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Master Fitness Trainer Courses Roll on Despite Government Shutdown

U.S. Army News Service

October 10, 2013

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The Master Fitness Trainer courses are still being conducted Armywide despite the government shutdown and reduction in temporary duty travel funds.

“The MFT (Master Fitness Trainer) training has not stopped,” emphasized Maj. David Feltwell, a lead MFT instructor and physical therapist at the U.S. Army Physical Fitness School, Fort Jackson, S.C. “We have six contractor teams in place and they are running those classes remotely with a total of 265 students in them.”

Since the training teams travel to the installations, it means the majority of the Soldiers don’t need to go on temporary duty, known as TDY. This has been a real plus, Feltwell said.

The funding issue has had somewhat of an impact on the periphery of the program, he continued. Active-duty team leaders of the six mobile training teams, as they are called, returned to the MFT’s headquarters at Fort Jackson, where they are having a team leader summit.

Also “a few students had to return to their home stations, but since the vast majority of students are all residents at the (six) locations, they were not impacted by the TDY cancellations.”

Funding for the contractors was already in place before the government shutdown, so that was not impacted, said Frank Palkoska, division chief for the Army’s Physical Fitness School at Fort Jackson.