A James Cook University researcher and Army veteran behind an innovative program that combines physical fitness and mental wellbeing has issued a call to arms for Townsville veterans wanting to get back to their best.
The Veterans' Individualised Physical Education, Rehabilitation, Recovery and Reintegration program, or VIPER3, will combine free physical training and mindfulness sessions to improve both physical and mental health outcomes for veterans who have been wounded, injured or developed an illness as a result of their service.
VIPER3 founder and JCU Exercise Physiology lecturer Brian Heilbronn said the program evolved out of the successful Veterans' Physical Activity and Sports Performance Program, which has already produced two Invictus Games athletes.
"It's a targeted, 12 week period program based on what we've already been doing, combined with Associate Professor Wendy Li's Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction programs for veterans," Mr Heilbronn said.
"This will be a dedicated research program to show what we are doing is working and helpful for veterans' physical and mental health"
Participating veterans will undergo a series of strength and conditioning exercises tailored to each veteran's physical abilities at JCU's Sports Science Lab.
Meanwhile, JCU Associate Professor of Psychology Wendy Li will guide veterans through a mindfulness session for one hour each week comprising of breathing techniques, a body scan, movement meditation, an attention-focus meditation, a walking meditation, and a sitting meditation.
A "Battle Buddy" system will also be incorporated into VIPER3, where participants are paired with another participant and they'll do sessions together to assess whether a social element can improve health outcomes.
"In the military, you never do anything by yourself. You always have at least one person doing something with you as backup, so it's a good idea to transfer that into the veteran space," Mr Heilbronn said.
"It also gives participants accountability. If a veteran is feeling a bit tired, sore or too busy, they might decide to miss a session. But if they're partnered up with someone, and there's a connection there, we're hoping that will help with that accountability and the responsibility to show up because there's someone there who wants to train with them, that they rely on for that support.
"We know how important social connections are for mental health. It could take a veteran who might be a bit isolated and once they're partnered up, they might just click."
With the recent Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide highlighting the mental health crisis being faced by Australian veterans, Mr Heilbronn, an Australian Army veteran who served in Afghanistan, hoped the program would give participating veterans some tools to aid their ongoing physical and mental recovery.
VIPER3 is hoping to recruit 30 local veterans who will be assessed on their physical fitness and mental wellbeing before, during and after the program.
Data generated from the program will help support future funding applications to grow the program in scale to reach as many veterans as possible.
"It's highly unlikely that any veteran would be ineligible to participate, and we've done that intentionally to help as many veterans as we can," Mr Heilbronn said.
"The goal is to show the effectiveness of the program so if organisations outside of Townsville are interested in doing something similar, we can offer them this program as a template knowing they should get good results."
VIPER3 is expected to kick off later this month with sessions to be held Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Veterans interested in participating can contact Brian Heilbronn on 4781 3390 or [email protected].
