The latest development in the Total Force Fitness Movement: the Chairman's CJCSI

HPRC has been at the forefront of the Total Force Fitness (TFF) movement, pioneered by two of HPRC's founding directors, Dr. Deuster and COL O'Connor.  The movement took shape in August 2010 with the Military Medicine supplement called Total Force Fitness for the 21st Century: A New Paradigm.

Since then, many of those in the performance enhancement, performance optimization, fitness and resilience fields have embraced the TFF paradigm (or were already operating under a similar paradigm).

Total Force Fitness (TFF) is a framework for building and maintaining health, readiness, and performance in the Department of Defense. It views health, wellness, and resilience as a holistic concept where optimal performance requires a connection between mind, body, spirit, and family relationships. Eight important domains were identified that combine to make up Total Force Fitness: physical, nutritional, medical and dental, environmental, behavioral, psychological, spiritual, and social (for more information on each of these domains, read the 2010 TFF supplement).

In September 2011, at the end of his time as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen signed the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction on the Chairman’s Total Force Fitness Framework (CJCSI 3405.01). Throughout his tenure, Admiral Mullen was a proponent of TFF. The CJCSI highlights TFF as a "methodology for understanding, assessing, and maintaining the fitness of the Armed Forces" and reinforces how it is an integrated process across all of the eight domains.

Total Force Fitness defined: "The state in which the individual, family, and organization can sustain optimal well-being and performance under all conditions.”

The aim of the CJCSI on TFF is to help Warfighters and their family members remain or become resilient and foster optimal performance over their life spans. The recent CJCSI describes tenets within each domain, identifies strategies, and suggests potential metrics that could measure desired outcomes. Some tenets that are highlighted in the CJCSI are:

• Warfighters’ family members are crucial for optimal performance.
• Leadership is crucial for Total Force Fitness.
• Metrics should measure both positive and negative outcomes.
• Total Force Fitness should extend beyond the Warfighter to strengthen the rest of society: families, communities, and organizations.
• Total Force Fitness is connected to the fitness of the society from which our Warfighters come.

For more information on the Total Force Fitness paradigm, read the Military Medicine Supplement and the recently released CJCSI on TFF.