) resilience-building program developed by the Army and based on 30 years of research in positive psychology and resilience building. CSF is designed to give Warfighters, their families, and their communities the knowledge, skills, and behaviors to thrive and successfully adapt to life’s challenges in an era of high operational tempo and persistent conflict.

This section of HPRC’s Total Force Fitness lineup provides an overview of what CSF is, describes the different components of the CSF program, gives you service-specific CSF information, and offers additional information on CSF.

If you'd like to find more information on your own, please visit the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness website at http://www.army.mil/csf/.

What is CSF?

Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) provides Warfighters, family members, and associated civilians with the physical and mental skills required for optimal performance and well-being. To find out what resilience training with CSF is, view this PowerPoint or PDF.

Comprehensive Soldier Fitness—or CSF—is an integrated Total Force Fitness (TFF) resilience-building program developed by the Army in collaboration with pre-eminent researchers in positive psychology and resilience building. CSF is designed to give Warfighters, their families, and their communities the knowledge, skills, and behaviors to “thrive in their lives” and successfully adapt to life’s challenges. Consistent with the components of Total Force Fitness identified by the Department of Defense, CSF has five basic sectors: physical, social, emotional, spiritual, and family.

CSF was initially developed for the Army community, but it now has been adapted for use by the Air Force, Navy, and Marines (see “Service-Specific Trackers”). In addition, CSF provides training tools specifically designed for family members.

For more information, visit the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness website. You also may want to read the Army’s 2009 Posture Statement on CSF for more about the goals of this program.

Program Components

The CSF program is a holistic resilience-building program. Like the Total Force Fitness movement (read more about this at the HPRC's blog), which identifies multiple domains comprising total fitness, CSF highlights “5 Dimensions of Strength”: physical, emotional, social, family, and spiritual.

5 Dimensions of Strength

 

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  1. Physical: CSF teaches you the importance of cardiovascular fitness, strength, and flexibility as important dimensions of fitness. The program also discusses body composition and how to balance exercise, nutrition, and overall training.
  2. Emotional: CSF teaches you the power of positive thinking, optimism, and self-control. The program emphasizes the links between emotions, thoughts, choices, and actions.
  3. Social: CSF teaches you how to foster and maintain trustworthy and fulfilling relationships outside the family that include positive communication, discussion of ideas, and experiences.
  4. Family: CSF teaches you how to foster and maintain supportive, loving, safe family relationships in which every family member receives what he or she needs for optimal health and security.
  5. Spirituality: CSF teaches you how to strengthen your spirit (i.e., the beliefs, values, and principles that guide you) as another resource for resilience.

There are four parts to CSF, referred to as the “4 Pillars of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness.”

4 Pillars of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness

  1. The Global Assessment Tool (GAT) is an online survey that can help you assess your emotional, family, social, and spiritual fitness. It has 105 questions that take about 15 minutes to complete. The GAT is not just an initial assessment tool, but should be used to periodically self-assess your progress.
    • See the “Service-Specific Trackers” area of the HPRC site for information on how to take the GAT.
  2. Master Resilience Training (MRT) is a specific CSF course that trains individuals to become Master Resilience Trainers. Soldiers or Department of the Army civilians can attend a ten-day MRT course at the University of Pennsylvania or other locations. The aim of the course is to teach participants how to foster resilience not only in themselves but in those around them. The MRT Unit Implementation Guide is available for download from the CSF site, as well as MRT Facilitator Training and "Sustainment" information.
  3. Comprehensive Resilience Modules (CRMs) are interactive (video, animation, games, etc) training modules designed to give Soldiers, Family Members, and DA Civilians instant access to resilience training.
    • Operational Resilience for Warfighters: CSF has Operational Resilience Training Modules specifically tailored for unique Warfighter needs throughout deployment cycles. They highlight how to prepare for deployment and how best to transition back home.
    • Downloading these materials requires AKO/DKO access.

    • Resilience for Family Members: CSF has Family Resilience Training Modules that help families of Warfighters prepare for deployment and the post-deployment transition home. This is available for all to access.
  4. Institutional Resilience Training (RT) is a part of CSF that is incorporated in the Army’s training of commissioned and noncommissioned officers (OES and NCOES) in warrior-specific resilience skills to ensure that resilience training continues throughout the military career of every soldier and leader. RT also includes training designed to break down barriers to seeking healthcare. The Institutional Resilience Training modules are provided for download from the CSF site.

Downloading these materials requires AKO/DKO access.

Additional Materials

CSF is developing more materials to be available online. In the meanwhile, you can use the CSF Student Handbook (14mb file) as an individual Warfighter, as a unit, as a leader, or as a community to help build Total Force Fitness. The handbook can be downloaded by anyone and is written so that you can work your way through it. It discusses what CSF is, how to assess yourself, specific aspects of CSF, skills for optimizing your life, and how to set goals. Through the practical exercises described, you can learn to think through important areas in your life and develop goals and strategies for how to be more resilient.

Service-Specific Trackers

The Global Assessment Tool (GAT) can help you assess your emotional, social, family, and spiritual fitness. The online survey takes about 15 minutes to complete and has 105 questions. The GAT is not just an initial assessment tool, though; as the name implies, it can and should be used to periodically self-assess—i.e., “track”—your progress. Although it was initially developed for the Army community, it has been adapted for use by Air Force, Navy, and Marines personnel, as well as their family members.

    If you are in the Marines or Navy, your CSF tracker is coming soon. We will add that link as soon as it is available.

    Additional Information

    The Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program:

    • Focuses on the whole person for optimal fitness.
    • Focuses on teaching skill sets. Like the age-old saying “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime,” CSF teaches participants how to examine their emotions, thoughts, and actions and figure out ways to adapt for optimal well-being.
    • Uses a strength-based prevention approach. Rather than using a “one size fits all” approach, CSF teaches skills that enable participants to tailor the program to their unique needs and become champions of their own resilience programming.
    • Focuses on the majority of the military force, who are essentially well and fit.
    • Teaches how to weather everyday setbacks as well as greater challenges.
    • Emphasizes that Total Force Fitness is a process that participants will engage in throughout their lives.

      For more information on CSF, including Master Resilience Trainers, unit plans, and training, contact DCSG357ResilienceTraining@conus.army.mil.

      CSF’s website also has an extensive list of Frequently Asked Questions with answers about Comprehensive Soldier Fitness.

      Books and brochures containing additional information, as well as posters you can use to help promote the program, are available for download from the CSF website.