Category: Plan Your Fitness

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3 Tips to Help You Build Effective Wellness Systems for Your Policing Organization

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Here are 3 tips and 3 questions to help you build a better wellness system for your law enforcement organization.

First let me tell you what I believe, then I’ll give you 3 tips and ask 3 questions to help you, and then I’ll ask you what you believe about police wellness.

I believe: Police wellness should NOT be a program, it should be a system!

Effective Wellness Systems should be strategic, comprehensive, specific, measurable and sustainable.

There are three reasons why most law-enforcement wellness programs aren’t making their people, healthier, safer, nor more professional… Continue reading

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Building Small Police Agency Wellness

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Do you want to start or enhance a police wellness program in your small law enforcement agency?

What do you say when the public and media ask: how do police officers stay healthy and fit for the job?

Small law enforcement agencies deserve the best possible wellness initiatives to keep their people physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually fit.

For small agencies, usually with less than twenty-five employees, paying for training, both in time and money, can be daunting. It’s hard to get everyone together for a class and then sometimes that information is lost without regular reinforcement.

What would you say if I told you that for less than $300 you can harness the makings of a full wellness system and get started immediately. The scheduling, implementation and reinforcement are totally within your control and it will create the foundation for a life-long learning experience for your people.

I believe wellness… Continue reading

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How’s Your Brain?

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How’s Your Brain Doing?

Building and maintaining mental strength is critical to your performance and effectiveness in life and at work.

In the book Armor Your Self: How To Survive A Career In Law Enforcement I talk about the importance of strengthening your “Self” physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

When I talk about mental health and fitness, I’m talking about the cognitive functioning and fitness you need to thrive as a law enforcement professional or other emergency responder.

The other things you might think of as “mental health” are covered in the emotional and spiritual health categories of our overall plan for building Tactical Resilience™ and I will, or have, covered them in other articles (See Below).

For the purposes of our discussion here I want you to think about the cognitive functions that are critical to your performance in your capacity as a law enforcement professional or other emergency responder role.

To me mental strength comes from regular conditioning much like… Continue reading

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End Overwhelm Now

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Are you feeling a little overwhelmed? Tis the season, but I can help you!

My very good friend Karen Van Cleve has just published the book: End Overwhelm Now: A Proven Process For Regaining Control Over Your Life!

if you, or someone you know, experiences that feeling of overwhelm then “End Overwhelm Now” is the book for you.

The Kindle version only of this book will be available for FREE on Friday December 23, 2016 on Amazon.

Overwhelm is epidemic across most of the modern world. Our nervous systems aren’t designed to keep up with the rate and scope of change. We can’t slow down the outside world; all we can do is manage our inside worlds – the space between our ears.

Life and business coach Karen Van Cleve has spent the last 15 years learning what overwhelms us, why, and most importantly, what can we do, NOW, to shift our overwhelm.

This book offers a seven-step process designed… Continue reading

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Using Kims Game To Improve Your Memory

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KimsGameSmExcellent memory skills can be critical to a law enforcement officer’s daily activities and yet most of us have never had any training to improve those skills. There are a lot of simple ways you can work with your team or a partner to improve your skills. Consider using Kim’s Game at your next roll-call training session as a simple way to build your memory and observation skills.

Use Kim’s Game To Improve Your Memory Skills

The name Kim’s game comes from Rudyard Kipling’s book called Kim published in 1901. “Kim” is the story of an Irish orphan who grew up in India. Kim was being trained to be a spy by the government’s intelligence agency. This spy training involved many things but one was a way of improving his memory. To do this the trainers showed Kim a tray of gems and other stones and he was allowed to memorize them for one minute. After the minute had elapsed they… Continue reading

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Plant the Seeds for Comprehensive Fitness Today!

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It’s the beginning of a new year and everyone in the world is thinking about improving their physical fitness. You on the other hand are a police professional and you know that you have to think of yourself as a professional police athlete who trains all the time, and will do so for the rest of your life. You do that because you know that this career is filled with hidden dangers that can be toxic to your physical and emotional health. You know that in order to adequately Armor Your Self™ against the negative side-effects of this career you must strengthen and condition your Self mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually every day.

Sure, you know all this, but it’s hard to do. So why don’t you use this new year to recharge your batteries and set some fresh goals to take care of yourself. Why don’t you create a positive mindset of comprehensive fitness for your Self and get started today.

How do law enforcement officers stay healthy? Continue reading

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Power Food For Law Enforcement

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Screen Shot 2015-07-26 at 6.19.23 PMFueling the human body in extreme situations has become a science and law enforcement officers deserve to have the best nutritional knowledge and high-energy food products available to them.

Whether you work the streets, corrections, long duration investigations or emergency call-outs you deserve to have the best possible nutritional information and high energy food available to you to keep you performing at your peak capacity. You deserve it and so does your public.

Law enforcement officers should be fueling their bodies properly with fresh, nutritious foods and have the best possible high-energy substitutes available for emergency or long duration situations.

To that end we would like to gather as much information as we can to help. We want recommendations from law enforcement officers and nutritional professionals on what you should eat and what you should carry with you during your work shift to fuel you during an emergency or long duration call.

We want your input.
1. What do you pack in your power lunch?
2. What do you keep with you for emergency food in case you don’t get a meal break?
3. What do you keep long-term in your car or go-bag for emergency food

Eating the right things and knowing what to eat has long been a challenge for law enforcement officers. Some of us do this well and many do not. Obesity is becoming Continue reading

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PTSD Can Attack Years Later by Allen Kates

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Jonathan-FigueroaPTSD Can Attack Years Later
Even With No Previous Symptoms

EDITORS NOTE: This article has been graciously provided by Allen R. Kates, BCECR, MFAW the Author of CopShock, Second Edition: Surviving Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

“I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I can’t think,
I feel sick. I can’t do this anymore.”

Can you develop Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) months or even years after a traumatic event like 9/11? Without showing any previous symptoms?

There are studies of World War II veterans and victims of motor vehicle accidents that say Yes.

This phenomenon is called “delayed onset PTSD,” according to the therapist’s diagnostic bible known as the DSM-IV-TR. It states that symptoms first appear at least six months after the traumatic event. That could mean months or even years later.

Yet some mental health professionals argue that the individual must have had symptoms early on, but didn’t recognize them. They also suggest that the PTSD sufferer delayed getting help for months or years, not that the PTSD itself was delayed.

Nevertheless, many law enforcement officers with no obvious previous symptoms do develop PTSD months or even years after a traumatic event.

As an example of delayed onset PTSD, here is the story of a police officer that developed the disorder five years after 9/11 and what he did about it… Continue reading

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The Importance of Developing Resilient Law Enforcement Officers

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Can A Career In Law Enforcement Be More Than Just Dangerous, Can It Be Toxic?

The importance of developing resilient law enforcement officers is something that we all must work toward. Many in law enforcement suffer in silence from the hidden dangers and toxic nature of this career. Many allow the negative effects of this profession to undermine their abilities to maintain their composure, control anger, fear and frustration and offset the sadness and depression all influenced by the tragedy and trauma they endure. They struggle to maintain their physical, emotional and spiritual health as all the negative things they see every day slowly erode their ability to perform their jobs at the required high level of performance.

We want to help you or partner with you to fix this problem. The Law Enforcement Survival Institute is ready to help you build individual and agency resilience and we are here to partner with you to build a strong and positive law enforcement wellness culture. We have initiated several excellent training programs and research projects and we are looking several strong partners to begin long-term law enforcement training and research relationships.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM:

Current news reports are rife with stories about issues of police officer suicides, PTSD, depression, alcohol problems, citizen complaints, excessive force, police misconduct and “cultures of aggression”. The problems are serious and the solutions all require strategies of building integrity, professionalism along with mental and emotional strength.

The challenge facing the future of our law enforcement profession centers not around the question of how our officers are dying but, rather more importantly, how they are suffering?

Challenges like police officer suicide, fatigue, depression and PTSD are serious problems. A growing body of research on law enforcement professionals seems to indicate that this profession is very toxic with side-effects causing an increase in heart disease, diabetes and cancer and even a lower than normal life expectancy. If you include other worries like alcohol and drug abuse, depression, relationship problems, domestic violence, anger management, financial mismanagement, and other issues that affect officers, on and off duty, then you might even see signs of a crisis.

We should also be asking how effective and professional our law enforcement officers can be while… Continue reading

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Happiness in Law Enforcement

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happyfaceDoes happiness play a role in law enforcement?

More importantly what are your beliefs about your own happiness?

I think these are important questions because, sometimes if we lose sight of the prize, so to speak, we lose track of ourselves. We all know that depression, suicide, cumulative stress and PTSD are very real hidden dangers of a law enforcement career. What we do about that, and how we stay focused, are the important areas for our examination here. Learning to assess and develop their own personal well-being can go a long way to protecting a law enforcement officer from the toxic side-effects of the job.

In the Armor Your Self™ How To Survive A Career In Law Enforcement training program I suggest that everyone in law enforcement, and yes that means both sworn and civilian employees, learn to strengthen and condition themselves physically, mentally, emotionally as well as spiritually. I believe that these four areas of your “self” are the areas that are vulnerable to the toxic effects of this job that… Continue reading