NY Air National Guard Rescue Squadron Works with NY Hospital to Fine Tune Fitness Routine

Defense Video and Imagery Distribution System—May 5, 2014

The Airmen of the New York Air National Guard’s 103rd Rescue Squadron—pararescue specialists who must be fit to do their jobs—have a new partner to help them perform.

The Airmen, known as Guardian Angels, have teamed up with New York City’s Hospital for Special Surgery, (HSS) which specializes in orthopedic health, and created a “human performance optimization training program", called the HPO for short.

In this program, the HSS team educates and assists with the fitness and nutritional knowledge of the human based Pararescue/Guardian Angel Weapon system, on April 22, the program hit its six month training reassessment.

“We are taking all of the data that we collected on the initial assessment and compare it to what we are doing today,” said Kara Federowicz, a certified athletic trainer who works for the hospital. "We look at how far the guys have come, if they have made any progress, if they have regressed at all and how we can build their programs for the next six months.”

It is also very important to the HSS HPO program that the 103rd gets the underlying fitness education the goes along with the execution. When the HPO team trainers come in, they start off with class work, Federowicz explained. The lectures differ between nutrition to stretching techniques and then move to warm ups and then to the drills that they will be doing for the day.

Every month the HSS HPO team comes out and trains with the 103rd and every six months the 103rd’s progress is re-assessed. The HPO team consists of a registered dietitian, an exercise physiologist, certified strength and conditioning specialist and a Certified Athletic Trainer.

Both teams have been working together since October 2013 and this program has already made a big impact on the lives of the operators that are in the program. This type of program, in the near future, will be making even more strides as it becomes engrained across the Guardian Angel career field., said Chief Master Sgt. Brian Mosher, a pararescue jumper.

This program is vital to the sustainment of the Pararescue/Guardian Angel career field, he emphasized.

Read the full article on dvidshub.net.