The Army National Guard needs more training without more straining, said Lt. Gen. Timothy J. Kadavy, talking about the balance between having a ready force without disrupting lives.

The message from Kadavy, the commander of the Army National Guard since March 2015, is the need to be “mindful that there is a breaking point somewhere for the number of days they can commit” when increasing training days.

“We do not want to strain those relationships that they have with their families and with their employers, and we do not want to strain the relationships that we have with our soldiers,” Kadavy said during a recent breakfast hosted by AUSA’s Institute of Land Warfare. “We want to make sure that we build strong relationships with families, their schools and their employers.”

Training demands “will have to be predictable and transparent,” Kadavy said, so soldiers, their families and employers know what to expect.

For many years, Guard members could expect to have 39 days of training spread over a weekend a month and two weeks in the summer, but this has been changing. In 2000, the average was 49 days of training, Kadavy said. By 2008, it had reached 85 days. Last year, the average was 67 days, he said.