Two topics for firefighters

[BareSteel]

John Musser’s Starting Strength article for firefighters was a great read. Strength Training and the Firefighter | John Musser

I’ve been volunteering for a few years and want to improve my performance. I’m an intermediate lifter, so my novice gains are behind me.

1. Can we continue the discuss about reducing air consumption? I understand that it’s a function of both physical fitness and management of anxiety during a stressful situation. Does anyone here have additional advice for getting more time out an air cylinder?

2. With the SCBA pack on, my upper back and neck fatigue first. One thing that helps is adjusting the shoulder straps to distribute some of the load to my hips. Any other tips on this? Yes, I’m already deadlifting and doing chins.

Thank you,

[Alex Ptacek]

One of our coaches here at SS Chicago is a firefighter. Might have to submit a version of this as a part two to Musser's article, since not everyone reads the boards. This is what he had to say:

'Aggressive firefighting is an important part of my life. So, this topic is close to my heart. The fire service, like the military, is all caught up in this idea of making people small, capable of running 4 miles in whatever who cares time, and all that normal “endurance” nonsense we’ve all been bathed in. But your here, and that’s a GREAT start, because it means you know that strength is at the core of anything you can hope to get done. I didn’t look through your posts to find your lifting log but keep pushing your strength up as you can. Make sure you’re carrying reasonable body weight. If you’re an intermediate, you should have an idea of what it means to be strong. Continuing to train is imperative for you, and for your crew.

I saw that you’re a volunteer, how do you shifts work, and how does that impact training and the rest of your life? The normal caveats here all apply. Do your level best to eat well, sleep when you can, adjust your intermediate training as needed to continue to drive weight up across the period you’re programming for. Please watch your testosterone levels. We’re starting to get good data that the simply being around the firehouse places crew members in an adrenalized state. Turns out being chemically jacked up all the time isn’t good for you in the long term. So that and the effect of the tones dropping at night, and the diesel fumes we breath, are the real long term dangers to our health. The TL;DR here is: Get good blood work yearly from a smart doctor.
To more specifically answer your questions:

1) Without knowing the culture of your house, or your bottle times, there are a few things we can look at right away. First and foremost, the amount of air your body uses has a genetic component. If you’re not the breathing version of a 40” vertical jumper we can only get so much out of you. That’s not excuse though. Being strong will help your bottle times. Being strong and conditioned for the job will help the most. My experience has taught me that the job has two gears.
Sprints followed by a period of short down time.
Think of your initial stretch down the hallway, or even better your work as the heel man. You’re making that loop in the front yard, chasing kinks while the pipe bleeds the air out of the line, then you’re going to be feeding hose. You are making corners and dragging hose (hopefully by using the coupling stapled to your hip and driving the hose into your room and not trying to pull it with your arms) hard for a short period of time, then you’re walking to get more hose, or waiting to do it all over again. There are a lot good examples of this, and it’s all the stuff we signed up for: forcing the door, aggressive searches, popping inspections holes in front of the hose line advancement to make sure you’re not getting trapped in a hallway, ventilation. All the good work is basically a set of very hard and heavy sprints with period or rest between them.
“Diesel mode.”

I make this joke all the time about the second kind of work firemen do, but it’s accurate. High torque, output continually, over a longer period. This is when we are in tugboat mode doing overhaul, checking for extension, extrication, anything that moves slower, but for a longer period than the work mentioned above. This is the fire service’s version of Long Slow Distance work. You’re outputting energy continually, but at a lower rate and pace than before.
The metabolic adaptations we want need to be trained for, just like the strength adaptations. And just like it is silly to have a ball player swing a heavier bat, or for anyone to do plyo jumps, it’s silly to do “fire service conditioning.” We could have you run around and do a firefighter obstacle course, but that’s for nerds. And when one of the new guys drops a ladder on someone all hell will break loose. Instead, just use the Prowler or the Air Bike. Please don’t do this in your turnout gear. It won’t help. It’s good for likes on Instagram and nothing else.
Heavy prowler work or the air bike are my “favorites” (in quotes here because it’s hard to love something you honestly believe is trying to kill you). You can do something like bear crawls or hill sprints if you don’t have a Prowler or an Air Bike available, but they’re not as good. You can also accomplish your conditioning goals playing a sport that is based around high output sprints with bouts of rest between. Rugby and Jujutsu are both favorites of mine. Of course, Rugby and Jujutsu can both get you good and fucked up, so…

The point here is to do hard sprints with rest between bouts and get the hell out of the gym and back to your family. The Prowler and Air Bike are both good for firemen because you have to push damn hard on both, and most of our work involves power output. That’s why you can accomplish your conditioning by doing flat track sprints, but it wouldn’t be as good as a Prowler or Air Bike. The flat track doesn’t have the power output component to it. You can’t load a 100-meter dash. I mean, you could, but don’t. The Prowler and the Air Bike both have one other really useful mental adaptation that transfers over to the fire service: on some level you can decide how hard you’re going to push on these things. There are guys that will make themselves “do the Prowler” hard, just like there are guys who go hard on scene. There are also guys who “do at” the Prowler, like guys who are happy that the line will “make it to the seat of the fire pretty quick.” Between serious barbell training and the Prowler or the Air Bike you should have mental toughness pretty well covered entirely.
If you’re just starting to add conditioning work don’t turn the dial up to 11 your first week. If I were just starting out, I might do something like one 5-minute bout of 10 seconds on, 50 seconds off on the Air Bike once a week. I would do this either at the end of my first workout when I came off shift, or on a day when I’m not doing anything else. Unlike training heavy, I think conditioning work can absolutely be done at the firehouse while on duty. You’ll recover from it fast. The same can’t be said about that 15th rep of squats. The first time I racked a work set and went to a structure fire was the last time that ever happened. But I’ve finished sprints and not been totally useless on scene.

I would titrate the above starting point up over time. My long-term goal would be aggressive bouts on the Air Bike, one to two times a week. Work periods would be 10 – 20 seconds on with 40 to 50 seconds of rest between bouts. Total time would be 10 minutes. So that’s one to two 10-minute bouts a week, with between 10 and 20 seconds of work, with between 50 and 40 seconds of rest between sprints. I would always do this after I’ve taken care of my barbell programming for the day if I were to do it on a day I’m lifting.
If you keep lifting and add some intelligent conditioning programming to your life it will take care of both types of work you’ll see on the fireground, and you will have done everything you can programming wise to increase your bottle time.
The rest of the equation is, as you mentioned, air management, and how efficient you are with your tasks. We’re not teaching skip breathing anymore. If you’d like I can talk about some of the job specific things I do to manage my air.

2) I get this all the time when I teach academy. How are you wearing your pack? You mentioned it, but I don’t know if it clicked, or if anyone has told you: as much of the SCBA load as possible belongs on your hips. That thing was roughly designed around the frame of a hiker’s backpack. Your shoulder straps shouldn’t be pulling on you, and the waist straps should be tight, and around your hips, not above them. The base of the frame of the SCBA straps should go below your iliac crest. If you put the straps there you can tighten them and it won’t mess with your belly, so you can breathe.
When I demonstrate what I mean at academy I put my pack on, tighten my straps, and then I completely loosen my shoulder straps. The pack does not move when I do this. Then I do some overhead work to show the candidates just what I mean by “as much load as possible should be carried by the hips”. Every single time I’ve gotten lazy and let my waist straps drag I’ve paid the price. So synch those things down and wear your pack on your hips. That will help.'

[BareSteel]

Alex, thank you for relaying the thorough post from the SSC in Chicago. Tons of great information in there - I feel like I got a free custom article here.

We’re a mixed company of career and volunteer staff. Our volly company staffs and maintains the ladder truck. We’ve got it a bit easier than some departments, as every house has career guys 24/7 and the vollies respond when we can. Most of us have full time jobs.

He’s right that there’s still room for a performance increase from strength, with better sleep and smarter programming.

That’s new information for me about the pack. I’ve seen guys focus on the shoulder straps and disregard the waist straps entirely or loosely buckle them as an afterthought. I’ll definitely try your method next time out.

Thanks again for the detailed reply. Agreed that it sounds like a part two to the article.