24th SOW paves way with innovated human performance programing method Published Jan. 17, 2019 By Senior Airman Joseph Pick 24th Special Operations Wing Public Affairs HURLBURT FIELD, Fla. -- How does someone prepare themselves for a 4-day operation, where they are on the go, but must remain vigilant and clear-headed to deliver airpower onto the battlefield…. with limited sleep? The answer isn’t simple and likely has something to do with years of training, but at the 24th Special Operations Wing, operators also have a team of more than 40 human performance providers in their arsenal, working to prepare, mold, and enhance the strength, conditioning, and performance of these Airmen through various programs. Special Tactics operators are intelligent, intense, mission focused, and lethal battle-groomed warriors conducting battlefield surgery, personnel recovery, precision strike, and global access operations across the globe, any time, any place. Recently, this human performance team has partnered with TrainHeroic, a software company, to further enhance the Special Tactics operator’s capabilities and quality of life. With a downloadable application on a mobile device, the team is able to provide easy communication between operator and provider. Between temporary duties, deployments, and responding to humanitarian calls across the globe, it’s not uncommon for Special Tactics operators to be away from home for more than 200 days every year. TrainHeroic can be quickly accessed by phone, tablet or laptop, bridging the communication gap for operators to send questions about their assigned program directly to their human performance providers. The direct communication allows those same providers to go into the app and make individual adjustments for the operator at an unprecedented rate rather than the previous method of printing a plan and waiting for operators to return home to gain feedback. “It gives us a direct line to the operator, to continue being able to keep in contact with them and optimize them, no matter where they are in the world,” said Hunter Treuchet, the human performance program director with the 24th SOW. “It advances the operator’s human performance knowledge and the efficiency in which our providers can push it to them.” With more than 1,000 operators scattered across more than 10 geographic locations, this new system is standardizing how the human performance teams move forward and ensure they’re using the same semantics across the globe. “Every time an operator arrives at a new unit, they have to get used to the coach. It should be the other way around, the coach should get used to the operator,” said Craig Engelson, director of the Preservation of Force and Family program with the 24th SOW. “The operators need to hear the same language. They have a lot to focus on and if we can synchronize what we're doing across the force without losing the skill set of the professionals that we hire, the second and third order effects are great.” Providers can tailor specific workout plans with this new software to meet every operator’s needs and in the event that the operator changes units, his gaining provider can pull his individual program from the software and continue the Airman’s development without unnecessary adjustments. “At the end of the day, it allows us to do a lot of in-person coaching when we aren't actually with them and that's the hardest part of being a human performance provider,” Treuchet said. “We needed to find a way to keep in touch with the operators that was easy, relatively fast, not work intensive, and user friendly, because those are all the barriers to success in technology.”