Apr 11, 2008 3:34 PM

Q: How has the importance of fitness changed since you started working for Navy Fitness?

A: When I came on, the unique position I got with the Navy was to be a float fitness specialist. It was an infant position at the time. It was kind of like they were going to try a new thing to say, “We are going to let a civilian fitness person go out onboard a ship and run all the gyms and keep the equipment up and running,” things like that. Where before it was kind of a makeshift type of thing, where maybe a couple of the sailors took care of the equipment or maybe one person did a program here and there, so it was kind of disorganized. I mean they still did stuff, but it wasn’t anything on a structured basis. So what they wanted to do was hire these civilians to come on the ship and run the programs [to] make sure the gyms and the equipment were up and running all the time or ordering equipment for the facilities, designing facilities onboard ships and then also running the fitness programs onboard, which could entail anything from some sports programs all the way through doing fitness classes onboard the ship or in a hangar bay or whereever we’re at. And [they also would] assist with the command fitness leaders, getting the people ready for the physical readiness test that they take twice a year.

Fitness was starting to take on a lot more importance [when I started]. One thing they realized was that they needed to have a lot more structure. So rather than saying “Yeah, we do programs,” you could walk in and say, “Do you have a fitness calendar? What do you do this month? What classes are offered?” People started feeling a little bit better about what was available to them, rather than trying to make it up themselves.

The importance of it now as it’s come full circle, you have to maintain your fitness to stay in the Navy or you don’t go up for advancement anymore. So that becomes a bigger issue, too. So that’s why we have to have fitness professionals both shore side and out to sea to make sure things are properly running, things are available to our sailors to stay in shape and to also to enhance the questions that they have because most people just don’t know how to stay in shape. They have no clue, and you need somebody with an education or a background in fitness to provide that information to them. You would think that in today’s society, fitness being a priority, people would know, but really they still don’t. It’s just getting the information out to them. Now once they get that information, a lot of people take it and run with it, and you may never see them again; they’re fit the rest of their lives. But then the other people who are still not drinking from the Kool-Aid yet, it’s getting that information to them and saying ‘Hey, you do need to do this. It’s very important in your life, and not only does it affect you and your family, but [it also affects] everybody else.”

Some of the jobs [in the Navy] you think “Well, all I do is sit and stare at a radar screen all day, and I’m landing planes.” Well, that’s great, but still it’s the physical demands of sitting in that chair all day long and looking at a screen. If you’re not in shape, that’s going to affect that job, whether [or not] you think it physically affects you. It’s not like you are loading 1,000 pounds of whatever onto the ship, but just because you are sitting in a chair looking at a screen doesn’t mean [you] don’t have to be in shape because we all know mental and physical health play a big portion in how you do your job, not just being mentally alert, but physically alert. If you’re sitting there falling asleep because you are physically exhausted from doing that, because you’re out of shape, that’s not a good thing.

And then the other thing is, you never know when there’s going to be an emergency when you’re in the Navy because you might be out on a ship and—even though we hope that it never happens—the thing is, if there is an emergency that’s something—we would be attacked or whatever—you would need to get to your station or whatever your side duty is when an emergency situation happens. If you can’t run that distance and get there, or then, once you get there you are so out of breath you can’t be of any help to us in an emergency situation, that is a big thing, too. We want to make sure our sailors are ready in an emergency situation so that they could react to whatever they would be called into action [for], other than what their normal duty is.

Q: As obesity rates in the United States keep rising, is that being reflected [in the Navy]?

A: The thing that people have to remember, when you watch old war movies you always see everyone staying in shape. When you’re in the military [in movies] you have to be in shape. Well, that’s Hollywood magic, and it’s never been that way. There are always a few people who are out of shape and things like that because it reflects the general population of the world. When you are taking the population of the Navy, it comes directly from a chunk of the direct population of the United States.

Sure, you are going to deal with those problems because that is a direct reflection of what is going on in society right now. We always think of the Marines out training and doing things like that, and we always think of the people in the Army in tip-top, zero percent body fat guys going into battle. Well, unfortunately, you know not everybody can be that way because genetically they weren’t as blessed as well as somebody else or things like that, or they’ve had other issues.

Now people do get into shape. But a lot of times when they come into the Navy or they’ve been in the Navy awhile or the military, just with age and everything like that they deal with the processes of age just like everyone else does. It’s harder to lose weight, it’s harder to stay in shape, so some people put on some weight and some people lose weight. It’s a direct snapshot of the United States’ society. So what’s going on in the U.S. population? The same thing that’s going on in the Navy population.

I wish I could say, “Yes, when you join the Navy, you become thin and in shape and the fat just melts off you because you signed on the line for Uncle Sam.” Well, it doesn’t, and that’s the thing. You have to make a commitment just like the average person in the civilian world would go to a health club everyday. It’s the same thing for a sailor. They have to come into our fitness centers to maintain their fitness on a daily basis.

Q: Does having more obese civilians, sailors and family members put more of a strain on Navy fitness?

A: We’ve started to realize more and more that our main duty is to take care of the sailor. That’s the number one thing: We are there for the sailor. But we are also realizing that we have to start tapping into the families. We have to start tapping into the Department of Defense (DOD) employees that work on our Navy bases, too, because again, it all comes down to the Navy family, and not meaning family as in direct relatives; we’re meaning the Navy family, meaning the Department of Defense employees, your family members, your spouses, your retirees and then your active-duty sailors. So it’s a big family that all kind of encapsulates and falls under, again, the priorities of a sailor, but we are starting to bring more programs that reach out to the families, meaning we are trying to have family-friendly areas where moms can bring their children and put them in a little area up front of where they are actually working out, so they can actually watch them instead of taking them to child care during the workout.

We are also doing family fitness hours where the family can bring in their children and things like that to exercise together with them. We used to have a stringent policy where no one under 14 was allowed to lift, or if they did, they would have to go through some certification and things like that. Now, we are starting to make some hours more specifically when these populations can come in. Rather than before it was like, “No, you can’t do that.” So we are reaching out a little bit more and opening up our programs, and we are still keeping them in control. We are not just opening up our doors and saying, “Come on in,” but we are doing programs that make things more available, and it’s amazing to see the family-friendly areas become a social club for people to come in. It’s where people meet, and they work out together, and their children are there playing with each other.

To make that available to them is a big thing, where normally if they didn’t have the babysitter or didn’t have somebody to watch the child, they couldn’t come work out. So that’s a huge increase that we are starting to see those little centers pop up here and there, and usually what we’ve done is either take a racquetball court or someone who had an older barn in a storage building or an area that they’ve converted into [a family-fitness space], and it’s about 800 square feet usually. So it’s definitely helped out a lot in the push of getting some people who normally couldn’t work out the opportunity to [work out].

Q: When was the Department of Navy Fitness, as we know it now, created?

A: They finally realized that there was going to be a change, say go back 30, 40 years ago, basically fitness in the Navy was sports. You’d go out and play softball, you’d play football, you’d play flag football or you’d play soccer or you’d play a sport; that was your fitness. And there were some gyms there at the time, you know a multi-station hidden back somewhere that they’d use or I’ve heard they turned old jail cells on these ships into makeshift gyms in the early days and things like that. The changes that I started seeing in the mid-1990s was that more people were getting into this fitness thing, meaning fitness [and] actual working out—physical fitness—rather than just playing sports to maintain your fitness. They knew they needed this transition, so about 1995 is where they kind of made that shift to develop an organization to kind of govern these new fitness centers that were coming about. No longer was it just a big open building with a gymnasium in it and that was it. Now we were starting to see these nice little fitness centers popping up with free weights and cardiovascular equipment and selectorized machines, and most of them had swimming pools starting to be attached to them and things like that, so it was becoming more the fitness center rather than just the sports type of atmosphere. That’s kind of where the shift was. Now, Navy fitness is fitness, aquatics and sports. It is not only sports anymore. It’s all three encapsulated into one, so Navy Fitness is like a big blanket term for all of those components of it. So that’s kind of where they started. In 1995, they made a big transition when they started creating a true office or a staff that would govern over, as far as policy, the running of these fitness centers.

Q: Would you say it’s become larger as time has gone by?

A: Definitely. Like I said before, it was all sports, so your ball fields were your major things, your gymnasium was your major thing, and that’s all you saw on a lot of bases. And then [there was] that transition where people started saying “hey, we want more. We want to work out. We want to get in shape. We want to do things like that rather than just playing a sport that not everybody was in to.” I mean it’s just evolved. Many centers have gotten bigger than what they were. Like I said, many of them went from those old gym, high school, selectorized pieces of equipment that were multi-station into kind of a full-blown center. So yes, the evolution has been tremendous, and with that comes more dollars to maintain it, so more dollars started coming into the program, too. Before, [we had to] mow the fields, make sure the courts weren’t warped out or needed to be re-varnished or whatever. And now, we are worrying about getting new rubber floors and new equipment every year, so with that you needed more money. So that’s where you needed some kind of organization to kind of govern how the things should be and what should be ordered and things like that.