Firefighter Athletes Need Functional Fitness

Remaining physically fit for duty is a vital job requirement, paid or volunteer firefighter alike. Today’s emergency environment is stressful, complex, dynamic and fast-paced, and the ability to perform strenuous functions is often needed to achieve mission-critical tasks. Many of our critical responses are high-risk/high-consequence events, requiring the firefighter to “get it right” the first time. At some point during your fire service career, you will be challenged to perform strenuous, physically demanding and exhaustive functions, often simultaneously and sequentially during the response.

As firefighters, we combine learned skills, knowledge, attitude, mental fortitude and physical prowess to respond to the needs of our customer. We are not afforded the luxury of do-overs and are always expected to perform optimally. Success is dependent upon the responders being mentally and emotionally engaged and physically capable of performing their task(s). As Kerrigan and Moss underscore in “Firefighter Functional Fitness,” Being physically fit for duty is one of the most vital and fundamental ingredients of being a successful firefighter.¹

Four approaches to fitness

Our attitude and belief toward physical fitness is often a determining factor in our desire to remain physically capable of performing our job. If we view fitness through the lens of the fire service culture, we can easily identify four distinct approaches to physical fitness.

1.   The Mirror Firefighter: The first approach are those firefighters who look great in their duty uniform, having spent countless hours exercising specific body parts. These are those firefighters who look terrific in front of a mirror but lack cardiorespiratory stamina and muscular endurance to perform under strenuous conditions.

2.    The Cardio Nut: Cardio nuts are often found running 3–5 times per week. These members have great endurance, but lack upper-body muscle strength.

3.    The Recliners: This group is the most troubling, but unfortunately very common—firefighters who rationalize their lack of activity due to tenure, lack of time and that they won’t be around for the “big-one” anyway. “Why should I work out? I’ve been fine for a long time; nothing will happen to me.” These are the firefighters who practice their favorite training—from a recliner.

4.    The Functional Athlete: When we combine the efforts of our “mirror” firefighter with that of our cardio nut, we get much closer to describing the best practice for the firefighter athlete. This is our fourth fitness culture or group. The foundation of fire service fitness is integration. It's about teaching all the muscles to work together rather than isolating them to work independently, doing so in a manner that builds cardio, strength and endurance. Functional athletes use combinations of functional movements (push, pull, lift, bend, carry, craw, etc.) performed in rapid sequence. Our activities of daily living involve functional movement. Whether we are on duty or off, we are required to move—up and down, backward and forward as well as side to side. Functional movements test balance and coordination and involve both upper and lower multi-muscle groups. This style of exercise improves strength and range of motion, while increasing our cardio and muscle endurance.

From a review of all four fitness approaches, it should be clear that the functional athlete is the one we strive to be—and research underscores why.

Health benefits

The importance of firefighter fitness, as it relates to overall health benefits, cannot be overstated. Studies by the U.S. Army have shown that individuals with lower levels of cardiorespiratory endurance or muscular endurance are more likely to be injured and that improving fitness lowers injury risk. In his report on the importance of physical fitness for injury prevention, J.J. Knapik reports that, “those who are more fit perform activity at a lower percentage of their maximal capability and so can perform the task for a longer period, fatigue less rapidly, recover faster, and have greater reserve capacity for subsequent tasks.”²

Not only is the potential of injury reduced when fitness is improved, but also being physically fit minimizes our risk of death due to cardiac and cerebrovascular insult. In 2016, firefighter cardiac-related events accounted for 38 percent of the deaths and 42 percent of the line-of-duty deaths (LODDs) over the past 10 years.

Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) believe that more active and fit individuals tend to develop less coronary heart disease (CHD) than their sedentary counterparts. 

Choosing a fitness regimen

A comprehensive wellness approach to fire service injury and LODD reduction begins with programs designed to address physical fitness, nutrition, hydration and rest/recovery. One aspect of this wellness approach, functional fitness, aims to improve performance and reduce the risk of health-related injuries and deaths.

The concept of what “fitness” is relates directly the individual’s knowledge of beneficial exercise, the value placed on fitness and one’s life goals. Fitness to many firefighters ends up being subjective in nature (i.e., we define what “fitness” means to us as individuals). This further confuses our attempts to identify a “best practice” approach to exercise effectiveness.

Our ability to perform critical fireground tasks should start as a guide in determining which fitness regime is best suited for firefighters. Critical fireground tasks—laddering, ventilation, fire attack and others—all require the firefighter to move heavy and awkward objects, under duress, often in contaminated environments. These tasks must occur in a coordinated and concurrent fashion, often in quick succession. 

Kerrigan and Moss explain why this matters so much for firefighters: “Firefighting is strenuous and affects every body system, and it taxes these systems in ways that are hard to duplicate in any other profession. To best prepare ourselves for the rigors of emergency response, we must train accordingly. Training functionally not only addresses the core strength, cardiovascular capacity, flexibility and strength needs we have as firefighters, it also adds value in terms of increasing proficiency on the fireground and optimizing performance.”

A fitness HIIT