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Healthy Nutrition Hacks for Firefighters, EMTs and Medics
Do you want to know how fit fire rescue athletes make nutritious meal choices? Here are some shortcuts, go-to recipes, cooking suggestions and go-to snacks for making the life of a fire rescue athlete a little healthier. Eating healthy with a demanding job can be difficult. Add in the fact that the firehouse is usually full of non-nutritious choices like cakes and baked goods and its no wonder that obesity, diabetes and heart disease are huge concerns in the fire industry. Yet, as any busy person, or appointed firehouse cook can attest, whipping up a healthy nutritious snack or meal at the end of a long shift can be time consuming and stressful. In fact, research by the American Sociological Association found that cooking can make many people stressed, anxious and unhappy. However, cooking and eating around the firehouse doesn’t need to be so stressful. Producing healthy meals and making the…
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Try this Firefighter Bodyweight Challenge Workout- Get Lean and Strong
It can be very difficult to try to stay “fit for duty” on vacation, during the Holidays, or if you don’t have access to a lot of equipment. This workout will help you stay FRF (fire rescue fit) on vacation or when you are at a firehouse that doesn’t have any fitness equipment. I actually performed this workout a couple times on vacation in a small condo with only a towel and a little floor space. The objective of the workout is to complete all the assigned reps of each exercise for a total of 500 reps. **You can substitute out any of the exercises if you would like. Beginners can bounce around from exercise to exercise until all reps are completed. For a more challenging workout you should try to complete all the reps of one exercise before moving to the next. Perform a couple of minutes of active warm-up movements…
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Firefighter Tabata Workout Option to Improve Performance
Have you heard of Tabata? This is an unusual style workout floating around a lot of gyms and firehouses lately. I wanted to explain what it is and how we, as fire rescue athletes, can incorporate it into an effective workout. “Tabata” is the name of a particular type of workout program that provides increased fat burning and oxygen efficiency in a short period of time. Instead of hours upon hours of exercise, Tabata can be completed in just 4-minute cycles. Tabata training was developed by a Japanese researcher named Dr. Izumi Tabata who was working with Olympic speed skaters. In his study, he found that a control group using his training method of 20 seconds work, 10 seconds rest, for eight intervals, saw greater VO2 Max improvement than the other group that trained with 60-minute sessions. The real question that you want to know is: “How can this apply…
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Fire Rescue Fitness Birthday Challenge Workout to Improve Performance
I like challenge or out-come based (OCB’s) workouts because: #1 They are tough, #2 They are a great way to measure your level of fitness and #3 they can improve performance (if they include an active warm-up and some stretching). The last 4 years (including this one) I have completed this special “Birthday” workout (on my birthday..lol) to help me measure my fitness and determine where I need improvement. This particular workout doesn’t require a lot of equipment and can be done at home or at the gym or firehouse (even if its 22 degrees below zero). I encourage you to do this workout (or a similar one) every once in a while to help keep you motivated and to gauge your level of fitness. This “Birthday” workout is difficult but can be scaled to meet your available equipment and level of fitness. Before you begin…
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Stay Fit for Fire (and for Life) by doing these 3 things…
Lets face it, plateaus happen. There are certain days, months and weeks that you don’t feel like you are making any fitness progress. Maybe you just took a vacation or had a rough shift and just don’t want to workout. It doesn’t matter if you are a career firefighter, volunteer firefighter, an EMT or even a professional football player. We have all been there. Heck, I’ve been there too. And, when you hit a fitness plateau you start to search for motivation and for information. Unfortunately in this day and age, it seems like fitness information is coming from every angle. The so-called experts tell us that we need to “do yoga, do crossfit, do low intensity, do high intensity, do weights, don’t do weights, eat this, don’t eat that.” It can get to be very frustrating and in some cases overwhelming. My goal with FRF is to sift…
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10 Simple Rules for Firefighter Fat Loss (2018 Edition).
Would you agree that a leaner athlete is a better athlete? I know this is a “loaded” question. A lot of the answer has to deal with the sport in which the athlete is participating. One thing that research shows is that a leaner athlete is a “more efficient” athlete. When it comes to firefighters, this is a valid finding. Efficiency in general terms, describes the extent to which time, effort or cost is well used for the intended task or purpose. So, a more efficient Fire Rescue Athlete will be able to do more work with less physical effort. This is especially important since most of our “more intense” work as Fire Rescue Athletes comes when breathing air via an SCBA. The winter months can be a challenging time to keep your weight and body fat in “check.” So, to help you stay lean and perform better on (and off) the fireground, I…
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Top Five Fitness Trends in the Fire Service for 2018.
Every year I try to take some time to evaluate current fitness trends in the general public and in the fire service. I have been very fortunate to have some great connections in both industries, based on my research and numerous conversations with colleagues, I’ve identified some of the fitness trends we are most likely to see in departments this year. You would think that the correlation would be almost the same, but the budget restrictions and the fire service’s (sometimes) resistance to change can hinder progress and slow popular fitness trends. Another reason the popular trends you see in your health club may not make it to the fire services is due to workout outcomes. People in the health club are primarily working out for aesthetics and improved health while firefighters, EMTs and medics are (or should be) working out for performance, overall health and then for the six…
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How to Create a Firefighter Workout Schedule
Do you workout on shift? Should you workout on shift and what is the best workout to perform? How do you schedule your workouts around your shifts or calls? This is a major concern for the fire rescue athlete. On one hand we know we should be working out to stay and get fit for duty. Yet , if we burn out in the gym we won’t be able to perform when it really matters. I recently post workout options and get a lot of emails to post more. But, before I do, I think its really important to keep the big “fitness” picture in mind and see how all these workouts should be organized. Part of the big picture is to figure out “what is the best form of exercise to perform on duty?” If you want a done-f0r-you program that incorporates the best firefighter workouts organized in…
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10 Healthy Snack Options for the Firehouse
Nutrition plays a very large roll in your health and fitness. Unhealthy eating habits have contributed to the obesity epidemic in the United States and especially in the fire service. A poor diet is associated with major health risks that can cause illness and poor performance when it counts. Poor nutrition can contribute to heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and numerous types of cancer. Let me repeat that…. Poor nutrition can contribute to heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and numerous types of cancer. Currently, in the fire service, the number one reason we die in the line of duty is sudden cardiac arrest. Also, the number of strokes and incidences of caner are growing at alarming rates. In the fire service we are taught to risk a lot only when you can save a lot and to always “minimize the risk” whenever we can. So, with that in mind, does your nutrition…
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