Planning firefighter training can be really tough.
Keeping the crew and yourself engaged is sometimes a struggle and at times it's easier
just to wing it.
However, winging it usually leads to unfocused actions and just doing the same thing over
and over, especially things that we're really good at and we always win at.
That's not really the point of training.
So is there a concept or template out there that we can use to develop and plan relevant,
useful and fun training that's not just related to the fire service?
Welcome to the Firefighter Craftsmanship Podcast where we coach you to deal with the stressors
of the job as a first responder as well as how to thrive off duty.
My name is Kevin Housley, the human performance coach and a firefighter since 2005.
I've been able to coach over a thousand emergency responders on ways to be more resilient, better
prepared for the job, and how to be happier and healthier at home.
So let's get to it.
Today's topic on the Firefighter Craftsmanship Podcast, using periodization for basic skills
training.
So creating quality training and quality culture evolution is really hard.
You've heard me talk quite a bit about both quality training, quality evolution, quality
mindsets.
All of those things are really, really tough at times.
And especially training, most departments do what they do because that's just what they
do.
And so if you've ever asked the question of, well, how come we do that?
And you either got a response of like, well, because I said so or shut up because you're
the new guy or, I don't know, it's just what we do or my favorite.
That's just the way we've always done it, which is not a response.
It's definitely not an answer.
But there's got to be a better way.
So how can we be a little bit more focused so that way we get more bang for our buck
when we're doing quality basic skills training?
So on this episode of the Firefighter Craftsmanship, we're going to take a concept right out of
good old fashioned strength and conditioning programming.
So all you strength and conditioning and aficionados get all excited.
We're talking about periodization and applying it to your basic skills training and emergency
services.
So from the get, what is periodization other than a word that I have a really hard time?
It's a tongue twister for me.
But really, you know, Lorenz and Morrison define periodization as the planned manipulation
of training variables, load sets and reps in order to maximize training adaptations
and to prevent the onset of overtraining syndrome.
It appears from the strength training literature that is available that periodization is usually
needed for maximal strength gains to occur.
So from strength and conditioning, we know that if we just rep out buys and tries every
single time that we work out, there's probably going to be some negative connotation to it.
And I can hear some of you gasping already that you can't just do bro sets every day
and get the most gains around that regardless of how many C4 pre workout drinks or protein
shakes that you consume.
So we know if we over train our muscles at some point, it's going to come back and bite
us and all you young bucks out there, young guys and girls who can go out and do pull-ups
every single day.
Unfortunately, I'm here to tell you at some point that's going to catch up to you and
it's not going to work out great.
It's going to be an injury that's going to be a little bit harder to overcome.
And so when we look at that, when we look at this from a basic skills training perspective,
have we ever thought about overtraining on basic firefighting skills?
And I can hear the naysayers already, oh, you're trying to get out of doing training.
And if you know anything about me, you know, for a fact that that is not true.
I love training.
I love it.
But I also don't want to just train on the same exact thing every single time.
And a lot of companies that we see that get out there and they train on the exact same
thing every time is because they are so dialed on it that there's no chance for failure.
So what's the cultural round failure for you and your company?
Specifically, you, that's where everything starts.
But where is that cultural failure?
What does that look like?
And if you win every single time in basic skills training, you're simply doing it wrong.
You don't have to like it when you struggle and you fail and you don't come out on top
in basic skills training.
But if you're winning every single time you go out on the drill ground, then you're not
challenging yourself enough.
You're not trying to learn.
You're not trying to push.
You're not trying to evolve and challenge.
And that's where that whole, well, that's just the way we've always done it concept
comes from.
So back to periodization.
How does it work?
So when we look at this from, from basic skills, we're going to try to correlate this to strength
conditioning.
And we know if we're training for a specific event, you know, as we got the Olympics that
are about to start.
All of those athletes there have been working in very, very specific training regimens.
The Olympic trials are happening either now or very, very soon within the next week or
so.
And so all of those athletes are trying to peak at the right time for their specific
sport.
For us in emergency services, we don't know really when that competition is going to occur
and we don't have an off season.
So how can we apply some of these concepts from the strength conditioning world into
what we do as tactical athletes that we have to be ready all the time?
And yes, there are some basic skills out there that we're probably not here in Colorado,
going to have an ice rescue in July or August.
But that relevancy for, for some of those still correlates to still water rescue.
So periodization works by combining macro, mezzo and micro cycles.
And macro cycles are typically defined as a year at a time.
And so if we look at this from like the Olympic athlete perspective, you know, they have four
years worth of work before they have an opportunity to show what they've done or show their training
effects.
And so they might be planning, you know, six months, 12 months at a time overall.
So what does that look like for us in emergency services?
So we can really look at training on a yearly big picture view initially.
So it's not a little bit of a detached, a higher altitude view.
And you know, some skills are only covered once a year and we're only going to train
on them once a year.
And an example of that would be ice rescue.
Another example of that might be active shooter and whatever is relevant for you in your specific
role and department and all the other factors that go into that.
I'm sure you can identify some things that are annually, we're only doing that once.
And another option of that would be like leadership training specific to 360 degree reviews.
So macro cycle is just going to be that overall long snapshot.
How does everything play nice in the sandbox together over a 12 month period of time?
So when we break it down a little bit further, we get into the mezzo cycle.
And in our context as emergency responders, it's a little bit easier to plan using mezzo
cycles versus the macro cycle.
And really this is because we don't have that off season for basic skills.
And much of what we do in emergency services can be called the action 12 months out of
the year.
And for sure we don't get a chance to warm up and we don't really have a chance to prep
other than just our general basic skills and training mentality overall.
That is our prep time.
So mezzo cycles are typically defined as several weeks or months at a time.
And this is really, really relevant to us in emergency services.
So really we can think of this as quarterly or monthly training topics.
What's the focus for the quarter?
What's the focus for the month?
We could also think of mezzo cycles as the seasons we're in or the season that is on
the horizon.
So here in Colorado, it went from spring to summer and one day, we had a 30 degree increase
in one day.
And so now different things like wildland have a different perspective.
And so could we have been training on wildland during January, February, March to get ready
for the wild end season that starts at the end of May.
And here it runs all the way into November typically.
So what season are we in?
Well, what season is on the horizon?
And so using the mezzo cycle concept, we can then start to skill stack different seasons
for things like RIT, technical rescue, wildland, or even gasp EMS specific emergencies like
heat or cold exposure based on your first due response called types.
So if you're in an apartment that maybe has some urban interface things, well, you probably
also have recreation that happens in that urban interface.
You might have mountain rescue, high angle rescue, trail rescue, search and rescue.
So that would be a season of the year.
If you have mountain rescue in the summer, that's different than mountain rescue in the
winter.
And so can we skill stack and use the mezzo cycle to get ready by doing basic skills training
in preparation for a season or while we're currently in the season for our maintenance.
We also could look at departments, if you have beaches or oceans, those called types
when's the season for those things or river rescue, swathwater rescue.
The micro cycle is the final stage in this periodization concept.
And micro cycles are typically defined as day or days.
And this is typically where the fire service lives.
We just work day by day.
Hey, today we're going to go out and we're going to stretch hose.
Hey, today we're going to go out and we're going to throw ladders.
Hey, today we're going to go out and search.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So a lot of times it's like, hey, what do you guys want to do today?
And then we just go out and we train on that.
And we kind of stay in that nice little comfy box of what we're used to training on and
we're used to getting out there and getting after it with.
And when we do this, it's not necessarily bad.
We can go out there and we can have really, really good quality basic skills training,
but there's no overall focus plan or intention.
And a lot of times when we don't have a focus plan or intention, we don't grow year over
year.
So this might not be the best approach based on lots of things, including burnout, overload
principle and weather implications.
So be smart about training in environments that could cause undue harm to you and your
personnel.
Meaning, if it's 115 degrees for an entire month or two months where you live, it might
not be the best time to go out there and be training on rapid intervention techniques
and down firefighter removal techniques.
Okay.
So let's call it out here.
I'm not talking about, hey, let's not train in the environments that we're subjected to.
That's not what I'm talking about at all.
But getting hurt in training is stupid.
And intentionally putting yourself and people in positions where you know that they're going
to get hurt is a bad play.
So do we need to be able to operate rapid intervention team, RIT skills in high heat,
high stress environments?
Absolutely.
But could we get the same effect in training if we're training on those things and maybe
a little bit cooler time of the year?
Or can we even pick time of day?
Right?
If it's 105 outside, do we need to be fully PPE to go on to the roof for vertical ventilation
training?
Or can we wait maybe till it's 85 in the evening, nighttime?
And the cool thing with most of our training centers is nobody's around there at night.
It's always open.
So you can get out there, get some night ops, get a little bit cooler reps in, make sure
that you're ready to go and you're ready to respond and operate on your shift.
So there are definitely departments and leaders out there with an eye towards this concept
of periodization.
And they're probably going to use other terms, but that's essentially what they're doing.
You know, they're definitely using seasons of the year.
You know, there's like a spring training, a season, and then the Super Bowl concept
out there and some future firefighter craftsmanship podcast guests are going to dive into how this
looks and works within their specific context.
So stay tuned for some pretty awesome interviews coming up.
So for now, kind of start to think about how does periodization work for you?
What could it look for you?
Are you using it already in your tactical fitness regimes?
If you're not, maybe you should.
Maybe that's part of the reason why you keep getting hurt is because you keep doing the
exact same five movements every time.
And so can we work on maybe having a muscle endurance phase, a power phase, a strength
phase, a conditioning phase, those concepts really, really, really apply and correlate
with basic skills, emergency services training.
So we have firefighter craftsmanship have taken the guesswork out of using this periodization
concept for you as it relates to basic skills training.
So if you head over to firefightercraftsmanship.com backslash template and download a full editable
12 month training template for yourself.
All the instructions are on the spreadsheet on how to make this template editable in your
own.
So it'll be included in the email on how to do that as well as at the top right corner
on how to create your own copy where you can make it your very own little buddy.
So included on this template is a yearly macro training map, a whole cache of basic skills
training ideas.
So if you run against a mind block, a writer's block, you can't figure out what you want
to do.
There's a whole cache of training ideas in there.
There's also 4896 and modified Kelly schedule templates.
But as you'll see, once it's editable, you can make it for whatever.
If you work a 2448 or you work a 2472 lucky or you work some other Denver schedule, something
like that, all of that is completely editable within that training template.
So check it out, get yours at firefightercraftsmanship.com slash template.
So thanks for spending your valuable time with us and please rate and review and follow
the show.
In just five seconds, if you've gotten any value out of this and give us a quick rating,
it really does help us grow the organic nature of this show and it helps it get into the
ears of those that might not know who the firefighter craftsmanship podcast is.
So we really, really appreciate all the support.
Smash on that follow button so you never miss one of these weekly Wednesday episodes
and head over to firefightercraftsmanship.com slash template to get your 12 month editable
training template today.
Stay smart.