Firefighter Fitness- Hill Training to Increase VO2 Max

VO2max is a measure of the maximum rate at which an athlete's body is able to consume oxygen when performing a specific activity, adjusted for body weight.   This is a very important for the fire rescue athlete, a higher VO2 max means that the firefighter can do more work with less oxygen.  This comes in extremely helpful when doing fire operations (on air) of course.  VO2 max can be calculated many ways, the easiest is to use a treadmill or track (read more about calculating VO2 max by clicking here.)

From a fire rescue fitness program perspective, the program should not only focus on sstrength and flexibility but also on increasing VO2 max.  This brings me to today's topic.  Last year I personally focused on training for the Ironman, which is a very endurance based event, even though I completed the event (you can read about my journey here) I still felt that I was lacking recovery on the fire ground. This year I have focused on increasing my VO2 max by performing more intervals and by hill training.
There are two major factors that contribute to a high VO2max. One is a strong oxygen transport system, which includes a powerful heart, hemoglobin-packed blood, high blood volume, high capillary density in the muscles, and high mitochondrial density within the muscle cells. The other is speed, or the capacity to contract a large number of muscle fibers simultaneously, as the more muscle tissue is active at any given moment, the more oxygen the muscles demand.  Running up hills helps to improve both of these factors.
Close to the firehouse we have a pretty big and steep hill, along with my regular interval training, I've been trying to run the hill for at least one session each week.  

Hill Intervals



Try to find a hill that takes anywhere from 20 to 90 seconds to get to the top.  Because running hills can be very stressful on the body and joints you want to make sure to warm-up properly. 
Before I run the hills I perform this warm-up:
Walk for 5 minutes around the park (including one walk to the top of the hill and zig-zag down). 
Perform 10 air squats (slowly)
10 overhead to ground chops
10 walking quad stretches

Head for the hill
If your new to running hills, start slowly, try to jog up slowly and gradually increase your speeds. 

My workout today was to run up the hill (about 40 seconds) then zig-zag back down to catch my breath 5 x for a total workout of  20 minutes.  My goal is to increase one hill each week.
Give it a try and let me know what you think.  I can tell you from experience it will be a love/ hate relationship.
Stay safe and healthy,
A. Zamzow

How Do You Define Firefighter Fit?

Are You Firefighter Fit?

Most people, when asked this question, will normally think about how much weight they can lift or if the are overweight or not.  I argue that being "firefighter fit (fire rescue fit) is much more than that.  You may be able to lift heavy weights but that doesn't necessarily mean that you are that strong.  When talking about Firefighter fitness you are only as strong as your "weakest" part.  You see true strength comes in the form of functional fitness, fitness that can be applied and used in fireground situations, not just in a gym.

When you carry the saw from the truck to the scene or lift a patient into the ambulance you use many muscle groups which have to work together to achieve the job at hand. The Fire Rescue athletes' body must work as one unit, integrating all the muscles together.  Weight training in its conventional form (on machines), isolates muscle groups, and it does not teach the muscles it isolates to work with each other.

Functional exercises focus on building a body capable of performing real life movements in real life positions, whereas weight training on machines in a gym, teaches the body to perform only in positions when posture is made ideal by the machine. 

Machine training is not the same as functional training.   We see this in the fire industry all the time,  someone reaches for something or bends the wrong way and "bang," throws their back out.  Now there are cases where we lift heavy things in awkward positions and "yes" those situations have a high incidence of injury.  What I'm talking about are the situations where someone is reaching for something light and happens to "tweak" their back or shoulder.  In this situation, the "tweak" can be attributed to poor core strength and a lack of flexibility. When we perform everyday movements, such as carrying equipment or reaching over a patient, our body calls into play many more muscles than would be used on a gym machine. When we lean over or reach to lift the equipment, we use the stabilising muscles, which include the core muscles of the abdomen and secondary muscles to keep our balance so we don’t fall over.

We all know that firefighting is a physical job, we need to be strong, have good muscular endurance, great core and grip strength and must be able to recover quickly.  The challenge that we (as fire rescue athletes) face is trying to identify how to functionally test fire rescue athletes?  There are so many components of the body that must work efficiently in order to do the everyday tasks of the Fire Rescue Athlete.  This is the purpose of today's blog post.  How do you define firefighter fit?  What tests do you think are good measures for our job?

I have been doing a ton of research on this topic and have some guidelines and assessments that may work which I will post about soon.  For now, what I really need is some input on this topic, let me know what you think.  Please leave comments or email me.

Stay Safe,
A. Zamzow

PS- If your looking for a great firefighter workout program and some nutritional guidance please join my FireRescue Fitness Email list and get my 28-day Quickstart Workout Program and the SOP's to Eating Lean in the Firehouse.  Click here to get them FREE.

The Best Nutrition Advice for Firefighters

Today I wanted to piggy-back on my post about inflammation and heart disease (keep the comments and emails coming).  I know that in health and fitness sometimes the best results are obtained from the simplest advice.  So here goes, in my opinion the absolute best thing you can do to lose weight, get healthy, or live a life full of energy is to eat by this ONE RULE:

“Only eat whole foods with ONE ingredient.”

That's it.  The reason why one ingredient whole foods are the best for you is that they contain zero processing and zero artificial ingredients that have been linked to increasing inflammation. One of these common ingredients is high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).   HFCS is a man-made sweetener that is 20 times sweeter than sucrose (table sugar). It is mainly found in soft drinks and fruit juices. Americans as of 2001 were ingesting on averaging 63 pounds of HFCS per year!  The health implications to consuming HFCS are that it has been shown to raise triglyceride levels,which are a precursor to heart disease. Elevated triglyceride levels are related to high insulin levels which promotes fat storage, inflammation and is a precursor to Type II Diabetes.  Obviously you want to avoid HFCS along with other processed ingredients.

Another reason to  stick to one ingredient foods are that they are the most naturally nutrient packed, which provides you with the maximum enzymes, nutrients, and energy to fuel your body with.  Plus, they are satiating and are the exact foods nature intended us to eat.  Some of the best ones in the grocery store don't even have a label... (keep in mind that if the food doesn’t have a label on it that’s usually a dead give away that it's probably a one ingredient whole food.)  So next time you are preparing a meal at the firehouse or for you family, try to include one ingredient foods and stay away from the processed ingredients.  Once again, read your labels and consume more water while decreasing your intake of soft drinks and fruit juices.

I you are looking for more healthy recipes along with great guidelines to eating healthy in the firehouse, get my FREE SOPs to Eating Healthy in the Firehouse.

Stay Safe and Healthy,
A. Zamzow