Soldiers at Fort Drum chose what they wanted to learn during an Oct. 23 Holistic Health and Fitness event. The 2nd Mobile Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, hosted the event with its H2F staff, according to the U.S. Army. For NCOs, our takeaway is a practical discussion point: a unit can use an event like this to introduce Soldiers to the people who support their training and recovery.
The presentations covered nutrition, sleep, recovery and Sports Vision Training. Outside, Soldiers took part in sessions on Strongman training, recovery methods and sprint drills. Coach Zach Mahl demonstrated Strongman movements using heavy objects. He said deployed Soldiers might have to work with the equipment available to them. This was an example from the event, rather than a new training requirement.
One session paired a short, hard workout with stretching and mobility routines afterward. Collin Recore, Chris Sanders and Sgt. Mechella Brantley led Soldiers through the activities. Recore wanted to show why recovery belongs in a training plan. He also challenged the idea that time spent on recovery takes away from training. The report describes that demonstration; it does not provide measured results from a recovery study.
The event also addressed spiritual readiness. Chaplain Capt. Jonathan Gonzalez opened the symposium by discussing purpose, identity, values and belonging. He urged Soldiers to pay attention to changes in their teammates and connect them with available resources. His message was that strong performance alone does not tell the whole story of how someone is doing.
Between presentations, Soldiers could speak with H2F staff and other support organizations at Fort Drum. Those included the Armed Forces Wellness Center and the Ready and Resilient Program. Brandon Lee, the brigade's registered dietitian and the event organizer, said helping Soldiers become familiar with performance professionals was a major purpose of the day. He emphasized individual conversations alongside the presentations.
Patrick Sandora, the brigade's H2F program director, said the team had already held leader development sessions at company and battalion levels. Senior leaders then requested a brigade-wide event. Sandora described a goal that went beyond short-term results: helping Soldiers understand their health during service and after leaving the Army.
This was a local event, not an announcement of new fitness-test standards. As an editorial takeaway, NCOs could discuss which of their Soldiers know the available performance professionals and which training or recovery topics they want to understand better. The Fort Drum example offers a way to start that conversation without treating one brigade's event as an Army-wide requirement.
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Source: U.S. Army: Fort Drum Soldiers explore performance optimization, peak readiness during H2F Day. Published 2026-10-26.