Training for Readiness and Resilience: Supplemental Findings

Conventional military training might not fully prepare Soldiers for some of the physical and psychological skills vital to reducing stress as well as avoidable causalities in combat situations. The present study operationalized a complex Integrative Training Approach (ITA) [1, 2] to address cognitive-based gaps regarding First Responder actions and decisions. This approach included three live, scenario-based exercises calibrated with scenarios meant to elicit increasing psychophysiological pressure via combat stressors embedded within key events. The associated mental and physical arousal was recorded using subjective and objective measures during each scenario. Participants in the experimental condition were provided psychological training and practical application before proceeding to the live environment. This paper serves as the continuation of the 2016 Training and Readiness Resilience study, published in 2018 [2]. With the incorporation of additional data, we found continued reliability with previously reported results; indicating that training was a mitigator of measured stress, as compared to Control squads, who received no training.