specialREPORT


How trainers bring out the best in the modern Army


Major Jim Crompton, chair of SET’s Management Board, looks at the importance of coaching and empathy, including a focus on mental resilience, in ensuring that trainee soldiers can realise their full potential.


On TV and in films, Army training has often been portrayed as recruits undergoing gruelling training as they are shouted at by a senior soldier until, through adversity, the entire squad pulls together and achieves its goal. Adversity, team cohesion and role modelling are all


key elements of Army training and there can even be a time for raising of voices, but being an Army trainer in the 21st century is fundamentally about working out the best way to help recruits realise their own potential. The Army Recruiting and Initial Training Command Staff Leadership School (ASLS) was founded in 2007. This followed a series of high-profile reviews and reports that found that the Army needed to improve its standard of care for, and support to, new recruits, as well as trainees at the beginning of their specialist trade training.


This founding principle remains and over the years


the Army has striven to produce the highest quality of trainers to provide the best experience for recruits and trainees.


TRAINING FACTS The British Army is the UK’s largest employer provider of apprenticeships, with some 6,000 completing annually. More than 40 apprenticeships are offered up to Level 4, and the Army is looking to expand the Degree Apprenticeships it offers.


CASE STUDY RESILIENCE TRAINING TO SUPPORT RECRUITS Bombardier Matthew Wyatt (also see main picture top)


The delivery of training in the Army has evolved dramatically over the past few decades. Once upon a time recruits were simply expected to be robust


or become robust, both physically and mentally, through repeated exposure to challenging or difficult situations.


Anybody with a basic understanding of physical fitness will understand the need for structured and progressive training to avoid placing undue stress on the body.


Mental fitness has similarly seen an overhaul in the Army. For many


years the Army has provided support mechanisms for those with mental wellbeing issues but, more recently, the introduction of training at the start of a soldier’s career has helped them better cope with mentally demanding situations. All recruits joining the Army today receive a package of Mental Resilience


Training. Primarily delivered in the classroom, and reinforced throughout the rest of the syllabus, Mental Resilience lessons cover topics from emotional


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regulation to pain tolerance and mental rehearsal. These lessons are delivered by the same instructors who are teaching drill, weapon handling or any other aspect of military training. These instructors are themselves trained in the delivery of Mental Resilience Training. This allows the resilience training to permeate the course programme, with instructors encouraging the skills taught to be practised at key moments of their journey. When I joined the Army in 2012, Mental Resilience Training was not part


of the program. Some instructors had the empathy to offer genuine words of advice and strategies on mentally coping with difficult situations. However, phrases like ‘just push through it’ or ‘stop being weak’ were common language and offered no meaningful support. The concept of recognising the mental challenges presented in military life were alien, and talking about them used to be the rarest of things. Today, recruits have strategies and techniques to call upon, and the ethos


throughout the training environment focuses on acknowledging the trials ahead and how, with the right mental approach, they are achievable goals.


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