(Re)Building a Fire Fighter

Coaches (and parents) aren’t supposed to play favorites. We all know that. Neither should teachers or bus drivers.

And maybe it’s not that Emily is my favorite, but she’s definitely something special.

Who’s Emily?

Here’s the quick run-down. At 26, Emily has worked for Unified Fire Authority as an EMT for the last three years. I first met her in February of 2018, and within just a few weeks, we started working together in earnest.

She had a few goals, but the priority was being ready to pass a physical skills test as part of the interview process for a fire department. She passed the test, and was offered a position with UFA, and assuming she was able to successfully complete UFA’s 16week camp for new hires, she’d become a full-time firefighter.

So we turned our training towards readiness for camp, and that’s where the real story begins.

How did we build her?

One of the skills I’ve developed over the years, which I apply to most challenges in life, is taking a “where are you and where do you need to go” approach to problem-solving. In Emily’s case, the question was rephrased as “what’s most likely to f#ch you up at camp?”

Here’s what we determined she needed most to get ready:

1. A stronger endurance base, the ability to go and go and go; become the Energizer Bunny. At 5’5″ and 140 pounds, Emily doesn’t have the mass or strength of her 240-pound colleagues; instead, we aimed to make Emily the one on the crew who never needed to rest, who could go on when most others were resting.
2. Leg durability. Emily’s left ankle’s been a pain in the leg for a while; wearing and carrying 60 pounds of gear wasn’t going to make it any happier, so we needed to make her ankle more durable by making her legs stronger.
3. Upper body and grip strength endurance. While we weren’t going to add 10 pounds of mass to Emily’s back and shoulders, we could make sure they wouldn’t wear out during long days at camp. And there’s a lot of grip work for firefighters, so there was a lot of rope pulling and dragging for Emily.

In the weeks leading up to camp, Emily had a very simple (but not easy) training plan: 4 workouts, ideally each one executed once per week, but in reality, some weeks were better than others. She averaged three sessions per week.

These sessions emphasized leg durability, upper body strength endurance, and torso durability in varying ratios. But every single day had an endurance session. And here’s the most important thing about those endurance sessions: for 90% of them, her heart rate was to be maintained between 140 and 150 beats per minute.

Let me repeat that: for most of Emily’s pre-camp training, her heart rate was to be maintained between 140 and 150 beats per minute. Why?

I already knew that Emily was strong and fit, but I also knew that she tended to train at a higher level of intensity, which meant a leaning towards anaerobic work – without oxygen, and burning lots of sugar. Which is fine when your task is done in less than 10 minutes. But when at camp, and on scene at a fire, Emily could easily have 30 minutes of work to do, and that’s easier when your body is tuned to aerobic work – using fat stores and oxygen to provide most of its fuel.

There was a second benefit, which Emily noticed profoundly on day one of camp: learning to regulate your heart rate while you’re training means you know how to regulate your heart rate and breathing when you’re in a stressful situation. Or when you’re training to save lives.

This doesn’t mean that camp’s been easy, or simple, or even that we prepared her as effectively as we could; honestly, a lot more grip strength would be included if we were to do it again.

How do we rebuild her?

I still see Emily every week for 90 minutes. We chat and check in; I tell her what I’ve been up to (honestly, building a business and running the gym – same stuff each week) and she gives me the highlights from camp. And then we get into the real stuff:

What hurts? What happened? What can we do about it, right now?

I saw Emily last Friday. She’d sent me a text asking if we could work on her elbow – she’d tweaked it during camp. So we spent about an hour working on it:

1. We applied DeepBlue.
2. We scraped the surface of the skin over and around the painful spot with an IASTM tool (the Verktyg).
3. We massaged it with the Hypervolt percussive massager.
4. We smashed it with the Boomstick.

And it was feeling better. From being unable to steer her car with her left hand when she came in, as she was leaving the left arm was again useful, and the pain was down to 3/10.

Coming in yesterday, a week later, the elbow was still the biggest issue. So we gave it 30 minutes more:

1. DeepBlue.
2. Scraping with the Leopard Claw (another IASTM tool).
3. Voodoo flossing on the forearm, downstream from the elbow.

At the end of the 30 minutes, the pain was gone. Freedom of movement had been restored.

We still had time, so we went after the left ankle (which is perpetually stiff, partially because Emily walks like a duck, and partially because her ankle and foot are weak. Which of these came first? Chicken or the egg? Doesn’t matter. The stiffness and the weakness are both problems to address. Yesterday, we aimed to address stiffness.). And as a bonus, someone stepped on her left foot a few weeks ago, causing some pain on the top behind the toes.

1. We applied DeepBlue around the Achilles tendon.
2. We scraped around the Achilles tendon with the Leopard Claw.
3. We worked with the Hypervolt up and down the calf, on the sides of the lower leg, and along the bottom of the foot.

End result: the left ankle was moving better, and acting a lot more like, well, an ankle.

Here’s the thing to keep in mind: I’m not a doctor, a massage therapist, or a physical therapist. And I didn’t step into any of their lanes. I showed Emily how to use the tools available, and with some time, patience, and a bit of discomfort, she was able to make some profound changes. Sure, there was probably $700 worth of tools used to get to these outcomes, but that’s not necessary. A spoon will work for IASTM. A bicycle inner tube makes a good voodoo band. DeepBlue can be replaced with IcyHot. The Hypervolt can be replaced with a $50 massager from Bed Bath and Beyond. And the Boomstick can be replaced by a barbell or a spouse with a rolling pin (and probably a grudge to settle).