Operational Demands of Firefighting with Annette Zapp | Episode 11

Annette Zapp, firefighter, researcher, and all-around badass coach joins us to discuss her approach to training firefighers.

In this episode, she breaks down:

• The realities of our modern fire service men and women
  
  
• How to structure programs for firefighters
  
  
• Where these strategies show up when working with departments
  
  
• The adjustments she makes to fit the lifestyle of firefighters
  
  
• The importance of building trust quickly and prioritizing adherence
  
  

This content of course applies to firefighters, but it's incredibly useful for all coaches.

Join us live for each episode. Follow @BridgeAthletic on Instagram to catch monthly announcements and be part of the conversation as it happens.

What is BridgeAthletic? BridgeAthletic is the leading training software for coaching professionals. Design programs, track progress, and deliver world-class training at scale. Start your free trial today.

Use code "COOPER" at checkout to get your second month of Bridge at 50% off.

Join us live for each episode. Follow @BridgeAthletic on Instagram to catch monthly announcements and be part of the conversation as it happens.

Watch the full video on our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWugDFLfxg9yEcS3hPXIMlupx9gmIFFDN

What is BridgeAthletic? BridgeAthletic is the leading training software for coaching professionals. Design programs, track progress, and deliver world-class training at scale. Start your free trial today. 

Use code "COOPER" at checkout to get your second month of Bridge at 50% off. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hello folks. Welcome, welcome. Um, usually try to to wait a minute or two so people can can get to where they're coming from. I know a lot of a lot of coaches are wrapping up that that morning session, so I'll give them a couple to come in. And in the meantime, uh, would love to hear where everybody's from. Um always one of my favorite parts of the uh episode is for you guys to blow up the chat. Um I usually have a pretty worldly crew, so go ahead and and send the messages in, folks. We'd love to see where you're from. Chicago, welcome. Rochester.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Love it, Breckenridge, welcome. I'm in Golden, so not too far away. Cocaine, heck yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Alex, you're kidding, you're not in Australia. I know that's true. Not true. You're on the East Coast.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Hey Rachel.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Welcome to the AI note takers. Always good to have you guys. Cool, yeah, we do have a World League crew.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Yeah, but Alex admits it now, he's in Virginia.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

I know.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

You can't trust an Aussie.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Welcome from from Kosovo. Heck yeah. I love it. Cool folks, well, we're gonna get going. Uh Unracked is a live conversation series from Bridge Athletic. Bridge provides coaching tools to world-renowned organizations like the Atlanta Falcons, Naval Special Warfare, University of Arizona, and West Side Barbell. They provide those very same tools for coaches like me and you to use in our communities to deepen the training experience. UnRack is a free educational series Bridge puts on to break down the training systems, methods, and philosophies that drive performance at the highest level. Each episode takes you inside a specific approach, how it's built, how it's applied, and how it evolves under real-world conditions. Views expressed by our guests are their own and don't necessarily reflect the positions of Bridge Athletic or a partners. Today's guest is a true pioneer in her field. Having walked the walk as a lieutenant in the fire service, her practical experience equipped with um her ability to learn how to talk the talk of performance as well is second to none. Uh, she's pursuing her PhD in health and human performance. She's worked thousands of hours with athletes, and she's an all-around badass. Annette Zapp, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

Um, thank you so much for the introduction. I'm really, really happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Of course. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm stoked to have you. And, you know, I I know we're gonna really talk about, you know, the theme of the episode being operational demands of firefighting, but but I think it's uh really important for us to kind of get to know you a little bit first because you have such a wild, incredible backstory. And, you know, I'd I'd love to start um you know the conversation just kind of learning about how you got into firefighting and you know, in particular, realizing when you wanted to become a coach for firefighters and get more involved in the research side of things.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

That is a really great question. And I just realized it looks like I have a fuzzy rabbit in front of me. So welcome to the show, my fuzzy rabbit microphone. So I kind of always use the same elevator speech, which is I am a biochemist by degree, I'm a strength and conditioning coach and a sports nutritionist by credential. I'm a firefighter by trade, and I'm a business owner by choice. And the reason I'm a business owner is that once I got into the fire service, um, you know, once you find what breaks your heart, that's when you find your purpose. And so after I got my degree, it's embarrassing to admit, but I got my master's in 1994. Yes, some of our listeners were not born in 1994, but I walked out of academia and I didn't think I would ever walk back in. And with a degree in biochemistry, I just had these aspirations of doing all of these wonderful things. And what I really realized is that I enjoyed doing the coaching a lot. I'd been doing that part-time as a university student. And so I kind of went all in on the personal training and the group exercise. Uh, off-camera, Cooper and I were talking about um, I was one of the first concept two indoor rowing instructors, which is wild.

SPEAKER_03 4:19

Pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

I know, which kind of plays into my story, interestingly enough. But I moved from South Dakota to Chicago because I was looking for kind of more of a um sort of a mecca of health and fitness, and Chicago seemed to be the place to go. I didn't really put too much thought into it. I probably should have put a lot more thought into it, but it worked out really well. I moved to Chicago. I started working at a um hospital-based wellness center, and I was working for Johnny G and the spinning program. So I was traveling all over the country teaching um indoor cycling to you know gyms, and I actually got to visit a couple of military installations. I got to train the Secret Service, which is crazy to think about. I know, wild. But I was really successful and I was making a ton of money and I had health insurance, but it was super, super expensive. And I actually had a medical emergency. And it I had to make decisions based on my medical care on how much things were gonna cost. And I just realized that even though this was a lucrative business to be in, it wasn't very stable business. And so I started to look for more of a, I call it a big girl job. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, but there were firefighters coming into my fitness center, and they were amazing, really cool people. And they kept talking about what a great job it was. Now they forgot to tell me about the shortcomings of the job, but they told me about the great hours, the good pay, time off. It's like a team sport. You get to look cool driving a million-dollar apparatus. I was sold. So I went all in and I and I got my EMT and my paramedic, and uh I got hired relatively quickly. And so in 2004, I raised the right hand, I took the oath, and I worked for a small fire protection district outside of Chicago for exactly 20 years to the day.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

So cool. So cool. I would, I would, I'd love to hear more about kind of the you know, the the dark side elements, so to speak. Like, you know, I I wonder, you know, how many people have like direct contact with like someone who has so much experience in in the fire service. So like, you know, I want to hear the good, but I want to hear, you know, some of the bad too. Like what really is the reality of the day-to-day life of someone?

SPEAKER_02 6:44

Yeah. So it is the if you ever ask a firefighter about their job, you will hear the same thing. I always say it's different, different circuses, same clowns at every single fire agency. It's like this maybe 10 or 12 different personalities, but you find them at every agency. But when you ask them about their job, they always say, best job in the world. And it is absolutely 100% true. It's the best job in the world. But I personally wasn't prepared for the sleep deprivation. Of course, I knew, I knew I would be going on calls overnight. And I was aware that I would be seeing things that, you know, were not probably, you know, people just aren't used to seeing what you see when you're a first responder. So I was aware of it, but I didn't understand how those things would play together. So the sleep deprivation, the exposure to trauma. Also, I I will pull no punches on this. I um wasn't a particularly emotionally mature person. Um, I just I get it was partially like when I grew up, partially my family dynamic, but I didn't have a lot of ability to uh resolve conflict. And so it just got for me personally, it got really, really dark. And what I learned um luckily I learned it before something terrible happened to me. But some of the things that take the lives of our firefighters, you would think, oh my gosh, falling through a roof or um making a big rescue. But actually, one of the things that kills more firefighters than almost anything else is suicide. And so when I when you think about this population, a lot of times we're like tactical athletes, everyone wants to say tactical athletes, but really what we have to think about is these are just general population people who want to be helpers. They raise their hand and they just are general population that have a really, really, really hard job. And they do that job under conditions of sleep deprivation and I guess just not ideal conditions all the time. So for me, it was a big eye-opener because the only thing that I ever knew was the fire trucks speeding past the lights and the sirens and helping people on their worst day. That's the only thing I knew. I wasn't prepared for everything else.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Got it. Yeah, I mean, it's uh obviously an intense role. And if you look at the broader tactical populations, it's it really is true. I think what you're saying, like it's these are Gen Pop people folks that are just like in the face of these traumatic things day in and day out, and you know, losing sleep, which you know, nutrition's not great, and and so on and so forth. And and I think that plays nicely into kind of the you know, diving into some of the the deeper elements of you know the firefighting culture, um, and getting us like really triangulated on that um before we dive into the the finer details. So, you know, I I I want to explore, I guess, really like the calculus of of the culture, right? Where are we right now? How do we get here? And like where are we trying to go in the future?

SPEAKER_02 9:56

That is such a great question because the job, even in the amount of time that I did the job, 20 years, it really changed a lot. And so uh we like to say it's a pretty common term in the fire service, the United States Fire Service, 200 years of culture unimpeded by progress. And so uh for a lot of years, the fire service was a pretty, I won't say a cushy job, that's not the right explanation, but you might go to your job and respond to a couple of calls. And and maybe those jobs are fires, but primarily uh you were not particularly busy and the jobs that you were going on were fires. Thanks to fire prevention principles. We actually go on very few fires, I shouldn't say very few, but far fewer fires than ever before. And we're primarily going on EMS calls and so, or calls for other types of rescue. And so at most agencies, the call volume has expanded greatly, whereas the manpower, woman power, the amount of apparatus, the amount of resources has actually either stayed the same or gotten smaller. So I'll use my agency for an example. I mentioned that it was a small agency, but when I got hired, we had 105 firefighters. And then about 10 years into my career, there were some big budget cuts, and we actually went down to 87 firefighters through attrition. So nobody lost their job, but we lost two uh rigs and whatever math is hard, 18 firefighters or however many that is. And so the fire service is exceptionally busy, not only with calls, but they have a lot more in terms of paperwork, in terms of reporting requirements, in terms of responding to all manner of different calls that maybe never would have been on our radar before. So that whole doing more with less is really, really, really apparent in the fire service.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Got it. Interesting. Yeah. And so so is it it sounds like there's kind of like a thick layer of bureaucracy that got added, which, you know, I'm sure having experienced, you know, elements of that, like in addition to, you know, going out on a crazy call and all that, to have to come back and do all this like grueling paperwork, you know, and all those things could could not be a more jarring experience. And so I'm I'm curious, you know, uh hearing you say all that stuff, like have the problems firefighters faced from like a performance standpoint like really changed and evolved over the last, I would say, I don't know, I guess since you since you've been in.

SPEAKER_02 12:50

Another interesting question. Uh maybe not so much since I started, but let's look back, say, in the 70s and 80s. The population of the country was much more fit because they were much more active. Uh, kids had recess and gym class. Moms, I know my mom would say, like, go outside and play and don't come home until the streetlights come on, whatever. And so um, the fitness levels, I believe, of the people coming into the fire service were more uh suited to the job than potentially they are at this point. And so if I look now, okay, so 70s, 80s, 90s, let's just put that aside because I don't have personal experience. When we look in terms of when I was in the fire service, I would say that the performance requirements maintained or were very similar, but sometimes the equipment that we use, the metamorphosis of the equipment, which is supposed to make our job easier, sometimes made our job harder. So, for example, uh we had it's actually quite a rare type of air pack that we had at my agency, but it was a wireframe harness, which is extremely, extremely light. And um, in terms of mobility, pretty easy to move in. And so we updated our air packs not too long before I stopped working. And they were several, several pounds heavier. They had a much thicker waistband, so mobility was diminished. Um, and again, just those few pounds of weight on your back make a big difference. And sometimes I wonder like, did did anyone think this through thoroughly in terms of a performance standpoint before designing this equipment? And then ultimately agencies purchasing the equipment.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Interesting. That's so interesting. Yeah, and I I know you have you know some slides you kind of want to go over today, you know, and that that will start to really dive into you know how you think about the framework for starting to train these folks. So go ahead and pull those up. Um, and and I think you know, it'll be really nice to see these. One, because you know, I've worked with maybe one firefighter in my career, um, and it was very much like he was at the gate about to go into um, I guess, what is it, fire school? Um, and so like, you know, what what I know I think is a drop, and what you have to share is an ocean. So please uh yeah, dive in.

SPEAKER_02 15:24

Okay, so I don't like to kill people with PowerPoints, but also I've learned at my age, I think I'm both autistic and ADHD, and so it just helps me to keep on track. So um uh Cooper already mentioned this, but I always like to disclose this as well. I am a business owner, I'm also a PhD student at Oklahoma State University with the Dr. Jay Dawes, just one of my favorite people in the whole entire world. And I'm currently embedded with a large metropolitan agency in Oklahoma. So it is I a great, it is my great honor to be able to have such a cool grad assistantship and hopefully I'm providing value to that agency. So that's where we are. So in the fire service, as in police and in the military, we use the term called bluff. Cooper's probably familiar with it. Maybe some of the coaches on the call are not, but bluff is bottom line up front. So tell me all of the important stuff. Don't bore me with the details, tell me all the important stuff, and that's what I'm gonna do with you today. And so I already mentioned it. Firefighters are from the general population, and the general population is getting more and more increasingly unfit year by year. And so the military and police and fire are all pulling their candidates from the same fishing pond, which is becoming less fit overall. So keep that in mind. There's also the concept of the tactical athlete. Now, I'm gonna give a big nod to Dr. Dawes and also Mark Stevenson, who were at the NSCA when this kind of whole concept of the tactical athlete came about. But, you know, we've had a ton of conversations about that, Dr. Dawes and I. And he's he's like, Aisy, we never meant to say they were athletes. What we meant to say was they should be training like athletes and they should have the recovery modalities and the nutrition and all of those things, you know, that like an athlete would have. And so my friend Vanessa actually has a really good thing, she poses the question, she says, are these tactical athletes or are they just really high-risk general population? And I would vote with Vanessa, super high risk general population. These are people, again, who want to do good for other people. They raise their right hand and they just do really, really freaking hard jobs under really bad conditions. With this population, I'm for the most part, fire service, we're not talking tip of the spear fitness. We're talking sometimes just health is a challenge. And so, you know, there's a paper, I wish I would have actually put the citation on here, but there was a paper not too long ago that said about 70% of firefighters don't even get the minimum exercise recommended by ACSM. Not even the minimum. So we're not talking tip of the spear, we're talking holy moly, these people just need to get some exercise training. Yeah, the other thing too, we have to be really cognizant and careful for many agencies have pretty comprehensive medical screening. Many agencies have no medical screening, and then there's you know the agencies that meet somewhere in the middle. But many of these firefighters may have underlying health conditions that even when really, really carefully screened, are hidden. And so I like to give the example uh South Metro, which is in kind of your neck of the woods, Cooper in Colorado. Um, they have a really, really elite um human performance optimization team. They have their own doctor, they have physical therapists, ATs, they have um dietitian, strength coaches, uh, mental health. They have it all. And so a few years ago, they started thinking like, what else can we do in terms of screening for cardiac disease? And so they did a pilot study where they provided cardiac CTs. So it's pretty typical in the fire service, EKGs, stress EKGs, calcium scores, all of those things are pretty typical. But no one at the time was doing cardiac CTs. And so they had a group, I believe it was 20 people initially, and a few of those people were they screened out as high risk. So either they had a family member who died of heart disease, they had symptoms, signs and symptoms themselves, complaints of shortness of breath, things like that. But the balance of that small pilot study, those people had no risk factors, no complaints, and had also just been cleared through an EKG and a calcium score. Like you are good to go. And they actually found pretty heavy underlying cardiac disease in a couple of these patients.

SPEAKER_03 20:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

And so it's the soft plaque that you can't see on the on the um calcium score. And so, in fact, a couple of these patients actually would have more than likely been a cardiac arrest in a in a short amount of time. So, in terms of underlying disease, we just always have to consider that because even though they're being screened, they are exposed to so many things and the sleep deprivation. So we know sleep deprivation is correlated with about 15 of the top mortality risks, including cancer, which kills a lot of our firefighters, including cardiovascular disease, including suicide. So we have to keep that in mind. And then the other thing that we need to consider is when we're working with firefighters, we have to consider the requirements of their engine or their VO2 max. Uh, obviously, with VO2 max, I can't think of an example where more wouldn't be better just for a human. But in firefighters, we have to consider like maybe with a low VO2 max, maybe you can get that job done, but at what physiological cost to yourself? And so we have to really focus on big engine. Then we have to think about the muscle. So there's quite a bit of research on the fact that lower body strength, upper body strength, and power are important for firefighter performance. And also overall endurance is important, muscular endurance. And so we need to kind of be able to train them through the gamut of strength, power, endurance, et cetera, et cetera. Uh mobility, mobility, and stability, as you probably can guess, lots of injuries in this job. And simply being able to maintain the ability to not only say deadlift a patient off the floor, but have but own the mobility to do that in a good position is super, super important. And then I need to give a nod too to body composition. Body composition, which plays into our VO2 max, which plays into our muscle quality, but also the biggest predictor of an injury is a previous injury, but poor body composition is also a huge predictor of injury. So we need to take all of those things into consideration in a population where 70% of them simply aren't getting enough exercise.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

Well, I have one question on that is um the injuries and such. You know, I I know having worked with a ton of Gen Pop in my time for sure that low back pain, just general low back pain, general shoulder pain, general knee knee pain. I'd be curious though, like I'm sure all that's there, but what are some of the things that are kind of unique to this population that uh, you know, like from an injury perspective?

SPEAKER_02 23:18

It is so funny that you said low back, shoulder, and knee, because in that order are the injuries that firefighters experience.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

Same, same with Marines, same with like army, navy, it's all it's all the same.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

So the only one that I'm gonna add that I see a lot is elbow tendinitis and tendinopathy. And it's probably from wearing gloves that don't fit, manipulating knobs and buttons and things like that. But I wish uh I really wish I'd have put this slide on, but the um, I believe it's Mike Boyle's joint by joint, the the picture that he has. We need ankle mobility, hip mobility, teeth by mobility.

SPEAKER_03 23:55

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

Um we layer those areas that are already needing to be mobile and probably aren't as mobile as they should be. Then we put on these um safety toe boots, which have super high um ankle shanks or whatever you call it. So your ankles can't move. We have the turnout gear, which keeps our hips uh from moving and our T-spine from moving. Then we put the air pack on that makes sure it's almost like wearing a cast, an upper body cast. And so when we don't have the requisite mobility and joints that should move, then our poor little knees and low back and shoulders suffer.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Interesting. And yeah, yeah, I I guess interesting point about the gear, right? Like and the external constraint that that places you under already, like whatever mobility you have is being reduced significantly. So on top of that, like you know, you're you know, if you have shitty joints, like you are fucked.

SPEAKER_02 24:53

Right. So and and I won't go too down too far down the rabbit hole, but it's one of the things that um it's kind of uh one of my passion projects right now because there I think it was in 2016, something like that, a paper came out that talked about how simply just putting on your gear um took down your VO2 max and it and it kept it it diminished your strength, and having the gloves on diminished your grip strength. And the the sort of punchline of that paper was uh practitioners should make sure that firefighters perform job task training in their gear. But what I think a lot of the fire service heard was we should be working out in our gear, like like actually deadlifting and burpeeing and pull-ups. Well, and the thing is, I try to be very, very transparent. There currently isn't any research that definitively says that's a bad idea. There's not any research that also says that's a great idea. And so that's one of the things I'm hoping to put on my horizon as far as research. I have some great guys at the agency that I'm working at that are actually very much fans of working on it in their gear, but they're also fans of finding out what is the answer to that scientific question. So hopefully down the road we'll be doing that. But yeah, it is cool. But but my philosophy is if your VO2 max diminishes by putting on your gear, then let's just get it as high as we absolutely can by doing things outside of your gear. And then you do need to be comfortable in it. And so let's then have you do job tasks instead of you know burpees in your gear. Let's have you do search and rescue in your gear. Let's have you do ladder deployment, let's have you do um hose deployment in your gear. So that was a really good question, Cooper.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Cool. Yeah, continue on. I mean interrupt, but I uh no, no problem. I'm very curious. And I will keep interrupting you. So no, that's fine.

SPEAKER_02 26:56

And I have to tell before I go to these notes, I have to tell a funny story about I try very hard to use either photographs I've taken or photographs from a site called Unsplash because I think it's not cool to use people's copyrighted photos. And so I was looking on Unsplash one day for I wanted specifically a female firefighter, so I just you know put that in the search bar. And this came up. I'm like, are you kidding me right now? This is a friend. This she works for Windsor Severance Fire.

SPEAKER_03 27:21

And like, this is her practice.

SPEAKER_02 27:23

So I put this in all of my presentations. Thanks. Shout out, Jamie. So important things to note with programming for firefighters, time limitations. And you have to think about this in several on several different planes. The first one is if you are going to do a training session with them at nine o'clock in the morning, um, there's a 95% chance you're gonna show up at the fire at the firehouse and they're gonna be on a call and they're not gonna be back for 90 minutes. And so if you do get there and you do get a session started, you have to keep in mind, like keep her moving. We're not gonna be chit-chatting, we're not gonna be um, you know, stopping. We are just gonna keep that session going. And then the other thing as far as time limitations, we wanna be able to harness their ability because many, many agencies not only uh endorse working out on duty, many agencies require this. So it's great. So we want to have them working out on duty, but we want to make sure that the types of training that they're doing on duty isn't going to hinder them from a good response. And so, because I'm a data nerd and a research nerd, I will mention a shout out to Katie Dennison and Mark Abel's lab. They've done quite a lot of work on this. Um, what they found was that doing a heavy resistance training session wasn't too big of a big, uh, too big of a deal in terms of response. So they did a heavy resistance training session, then they went on a simulated call, no big deal. Then they used um, they called it a high-intensity functional training, but in your head, you could just say like a CrossFit type workout.

SPEAKER_03 29:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 29:04

And when when the first responders did a CrossFit or high-intensity functional training session, and then subsequently went on a call, their air tanks lasted longer, their perceived exertion was higher, their power was lower. So there's all kinds of these um bad things that happened. So some people might go, aha, I told you firefighters shouldn't do CrossFit. But the the punchline to this is those firefighters that were more fatigued and went through their bottles slower also still performed way better than the dudes and dudettes that didn't work out at all. So is it the absolute best type of training for on duty? Probably not, but it's it's another modality. If you enjoy that kind of stuff, do that kind of stuff. Because again, 70% of firefighters don't get enough exercise.

SPEAKER_03 29:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:56

So we also have to deal with sleep deprivation and everything that goes with that. So sometimes auto-regulation is something that uh that can be very, very useful. Many of these firefighters have, whether they know it or not, uh, have had traumatic brain injuries. So again, just something to keep in mind. And then we have to also keep in mind that these individuals have been exposed, at least in some level, to trauma. And so a trauma-informed approach to training, uh, trauma-informed isn't my uh area of expertise. It is, I am at the um the knowledge-only level of trauma-informed, but there are great people out there that uh present on this, Tracy Toffner and um Anna August and Becky Swann are they're all athletic trainers that kind of present on this trauma-informed care. And it's fantastic to just have an awareness level on that. I'm gonna skip decision fatigue for one second, I'm gonna go to culture. The if you have an agency that has 50 fire stations and three shifts, you effectively have 150 different fire departments because the culture at each station on each shift is very different. And it's almost like all or nothing. So if you see one person from a shift and they're fit and they have their stuff together and they seem very much motivated and disciplined to train, generally the entire station is the same way. And vice versa, it's also true. And then I left decision fatigue for last because I do have a little story about decision fatigue. I recently became really frustrated because I wrote a program. I don't do customized programming for, well, let's be honest, for anyone. I don't do customized programming, but especially it's not necessary in the fire service. I want to teach you how to fish. And so I'm gonna give a general program that's gonna be pretty good for everyone. And then when you tell me, AZ, this exercise hurts my knee, then I'm gonna teach you how to substitute confidently another exercise. So you don't have to call me every time you need to substitute an exercise. You don't need me. I'm gonna give you the confidence. So I gave this individual a program and he wrote me back and he said, I can't do this program because I don't have a treadmill. And I said, Could you walk around the block instead? And he's like, I mean, I guess I could. And then another day went by and he's like, Yeah, I still can't do this program because I only have 15 pound dumbbells. So as it turns out, he was trying to do the program at home, not at a commercial gym. And I was really frustrated. Like I was, I was so frustrated that several of my friends got an earful about it. I was just bouncing it off them. And then I took a step back and I was like, oh, you know what though? First of all, he's not an exercise person. This doesn't come naturally to him. But the bigger piece of it is these men and women make life or death decisions X number of times per day. It's kind of like when you've been at the office all day and you go home and your husband or wife or is like, what do you want for dinner? I don't know. I have decision fatigue. I can't even tell you if I want a grilled cheese or a ham sandwich. I don't know. I think this happens in fire too. So these people are, these personnel, they're they're super smart, they're super competent, they're super um, they're really brave. I mean, it takes a good amount of kahunas to walk into a thousand-degree oven. But they really don't they don't want to think about could I substitute jump roping for treadmilling? So decision fatigue is real.

SPEAKER_00 33:44

Uh yeah, that cognitive load element is this, it's the same thing. I've I've seen it across all tactical athletes, like, and why it's so important to have like practitioners involved is because the second they go to write their own workout, that's like a thousand decisions they had to make, in addition to, oh, hey, I just spent four hours doing like CQB or putting fires out, you know, and like drills and stuff. And it's like it's worth it to give a level of white glove experience to these folks so that they can just get this element that is like so crucial to their job done. Um, but like you said, it it can't be it, not everyone can have their hand held every step of the process. And so, yeah, that teaching to fish element is good for their cognitive load too, you know, in a way, because then they're never they're never confused once they reach critical mass of getting really good at that. So I love what you're saying.

SPEAKER_02 34:36

Absolutely. And there will be, there are those individuals that are simply looking for making the barrier so high. See, I can't get in shape because AZ didn't, you know, tell me to step with my right foot instead of my left foot. But that's it's not very common. And so again, I just try to use that, teach them how to fish. When I when I open up the app, when I and I show people how to use the app, the first thing I say is, we're never gonna not do a training session. Listen, I hate burpees, I hate with a burning passion. I cannot tell you how much I hate burpees, but we cannot open up the app and go, oh, I see burpees on this training session, so I'm not doing that one, or I can't do this program. So we have to be able to have it's much like taking your car and for an oil change. Like I could take my or I could do the oil change, but then what do I do with the oil when I'm done? I have to find somewhere to get rid of it. It's easier for me to just take it to the shop, but I have to have that level of confidence and competence to at least get the oil change somehow. So the being we have to be really practical with this population. And so the three things I really consider are safety, efficacy, and density. So safety. I 100% never, never, never um do max testing with this population. If I'm doing research, we do isometric mid-thigh pull. But I am not doing your one rep max on a deadlift. I am not one rep or three rep maxing you on the squat. First of all, for me to do that with 1100 people, literally impossible. And second of all, the letter would start like this Dear Chief, it was a day like any other. And I was, you know, one rep max testing Cooper on the squat. Oh, by the way, Cooper hasn't done a squat in 18 months, and now he's out on a back injury. So safety, safety is super important. Efficacy with all programming, right? We want to have effective programming, but especially in this population, uh, wasting time is they just don't, they don't want to check a box. They want to make sure what they're doing is going to make a difference. And then the last thing that I use is density. And so Cooper and I chatted about this on the phone the other day. He had a better term for it, but I just use the word density. A collegiate coach would probably look at my programming and be absolutely horrified. Like, oh my gosh, you're not resting. This is not enough rest. Uh, this is this is the timing is wrong, the order is wrong. But with the exception of my main lifts, I am always putting other exercises in the resting. So let's say the main lift is the deadlift. So yes, we're gonna rest, but probably only about a minute. Why? Well, because we want to get as much of that deadlifting done before they go on a call as possible. But the other thing is conditions are not optimal in the fire service. And so you do need to be able to perform again. You can't really say, like, uh, sorry, Chief, I got I gotta rest another three to five minutes before I can list lift another another patient. So that's one of the reasons. And then the other reason is I need to sneak in mobility, I need to get those other body parts in. So I want as much bang for the buck as I possibly can in whatever amount of time that they can give me. And so that is it for the slides, Cooper.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

Yeah. Well, I would I would love to dive deeper into that density element, um, you know, and and chat about like what that means, why that's important, because because the in a separate episode, actually our first episode of Unwracked was with uh Tom Barry from a gym out of Columbus, Ohio called West Side Barbell, and he talks a lot about tonnage um you know in his training for professional athletes. And basically what that means, if okay, in 15 minutes, right, you could get X amount of trips done with the sled down and back, you know, in in this. If you are doing more trips, right, that's like more overall tonnage in that 15 minutes, right? And so these density elements and like volume load per minute and all these different metrics you can track, like why is that important? You know, and and like how can coaches start to think about density in their training? And I I think this is important for all populations, folks. Like, if we're talking about people who just are extremely high stress gen pop, this is going to apply to genpop, right? But this is also going to apply to like athletes at the top of their game who need to be able to put more tonnage out than the than the guy they're going against or gal they're going against for the next hour, right? On the field. So so dive into that density element.

SPEAKER_02 39:39

So I'm gonna circle back to it if it's okay. Uh another one of my dudes says, um, he's actually wildland. Shout out to Austin. But Austin said, you know, ideally in a perfect world, we would do our speed and agility first, and then we would, you know, follow by this, follow by that, endurance work at the end. And he's like, when you are at the bottom of a mountain crawling over a tree or whatever, uh, you had better be able to have your endurance like tap it into your endurance um in a in an order that maybe isn't as logical as it would be. So basically, he creates his workouts a little bit out of chaos. Now, I don't go that by that far. Um, not that it's not a great idea. I do try to keep things a little bit more in a traditional order, but the biggest thing I have to keep reminding these firefighters about is that um the fire service works in absolutes, not in relatives. Meaning uh I am a larger woman, a larger size woman, but I am a smaller size firefighter. And so at five, eight, nine, and 165 pounds, the gear that I have to wear, the hose that I have to carry, the tools that I have to carry, um, is relatively far heavier for me than a lean 250-pound person. And so again, it's because we work in absolutes, not relatives, I try to also get higher absolute work done in each training session. So that plays back into that lowering the rest, increasing the number of exercises, switching from you know, top of the body to bottom of the body to a mobility to maybe another put stick another mobility in there somewhere. But instead of resting, they are getting the advantage of increasing the overall tonnage, the overall workload for the entire session, thereby increasing the intensity without necessarily doing it in a way that's going to, again, make them unable to respond to a call coming up right afterwards. And Cooper, I'm the worst because the the comments keep popping up and I'm like talking, and then I look at a comment and I'm like, what was I just saying? We can we can answer the question.

SPEAKER_00 42:20

Yeah, yeah, no, a hundred percent. I mean, you know, we're talking about kind of how we build out, you know, like a session that is revolved around density. And and I think density, like, you know, from from what I gathered from what you told me is the absolute element here. There are a handful of like just you if you cannot overcome this minimum threshold of like you know, strength, power, endurance, speed, whatever it might be, right? It's a liability. Yeah, right. And and so we have to achieve these certain minimums, right? Obviously, if everybody could deadlift a thousand pounds, run a three-second 40-yard dash, and you know, like have perfect body composition, we would have that, right? But but instead of going maximal, we have to find like these minimum thresholds and exceed those, right? And and then what we layer on top of that is can you exceed that minimum threshold 20 times in a row and under fatigue, right? Is and so am I am I right? Am I wrong? Like what you know.

SPEAKER_02 43:31

No, and and you raise a good point. You're absolutely right, and you raise a good point. Every person on the team, quote unquote, has their specialty, but also everyone needs to be able to do the job. Because even in really large agencies, I'll I'll go in moderately sized agencies, you may be the driver one day, but that doesn't mean that. You're not in the right hand seat as the officer the next day or writing backwards the day after that. And so we need you to be a generalist in terms of, I was thinking about a decathlete. My favorite decathlete is um Ashton Eaton, by the way. Shout out to Ashton Eaton. But um, you know, in the decathlon, you have to be a sprinter. You have to be able to run, I believe it's 1500, you have to be able to throw the shot, put, do the hurdles. Um, and you have to be able to perform all of those events pretty well in order to win. And so I could go in the decathlon, and let me tell you, I was not any longer, but I was a pretty good hurdler. But that's the only thing that I'm gonna be able to pull a significant amount of points in the decathlon because I'm just I'm not good enough. I guess it would be heptathlon for women, but I'm just not good enough at the jumps.

SPEAKER_00 44:56

I'm not good enough at this is a great way to point it out though, right? Because there's all these physical qualities you have to be excellent at, right? Right. And like you literally, it's like virtually impossible to be excellent at all of them until you get to that, like, you know, like we're talking like 10 people on the planet that are competing with each other for a gold medal, right? So you're gonna have your deficits. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:19

Good enough. I need you to be good enough that if if we have a straight stick um truck and you have to climb a hundred-foot ladder, I need you to be good enough you can still get off of that hundred-foot ladder onto the roof and cut a hole for me. If you are cashed out, wasted after climbing up on the ladder, you're not any good to me. So I need you to have just a good enough concept of all of those attributes. And I think that that's another reason why when I do my programming, which I think we're gonna maybe go through a little bit later, but I always try to make it a bit of sort of choose your own adventure. That's dangerous. That's dangerous because many people choose the adventure where they're most comfortable rather than the adventure of this is what I need to work on. But uh I put it together in hopefully a modular way that allows them to first of all manage their time, but also manage their um ability to hit on the things that are really important.

SPEAKER_00 46:22

I love that. And I I guess like one question I have before we go into the programming element is like, you know, as someone who uh most recently in my career, high school football was was where I was working. And, you know, there there's a lot in NFL training that can inform us what to do with high schoolers. But at the end of the day, much like you're talking about, these are gen pot people that decided they wanted to play football. And so it's a wildly different approach, right? For for the vast majority of them compared to what we would do at that elite level. But I do want to get an understanding kind of like, okay, well, if 70% aren't necessarily up to par, and it sounds like a lot of like what you do is is getting that number to dwindle, but what does the top five percent look like? What jobs are they doing in the fire service? And like what can we learn from them?

SPEAKER_02 47:18

I think that okay, Cooper, I'm gonna ask you to ask me that question again in just one second because you said something that was that was really important. And I always use the the example. I wanted to be a supermodel, I really did, but I do not have the assets, the assets, right, to be a successful supermodel. And I can be sad about that and I can say it's not fair, but at the end of the day, you know, guess and Tom, whatever Ford and all of those modeling agencies are not gonna hire me because I am not qualified. Now, when we look at getting into public safety in the military, let's leave the military off. When we look at getting in public safety, many times, almost always, there's some sort of a minimum standard test to get in. And very often there's never a minimum test to keep. There's not a fit for duty. And so that's an entirely different conversation for today or than we were having today. But we what is really imperative, in my opinion, is getting people that are intrinsically motivated. And that speaks to um it speaks to education, but it also speaks to this. And I'll tell this as a very fast story because it could take forever. As a young athlete, my parents were, we didn't have a ton of money. I grew up very poor. My parents were very busy, we're farmers, at least for a period of time. And so my parents were like, listen, little girl, time out. You can participate in one and only one sport. You have to pick what it is. We cannot be running you around year round. Pick one sport. So I picked track and field. And I knew at the end of track and field season, I'm like, I have to stay in physical condition to be good at track and field again next year. But guess what I did? Zero zilch nada, nothing until track and field came around again. And then it was the same thing. I need to stay in shape. So then it moved into college. Um, I ran track and field for a couple of years, wasn't very good. But once I was done with track and field, I'm like, I need to keep working out. I need to stay in shape. Guess what I did? Zero zilchanata. And so then I was self-aware to know I need something that's going to help me. And so I took a class. I took a weightlifting class. It was fantastic. I got done with the weightlifting class. I'm gonna keep applying this stuff every single day. Guess what I did? Zero zil chanata. The punchline of this whole thing is I didn't start working out reliably on my own without someone holding a whip to my back until I became a group exercise instructor myself. And then I began teaching way too much group exercise. Then I actually now hate group exercise, and I have a home gym and I have discipline. All of this is to say I wasn't intrinsically motivated. I had to figure out what it took for me in order to be not doing zero zelchanata. That is my biggest lesson I need to teach to firefighters. How do we become self-aware enough to figure out how to be intrinsically motivated?

SPEAKER_00 50:43

I love that. I love that. Yeah, because it's the everybody's lives are so different in terms of the calculus of what gets them to the to the starting point of that. You know, in the first probably have kids from really wealthy backgrounds, you probably have kids from, you know, super poor backgrounds and like everything in between, and like, you know, what gets them to get to that point of intrinsic motivation. I'm curious, like, you know, what you think some of the things that are common that work for a lot of people are.

SPEAKER_02 51:15

Again, I think it just has to go back to that self-awareness. I think you have to take the really hard look at yourself. Self, what is it gonna take? And for some people, buying a gym membership may be what it takes. For some people, paying a trainer for accountability. Now, those are the types of clients I don't enjoy having. I don't want to just be the accountability buddy, but for some people, that's what it takes. For some people, unfortunately, it takes a scare. I had a firefighter for years. Every year we would do his fitness eval. Every year I would have a serious and hard conversation with him. And every year he would say, Yes, yes, yes, I I got it. I understand. But what it finally took was to for him to have a scare during a training drill where he got short of breath, got a heart palpitations and so on and so forth. And that kind of like scared him straight. So the answer to your question is, Cooper, it's a million-dollar question, and I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 52:16

It's okay. It's okay. Answering it though, it gets us one bit closer, right? And in terms of the the group think here. So so I love that. Cool. Well, I do I do want to dive into the programming elements, right? And like, you know, kind of take a look under the hood a little bit, so to speak. So feel free to to pull up what you have there. Um you know, uh obviously, folks like I work on behalf of Bridge. Annette uses Bridge. Um, but don't don't don't look any deeper into it than that, folks. So we're not, we're not, we're not trying to push product here, we're trying to look at programs.

SPEAKER_02 52:50

Well, Cooper, I thought that I would be able to do this, but let's see if I actually can do this. Nope, that's the other presentation. It's like my first day doing a zoom. Remember in COVID, everyone was like, um, I'm sharing my screen. Can you see my screen?

SPEAKER_00 53:09

I do. You know, you know, it's funny too. It still happens in like every meeting, even though we've all been using this stuff for half a decade now.

SPEAKER_02 53:17

Ooh, I might have it. Um, Cooper, are you seeing my screen?

SPEAKER_00 53:21

I'm seeing your screen.

SPEAKER_02 53:23

Oh, this is fabulous. Okay, so again, as I mentioned, if you are a collegiate or professional man, even a high school strength and conditioning coach, you are probably gonna be just completely underwhelmed. But let me tell you, it seemed this seems to work very well. I call it the meaty middle. And so, in terms of the fire service, we have like maybe through 25% at the top who they're gonna thrive and be super healthy and do all the right things in spite of anything and that I say. Then we have the 25% at the bottom who doesn't care. I could be like the NFL strength and conditioning coach of the century, they wouldn't care what I had to say anyway. The people that I can really impact are those people in the middle. And so the Spirefighter Performance program is designed for those people in the middle. As I mentioned already, I try to make this as much as possible a choose your own adventure. And I also try to make it so the agency I work with right now has actually the worst, like the worst schedule out there. Like the research has been done. It is the worst schedule out there. So it's Jesus, one on, one off, one on, one off, one on, four off. And so they are constantly either waking up at the firehouse or waking up to go to the firehouse for those one-on-one off days.

SPEAKER_03 54:51

So right.

SPEAKER_02 54:54

And so I program everything on a playlist and I and I we go from there. So as we're looking through this, I we can uh we can probably agree that most people, when left to their own devices, are not gonna warm up at all. So I provide them a super, super fast warm-up, which I call the express warm-up. I also provide them with what I call a full warm-up. For me, this would be a more traditional traditional like ramp style warm-up. And it includes some, I kind of hate the word, but prehab exercises for again T, spine, low, back, um, hips, ankles, all of those types of things.

SPEAKER_00 55:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:38

Then I provide a main lift, a secondary lift, accessories, and some sort of a cardiovascular finisher. So when you look at this program, if you just opened up and scrolled down, you would be like, this is so overwhelming. But they do know that this is a choose your own adventure. So, Cooper, what do you got today? 35 minutes. Let's say you got 35 minutes. So, what I'm gonna say is we're gonna have Cooper do the express warm-up because everyone should warm up, regardless of you know, age, and anything. Everyone should warm up. So I give them about three minutes of something on something, followed by again, we know where those injuries are coming. So I want to make sure that we're moving their T spine, their hips, and their ankles. And then I always like to end the warm-up with some sort of a pillar work, just so, okay, we've got abdominals that are maybe aware that something is gonna go on. So for right now, we're gonna skip the full warmup because Cooper doesn't have time. We're gonna go to the main lift. So excuse me, on this main lift for the pulling day is simply a trap bar deadlift. My firefighters know they can switch that up to kettlebell, they know they can switch that up to straight bar, rubber band, they know all of this. When I program for firefighters, again, we're not max, we're not one rep maxing them ever, ever, ever. I always program reps in reserve. So I have to explain to them what that means. It's pretty simple. The explanation, they they get it because I explain it kind of like the pain scale. When you're looking at a patient and saying, on a scale of zero to 10, are you in zero pain? Are you in a 10 out of 10 pain? All right, I want you to be able to do five repetitions. I am recommending that you have two to three in the tank when you are done. Does that make sense? It's kind of like the pain scale in some respects, and they usually get it. And so again, I mentioned that I do not program rest except on the main lift. So they're getting a minute of rest, which is maybe not optimal, but it's also compressing the amount of time that Cooper's spending doing his workout for the day. So I said he has 35 minutes. He did an express warm-up, he did his main lift. So uh he knows through the fitness testing that we have done at the agency, he also knows that his BO2 max isn't super great. So we're gonna finish up with his with a cardiovascular finisher. So on this particular day, uh, through some research done by Dr. Katie Hirsch, what she found was that one minute super high intensity, one minute off for 10 routes. So a total of 20 minutes was quite effective in not only mobilizing visceral fat, but improving BO2 max, improving body composition. So here comes the research when they ask, well, here we go. These are the issues that firefighters have. This um 20 minute, if you can swing it, finisher is gonna be perfect for you. Cooper's probably out of time, but I'm always gonna recommend, of course, some sort of cool-down stretch at the end again, focusing on those muscle groups of the joints that are gonna support the um the ability to I would say mitigate injury risk. We cannot prevent injuries, and if you say that, you will always disappoint your agency. We mitigate the risk of injury.

SPEAKER_00 59:12

I love it. So uh one question I have, um, I guess well, okay, two questions. First one is you're talking about a scenario in which RPE 10, R I R zero is usually not attainable, but you are still educating people on like okay, well, they have to get to X distance away from zero. So one rep in reserve, two reps in reserve, you know, RPE8, RPE9. Like I'm curious about how you're educating this population specifically on how to start to gauge that because I know it's it's it's subjective. Um, you know, and for me personally, this is like a little bit of my coaching creeping in. It's like, I know if I can get you to RPE 10 one time, R I R zero one time on that variation, you will fucking know. So how do you so how do you like kind of coach around that? Um, you know, I want to get into a little bit of the art of coaching alongside this art of programming.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:10

You know, that is a wonderful question. And what the people that seem to not quite understand what I'm saying, I'll I'll ask them or I'll tell I'll tell them, I'll advise them. Listen, the next time you put those weights on the bar and you think 285 is your um five reps with two to three in reserve. Go ahead and try to do. Can you do two to three more? Can you do one more after that? How about one more after that? Okay, we need to I we need to recalibrate.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:42

I like that the teaching them with the reps. It's like, hey, like fucker, if you can keep going, it's not heavy enough. Um, so I love that.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:50

The thing that um I get have I've started saying Cooper because I say it about a lot of things, it's not that serious. But with training on firefighters, the the thing that I always tell them is all of this shit is stupid made up. You know why it's stupid and made up? Because we don't work hard enough to move our bodies in the way that our bodies are supposed to move. So some jerk had to make up an elliptical, some jerk had to make up the Romanian deadlift, some jerk had to make up the rear foot elevated split squat or whatever you want to call it. And coaches can argue about it front squat, back squat, uh Zercher. It's not that serious.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:28

Do some squatting, do some hinging.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:32

Do some movement. It's not that serious.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:35

Yeah, yeah, heard, heard. And especially for this, you know, general population and like where I think early on, just not being as mature as I am now as a coach, it was like, no, it has to be this, that, or the other, and it needs this specific thing for this specific outcome. But a lot of these people just aren't fucking consistent enough for that to matter anyway. So it's like, what's simple? What reduces cognitive load? What keeps them in the gym? What like where am I over-explaining myself, you know, too fucking much? Um, and and just confusing these people um more.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:03

So you want to talk about periodization for a second?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:06

Di, I know your opinion on this, so please dive in.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:09

Speaking of it's not that effing serious, you know, people are always like, How do you periodize for firefighters? I'm like, you can't. First of all, you can't, because unless you're unless you're training a firefighter for police and fire games or world's strongest firefighter, you can't because you don't know when the event is. You have to continue to be pretty good at most of the stuff all the time. The other thing that's really sad is that they periodize themselves.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:40

Because um, the thing that makes them really good firefighters, this sort of like type A obsessive, compulsive questioning everything. The thing that makes them good firefighters and keeps them alive makes them really, really difficult clients and patients because it is all or nothing. There is nothing in the middle, there's no meaty middle. It's all or nothing, it's on the wagon or off the wagon, it's black, it's white. And so they are either adhering to the program or they are off the rails drinking beer and fishing. Uh they periodize themselves. So consistency. If I can teach them consistency, if I can get them to do something most of the time, that is a huge win with public safety.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:33

Yeah. Oh, I love that. Yeah, because it it I mean, it's such a different, and I think going back to like a question I know we wanted to come back to was like, you know, hey, you've got like elite fire service units and such, you know, that are doing like like smoke jumpers or you know, any of the laundry list of you know, incredible jobs that you know you you could be doing, but like that's not most people in the fire service, right? And and so you know, it it's just it's two really unique problems, I think. You know, I also relate it to like special operations versus like you know, hey, you've got just like admin guys and gals, and like they could not be living any more different lives in in the military, but they are still Marines, sailors, airmen, you know, soldiers, and all those things. So I guess like uh to go back to that question, and and I think um useful to have the programming up with this is like once you've achieved that, what are you progressing towards? Like like you've achieved okay, you've you've got your 25% that are killing it, but but now what are we working towards in that respect? Like, is it to go do these elite jobs? Is it to just like do a better job at what you're doing right now? Like, like how how does that work and how does the programming evolve?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:53

You know, for most of the individuals, there aren't if you stay within an agency, there probably aren't a lot of um opportunities to go for like within the agency I work with, there is a special operations, which is a a helic helicopter unit. Um, isn't it cool? They have something what do they do?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:19

Like, what does a helicopter unit do?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:21

They have a I think it's called a Bambi bucket, which I thought they were picking up deer out of the river. Let's see me. Nope, they scoop up water out of the river and then they fly to the wildland fire and drop the Bambi bucket on the fire.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:34

That's super cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:35

But but they do um search and rescue, they do um, you know, spot spotting. It's a it's a joint operation between police and fire. So they do a lot of cool stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:46

Neat, super neat.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:47

To my knowledge, uh, and again, this is a blind spot for me because I haven't been at the agency that long, but I'm not certain about about other physical requirements for that. What I do find. With that 25%, though, is these are the people, these are the women and men who are doing things like uh marathon training, they're doing like hundred miles, fire lifting me and like you know crazy stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:14

We have on our agency the recent winner of uh both the deadlift and the bench press, I think, at World Peace and Fire Games, like pretty wild unit.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:23

Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:24

So, or Cooper, they might be on the elite fire ferrets rowing team as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:30

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. For those that don't know, which I don't think anyone would know, but Annette is on a competitive rowing team um with some of the other firefighters. It's we talked about a lot before we got on the call this morning is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:41

I'm very excited about the fire ferrets. No, but I think that to speak to your question, I think that getting getting these women and men to the finish line of their career with a health span left. Because uh the book of the book, I'm sorry, is um Michael East or the Comfort Crisis. And he talks about our lifespan is longer than it's ever been, and our health span is shorter than it's ever been. So especially in a job where you don't get adequate sleep, where you your nutrition suffers, where your mental health might be impacted a little bit, getting your health span to last your lifespan is an absolute huge win for me.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:28

Oh, that's so cool. That's so cool. No, and I I love thinking about that. Like, you know, the because what you know, I I know my grandfather-in-law talks about, you know, with with some health problems, like just he's like, your body's a prison, you know, sometimes like he's like as he ages is how he described it. And I'm like, oh my God, like that is not is not how you know you want it to be. Um, and and yeah, that health window is a really unique way of looking at that. So yeah, I appreciate some of the some of the clarity around that. Now, one one question I have is around uh progressions. Um, you know, when obviously, like, you know, you you get into these lifts and you know, these are fast, rapid fire, in and out in like 30 minutes or whatever. And I'm curious, like, what does better look like from a calculus of that like week to week, month to month, you know, year to year improvement?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:24

So for right now, this is actually this is a new program at the agency. Okay, it's a new program for me, it's a new program for all of these firefighters. So part of that is I don't know yet, Cooper. We're just trying to get our 300 seats filled. Um, actually, I filled uh many of them yesterday afternoon when I stopped at, I shouldn't say many, several of them when I stopped at that firehouse. But yeah, yeah, but you know how it works at the firehouse? There's this thing called um jealousy. If one person has something, other people want it. And so that's how things like this grow. So I could just I just offer it to Cooper and he's like, yeah, whatever. But if Cooper sees someone else having it, then he wants it. So um we have a lot of I'm gonna talk around your question and probably not answer it that well, but we have a lot of things coming on the horizon where we're trying to make some really good improvements starting at the academy level. Um we're currently looking at some connex boxes because right now our academy has dumbbells and kettlebells and a few sandbags and a couple sleds, and they're all kept outside. Um, and we have some cardio equipment as well, but there really wasn't any progressive strength and conditioning programming prior. It was just kind of like um random acts of fitness. And so we're gonna try to get that really, really uh dialed in as far as programming goes. Yeah. And then get that set from the academy so that the expectation is we have this program, we have this delivery. I've learned how to squat and deadlift and shoulder press and all these things at the academy. I've also been taught how to integrate this into my lifestyle. And hopefully that's going to keep marching forward. Um, in terms of right now, the programming that I have out is pretty simple. I have firefighter performance. I have, I'm pretty proud of this name. Should I say it out loud? Because I don't want you guys to steal it. Okay, I'll tell you VO2 maximizer. Um, I have uh a mobility program and I've been actually sharing the West Side barbell programming with a few people. Nice. But obviously, once we start um building out more programs, we'll be able to sort of streamline it a little bit. But the big thing that we're using it for right now is in our fitness testing, if we find someone whose say body composition or VO2 max isn't optimal, then we're able to offer this to them as well as um have a pure fitness trainer work with them. So again, this is very new, but this is the way I've been programming for a really long time.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:04

I love that. Well, and it, you know, I I think you you articulate the story of this program particular you know really, really well. Um, and I I think that it's it's clear why for this population you've made these decisions and it's built around their lifestyle.

unknown 1:11:20

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:20

I think that's something like we can all like kind of always be doing better. You know what I mean? Is like making sure that like we understand whether it's clients, athletes, like whoever, that we we really just understand like the left and right boundaries of their life right now and how we need to fill performance in those gaps. Um, because you know, to to your point, like how many people you know are like if the workout's not an hour long, it didn't count. And yet you just yeah, yeah, not that serious, extreme density, like you know, several of my lifts during the week, like if I if I you know I'm choosing to go in like a morning slot, it's like uh I could just go in and kind of be blasting through like a handful of machines, just like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, like you know, it to get the day in. Um, I might not even do free weights that day. You know what I mean? And and the amount of progress you can get, I feel like, just uh like personally speaking from my anecdotal experience, but also like the experience of my athletes, like just like little hits, you know, it's like it's like what's two hours, okay. Like, great, you did one two-hour session this week. If you did 30 minutes every day when you have these gaps, that's like way more time under tension that you're getting, way more time with your heart rate pounding. So I just I I really love your approach. And you know, I I know you you undercut yourself a little bit. It's so stupid simple, right? But like that's like that's art, though. You know what I mean? Like it and it's a great story from point A to point B that you're telling with your programming. So I really appreciate you showing that.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:50

Well, and I think that it's important to know whether you're collegiate professional, high school, little league, um, military, it's really important to know your population. So I have 20 years of experience in the fire service, but you don't need 20 years in the fire service to know how to relate to firefighters. It's just like everything else. Show them how much you care, keep your damn mouth shut, ask a lot of questions about them, and don't start volunteering information until they ask you. So, again, I have 20 years in the fire service, but this agency, the the firefighters probably really don't care. What they do know though is that I'm gonna come in, I'm gonna be respectful, I'm gonna ask questions, and I'm not gonna volunteer a bunch of advice until they actually ask. Now, when they ask, the dam opens up. It's a long conversation. I was late for a conversation with Cooper yesterday because the dam opened up, but that's how you deal with this.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:52

Those are the best conversations, though. You know what I mean? Like going deep with the people you love working with. That's the best. That's the whole point.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:59

Exactly. And then to the other point, um, and this might be just people, I just haven't dealt with any other population for so long. You can give them your phone number, you can give them your email, your Instagram. Heck, they could pull a box alarm. Um, but they won't ask you a question until you are in the station. And then you've got 20 people lined up with a question that could have been an email three months ago. So you have to make appearances at the station as much as possible.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:30

Yeah, yeah. That I mean, that I I I find uh in the modern world a lot of coaches resist that like time of showing your face from a buy-in perspective. But I it it that's where all the magic happens, man, is in person. It's you know, I love online training for like what it you know can provide a coach in terms of like flexibility of lifestyle and such. But like you got you gotta like, you know, be be face to face, at least in some capacity in in my mind, it keeps you sharp, but it also keeps you like so highly engaged with like it's your thumb on the pulse, you know, um in in the best way possible. So I I love that. I love that.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:12

Uh and they have to make sure you pass the sniff test too. For sure. And I can't tell you that over an email or a message.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:20

Nope. Yeah, no, heck no, right? No, no, no way. Yeah, the uh what is the sniff test amongst firefighters? I'm curious if there's any variance there between high school football or you know, tactical or whatever, whatever it might be.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:33

Their bullshitometer is calibrated really precisely, and so uh I think you just have to you have to be really genuine and I I think being humble is it's a good thing in any situation, but um genuine and humble, I think. And then just be willing to say when you don't know. They he had gone down this rabbit hole the other day about it. Started on peptides, it transitioned to creatine unrelated, and then um he one of the guys pulled out a supplement. I just like, yeah, I'm a sports nutritionist, but I can't know every single one. I'm like, dude, I I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:13

I don't know what do you mean gorilla backflips, you know, 666. It's like, oh, cool. Uh well, yeah, I don't know what that is, man. Like, I have no idea what that is.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:21

Like I mean, I'm like, yeah, let me write it down. I'll check it out. But tell me what you're doing, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:27

Yeah, it's wild.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:29

So funny.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:30

Yeah, that's uh that's awesome. Cool. Well, I I kind of want to wrap us up with uh a question about like the the future, right? And you know, what we're kind of leaning into from a perspective of like you just launched, you know, probably one of like the the like most grand projects in terms of you know getting these people to start to take their health and fitness seriously. But like what are you seeing come down the pipeline over the next three years, five years, decade, however long you you you want to scope out to that that's going to change this stuff for the better?

SPEAKER_02 1:17:03

I think that the fire service is becoming much more open to research. When I started in early 2000s, it was all dogma, all dogma based. And and actually, I was standing on the front lawn of a of a fire holding a hose, getting ready to go in one day and thinking, I'm gonna get killed because what the chief is saying is not right. I know it's not right. I have five minutes of experience, but from a physics standpoint, this is not right. Yeah, and as it turns out, he was not right. But I think that the fire service is a lot more open to research. I think a lot of labs are doing some really good research. I think that some events are helping to disseminate the research in a better way. But I think the shortcoming still is that people primarily reading the fire research are other researchers. So we have to get that into the hands of the men and women that it really matters. And the problem is there aren't a lot of people that speak in a way that we talked about before that tells the story. I always think of it this way: I don't want to convince you, Cooper, to take creatine. I'm just gonna tell you a story in a way that is interesting and interesting enough to you where you might want to give a shit. And then I'm just gonna let you go and make your own decision. And so we need more people telling the story of the research in a way that firefighters give a shit.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:37

Yeah. Yeah, that relatability element, you know, I I think it's unique because I know someone asked a question and we'll we'll kind of dive into the you know the the QA from what folks asked, but like how do you do this? You know what I mean? Like learn the lingo. And it I think I know the answer here. Um, but you know, someone no firefighting experience, you know, that wants to help, you know, support this um, you know, absolute necessity for our society to function.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:05

So I have a new person in my lab who actually asked me, he's like, AZ, should I do you think I should go get it, like be a firefighter, get a job as a firefighter volunteer? So I understand I'm like, no. What I think you need to do is create a relationship. It's all about relationships. You need to create a relationship with an agency who will allow you to maybe not initially do a ride along, but come in for a couple hours, observe what they're doing, ask questions. Like, how much does that piece of equipment weigh? Can I can I hold on to it? What do you do with it? What is the hardest part of your job? Is it difficult for you to step down off of that rig wearing that gear? Can I try it on? Would that be okay? Like, ask questions because firefighters love to talk about their job. They don't necessarily want to hear about what you're an expert in. They don't care, but they love to talk about their job. So, much like any sport, you know, I probably would not be the best strength and conditioning coach for say baseball or volleyball, but I could figure it out through a needs analysis, asking questions, watching what's going on. So the key is you can't be an annoying a-hole. So be a good approachable person and ask if you can observe and maybe eventually move on to uh doing a ride-along. And some agencies have um citizens' fire academies, which is really cool. So if you live in, say, Dustin, Florida, go on the Dustin Florida website and see if they have Citizens Fire Academies or open houses or things like that. Super helpful.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:44

That's neat. Yeah, it's it it and I I think this this question gets asked pretty often, you know, like regardless of what industry someone's a part of when you know we we have them on the show. And I think like the through line that I'm starting to see across all the answers is that like you need you like you might have no clue the like all the little detail stuff, but like it's almost like learning a language. You the best way to do it is going to the country and like having it kind of like you know thrown at you and and stress you out a little bit. Yeah, I mean, but to be present and to try is more than 95% of people are willing to do anyway. So like by by being there and just being like curious, inquisitive, asking questions, and you know, like just you know, like you said, not being an asshole about it. It's like it's pretty straightforward, you know. Um, so so I love I love that response. And yeah, hopefully, like the more episodes I do with this, the more I want to be able to relate it back to that. Like you're you're speaking to something a lot of coaches are speaking to, which is just go get your hands dirty and like believe in yourself and believe in the people around you. So, so I love that.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:51

And I think too, um, you just have to be like a good dude or good dudette. So I was down at our training facility, our academy yesterday, and there wasn't an academy going on. We went to to speak to someone and they were uh they were unloading a a semi with water pellets with a forklift, and one of the water pellets like exploded. Like not the waters, but the actual cases. And so the athletic trainer and I just like rolled up our sleeves, got in there, started moving water. And that goes a long way. Just be a good dude.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:26

Love that. Love that. Now there were a lot of questions about wearables. Um, so I apologize to everyone who asked something very specific, but I think the smartest way to answer this is just to like hear your thoughts about implementing this um in the fire service.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:43

That is a great question. I saw someone too, um, again, my ADHD, I saw someone ask about the yes, this is an aura ring. I like it.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:50

I like the color.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:51

Yeah, it's um it's a rubber thingy. Uh the aura ring is actually my current favorite wearable because as an end user, I find that the data it gives me is the most granular and meaty. You guys, this is embarrassing. I'm also wearing a whoop. The reason I'm wearing a whoop is because my agency chose before I started, chose to put that on the recruits. And it's part of my research project. And I'm kind of frustrated with Whoop Whoop right now, trying to get my data from them. And so I started wearing one just so I could understand better. Now, with the Whoop, there's a huge advantage over the Aura Ring if you have an agency. And that advantage is they have a dashboard where you can see all of your athletes on one dashboard. I don't know of any other wearable way where you can do that. So that's a huge advantage. But also for me, that's not data. That is black box, um, hardly useful, that dashboard stuff. So again, and I was involved in a study on the Aura Ring, which um, again, the data is much more granular, it's much more useful, at least the data you can get. And then uh I also have a polar, which I've been wearing forever. You guys are gonna think I'm a freak. I wear the polar because again, I've been wearing it forever. I have 25 years of polar flow data on that, and I just think it's interesting. So, with the wearables, I want to know what is your goal? What is your goal with the wearable? Is it to educate the person that's wearing it? Is it to inform your training? Is it to what is it for? And that's how I would break down which wearable that I might potentially choose. Um, if again, the only thing that I can warn you, if you are doing actual research, it is excessively difficult to get that data from Whoop right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:45

Interesting. That's that's fascinating stuff. I mean, you know, we we get on the bridge side of things, like get asked all the time, hey, will you ever integrate? Like, you know, what what will you you know do? And it's just like one, it's really freaking hard to build that out. It's crazy expensive, and a lot of time no one really does anything with the data anyway, besides throw it into a dashboard, like you're saying, the black box here. I would like to ask a follow-up to that in relation to like like what do you mean by the black her master's in biostatistics? So I hear about this stuff and like am learning you know, drinking from the fire hose of you know, just being around her about statistics and you know how how we kind of evolve these things. So, like, like what do you mean that data is not useful in that black box? And like what what data are we really trying to dive into? What's valuable? Because I think that's a lot of things that like strength coaches hear that. And it might be very simple to you guys, but as someone who's like like not good at statistics at all, I'm like, wait, hold on. Like, I think this is important. So can you dive into that like 101 stuff for us real quick?

SPEAKER_02 1:25:48

Yes, I would love to. And um, full disclosure, I am probably not the best stat, neither statistician nor wearable person. But when I say black black box, Whoop in particular has what they call a strain score. And I when when the agency was buying the the um wearables, I and I I asked the salesperson, I'm like, what does that what does that mean? What does it take into account? No one can or will explain it to me what the strain score is. Um in fact, it recently came to my attention that their algorithm for sleep might actually be a little bit uh it's reporting more REM sleep than I think is actually possible in some people.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:30

Like I know because we did this as part of our tactical convergence that like the most accurate for the sleep stuff is Aura, without a doubt.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:38

Um, whereas like Garmin and Polar are the most accurate for like heart rate data if you have the strap. Like, you know, and so so yeah, continue.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:46

Yeah. So um, in terms of the dashboard, I could look at Cooper's output and go, okay, at 1001, his heart rate was 158. At 10.02, it was 163, whatever. Minute by minute heart rate is does nothing for me in terms of calculating heart rate variability, in terms of calculating responses. And so, I mean, I need the data, the the real data that they use to put into the algorithms to get those numbers, that's what's useful for me. And I think there, I mean, I know there is a way to get it, but each individual person has to set up an API and um it's just a whole thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:28

It's a lot of steps.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:28

And so it's a lot of steps. But in terms of wearables, though, again, if if we're using it to inform and educate ourselves and also not getting obsessive about it, because that is a thing, and we're we're focusing on one wearable and comparing apples to apples. I think that any of them will work Garmin, polar, whatever. But I do, gosh, I love that ring.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:54

Yeah, yeah, it's cool. It's cool. Uh I'm I'm in the market to get one soon here. Uh just For the sleep stuff to get really accurate with that, because it's it's something I'm I track pretty religiously, um, and feel like I'm not getting the best out of my out of my garment watch um at times. But this is again, it's just like what you wear, how you do it. Like, cause I move all over the place when I sleep, which means all watches suck for me. Like I will I'll like literally like lift the thing half off my wrist, right? While I'm sleeping because I'm I'm tossing and turning. So, you know, it's it's cool. I I really like I I love what you're kind of saying about that, like, you know, especially just understanding like if you keep one wearable, it's the change over time with that, you know, consistent measure that we're really looking for. So yeah, I I I appreciate you dive diving deeper into that. Um cool. Annette, what else you got for us and like how can we kind of follow along um with you as you're going through your research?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:50

Well, I did want to mention to you that even although I've only had my work band for less than a week, I am currently leading the agency in sleep and recovery because sleep is my thing. Um, my my PhD has been a little bit non-traditional because usually you uh propose your research and then you take your comps and then you collect your data. Well, I already collected my data about uh two months ago. It was a tremendous opportunity. So we're looking at stress responses in recruits along with heart rate. I hope if I ever get the data from Whoop, uh, with body composition and performance metrics and things like that. So super exciting. Uh as in terms of following along, uh, I used to be much better on Instagram, but you know, you can go ahead and find me over at Fire Rescue Wellness. Uh, but I do have, if you go to my website, I have a newsletter. I send out a newsletter on a weekly basis. But um, other than that, if you have questions, you're probably best to email me. I tossed that up a little bit ago, but maybe Cooper can put it in the chat again.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:59

Sure. Was it info at firescue wellness?org.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:02

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:02

I'll I'll type it into the chat so people can copy and paste. Go ahead, keep going.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:05

Yeah, I used to be a lot faster getting back um to people, but as it turns out, it um PhD's kind of busy.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:13

So one would think, you know, that you get you got all this stuff going on and you're like, why don't I throw a PhD in the mix? You know, it's uh it's impressive. I uh we're we're we're big fans of the way Annette approaches uh research and life over here at Bridge.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:28

It's firefighter, all or nothing.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:30

Go or stay home. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:32

Um if you are attending uh FDIC, the fire department instructors conference in um Indy in April. I'm gonna be there with some of my besties presenting on sleep. My topic is on sleep, and I'm also giving a little talk on creatine, my favorite supplement. So best.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:50

How much did you take this morning?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:52

Uh I do a uh relative instead of absolute, so I took 10 grams.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:58

Beautiful. I love it. I took 16.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:01

0.1 grams per kilogram on me.

unknown 1:31:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:03

Hell yeah. Yeah. I love it. It works. I know you pre you preach the word of creatine on on your uh social media often. And um, I know some of the new research with you know, some of the bigger doses has been coming around the block a little bit. And I'm like, I've I've tried a few uh times, especially when I've lost sleep. Um I think subjectively it works. I mean certain research is cool like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:25

I think you know the data are compelling, it does help in acute sleep deprivation. And we didn't really talk about nutrition, but um yeah, that's a big thing in fire too.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:36

So 100% beautiful. Well, folks, thanks for making the time today. As always, you know, the mission of Unwracked is to you know get wonderful coaches, researchers, practitioners like Annette on the show to give you guys you know tip of the spear information here. Um, and you know, Annette, I had a ton of fun today. Um, and thank you so much for you know be being a part of this. Um, so very grateful.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:57

Absolutely. It was uh wonderful to be here. I appreciate you all. Thanks for coming.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:01

Excellent folks. Yeah, thank everybody, or thanks everybody for uh being being here today. All right, take care. See y'all.