A massive new gym at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, has over 100 weight and cardio stations, a platoon-sized kitchen, and a digital shooting range — though it is open just to students and staff at the Army’s special operations training hub.
At $43 million, the Human Performance & Force Generation Training Center, or HP Forge, took three years to build and will be the fitness hub for the 1,000 or so students, instructors and staff at the Army’s John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. The JFK center runs the training pipelines for the Army’s Green Berets, Civil Affairs, and psychological warfare troops.
“This all goes back to our first SOF Truth that humans are more important than hardware,” Lt. Col. Mike Handlan, the director of Human Performance and Wellness at the JFK school, told Task & Purpose in an email. “This is an example of investing in our people and ensuring they get the best possible training, both on and off the field.”
Along with fitness equipment, the center will have what the Army calls a synthetic training environment, made up of “two digital marksmanship and simulation trainers,” a JFK spokesperson told Task & Purpose. One will be an “immersive 300-degree (5 screen), the other a flat-screen simulator.”
Similar to marksmanship or “shoot-no shoot” scenarios trainers used by law enforcement, the systems will also be able to put students through scenarios with “distractions both visual and audio” specific to military training while staff monitor students with heart rate and eye tracking equipment. Up to 25 students can use the simulator at once, JFK officials said.
The 90,000-square foot facility, which opened to soldiers in December, is nearly twice the size of another massive Special Forces gym that opened in 2022 on Fort Liberty, the Duskin Human Performance Training Center. That gym, at 56,000 square-feet and with much of the same equipment and facilities, is the fitness and wellness center for the 3rd Special Forces Group.
Latest addition to special ops ‘campus’
The new gym sits adjacent to a complex of three-story classroom buildings at Fort Liberty that look more akin to a university campus than a traditional Army garrison. Opened in 2022, the buildings house hundreds of classrooms where students in JFK training pipelines attend classes during the academic phases of their training.
For instance, after months of rigorous field training to begin their Special Forces training, new Green Berets can spend up to a year attending classes at the center to learn a foreign language before reporting to their first active unit.
Roughly the size of a Target or Super Walmart, just under half of the HP Forge facility is filled with workout equipment, while the rest has classrooms, a kitchen, offices, and physical therapy, rehab rooms and the shooting trainer.
“It provides holistic training across a variety of disciplines, maximizing the performance potential of each soldier and providing them with foundational knowledge that will serve them throughout their career,” Handlan said in a statement to Task & Purpose. “This includes not only the physical domain, but also the cognitive, psychological, family, social, and spiritual domains.”
The facility is staffed by strength and conditioning coaches, physical therapists, performance dieticians, mental performance coaches, performance integrators, and a data and analytics cell.
A ‘pro-style’ strength and fitness center
A glance at the gym’s equipment list almost reads more NFL than SOF, and that may be because the Army has brought in pro sports consultants to advise on using it. According to an Army release, New York Jets Head Athletic Trainer David Zuffelato visited the JFK school in 2023 as a “subject matter expert” on the fitness and training programs in the wellness centers.
Among the equipment in the center:
- 44 strength training racks with barbells, kettlebells, medicine balls, dumbbells, and over 30,000 pounds of weight plates;
- 56 cardiovascular machines;
- 22 Reverse Hyperextension machines;
- 10 push/pull sleds;
- 5 “run rockets,” machines that “hold back” a sprinter with a weighted tension cable;
- 4 recovery chairs;
- A large turf open training area;
- Sports medicine clinic with 18 tables for physical rehabilitation;
- A “performance kitchen” that can serve up to 49 people at a time;
- A behavioral health clinic;
- The synthetic training environment.
Up to 300 soldiers can work out at a time in the gym.
Handlan said the design behind HP Forge will assist the command with early detection of ailing physical or mental health, allowing the training teams to catch and treat problems before they become difficult to treat.
“Research consistently supports the notion that physical health, nutrition, mental performance, and social well-being are interconnected and collectively contribute to maintaining strong mental health,” Handlan said. “The resources within HP Forge, from counseling to performance training, work together to provide soldiers with the tools and support they need to excel both on and off the field.”