There are nine workout facilities, three running tracks, eighty-eight pull-up bars, and more than five acres dedicated solely to supporting the fitness of the Brigade at the Naval Academy. I’m well acquainted with these particulars from my years on the crew team. As my oar blade pushed against the waters of the Severn River, a glance toward the shoreline would catch someone running faster, jumping higher, or pushing themselves harder to stay physically fit. Upon reporting for duty on USS John Paul Jones (DDG 53), however, I was surprised to discover little more than two treadmills and a pile of mismatched free weights for nearly three hundred sailors. This was unacceptable. Being an avid marathoner, I knew the likelihood of staying fit (and sane) during the ship’s underway periods was minimal without the right equipment. When I began soliciting feedback from sailors on their concerns and suggestions for improving the facilities, it became apparent that the lack of adequate fitness equipment was slowly deteriorating their stamina and, in turn, affecting our overall manpower readiness.
Now I’m not trying to make the case that fitness was my top priority as a naval officer. In my five years of active duty, I earned my gas turbine engineering certification and helped plan complex amphibious operations in several forward-deployed arenas as a tactical action officer. Interestingly, however, looking back from my current vantage point in corporate America, my gym initiative on John Paul Jones is my proudest accomplishment because in the end, it all really boils down to two things: having initiative and taking care of your people.
It is well known that the military regulates physical standards for its service members. Such standards are implemented to ensure the proper conditioning of the best-trained armed forces to defend the nation. The military’s members are valued human capital, and exercising promotes their general health and well-being during deployments, which in the case of the Navy means long periods under way at sea. Whereas soldiers on the ground benefit from land-based training and exercise, those stationed on smaller naval vessels are at a significant disadvantage due to a lack of funding for equipment and the limited space on board ship. John Paul Jones was no exception. Albeit a marvel of modern-day engineering, this Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer simply lacked adequate fitness facilities to accommodate the personnel that occupied it.
The onboard equipment at the time consisted of two treadmills, one elliptical, a Smith machine, and a hodgepodge of free weights, all relics of an earlier time and hardly capable of adequately serving the warrior elite. The prospect of standing in line for one of the two treadmills was sufficient incentive to blow off exercise and walk around the corner to the candy machine. These conditions—coupled with the ship’s poor ventilation and average external temperatures in the Persian Gulf that reached 110 degrees Fahrenheit—gave our “gym” the same general appeal of the arid, uninhabitable deserts that would soon surround us.
By coincidence, the ship’s scheduled six-month Western Pacific deployment coincided with the release of several Navy policy directives reinforcing the personal weight requirements of each sailor, including harsh punishment for those who did not meet the weight and body fat standards. This was a significant policy change at the time. Effective July 2005, the policy stated, “Sailors who do not attempt to maintain standards will be processed for administrative separation” The logic of the new policy made sense: A paradigm shift had taken place whereby sailors were now being sent to the front lines of Operation Enduring Freedom in ground combat units. It was, therefore, clear that having an agile, well-conditioned naval force was extremely important. Although not yet fully understanding the impact this measure would ultimately have on the Fleet, I did know that otherwise hardworking, patriotic sailors would be forced to terminate their service, and this prospect deeply saddened me.
As a junior officer, I struggled to reconcile our exercise equipment dilemma with a policy that stated that “mission readiness and operational effectiveness are built on the physical fitness of an individual; therefore, all Navy personnel shall maintain personal physical fitness by regular exercise and nutrition.” Surely, physical fitness is an individual’s responsibility, but commanders must also bear responsibility by providing sailors the means to stay fit on board ship. A provision to the policy stated, “Commanding Officers shall aggressively integrate physical readiness activities into the work week in the same manner as applied to meeting other mission and operational requirements” My thoughts flashed back immediately to Robert E. Peary’s famous quote that hangs on a motivational placard in Halsey Field House on the campus of the Naval Academy: “I will find a way, or make one.”
Fortunately, as the ship’s morale, welfare, and recreation (MWR) officer, I was in a position to make a difference. Whereas my typical MWR duties involved menial tasks, like inventorying softball equipment, organizing raffle drawings, and running the holiday “Jingle Jog” on base, this endeavor was more crucial because sailors’ careers were on the line. In addition to fulfilling my primary duties as the main propulsion division officer, I began searching for funding to outfit the ship with a gym. The stars soon aligned, when, during an off-chance discussion with the regional MWR director, I became aware that a surplus of cardiovascular and weight-training equipment was being warehoused nearby. There was one stipulation: We could have this $30,000 cache if, and only if, we could allocate space for it.
While this may seem like a simple problem with an easy resolution, it was actually quite complex given the organizational and architectural dynamics of the ship. Earlier, during the winter of 2004, I had found an underutilized supply storeroom in the belly of the ship that seemed ideal. It was roughly twenty by twelve feet in dimension and lined with shelving and haphazardly stored supplies. I instantly conceptualized what it could be: a bustling, state-of-the-art gym. There were two problems. First, I had to convince the supply officer and my entire chain of command of the merits of converting it into a fitness center. Second, and probably more important, I had to ensure that by reapportioning the existing supplies to another location, the weight of the resulting fitness equipment would not alter the ship’s positive buoyancy and thus its stability on the water.
Initial meetings with department heads, my first leadership echelon, were fruitless. They were either too busy to hear me out or altogether disinterested. Frustrated but still determined, I scheduled a meeting with the command master chief (CMC). A CMC is almost equivalent in importance to a commanding officer, and sometimes more so in the eyes of sailors and junior officers seeking mentorship. This senior enlisted leader climbed the ranks from blue-shirt boot camp to be leader of the Chief’s Mess. It is within the master chief “code” to put the sailors’ welfare first, so I had reason to hope that he would listen to me.
After discussing my plans with him and showing him the initial design schematics, he too was convinced that we needed to do something. The following day, he privately corralled the Chief’s Mess, laid out the plans, and directed that they fully support my initiative. Together, we scheduled naval architects familiar with the Arleigh Burke class to assess the likelihood of shifting weight without reducing the ship’s stability at sea. With a few minor sacrifices by our supply officer, who gave up the ship’s storage closet, it was determined that the project would not impact the integrity of the ship.
With the commanding officer’s blessing, I went to work. During the planning phase, I developed a graphic model using computer-aided software to optimize the positioning of the equipment. Next, I recruited a team of ten sailors, with personnel representatives from every department on the ship, to collaborate on the project so that everyone would have equal ownership in it. Assigning tasks based on capabilities, I requested that the engineering department cut away the shelving to make room for the new equipment. The operations department, whose expertise lies in decking and bulkhead preservation, primed and painted the walls and installed rubber floor mats while the more strategically inclined combat systems and weapons departments masterminded the equipment disassembly on the flight deck and reassembly in the new gym. During the final phase, we collectively oversaw the crane operations lifting the remaining gear from the pier to the ship. Standing on the pier with my white safety helmet wedged against my Navy regulation hair bun, I felt like a powerful symphony conductor.
When the new fitness center was finally unveiled, I felt proud and validated by the overwhelming response from the crewmembers and my superiors. Those who had initially doubted its success had witnessed an organizational change for the better. Almost immediately, I saw a positive renewal in people’s attitude toward fitness, healthy eating, and incorporating workouts into their daily routine as a way to relieve stress and stay in shape.
What some may have viewed as my silly pet project, the command master chief took seriously, and he became my closest ally in seeing it through. I never really knew how much the experience had impacted him until I saw him become visibly choked up recollecting it during his closing remarks when he transferred off the ship. I don’t think he thought that a young officer like me could have cared about his crew so much, but I did, and I still do. Where there wasn’t a way, I made one, and because of that, a community of sailors can better serve and protect our country.