Category — firefighter fitness

The volume of calls ranges somewhere between “square wheels” and not having time to eat lunch and collect your thoughts.  Busy days make the shift go quickly while slow days seem to drag.  Your body can take a beating on the busy, physical days with multiple calls, or it can be a victim of circumstance by sitting around all day waiting for the bells to ring.  Either shift can be detrimental to your body.  Your ability to recover from these days from one to the next is going to dictate your state of readiness and risk of injury. This article will offer a few tips on how to enhance your recovery after a rough shift.

Busy days include calls where you’re lifting heavy patients, crawling through dark tight tunnels, running down a suspect, training, underwater search operations, or a structure fire.  These days may cause you to feel lethargic towards the end of the shift or a sore back, tight hamstrings, headache, and sore feet.  Busy days will find the weak areas in your body.   Slow days may offer more time in the recliner or cruiser which leads to tight hips and a sore back from the sitting position along with a feeling of tightness all around.  Too much time looking at your smartphone or computer terminal will cause tight cervical (neck) muscles and a headache or eyestrain.

Whether busy or slow, you can fight the effects of your shift with recovery techniques.  Employing multiple recovery techniques will give you options and help you figure out exactly which techniques are most effective. Below are some tips to help you recover from a busy or slow shift:

1.     Rehydrate. Staying hydrated is essential to health, digestion, and thermoregulation.  During the warmer months, you may want to weigh yourself at the start of the shift, then compare your weight after the shift ends.  Rehydrate yourself to the weight equal to what you weighed at the start. You should drink 1 pt. per pound of bodyweight lost.

2.     Sleep. If you’re coming off a night shift in which your sleep was interrupted between 10pm and 6am, taking a nap will help restore the metabolic processes that you missed during the night. R.E.M. (rapid eye movement) cycles, which involve deep sleeping, are essential to your health, vitality, and recovery.  At the very least, a morning nap will help keep your focus and attention span sharp. A quiet dark sleeping area will suffice during the daytime hours.

3.     Flexibility. Whether you’re busy or not, your body will go through various postures throughout the shift.  Maintaining or improving your flexibility will keep you prepared and ready to go for the next call. Static stretching that involves holding a position in stretch for 30-60 seconds will help restore your muscles’ optimum resting length, reduce muscle tension/tightness, and decrease pain associated with tight muscles. A dynamic flexibility routine at the start of your workout will help improve blood flow to working muscles, excite your nervous system, begin the fat-burning process, and increase your mental acuity and focus for your session.  Sometimes a 30-minute dynamic flexibility routine is all you need to battle the effects of a tough shift.

4.     Self-massage techniques.  A wide range of commercial products such as foam rollers, massage sticks, and massage balls are available to help you break up adhesions, calm your nervous system to release, and help stretch a muscle.  These products also help induce blood flow to a localized area to help muscles recover and become more pliable for stretching.  Increasing flexibility will alleviate stress effects, reduce effects of gravity on your posture, and reduce the likelihood of injuries.  If you cannot afford to buy the commercial products, you can use softballs, baseballs, tennis balls, and pvc pipe.  Some self-massage techniques, such as using the foam roller, will have you position your body on the foam roller so that you can roll specific areas of your body including quads, IT band, hip flexors, lats, and glutes.  This can be a great way to train your core, relieve pain, improve posture, and increase flexibility.

5.     Aquatic therapy.  Never underestimate the power of water.  As a recovery aid, it will help relax your muscles and clear your mind to improve stress management.  Water exerts at least 7 times of pressure against your body as air.  Just being in a pool offers a therapeutic effect.  Enjoy your pool after a shift outside during the summer or find an indoor pool to help you during the winter months.  Sometimes a hot tub can offer relief for sore, tight muscles.  Just be careful not to sit in the hot tub for too long.  Avoid the hot tub if you have high blood pressure, have been drinking alcohol, or feel dehydrated.

Recovery is an essential component of your exercise program as well as your job.  If you use some of these techniques each week, you will be able to exercise and work at a higher level.  Using a different technique each day will cover all of your bases and bring your recovery to a new level.

In this world of individuals, how does the fire service deal with the challenge of team-building? Everything in our society is focusing on doing it yourself. We can work towards that college degree and never interact with a student or set foot in a classroom. Even in the corporate world, one can work with any number of co-workers on a project and never once meet him or her in person.

Members of the fire service work together closely that at times you end up sweating all over each other.  This culture is foreign to many new firefighters. How do you develop an environment of people counting on you to pull your weight? There is a mindset of “I want to quit, but I know that my partner needs me” and “if I fail to do my part he or she will have to pick up the slack or worse be injured due to my failure.” It is the type of team that defines “I am my brother’s keeper”, not just someone at the end of an electrical connection.

Building a solid team foundation can be started with your fire fighter fitness program.  Exercising with your team helps keep you accountable for completing your workload.  A failure by the individual to give that total effort means that their partner has to work that much harder to take up the slack. Consider things in terms of fire ground activities. You are a member of a truck team and have made your way down a hallway at a college dorm. You have two rooms of fire, the hallway is heating up and you have several more doors that need to be popped, you need the hose jockeys to get there in order to cool things down. Is this an example of teamwork at its best? If that hose line fails to arrive in quick time, what is your world going to be like?

This is how functional firefighter fitness training works. Functional firefighter fitness involves duplicating the demands and stress of the fire ground within a safe training program.  The training program should be as basic or intense as the participants can handle. Drills should be adaptable so they can either be performed by a single individual or by a large group. Working in pairs is one of the easiest ways of getting the team-building message across.

When setting up the following routine, the first step is to determine a running distance; this can be anything from an apparatus floor to a large track area. If you have stairs in your facility they can also be incorporated. Unless you are a highly trained individual try and keep the running distance between thirty seconds and one and a half minutes to complete each lap. If the area is small you can add extra laps between each strength exercise set to meet the thirty plus second prescription.

So here’s how the program works. Choose from six to ten different strength exercises. The exercises can be met by using body weight, fire suppression equipment, or formal weights like those found in every gym. When the exercise segment has been chosen for the day, it is time to get the program started.

If you are working as partners, one of the members begins with the running component while the other individual does the assigned exercise, the individual that is working on the strength portion continues with the exercise until his/her partner returns from the run and relieves them. When the runner arrives, it is time for that individual to start the exercise while the other member completes the run. This relay of exercise and strength continues until the daily program is completed.

If you are performing this drill as an individual, start with the running section first to allow the body a chance to warm up for the strength segment. After you’ve completed your lap perform the first strength exercise, then run the 2^nd lap, perform the 2^nd strength exercise, etc. The strength exercise can be either by a number count or time limit. When the exercise is completed or time limit is met you return to the run.

Your work out program should look something like this:

1.    One running lap (If an individual is deconditioned he or she can walk or run walk each lap). If you are working in teams the individual doing the strength section will be working until the partner returns, so a shorter distance might be required for the beginners.

2.    Push-ups until relieved or individuals’ time or number selected is completed. This pattern will be repeated for each station.

3.    Run a second lap.

4.    Back step lunge.

5.    Run a third lap.

6.    Abdominal crunch, (place and SCBA on your chest to increase difficulty)

7.    Run a forth lap.

8.    Bicep curls (SCBA can be used in absence of dumbbells)

9.    Run a fifth lap.

10. Mountain climbers

11. Run a sixth lap.

12. Overhead press (SCBA as substitute)

13. Run a seventh lap.

14. Overhead Tricep extension (SCBA as substitute)

15. Run an eighth lap.

You can continue to add or reduce the strength stations if the team needs a more intense program or do two or three sets of established program after a 3 minute break between rounds.

The take home message delivered by this workout is that each person must be accountable to his/her partner. Each member needs to give their complete effort or their partner is forced to work harder, just like the company that takes their time getting the hose line to the fire scene.  I strongly recommend considering this training format when designing programs around the need of your department.

If you have any questions about this routine, don’t hesitate to contact the Public Safety Fitness Association.

In the firehouse, how many times have you heard someone say, “I should start working out again?”  It may have come from one, two, or even three people on your crew.  You may in fact be one of those muttering these words.  In any case, this article will give you a few suggestions to get yourself, and your crew out of the lifesuckers and back into the exercise room.

The new K.I.S.S. principle: Keep It Simple & Short…for now.   At the beginning, keep your workouts to a moderate pace and length (30 minutes), and filled with exercises that you already know.  Too much instruction in the beginning can turn away your crew.  Overloading with instructions and intensity will not keep the interest.  As firefighters, our attention span isn’t more than an hour.  Keep exercise instructions brief, positive, and effective.  Demonstrate an exercise as you explain the key points.

Share the responsibility.  If you are leading the pack, just remember that everyone has a stake in the program too.  Take turns letting each crew member lead the warm-up, body, and/or cool down portions of the workout.  During the session, let each member take a turn monitoring the stopwatch while resting (if using timed intervals).  Once your crew nails some of the fundamental exercises, have each member create one workout for each week of the month.  Be creative and have fun with it.

Explain the benefits. A little knowledge can go a long way.  We are an inquisitive people, so play into the fact your crew members want to know,  “What’s in it for them?”  Let them know how each exercise or session will help reduce heart attack risk, improve recovery time between calls or tasks, increase the amount of time it takes before they suck down a bottle, or how this will help them play better in the next department softball tournament.  Make it personal to each member.

Now GO! Avoid spending excessive time on the preliminary stuff.  After you build the excitement (YES! Excitement!), you must start moving.  The workouts don’t have to be perfect, but they should be safe for everyone involved.  Having an idea of how to change the level of difficulty of each exercise will be helpful for all members.  Make sure you perform a good dynamic warm up routine in the beginning and end each session with a cool down.

An example workout for you and your crew using three timed stations could look like the following:

Station 1: PVC cable pulls x 60 seconds

Station 2: Dumbbell stepup-overhead press x 60 seconds

Station 3: Rest (third person using stopwatch) x 60 seconds

If you have additional personnel with you, you can add the appropriate number of stations and exercises so everyone is doing something. If using timed periods, continue with one person using the stopwatch during the rest station.

Another example circuit, using reps or distance per set, could look like this:

Station 1: Highrise squats x 10 reps per side

Station 2: Duck walk x 100 ft.

Station 3: Situps x 20

These are just a few tips you can use to help get yourself and your crew moving.  You can be a leader in your firehouse by eating right and exercising.  Leading the pack and making the workouts fun will help you and your crew stay focused and fit.