1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,400 And we all have a window of tolerance and it's somewhat different every single day. 2 00:00:06,400 --> 00:00:11,180 Your window of tolerance at the beginning of your career is absolutely different than 3 00:00:11,180 --> 00:00:16,760 it is five years into your career, 10 years or towards the end of retirement. 4 00:00:16,760 --> 00:00:21,000 It looks way different. 5 00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:25,480 Welcome to the Firefighter Craftsmanship Podcast where we give you real tools to train ultimate 6 00:00:25,480 --> 00:00:29,000 humor performance both on and off the emergency scene. 7 00:00:29,000 --> 00:00:31,000 I'm your host Kevin Housley. 8 00:00:31,000 --> 00:00:33,520 Let's get to it. 9 00:00:33,520 --> 00:00:37,840 Firefighter Craftsmanship Podcast is brought to you by BruteForceTraining.com. 10 00:00:37,840 --> 00:00:42,960 Enter the code Firefighter Craftsmanship at checkout for 10% off your entire order. 11 00:00:42,960 --> 00:00:46,560 BruteForce Training provides unstable and odd object load training systems that are 12 00:00:46,560 --> 00:00:51,120 adaptable to meet whatever needs you want and they will absolutely give you all that 13 00:00:51,120 --> 00:00:52,520 you can handle. 14 00:00:52,520 --> 00:00:56,600 Check out their new adaptive filler design which allows customization down to 5 pound 15 00:00:56,600 --> 00:00:57,600 increments. 16 00:00:57,600 --> 00:01:02,280 This is a great option for ease of entry for yourself and your crew to get relevant odd 17 00:01:02,280 --> 00:01:07,000 object training that will help you perform on the emergency scene. 18 00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:11,800 So BruteForceTraining.com and enter the code Firefighter Craftsmanship for 10% off your 19 00:01:11,800 --> 00:01:15,640 entire cart. 20 00:01:15,640 --> 00:01:18,120 Welcome to the Firefighter Craftsmanship Podcast. 21 00:01:18,120 --> 00:01:23,520 This is episode one and we're excited to get started and share a bunch of humor performance 22 00:01:23,520 --> 00:01:28,280 resources for firefighters and other emergency responders. 23 00:01:28,280 --> 00:01:30,920 Thanks for spending some time with us. 24 00:01:30,920 --> 00:01:34,960 So the point of this podcast is really going to be about humor performance both on and 25 00:01:34,960 --> 00:01:36,600 off the job. 26 00:01:36,600 --> 00:01:41,480 And so much of what we see, especially in the fire services, ultimate humor performance 27 00:01:41,480 --> 00:01:45,040 relating specifically to fitness. 28 00:01:45,040 --> 00:01:51,080 And while fitness is absolutely a massive portion of our job and what we need to try 29 00:01:51,080 --> 00:01:56,360 to work a little bit better towards every single day to have ultimate humor performance 30 00:01:56,360 --> 00:01:57,880 on the job. 31 00:01:57,880 --> 00:02:00,040 There's a lot of other stuff that goes into it as well. 32 00:02:00,040 --> 00:02:04,880 And so we can use fitness in a lot of different connotations. 33 00:02:04,880 --> 00:02:08,000 Physical fitness is probably the easiest one. 34 00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:10,640 But sometimes we don't actually need to do more burpees. 35 00:02:10,640 --> 00:02:18,500 Sometimes we have to maybe even gasp, chill out a little bit and take a day off from physical 36 00:02:18,500 --> 00:02:20,040 fitness training. 37 00:02:20,040 --> 00:02:23,640 That physical fitness still is a huge portion and we're going to cover some physical fitness 38 00:02:23,640 --> 00:02:26,960 stuff throughout on this podcast. 39 00:02:26,960 --> 00:02:30,640 We're also going to look at fitness, mental fitness, you know, so mental health has a 40 00:02:30,640 --> 00:02:37,160 really, really good new wave of focus within the fire services specifically. 41 00:02:37,160 --> 00:02:40,040 And that's really, really important. 42 00:02:40,040 --> 00:02:44,760 A lot of however what we see with mental fitness that's happening right now in emergency services 43 00:02:44,760 --> 00:02:52,160 and fire service specifically is there, it's exclusively limited to what happens after we 44 00:02:52,160 --> 00:02:55,600 experience some traumas or we have to deal with some things. 45 00:02:55,600 --> 00:03:00,320 We have developed PTS or PTSD. 46 00:03:00,320 --> 00:03:04,640 So we're going to dive into mental fitness and a lot of our presilience training. 47 00:03:04,640 --> 00:03:10,440 How can we intentionally train ourselves to be ready for what is to come or what potentially 48 00:03:10,440 --> 00:03:14,360 could come over a long career in the fire service? 49 00:03:14,360 --> 00:03:18,320 And that's applicable whether you're a paid firefighter, a career firefighter or you're 50 00:03:18,320 --> 00:03:19,960 a volunteer. 51 00:03:19,960 --> 00:03:25,840 The job doesn't care and the people that call 911, they do care that the level of service 52 00:03:25,840 --> 00:03:31,880 that you're providing is at the upper echelon of what you're able to do and they don't actually 53 00:03:31,880 --> 00:03:34,920 care if you're a volley or if you're a career firefighter. 54 00:03:34,920 --> 00:03:37,720 So this is going to be applicable for that. 55 00:03:37,720 --> 00:03:40,240 We're also going to look at relationship fitness. 56 00:03:40,240 --> 00:03:48,120 You know, how are we building those relationships both in our firehouses as well as at home? 57 00:03:48,120 --> 00:03:52,840 And that's the thing that, you know, so often unfortunately we kind of ignore is the impact 58 00:03:52,840 --> 00:03:57,960 of this job and this career and this calling on those around us. 59 00:03:57,960 --> 00:04:03,480 And so that's really going to be a big portion of this podcast as well. 60 00:04:03,480 --> 00:04:05,840 So just what to expect, we're going to have a mixture of guests. 61 00:04:05,840 --> 00:04:10,320 We're going to have a mixture of just me trying to share some knowledge and some things I've 62 00:04:10,320 --> 00:04:12,440 learned along the way. 63 00:04:12,440 --> 00:04:16,080 We'll have short and long form content, but we really want to try to make this as valuable 64 00:04:16,080 --> 00:04:17,080 as possible. 65 00:04:17,080 --> 00:04:21,400 So some conversations will be pretty long and some will be quick hitters that you can definitely 66 00:04:21,400 --> 00:04:26,780 listen to on the way to shift change or as you're getting going or something like that 67 00:04:26,780 --> 00:04:28,900 when you're on duty. 68 00:04:28,900 --> 00:04:33,440 So let us know what sort of information you're after, what guests you'd like to see, what's 69 00:04:33,440 --> 00:04:36,040 going to be usable and things that you can implement instantly. 70 00:04:36,040 --> 00:04:40,400 And we're going to try to give you usable information and frameworks within every single 71 00:04:40,400 --> 00:04:42,560 episode along the way. 72 00:04:42,560 --> 00:04:47,240 So some episodes will have downloads associated with them or downloadable resources, things 73 00:04:47,240 --> 00:04:51,040 like that, just more to come on that. 74 00:04:51,040 --> 00:04:57,920 So today let's kind of dive in right away about some human performance psychology. 75 00:04:57,920 --> 00:05:02,200 And this first episode is going to be about a physiological response. 76 00:05:02,200 --> 00:05:06,360 So something that's kind of happening in below the surface and something that is called the 77 00:05:06,360 --> 00:05:08,960 window of tolerance. 78 00:05:08,960 --> 00:05:13,600 So the window of tolerance really plays off of our autonomic nervous system. 79 00:05:13,600 --> 00:05:19,960 And within our autonomic nervous system or the ANS, we have two different parts of that. 80 00:05:19,960 --> 00:05:23,200 The first part is a sympathetic nervous system. 81 00:05:23,200 --> 00:05:28,040 And most people know the sympathetic nervous system as fight or flight. 82 00:05:28,040 --> 00:05:29,960 And it's pretty easy to talk about fight or flight. 83 00:05:29,960 --> 00:05:34,560 And we've heard that about a fight or flight a really, really long time. 84 00:05:34,560 --> 00:05:37,000 And there's really a third part that we kind of ignore. 85 00:05:37,000 --> 00:05:42,000 And so the sympathetic nervous system is the fight or flight nervous system, but it also 86 00:05:42,000 --> 00:05:44,600 has a freeze component to it. 87 00:05:44,600 --> 00:05:49,680 So there's really three parts of that, fight, flight or freeze. 88 00:05:49,680 --> 00:05:53,960 And we look at that from a fire service perspective. 89 00:05:53,960 --> 00:05:57,040 Fight response is actually a trained response. 90 00:05:57,040 --> 00:06:01,600 So if we look at animals in the wild, right, they're usually not looking for a fight. 91 00:06:01,600 --> 00:06:08,520 When the deer is getting chased by the lion, it's not looking to mix it up with that lion. 92 00:06:08,520 --> 00:06:10,440 It's trying to get away from it. 93 00:06:10,440 --> 00:06:15,120 But we also see a freeze component in there that instantly sometimes you'll see if you're 94 00:06:15,120 --> 00:06:22,320 watching some of these Instagram videos or whatever about this prey predator relationship, 95 00:06:22,320 --> 00:06:28,320 sometimes you'll see that prey initially freeze and that sometimes is their demise. 96 00:06:28,320 --> 00:06:30,800 They're trying to assess what's going on before they start to run. 97 00:06:30,800 --> 00:06:34,840 And that one little step might be the difference. 98 00:06:34,840 --> 00:06:41,320 And we see this quite often in our jobs and not just with the customers that we're dealing 99 00:06:41,320 --> 00:06:42,320 with. 100 00:06:42,320 --> 00:06:49,920 So if a recruit firefighter has never been trained on what to do and they're not given 101 00:06:49,920 --> 00:06:54,360 the appropriate tools in the fire academy and we throw a big time evolution at them 102 00:06:54,360 --> 00:06:58,920 right away, they're set up for failure right off the bat. 103 00:06:58,920 --> 00:07:05,000 And they might eventually try to do something about it, a fight response. 104 00:07:05,000 --> 00:07:09,240 But more often than not, they're either going to try to get out of that situation or they're 105 00:07:09,240 --> 00:07:11,560 going to just freeze and completely lock up. 106 00:07:11,560 --> 00:07:14,680 And so that's a perfectly normal thing that happens. 107 00:07:14,680 --> 00:07:18,920 And so the fight part of the sympathetic nervous system is actually kind of a trained 108 00:07:18,920 --> 00:07:19,920 response. 109 00:07:19,920 --> 00:07:23,840 More often than not, we're going to try to flee run away. 110 00:07:23,840 --> 00:07:28,920 We can do some episodes specifically about the sympathetic and fight or flight and freeze 111 00:07:28,920 --> 00:07:32,120 response in the future. 112 00:07:32,120 --> 00:07:37,080 But there's just a general cursory overview of the sympathetic nervous system. 113 00:07:37,080 --> 00:07:42,120 So the sympathetic nervous system, the automatic nervous system is actually always assessing 114 00:07:42,120 --> 00:07:43,560 for threats. 115 00:07:43,560 --> 00:07:48,680 And it's really trying to keep us alive and healthy as long as it possibly can. 116 00:07:48,680 --> 00:07:54,120 So since we're always assessing for threats, when we go to an environment like a fire station 117 00:07:54,120 --> 00:07:59,440 and we're expected to be up and on our game all the time, we're trending more towards 118 00:07:59,440 --> 00:08:04,200 that sympathetic activation all the time, which is a stressor. 119 00:08:04,200 --> 00:08:12,280 So whether that's who's getting their balls busted along the way in the firehouse or if 120 00:08:12,280 --> 00:08:19,040 we're nervous about training or we're just even watching a movie or something, but you're 121 00:08:19,040 --> 00:08:21,880 always kind of up waiting for that next call to happen. 122 00:08:21,880 --> 00:08:24,160 Maybe the big one is about to drop. 123 00:08:24,160 --> 00:08:27,160 And this even happens even though we're asleep. 124 00:08:27,160 --> 00:08:32,120 And so that's one of the reasons why a lot of times when we come home and you finally 125 00:08:32,120 --> 00:08:38,680 get more than five seconds to yourself and you might have this massive power down feeling 126 00:08:38,680 --> 00:08:41,560 and you can really kind of feel that energy zapping out from you. 127 00:08:41,560 --> 00:08:44,400 That might even happen on the drive home. 128 00:08:44,400 --> 00:08:46,280 It might happen in the driveway. 129 00:08:46,280 --> 00:08:51,200 It might happen after you've already walked into your home environment and real life 130 00:08:51,200 --> 00:08:52,680 has started again for you. 131 00:08:52,680 --> 00:08:57,080 So you might feel that big energy dump along the way. 132 00:08:57,080 --> 00:09:02,120 And so that's a normal response, but it's because we've had such high sympathetic nervous 133 00:09:02,120 --> 00:09:05,120 system activation along the way. 134 00:09:05,120 --> 00:09:08,960 Little things can also impact that sympathetic nervous system quite a bit. 135 00:09:08,960 --> 00:09:11,840 And one of those things is, is how do we breathe? 136 00:09:11,840 --> 00:09:17,520 So this podcast is going to dive into breathing for performance, breathing for up regulation 137 00:09:17,520 --> 00:09:19,040 and down regulation quite a bit. 138 00:09:19,040 --> 00:09:24,520 How we can use breath as a superpower for us, especially to have long, happy, healthy 139 00:09:24,520 --> 00:09:28,120 and strong careers and finish strong for retirement. 140 00:09:28,120 --> 00:09:30,200 So we're going to talk a lot about breathing on this. 141 00:09:30,200 --> 00:09:36,000 But one thing that really negatively affects the sympathetic nervous system is hyperventilation, 142 00:09:36,000 --> 00:09:38,780 especially when we're breathing at rest. 143 00:09:38,780 --> 00:09:43,280 And so more episodes to come specifically at breathing at rest. 144 00:09:43,280 --> 00:09:48,240 And we're going to have quite a few resources coming up in regards to sleep and breathing 145 00:09:48,240 --> 00:09:52,040 as a big, big part of sleep as well. 146 00:09:52,040 --> 00:09:54,600 So just realize, start to be aware of how are you breathing? 147 00:09:54,600 --> 00:09:58,200 Are you breathing through your nose or through your mouth, especially when you're just hanging 148 00:09:58,200 --> 00:10:00,280 out watching a movie? 149 00:10:00,280 --> 00:10:04,760 How about when you have a stressor, but it's not a life for death situation. 150 00:10:04,760 --> 00:10:07,200 Maybe you're helping your kids with your homework. 151 00:10:07,200 --> 00:10:11,000 And it's stressful because you can't teach them fifth grade math. 152 00:10:11,000 --> 00:10:14,840 And so they're asking you questions that you can't answer and you're getting frustrated 153 00:10:14,840 --> 00:10:16,680 and they're getting frustrated. 154 00:10:16,680 --> 00:10:17,760 What's your breath doing? 155 00:10:17,760 --> 00:10:19,960 Are you breathing through your nose or you're breathing through your mouth? 156 00:10:19,960 --> 00:10:21,320 Are you breathing? 157 00:10:21,320 --> 00:10:22,440 How fast are you breathing? 158 00:10:22,440 --> 00:10:25,280 What's your respiration rate? 159 00:10:25,280 --> 00:10:29,280 When you're at rest and you're just sitting there, do you really need to be breathing 160 00:10:29,280 --> 00:10:33,800 20, 25, 30 breaths a minute? 161 00:10:33,800 --> 00:10:34,800 Probably not. 162 00:10:34,800 --> 00:10:41,920 It's a hyperventilation state, which is creating too much sympathetic nervous system activation. 163 00:10:41,920 --> 00:10:46,400 Another big stressor on sympathetic nervous system is social media. 164 00:10:46,400 --> 00:10:50,980 And so as we know, as AI gets more and more prevalent and the computers get smarter and 165 00:10:50,980 --> 00:10:56,880 smarter and it tracks all the clicks that you click on and it starts to feed you content 166 00:10:56,880 --> 00:10:59,400 because it thinks that's what you want to see. 167 00:10:59,400 --> 00:11:04,160 A lot of times that content, they know that negative content is more, gets more clicks 168 00:11:04,160 --> 00:11:08,200 and more views than positive content does. 169 00:11:08,200 --> 00:11:13,280 So social media is a massive sympathetic nervous system stressor. 170 00:11:13,280 --> 00:11:16,960 And if you're getting super bent out of shape about some political thing that you've clicked 171 00:11:16,960 --> 00:11:22,160 on in Facebook and now all it's doing is feeding you that same political rhetoric, maybe it's 172 00:11:22,160 --> 00:11:28,680 time to take a step back, stop clicking those links and install those apps from your phone, 173 00:11:28,680 --> 00:11:29,680 something like that. 174 00:11:29,680 --> 00:11:35,200 And that implies that we're having these sympathetic insults upon our brains, our psychology and 175 00:11:35,200 --> 00:11:38,680 our physiology all day long. 176 00:11:38,680 --> 00:11:43,320 The other side of the autonomic nervous system is the parasympathetic nervous system. 177 00:11:43,320 --> 00:11:48,540 It was nice for whoever named these two things that they made them super, super close to 178 00:11:48,540 --> 00:11:53,440 one another with sympathetic and parasympathetic, but that's what we got. 179 00:11:53,440 --> 00:11:58,740 So the parasympathetic nervous system is the rest and digest side of that. 180 00:11:58,740 --> 00:12:04,480 And so your body really has this like gas pedal, brake pedal, homeostatic relationship 181 00:12:04,480 --> 00:12:08,640 with sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. 182 00:12:08,640 --> 00:12:12,920 And so they're kind of always fighting for position and they both burn energy. 183 00:12:12,920 --> 00:12:16,400 And so even though it's a rest and digest, the parasympathetic nervous system is still 184 00:12:16,400 --> 00:12:21,480 burning quite a bit of energy as it's activated. 185 00:12:21,480 --> 00:12:25,800 So when we think about rest and digest, it's not just sitting in the lazy boy and kicking 186 00:12:25,800 --> 00:12:27,440 up your feet. 187 00:12:27,440 --> 00:12:35,040 Your body also does rest and digest along the way, even sometimes in stressful situations, 188 00:12:35,040 --> 00:12:39,240 if you're built for them and you're ready for them, you might be able to do some good 189 00:12:39,240 --> 00:12:45,360 parasympathetic activation, which then increases your cognitive ability to make critical decisions 190 00:12:45,360 --> 00:12:50,280 on scene, actually have situational awareness. 191 00:12:50,280 --> 00:12:53,520 We'll do a whole series on situational awareness as well. 192 00:12:53,520 --> 00:12:58,400 What that means, how we can train it versus it just being like a feel good term that we 193 00:12:58,400 --> 00:13:01,320 tell everybody to have high situational awareness. 194 00:13:01,320 --> 00:13:06,440 But rest and digest parasympathetic activation does have a pretty good psychological impact 195 00:13:06,440 --> 00:13:12,880 on us, but it also can have a relatively massive negative impact on us. 196 00:13:12,880 --> 00:13:17,960 And we're seeing this quite a bit in emergency services and the fire service specifically. 197 00:13:17,960 --> 00:13:23,480 And if we have too much parasympathetic activation over too long periods of time, it creates 198 00:13:23,480 --> 00:13:27,960 apathy and could even lead into depression. 199 00:13:27,960 --> 00:13:34,320 And so depression is a thing that everybody goes through different cycles of depression, 200 00:13:34,320 --> 00:13:39,360 but some people have depression that they need to be managed through things like physical 201 00:13:39,360 --> 00:13:43,800 fitness, through things like mindfulness practice, breathing practice, and sometimes 202 00:13:43,800 --> 00:13:45,640 through medication. 203 00:13:45,640 --> 00:13:50,680 And so if you feel like you have depression, please reach out to all the resources that 204 00:13:50,680 --> 00:13:56,280 are out there and talk to your primary care physician about it, as well as your peer support 205 00:13:56,280 --> 00:13:59,560 teams and things like that and try to get ahead of that. 206 00:13:59,560 --> 00:14:04,720 There's a lot of options out there for you if you're feeling down in the dumps, depressed, 207 00:14:04,720 --> 00:14:06,520 apathetic. 208 00:14:06,520 --> 00:14:07,640 Let's work through that stuff. 209 00:14:07,640 --> 00:14:10,760 And that's where the mental health and the fire service is kind of really, really focused 210 00:14:10,760 --> 00:14:17,880 right now is on that maybe over parasympathetic activation in that depression and possibly 211 00:14:17,880 --> 00:14:21,760 PTSD or PTSD field. 212 00:14:21,760 --> 00:14:30,560 So sympathetic or parasympathetic isn't all great, and it isn't all bad either. 213 00:14:30,560 --> 00:14:36,440 So there's there's a lot of different things that we can do to mitigate too much sympathetic 214 00:14:36,440 --> 00:14:38,280 or too much parasympathetic activation. 215 00:14:38,280 --> 00:14:41,680 We'll kind of dive into that in this podcast. 216 00:14:41,680 --> 00:14:45,120 So if we draw a line on a piece of paper at the top of the line of horizontal line and 217 00:14:45,120 --> 00:14:49,360 we write sympathetic across the top of it, and then we come down towards the bottom of 218 00:14:49,360 --> 00:14:55,160 the paper and we draw a horizontal line and we write parasympathetic activation across 219 00:14:55,160 --> 00:14:56,160 the top of that. 220 00:14:56,160 --> 00:15:00,600 We have two lines that are parallel to one another on this piece of paper. 221 00:15:00,600 --> 00:15:02,840 We got this big area in between. 222 00:15:02,840 --> 00:15:09,320 And so we can draw like a waveform, just a swooping line in between those two lines. 223 00:15:09,320 --> 00:15:13,320 And that waveform line is called the window of tolerance. 224 00:15:13,320 --> 00:15:16,560 And we all have a window of tolerance. 225 00:15:16,560 --> 00:15:19,400 And it's somewhat different every single day. 226 00:15:19,400 --> 00:15:24,160 Your window of tolerance at the beginning of your career is absolutely different than 227 00:15:24,160 --> 00:15:29,720 it is five years into your career, 10 years or towards the end of retirement. 228 00:15:29,720 --> 00:15:32,040 It looks way different. 229 00:15:32,040 --> 00:15:36,120 The good news is, is you get to control what that window of tolerance looks like based 230 00:15:36,120 --> 00:15:43,920 on intentional fitness training, whether it's physical, mental relationship training, all 231 00:15:43,920 --> 00:15:48,440 of those things that we can really, really have a really good impact on our window of 232 00:15:48,440 --> 00:15:49,600 tolerance. 233 00:15:49,600 --> 00:15:53,960 But just realize some, some days you have a really pretty big window of tolerance and 234 00:15:53,960 --> 00:15:55,880 other days you do not. 235 00:15:55,880 --> 00:16:00,400 And there's a lot of factors that play into that window of tolerance. 236 00:16:00,400 --> 00:16:03,400 One of the biggest ones of those is sleep. 237 00:16:03,400 --> 00:16:07,960 And that's why we're going to dedicate a significant amount of time in this podcast to talking 238 00:16:07,960 --> 00:16:11,040 about sleep, having great sleep hygiene. 239 00:16:11,040 --> 00:16:12,120 What does sleep do for us? 240 00:16:12,120 --> 00:16:13,520 Why does it matter? 241 00:16:13,520 --> 00:16:16,600 How do we make it work both on and off duty? 242 00:16:16,600 --> 00:16:21,760 And so, but sleep has a massive impact on our window of tolerance. 243 00:16:21,760 --> 00:16:26,520 So think about maybe the last time you had a pretty good set or shift and you guys, you 244 00:16:26,520 --> 00:16:31,640 know, you guys and girls out there got the beats and you didn't sleep really much or 245 00:16:31,640 --> 00:16:33,320 if at all. 246 00:16:33,320 --> 00:16:40,280 And when you came home, your tolerance for everyday life or the stressors that happen 247 00:16:40,280 --> 00:16:47,080 when you have relationships, whether it's a spouse or a partner or children or even 248 00:16:47,080 --> 00:16:53,480 just the neighbor driving home, road rage, all of those things that might, you know, 249 00:16:53,480 --> 00:16:58,060 some days you're more resilient and you're able to intentionally respond to something 250 00:16:58,060 --> 00:17:00,760 and other days you just react. 251 00:17:00,760 --> 00:17:03,200 And that usually shows up in forms of anger. 252 00:17:03,200 --> 00:17:08,080 And that's just a little bit where your window of tolerance wasn't big enough in that situation 253 00:17:08,080 --> 00:17:13,080 to intentionally respond to that situation and instead you had some sort of outburst. 254 00:17:13,080 --> 00:17:18,080 Okay, so what happens with the window of tolerance is over time that window of tolerance for 255 00:17:18,080 --> 00:17:25,000 us in the fire service gets smaller, mainly because we have sympathetic activation and 256 00:17:25,000 --> 00:17:30,080 we have too much sympathetic activation over long periods of time. 257 00:17:30,080 --> 00:17:34,240 And so what happens is those two lines that you drew on that piece of paper, they used 258 00:17:34,240 --> 00:17:37,160 to start out really, really far apart. 259 00:17:37,160 --> 00:17:43,080 Well now they start to squish together and that sympathetic drops down and that parasympathetic 260 00:17:43,080 --> 00:17:44,920 line keeps coming up. 261 00:17:44,920 --> 00:17:49,880 And now our window of tolerance that might have started out, you know, as a foot on your 262 00:17:49,880 --> 00:17:54,280 piece of paper, eight inches on the piece of paper now might be a millimeter away from 263 00:17:54,280 --> 00:17:55,760 one another. 264 00:17:55,760 --> 00:18:01,480 And so that's why every little teeny thing that happens just puts you into this certain 265 00:18:01,480 --> 00:18:06,600 state and typically like I said, that's going to be an anger or frustration state. 266 00:18:06,600 --> 00:18:10,540 Stuff that didn't used to be a big deal will kind of spiral out of control and you'll 267 00:18:10,540 --> 00:18:16,280 ruminate on those thoughts all day long for weeks, months, sometimes even years. 268 00:18:16,280 --> 00:18:19,520 And so the window of tolerance is a really, really big concept that we want to be aware 269 00:18:19,520 --> 00:18:22,920 of when we have to understand how it works. 270 00:18:22,920 --> 00:18:27,280 And so a lot more resources can be found linked in this show note. 271 00:18:27,280 --> 00:18:31,760 We have a full on blog post series in relation to this. 272 00:18:31,760 --> 00:18:37,600 So click on the show notes or visit firefightercrassmanship.com for more resources on what does the window 273 00:18:37,600 --> 00:18:40,640 of tolerance mean and how can we train it? 274 00:18:40,640 --> 00:18:46,400 All right, so for today, a really easy thing for us to do is in the fire service, most 275 00:18:46,400 --> 00:18:52,360 of us have too much sympathetic nervous system activation, which is stress. 276 00:18:52,360 --> 00:18:58,320 Sometimes that stress is positive stress from us doing things like physical fitness, sauna 277 00:18:58,320 --> 00:19:02,760 work, cold plunges, all positive stress, intentional stress. 278 00:19:02,760 --> 00:19:08,760 Other times that's negative stress based on department culture, 911 calls that we respond 279 00:19:08,760 --> 00:19:11,240 to and life itself. 280 00:19:11,240 --> 00:19:17,840 Okay, so more often than not for us to get more resilient, for us to get more, for us 281 00:19:17,840 --> 00:19:24,480 to get tougher in the fire service is we need more parasympathetic activation or parasympathetic 282 00:19:24,480 --> 00:19:29,800 tone to create a bigger window of tolerance overall. 283 00:19:29,800 --> 00:19:30,800 So we have to train that. 284 00:19:30,800 --> 00:19:34,920 Okay, we have to train that rest and digest system and we have to intentionally chill 285 00:19:34,920 --> 00:19:37,360 out and calm down. 286 00:19:37,360 --> 00:19:42,560 And a lot of the best training that we can do is in the middle of those things like cold 287 00:19:42,560 --> 00:19:48,560 plunges, sauna work, physical fitness, hard conversations you're having up and down the 288 00:19:48,560 --> 00:19:54,160 chain of command is to intentionally use that as a training opportunity, but also capitalize 289 00:19:54,160 --> 00:19:59,080 on the moments of silence and enjoying those things and be mindful and intentional about 290 00:19:59,080 --> 00:20:01,360 those those times in our life. 291 00:20:01,360 --> 00:20:06,560 Okay, so today I'm going to give you a really, really simple thing for us to train. 292 00:20:06,560 --> 00:20:10,800 And it's going to be a mindfulness practice just using our breath. 293 00:20:10,800 --> 00:20:15,880 And so to increase parasympathetic activation or parasympathetic tone, a very simple breath 294 00:20:15,880 --> 00:20:21,000 protocol that we can use is a two to one ratio. 295 00:20:21,000 --> 00:20:26,120 And this breath protocol, if you can tolerate it should be done 100% through the nose. 296 00:20:26,120 --> 00:20:31,880 So both the inhalation and the exhalation by the end of this protocol should be performed 297 00:20:31,880 --> 00:20:34,280 through the nose if you can. 298 00:20:34,280 --> 00:20:39,800 We know from lots of scientific research that when we breathe through the nose, it creates 299 00:20:39,800 --> 00:20:46,360 a vagus response, it triggers a vagal nerve, which the vagal response also creates parasympathetic 300 00:20:46,360 --> 00:20:47,600 tone. 301 00:20:47,600 --> 00:20:52,000 So simply by breathing through the nose, we can create parasympathetic tone, parasympathetic 302 00:20:52,000 --> 00:20:58,280 activation and calm down, which is going to give us over time, a larger window of tolerance. 303 00:20:58,280 --> 00:21:03,720 Okay, the reason we're using a two to one ratio protocol is that also has been shown 304 00:21:03,720 --> 00:21:07,240 through scientific study to create parasympathetic tone. 305 00:21:07,240 --> 00:21:11,680 So we're kind of double whammy in this thing through the nose and a two to one protocol 306 00:21:11,680 --> 00:21:17,320 to start to increase that window of tolerance by focusing specifically on parasympathetic 307 00:21:17,320 --> 00:21:19,800 tone. 308 00:21:19,800 --> 00:21:22,240 So what does a two to one ratio means? 309 00:21:22,240 --> 00:21:28,320 It just means that when I breathe in through my nose, let's say I breathe in through my 310 00:21:28,320 --> 00:21:34,680 nose for a four count, four seconds, then I'm going to double that on my exhalation. 311 00:21:34,680 --> 00:21:37,920 And that's what's going to help us create that parasympathetic tone. 312 00:21:37,920 --> 00:21:44,080 So when we breathe in for four seconds, we're going to then breathe out for eight seconds. 313 00:21:44,080 --> 00:21:50,600 All right, so getting a comfortable breathing position, sit up nice and straight. 314 00:21:50,600 --> 00:21:51,880 And you can do this while you're driving. 315 00:21:51,880 --> 00:21:53,040 It doesn't really matter. 316 00:21:53,040 --> 00:21:57,160 Try to do it all through the nose and I'll just give you a quick little count on how 317 00:21:57,160 --> 00:21:58,160 this works. 318 00:21:58,160 --> 00:22:07,880 So exhale your air and then breathe in through your nose for one, two, three, four, and then 319 00:22:07,880 --> 00:22:09,800 out through your nose. 320 00:22:09,800 --> 00:22:20,040 One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. 321 00:22:20,040 --> 00:22:22,600 Do it again in through your nose. 322 00:22:22,600 --> 00:22:29,480 One, two, three, four, and out through your nose. 323 00:22:29,480 --> 00:22:41,440 One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. 324 00:22:41,440 --> 00:22:46,160 And hopefully you can instantly kind of feel a little bit better by just taking those mindful 325 00:22:46,160 --> 00:22:47,160 reps. 326 00:22:47,160 --> 00:22:49,400 So that was just two breast cycles right there. 327 00:22:49,400 --> 00:22:52,440 We're slowing our respiration rate down. 328 00:22:52,440 --> 00:22:57,440 If that protocol, the four seconds in and then eight seconds out made you feel like you're 329 00:22:57,440 --> 00:23:01,600 kind of drowning on land, then that's something to just take note of. 330 00:23:01,600 --> 00:23:05,720 And as you start to dive into breath practice, it will get better. 331 00:23:05,720 --> 00:23:10,200 If you feel like that wasn't long enough, you can do whatever you want. 332 00:23:10,200 --> 00:23:11,880 You can do a five second inhale. 333 00:23:11,880 --> 00:23:18,300 You can do a 10 second exhale, a six second inhale, a 12 second exhale, whatever is comfortable 334 00:23:18,300 --> 00:23:23,200 for you, and it's going to depend on the situation. 335 00:23:23,200 --> 00:23:26,600 So start to use this two to one protocol, unstressful situations. 336 00:23:26,600 --> 00:23:29,120 You can use it on EMS calls to start to develop this. 337 00:23:29,120 --> 00:23:33,960 You can certainly use it in route to calls or when you're staged on responses or you're 338 00:23:33,960 --> 00:23:39,400 in route to the training center and you're kind of amped up about what's to come or you're 339 00:23:39,400 --> 00:23:44,000 getting ready to have maybe a conversation that you know is going to be a little bit 340 00:23:44,000 --> 00:23:47,760 sticky whether that's on the job or off the job. 341 00:23:47,760 --> 00:23:51,400 And so that two to one protocol is really, really going to help you. 342 00:23:51,400 --> 00:23:53,200 So there's your little takeaway for today. 343 00:23:53,200 --> 00:23:54,400 We're excited to have you here. 344 00:23:54,400 --> 00:23:57,640 We're excited to get this podcast up and off the ground. 345 00:23:57,640 --> 00:24:02,840 And please reach out if you have any questions or would like specific content or have any 346 00:24:02,840 --> 00:24:08,640 guest recommendations. 347 00:24:08,640 --> 00:24:12,120 Thank you for listening to the firefighter craftsmanship podcast where we give you real 348 00:24:12,120 --> 00:24:16,400 tools to train ultimate human performance both on and off the emergency scene. 349 00:24:16,400 --> 00:24:22,480 You can find more information on our webpage at firefightercraftsmanship.com including 350 00:24:22,480 --> 00:24:24,520 all the classes that we offer. 351 00:24:24,520 --> 00:24:28,120 And there's plenty of free resources and training on the site as well. 352 00:24:28,120 --> 00:24:30,880 Reach out to us on social media including Instagram and Facebook. 353 00:24:30,880 --> 00:24:35,640 We'd love to have a conversation and figure out how we can help you achieve your goals. 354 00:24:35,640 --> 00:24:55,120 Stay smart.