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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
It's always my name is James Gearing, and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show
veteran firefighter and the man behind fire rescue fitness, Aaron Zamzao.
Now, as you will hear in this conversation, Aaron, of course, is passionate about firefighter fitness, as am I.
He also hosts a podcast, obviously, so do I.
So I deviate a little bit from the normal kind of chronological timeline,
and we really just took off the gloves and hit some issues that needed to be discussed.
So I talked a little bit more than I like to normally on interview,
but it was a great back and forth conversation and really pulling some of the some of the myths
and some of the issues that we need to be talking about out of the shadows.
So it's a little bit more aggressive from my side.
You know, I got very passionate, but Aaron is an incredible guest.
He's you know, he walks the walk.
He's been doing this for 20 years.
As he points out, he is not an athletic phenom far more focused on performance in the fire service
and overall wellness in the fire service.
So before he gets this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment.
Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating.
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast,
therefore making it easier for others to find.
And this is a free library of well over eight hundred and fifty episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories
so I can get them to every single person on planet Earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you Aaron Zamzaal.
Enjoy. Well, Aaron, I want to start by saying firstly shout out to Jim
and everyone else behind the Beaver Creek, Ohio Brothers Helping Brothers Conference,
because we finally met face to face, even though we've talked before.
So I want to give them a shout out first for ultimately connecting us.
And secondly, to welcome you onto the behind the shield podcast today.
Thanks, brother. I feel like I made it because you're like the original OG podcaster for like fire service,
you know, performance and just fitness and, you know, optimization.
So it's really a privilege and an honor really to be here.
I was we were talking off camera about how many great guests you've had before
and how motivating they are and their stories.
And, you know, of course, I was telling my brother I was going to be on this great podcast.
And he goes, well, what do you why does he want you?
I don't know. Hopefully I'm going to be entertaining, but it's great to be here.
You know, just the conversations that you and I have had off camera.
I hope some people can take some stuff from me.
I mean, that that conference that we were at, man, I don't know.
You remember we were in the back of the room and I think Brendan McDonald was there and you were there and I was there.
And there are a couple of guys from the 62 Romeo guys were there.
And I wish we would add a camera on that.
Just talking about, you know, our experiences, everything from mental health, fitness to just life and, you know, relationships
and all the different things that we've kind of gone through and and see and passions on trying to help people.
Man, it was it was great to just be a part of that.
Like, I don't know if you have I step I step back all the time.
I couldn't believe, man, I was part of that conversation.
I mean, it's great. And that kind of started this whole thing.
So happy to be here. Excited to talk to you. Good to see you again, man.
How are things with you? I'm good. Good. Yeah.
I was just telling you before we hit record, this will be the last interview I do before Christmas.
So I'm taking a well-earned break, taking my wife off to a cruise for a week.
She's been in med school for two and a half years now.
So she will be dumb. Literally, she'll hit submit for her exam.
And then we're heading straight to a restaurant and then off to the cruise.
So can't wait, man. Can't wait. Yeah.
Good. Good. Needed for both of you.
I mean, you've had a great year, too. You travel around and
you just celebrated a big anniversary as well.
How many years and episodes are you at now? Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Seven years. And it's funny. I've got 861 episodes.
But the app that hosts my podcast has been glitching for a while.
And I wrote to them and they've actually got a banner on the actual behind the scenes thing saying,
yeah, we realize there's an issue. So I don't even know how many downloads I have at the moment.
I posted it was 5.5 million, but I'm pretty sure that's quite short.
So we'll see if they unfuck it, if they actually retro the actual downloads that happen.
But it's been frustrating because you're trying to verify that things are moving the right way
and that people are able to listen to it. And yeah, behind the scenes, as I'm sure you know,
it's like a duck. You're paddling frantically trying to make everything seem like everything's fine.
Yeah, it does run smoothly.
But there are some things that, you know, there's a lot of work that goes into this.
You know, I'm on the first year I've been hosting a podcast called Better Every Shift.
And the amount of work that I know I have to do, I can only imagine for 800 plus episodes.
I want to just say thank you. I've listened to I haven't listened to all of them,
but I've listened to a lot of them. And every time I listen, I just feel more and more motivated
to continually work on myself and try to help others within the fire service.
And you've brought forth so many different things to talk about that, you know,
over the course of the last 10 to 15 years, we didn't want to talk about.
We're just like, hey, that's we don't deal with those things.
They're not they're not part of our kind of our, you know, our education plan.
They're not part of our itinerary. So we just won't talk about them.
And so I got to just, again, applaud you for everything that you've done.
And thank you for your hard work, because it's not easy, man.
Everything from the guests that you've been getting to, you know, then you got to arrange times.
And then you got to do the edits. And then you got to mess with the platform who messes up your over five million views,
which, by the way, is really impressive.
So hopefully on your cruise, you take a step back, you have a cocktail and you laugh and you're like,
Zamza, he's a crazy dude, but I did five million, man. That's pretty cool.
And so I agree. It's I'm I'm very, very honored.
And it's funny because when you talked about, you know, trying to address the things,
I mean, ultimately, it's just standing there and imagine you're on a fire 200 years ago and you see a fire.
And across the street, you see a bloke with a bunch of water and buckets.
It's just connecting the two is all it was.
But the problem is in the fire service, as you know, is so siloed.
We're in this alleyway that and then the people in it are so damn overworked
and, you know, under slept that we tend to just look inside our little profession for all the answers for everything.
But then you look at and obviously we're going to talk about fitness and you are within the profession.
But as you know, there's lots of other people outside that are doing that all day, every day,
whether it's sleep or, you know, psychology or whatever.
And it's like, well, we should be including them as well.
We should have people in uniform talking about this and people that aren't in uniform.
And that was the real key is that I had a aha moment.
I'm like, look, there's all these other experts that we're not bringing into our profession who admire our profession.
So, you know, that was that was really it was just finding all these great people, yourself included,
to bring on here so that we could connect a person who's struggling with thing A with person who has solution B.
Yeah. And not to you.
You hit the thing about the silos is pretty, pretty interesting to talk about because we are like the fire service.
And it's a unbelievable fraternity sorority of brotherhood, sisterhood, almost sometimes to a detriment because we're like,
they don't understand us because we're firefighters. And and in some cases, that's the truth.
But there are aspects that we can take from other professions.
You know, military has been doing a lot of studies on mental health for a long time.
TST, you know, police, you know, and now we're starting to at least say, OK, we were experiencing a lot of that.
And and this is what's worked for them.
And we just have to sometimes cater it to our own language and to our own schedules.
But it's it is interesting, you know, over the years to like I mean, where I got started is I used to work with pro athletes and fitness before I got the fire service.
And I looked at all right, I got a you know, I work I was very fortunate.
I work with NFL athletes, NBA athletes, NHL.
And then when I I joined a volunteer department, which, by the way, I'm not a very good firefighter.
I'll just disclose that right away. Like naturally not gifted. Thanks, Mom and Dad.
I don't have a lot of athletic prowess, but you know, at the time I was training a lot of athletes.
I was training a lot of people. And then I started volunteering and I'm getting my butt kicked by these contractors and these guys who are carrying sheetrock all day and they're climbing ladders.
Well, that's what we did on the fires ground. And they're able to go do it with the humbling part was they go in the back and smoke cigarettes.
And I'd be there trying to figure out how the hell I need to get faster at this.
And at the time I was doing, you know, like a leg press, a tricep push down just what all the books said you needed to do.
And I'm like, wait a minute. Now, when I train my pro athletes that same way, like I break down their playing field and you break down their weaknesses and and you try to combine that like, hey, how can I make them stronger?
How can I make that applicable to what they're doing out there on the on the playing field?
And that's kind of where I started to look at firefighting. And and to me, that was the functional fitness aspect of the fire service that wasn't being met.
And I basically just trained myself that way and found that. Yeah, that really carried into performance, you know, maybe not the first bottle, but I always tell, you know, my crew, I'm like, that first body will probably beat me because I'm not athletically gifted.
And the second bottle is where fitness really comes in. And I said, I'll probably be ahead of you. At least that's my mindset is to keep myself in shape and to use kind of the the things that I learned training athletes.
And that's really kind of got me to, you know, here today. And I've been doing this now, speaking about fitness and and now that's turned into more just performance optimization and and, you know, and just about general improvement.
So it is really interesting how that's how I looked at things from day one. And I think that's why you and I resonate so well, because you're like, well, wait a minute, why are we trying to recreate the wheel on every single issue when everyone else is facing the same damn stuff?
So, you know, we started to kind of buy kind of talk about the sleep and the sleep deprivation and how that was just affecting everything.
Right. Like you've done a lot of research on that and and some new stuff, I guess, came out to correct about the shifts.
Yeah, yeah, there's there's there's a shift, I hope a paradigm shift in Florida, where we start in the C departments go to 24 72, which hands down to me, if you're going to create an industry standard, that I think is it now you can you know, you can tweak it if you want.
But I mean, to me, consistently having that 72 between shifts and all the sleep experts and psychologists and psychiatrists and everyone else is related to that.
You know, the the the the back injury people, they all say the same thing, like the more rest you can get between a shift, the better and they all were just like, you know, blown away.
What a firefighter work we actually looks like because we tell the myth ourselves. Oh, I work one day on two days off. You know, no, you work three days on one day off, three, eight hour days crammed together.
I work 10 days a month. No, you work 30 days a month. You know what I mean?
So it's really exciting because what's happening now, if you live where I live in Ocala, Florida, city of Gainesville is just about to go to 24 72, the county of Pasco, which I think is right around Tampa is about to go to 24 72.
Now everyone's going, oh, it's such a hiring crisis.
Firstly, yes, there is because kids these days can research what it's actually like to do our job and, you know, doing more with less for decades.
We're a critical mass now, people looking in from the outside going that looks a bit shit.
Actually, you know, the passion, the desire to help.
That's nothing to do with it. It's am I going to stay healthy? Can I come home to see my kids?
That's a big part of this conversation. But you add now we're in this at the moment and now you're a department you're trying to hire and then two departments near you have gone to 24 72.
Good luck getting people when that domino starts falling.
So what I'm so excited about is it's always been the right answer.
And it's crazy that the fire service thinks it's lunacy for a fire department to work a 42 hour work even though everyone else in their city works 40 hours.
But for us that we're going to get up from a dead sleep and go save lives 56 is fine.
So I love that. But also they're going to be forced to because either a you're going to have to finally catch up or be you're not going to have a fire department.
Good luck with your next political cycle if you don't step the fuck up. So I'm excited, as you can tell.
Well, and I am too because I'm I just experienced it.
I worked a Saturday at our busy station downtown where I got maybe an hour and a half to two hours of sleep.
And my next day was complete shit. I mean, it was so I mean, really, that's a 24 hour shift that's turned into a 48 because I was not.
I was worth it. I really didn't get anything done.
You know, that next day, other than just sleep and try to recover and even then, you know, the next day after that, I'm finally starting to feel OK.
Now we're three days after 72 hours and I'm feeling great. But, you know, and then I go back to work tomorrow.
Our shift isn't the four shift yet. I'm working and working and working on it.
But I think you're right that we we also have to look at it from a different lens. It's not just about, you know, OK, so immediately we got to add more people.
OK, and some people don't get as much vacation as they used to on other schedules and they get all bent out of shape over that.
But what we got to realize is from a recruitment standpoint, this is healthy and that from a family standpoint.
When I go home after that shift, if I go back, let's say if I did a you know, we do like a modified California.
So it's a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, then you're off for then it's Wednesday, Friday, then you and then you're off like six.
But if you're working on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, that Tuesday, Thursday, you are a zombie.
You are not who you your family needs you to be.
And you're really just and then you're trying to just catch up.
So then let's say you work that Monday, Tuesday, you're a zombie. Wednesday, you get hit again.
Thursday, you're you're really not yourself. And then Friday, you try to eke through that shift.
And let's say you don't get any more sleep. Well, Saturday, you're you're a zombie.
You're worthless for your family. And then Sunday, you're just starting to recover.
So if you look at that, you just wasted a whole week of quality time that could have been spent with your family where you're not at your optimize self.
And you're right. We tell ourselves this lie. I'm fine.
I'm not I don't it doesn't bother me that much. Ask your family that damn question.
Right. Like ask your kids, ask your your significant other.
What's what's daddy like or mommy like after a swing?
If they're honest, they'll be like jerk. They're an asshole.
You know, like but we don't see it because we were surrounded by people doing the same thing.
And like you said, that's where we just don't understand the ramifications of it.
And we're also surrounded by people like, hey, I did it. I survived as a chief.
So now you guys can do it. And and I think it's just that it's a mindset shift that we have to get into.
And that, you know, you could still have your your vacation.
You just have to go around and do some switches and stuff for it.
But but I think I'm excited, too, because now we're going to start to see that other side of things that maybe doesn't show up in the initial data.
And I think recruitment is a big part of that and also retention, right?
Like injuries, retention. The other part of that is apparatus accidents and and and and everything from like protocol mishaps for somebody that's sleep deprived,
given the wrong medication, the wrong dose, the wrong time because they're deprived or not delivering it at all and quality of care.
I mean, we can go on and on with that. So right.
And that's what you're talking about. Also, these are all the things that you can't put on a data sheet at first. Right.
Yeah, no, exactly. It's funny when you said about people talking about losing the vacation.
There's there's two things that I want to kind of put some stuff out on their videos or whatever to talk about.
The firstly is, you know, I got this I just sat with a bunch of uber intelligent people,
a few people from the fire service and a bunch of scientists and everyone kept saying, oh, we got to see the data.
And I literally had to go, look, I'm out.
You're telling me that you need research to show that a 42 hour workweek is going to be healthier than a 56,
that an extra 24 hour shift between shifts is going to be healthier for a firefighter, for a first responder.
I mean, this is insanity. This is a problem. I want to see the data. I want to see the research.
Yeah, absolutely. In some areas, like I want to make sure this drug that you tell me that my kid needs for whatever illness
they've got has been researched thoroughly and is not going to kill them.
But I don't need research to find out if a car hits me at 60 miles an hour, I'm going to fucking die.
There's a certain point where you've got to use your you know, you've got to put your big boy pants on and just think.
But then the other side as well, when touching on the vacation, you know, like, you know, it's numbers.
And you know, you will still come out the same or ahead.
You know, you'll be ahead basically because you'll have that extra shift.
But then, you know, you don't don't negotiate away all your vacation days.
But there has to be a little give and take to get this into effect.
But the other thing that I've I've really want to call out the fire service because I hear this all the fucking time.
Oh, you know, they're going to take this away. Oh, you know, I'm going to miss my vacation day.
When did you become such a fucking pussy that you won't advocate for yourself and your marriage and your ability to be a parent?
Like you will just let these cities and counties tell you you have to be away from your family
and a needless amount of hours because you don't have the fucking balls to get together and actually step the fuck up and challenge this
and pull in all the research and say, look, this is what Boca Raton, this is what Boynton Beach, this is what FDNY does.
This is what all these other areas are already doing. Explain to me why you, council member, go to get to go home at five every night and work 40 hours a week.
But we're here at 56 and you're ridiculing the idea that we work less.
So this is a call to action. Like I'm so sick of, you know, people bitching about, oh, that will never happen.
Why the fuck wouldn't it happen? You got a pack, didn't you? Didn't used to have a pack. You wear bunker gear now.
You have a radio. So why is it such a fucking, you know, mythology that you actually have a work week that keeps you healthy and allows you to be home with your children?
It drives me up the fucking wall. Well, I think part of it comes with this, right?
Because people go, well, you get to sleep at where you work. Like you get to take a nap. You get to sleep. You get to do this.
You get to do that. And it's like, yeah, on paper we could, but that sleep is isn't it's shit in a lot of cases, because if you're at a busy firehouse, the tones are going off.
Even if you're not, it's not your unit responding. You're still not getting that deep recovery sleep.
Number one. Number two, then there what happens when there is that call in the middle of the night that just it just puts you back at square one.
You know, that one call can can wear on you for an hour or so. Like, right.
Like and and and I'll say data. There's data there shows blood pressures up. Your heart rate is elevated.
You know, body temperature actually can go up depending upon the call and what you're doing.
So one call puts you out of that recovery sleep that you need. Right.
So the difference I would tell people is that, yeah, we get to take a nap every once in a while because we're going to get those calls at night.
But when we do get those calls at night, it breaks our sleep up into, you know, just restrictive recovery is really all it is.
And it's it's not the full recovery we need, especially for mental health issues, PTSD, because we're realizing now research is showing us, I think, what between the hours of you need like four or five hours
between that five and seven or four and seven is where you're starting to get into the deep recovery of the PTSD and the mental health side of things.
Is that right? I get that right. I mean, we were talking about that in in Ohio about it, but we don't get that in a firehouse.
I mean, and if you work in a firehouse that that you do get that, then you know, maybe you're one of the the anomalies that doesn't need the four shift because your call volume isn't that much.
But for most fire departments, you know, and I know mine, that four shift would go a long way in helping with firefighter health and wellness recovery.
And you're right. Isn't that more important than whatever you're you're you know, like, you know, guys will say, well, then that gives us more time.
People are still going to do their side jobs or they're going to do, you know, whatever.
But that's that's on them that like that's that's that's their decision.
But as a as an organization, I would want to come in and say, look, I'm putting my my members in the healthiest position I possibly can.
And I'm giving them, you know, the opportunity to be healthy.
But right now, like my schedule, I don't even have the opportunity, you know, like, I mean, I shouldn't say that I could go into training or I could go into somewhere else.
I mean, I could do it, but that's not a guaranteed either, you know.
But you're right. It's we got to get we got to get over ourselves, man.
And I don't know where that that comes from.
I think that could be a whole other podcast, just digging into why are we so reluctant to change when our environment is changing so quickly and the data is telling us to change.
Right. Like you ever just sat back and went, what in the hell, man?
Well, I mean, I'll give you an example and people hate.
I'm sure when I talk about this, but it's because it's a glaring truth and I'm not in uniform anymore.
So it really doesn't matter to me.
But the I saw it the other day and it was really disgusting because it was a I think it was a line of duty death in Australia.
And someone was was made the snarky comment like, well, that's because you're wearing a space helmet.
And it's like this whole thing with the leather helmet to me is is is the symbol of our resistance to change.
And I always ask people, all right, all right, then salty fucker.
So so let me see some pictures of you on scene.
Oh, you weren't you weren't a CBA.
I thought you were traditional. Where's your woolen tunic in your three quarter length boots?
Why is it that you choose to to move with certain things, but then you ridicule other fire departments around the world because of their helmet?
You know, which is better, which has comms built in, which has got a light on the top, which is actually snow.
You have to take it off during extrication and put it on the roof like all of us do.
You know, so that's it's almost like I honestly feel like there is narcissism and vanity in the fire service as well,
because the only way you'd give a shit what other helmet another fire department was or hang on to a carcinogenic sponge like we do in America is because of how you look.
And you're doing your little pike pole selfies with your mustache and your leather helmet and then have your dastardly to say it's for them.
No, no, it's for you. You want you're talking about how you look.
And so for me, as I've said a million times, Green Berets and Navy Seals don't wear World War One tin helmets.
But right behind me on war here, I've got the specs for the, you know, the leather helmet that we all wore for so long.
And it says 1937. So this is the problem is that we hang on to mythology and is almost like this kind of projection of heroism that we have.
Whereas a lot of these countries with their space helmets, they just get on to the job.
They're not beating their chest and taking selfies and, you know, doing little videos of them doing burpees in their gear with some David Goggins speech playing over the fucking top.
They're just firefighters and they are serving other people.
So I think that's one of the resistance is we got to look in the mirror and remind ourselves why we do it and realize that there needs to be an evolution of progress.
And if there's any element, whether it's you thinking that being talking about mental health as being a pussy or that you're going to be buried in your leather helmet, which someone told me a while ago.
Yeah, you probably will actually sooner than you think that these are some of the things.
And it's an uncomfortable conversation.
Like you said, I wore, you know, West Coast helmet, East Coast helmets.
They're beautiful and they would look great hanging up on your study to remind you of the history of the fire service.
But that's not tradition. Tradition is selflessness, you know, fitness, camaraderie, service.
The helmet is a hat. Nothing more, nothing less.
Yeah, yeah. It's what's it's what maybe that stands for is why they can't get over it.
I mean, you brought up another thing that just kind of eats away at me a little bit.
I had this discussion with somebody about annual medicals, right?
Annual medicals and the reason that we're NFPA, every organization is pushing for annual medicals is because like, right, a majority of our firefighter fatalities is heart attacks and strokes, right?
And if you can do something about that, right, you could try to do early warning sites. Now, look, shit happens. It falls through the cracks or people get some obscure disease and they pass away.
That happens everywhere, not just in the fire service.
So we're talking about I really believe that everybody should be required to be have an annual medical and at least be clear green, yellow or red in order to do the job.
You know, truck drivers have to go through an actual annual medical.
We don't like it's not required anywhere.
And someone just said to me, well, I don't I don't care.
Like, I don't want I don't want fire our chiefs knowing what's going on with me.
And I just said, I said, well, first of all, they don't want to either.
They just want to make sure that you're you're taking care of your health so you're able to do the job.
I said, but here's the deal.
When we're on a fire call, your health issues are my health issues when we're in that fire.
Because if you go down because you had a heart murmur or something that you didn't take care of and I go down, I'm going in to try to rescue you.
And you know that, right?
Like, that's one thing's pretty for certain.
We know we do that.
And now if I go down and then another person goes down, like, that's all because of you not taking care of yourself.
Now, this is a very dramatic like some of the Zim stuff is so dramatic.
But to me, it's the it's the the mindset that like, how are you and you're you're putting your your your health and and your whole like, I don't want anybody to know my health is more important than your crew.
Like to me, being selfless is being at your best, trying to optimize your health for the sake of your your crew.
Because, look, even though like I've had this discussion, right, I actually had a t-shirt, a great t-shirt, one of my lieutenants bought for me once for holidays.
It said, eat right, work out, still die. Yep.
Shit happens.
But from the moment you open a textbook, we talk about minimizing risk on the fire ground and off.
Minimize risk.
Well, one of the one of the things like right, like we just said, what's the biggest health issue or issue face when we're on the fire ground?
It's not the fire itself. It's the heart attacks, the strokes and all the the significant, you know, physical fitness aspects of it.
So by looking at all of those, I'm minimizing the risk of everyone around me.
And for some reason, people can't get that damn thing through their head that getting an annual medical, taking care of your own fitness, taking care of, you know, at least watching what you eat and monitoring your health is the should be the number one step before you even learn how to frickin pull a hose.
Before you even learn how to tag a hydrant or gear up.
You have to understand that the physical ailments that it takes to do the job, you need to hone in.
And when we deny that or say it's not nobody's business, what kind of fitness I'm in or what my health issue is, I just I shake my head and I go, what am I missing here?
Am I in the wrong profession? Because I take this oath to help anybody at any time and be my best in order to do that so I don't put my crew at risk.
That's the way I look at that helmet. That's the way I look at that bumper sticker.
That's the way I look at this, these sides, right?
That's what you and I, I think that's why we we just we mesh so well because we believe the same thing.
But for someone to tell me it's not my business what their health issues are.
Look, I don't really I don't want to know your left toe points the wrong way.
What I do want to know is that are you taking care of yourself and doing everything you can to help to be relevant on the fire ground, right?
Like to do your job. And I don't know. So that gets me worked up too, right?
Like there's two worked up guys on this podcast now.
Am I looking at that wrong? Sometimes I wonder, you know?
It reminds me what you said. It reminds me of the guys that, you know, talk about Big Brother watching them.
My big brother doesn't give a shit about, for example, James Gearing, some random dude sitting in Ocala, Florida, talking on the microphone right now.
You know, now, if I start doing certain things, yeah, maybe they'll pay attention.
But, you know, let's be honest, most of us are being listened to simply so Amazon can shove more commercials down our throat.
That's it. So to not take care of your physical health or not take care of your mental health because, oh, you know, they are going to do this thing.
Well, firstly, go to your union, you know, address that if there's a fear.
So, hey, just find out. Is there any way they can do that?
No, we've got here. We've got all these other things.
No, they can't. It's again, you're telling yourself another fucking fairy tale.
But the one that drives me crazy as well is the fitness standards.
When you know, I've had so many high performers on here and they all may all of them hold us fire police EMS to the same standard as themselves, including EMS.
Those are the ones that are running on their families.
The Navy SEAL families, the Green Beret families, the S.A.S. families, when they're overseas fighting for our country, we're the ones protecting their loved ones.
You know what I mean? And so they do look at us like special ops.
You know, so we are tactical athletes. And I've used this example a lot.
My last place, which was known to be a very low up, I mean, high up tempo, but low expectations as far as, you know, physical fire and that kind of stuff, because they're protecting theme parks.
Mainly we had a 28 story hotel next to us, 28 stories. So with a high road high rise strip, so your gear, a pack hose, force entry tools and extra air as 100 pounds that you have to take 28 floors vertically before you even get to whatever it is that you're supposed to be doing.
So, yes, that is a tactical athlete.
And so it blows me away because those groups, they have tests that they have to maintain SWAT. They have tests that have to maintain Ocean Lifeguards tests that they have to maintain physical tests fire service.
Oh, man. Yeah, I was I was the fittest I've ever been when I was in the Academy.
Like, we label it minimum standards like it was couldn't be fucking clearer.
This is the shittiest you should ever be in your entire career.
Now, obviously, we age, we break down, but as far as diligence, training, discipline, routine, you should never lose that because as you age, you become more efficient as well.
The old ball, young ball thing.
So talk to me about your perspective of the fact, again, resistance insanity, why the profession that is jack of all trades, master of none that could be climbing a building, going down a sewer pipe, entering a burning building, extricating with heavy tools, has zero fitness standards and industry, you know, industry standard.
Yet all the other tactical professions I mentioned do.
I think it's part, partially the same. It's it rides the same train of, you know, the helmet and, you know, the the assessment, you know, the physical assessment, I think the or the medical assessment.
I think we get in our own way in some some cases.
Because, and I can agree with this part of it. So some fire departments are going to a, like, I'm gonna you have to run a mile and a half or you have to do some some X amount of push ups or you have to run in certain amount of time and and they measure VO two max and that's how they're measuring fitness.
Now I don't necessarily agree with that because some people don't run very well.
Look, I get that. And in push up sometimes doesn't transfer to being a good firefighter. I learned that, you know, from day one.
But what I do really really think we need is, like, more like occupational testing, you know, OPT and actual job oriented tasks where you have to complete them under a certain amount of time so if we want to make sure that our members are are strong enough or can put up a ladder.
Then let's have them put up a ladder, you know, let's have them do the things that they are going to do and and put it into a, you know, a particular kind of situation or a circuit where it makes sense that they would actually have to do that so you know I've come up with some stuff.
You know that you work on a little bit on air and you have to pull some hose line you got to put up a ladder. You have to, you know, drag a victim you have to crawl like like we would in a search.
And I think that's the way that apartments need to look at it and you can actually base that off a particular call if you had a, you know, a single family structure fire where you had an engine response, the ladder response.
Look at what those those positions had to do, you know, hey, we had to have one firefighter had to go pull LDH take the hydrant walk up to the door crawl down the line, do a search, hold the hose line, and then we had to drag it back out go to another room, come back out and then we had to do overhaul it.
So make like six or seven exercises based off of that put up, put a pass fail to start and then eventually throw enough data out and go okay everybody should at least be able to do these things in a certain amount of time.
We've looked at the union to do that and we know that the union won't do that look that's not their specialty their specialty is, and they do a great job on in general terms we're going to say that but I think, you know, in order to to put parameters
to it I think we, we have to do that ourselves as individual organizations in some cases.
But to me that's that's where it begins and then my little pipe dream is, look, we do, you know, if I was running the health and wellness of a fire department I would say look we're going to come up with this minimum performance assessment.
We're going to do every odd year it's going to be engine ops so we're going to do seven tasks, back to back to back to back that you would have to do if you're on an engine crew, then the next year we're going to do five, you know tasks back back to back.
If you were on a ladder crew and reason, you know, based off of the seven and the five is just based off of what you're building construction is what your needs are right so if I don't have anything over four stories in my, in my territory my first you or my,
my response area I'm not going to have them climb 10 flights of steps, right, I'm going to have them climb for, you know, drag a hose line down for crawl down for walk down, you know, and then, and then, you know, throw up a ladder up to the second or third story and it but make
sure that the testing based on what you're likely to see, because then the union can get behind it go. Actually this is feasible this is either happened, or any, any one of our members can be tasked with this, any certain any any and every day of the year.
And then same thing with ladder ops like you may have to climb ladder. See where the where the fire is position ladder, come back down, carry a fan in drag some heavy stuff back out like a victim, you know, carry the extrication gear and operate that,
you know, so make your minimum performance assessment or your performance assessment I don't like using the word minimum but like, make that your assessment and then if you want to throw like, hey, we can correlate body composition to this.
You know, Zam, you were, you did this whole engine op assessment in 10 minutes when you were 40. Now you're 50 and you're 30 pounds heavier and your time is two minutes more, or even year to year, you know, even start with just body composition, MPA, do a
30 to two or sub max test, and we can now start to add data and, and basically show us as firefighters like look, you are 20 pounds fatter, and you're now two minutes slower than you were last year, look at that correlation that's why managing your weight is so important,
because that two minutes can make a big difference on a call right so and we, I, we need to see that interface, because I think that's what really it takes and where the problem has lied is that I think we started off by going hey we need to do these fitness
assessments and I, I agree to a certain point I think we need to do more performance assessments instead of fitness performance based first fitness second, and then we can really start to draw the correlations between them, and there's a usable data.
But why we haven't.
And outside of Colorado has done wonderful things but they started because they had two people or three people have heart attacks. And if you want to wait for that call to happen or that situation to happen, I feel bad for your organization because right we have, I don't know how
we're going to do this, but we have hundreds of NIOSH reports or, you know firefighter injury reports that we could show that that it makes sense to start doing this you know. So, is that kind of where I know you and I have talked about this before and I think, you know, just from
the perspective of the
community as well I think that's where a lot of people are starting to move to is creating their own kind of occupational testing. And the good departments are doing that.
Well, this is one thing that I just come up over and over again a couple of things firstly, when it comes to unions again is this is about courage and it's about not self serving, and I'll call out, you know, bad union members and there's so many good ones out there
and I think that's one of the things Chris Macklin was on the show. But, but even them terrible work week though, great fitness initiatives you know on site physios and those kind of things.
Shitty work week so I don't do an MPA either. They don't do much for an assessment so I would say hey, even they could could improve, you know, on that and, and I don't mean to call them out but I'm like hey you're leading let's let's let's lead this.
Yeah, exactly. But I mean with the unions though you hear, oh you know you're trying to take you trying to take people's jobs.
And I disagree 1000% and no one is saying you introduce some sort of assessment and then, you know, that day you start firing people of course not you have an on ramp you have a transition period where if people are behind then you have you know you do have them
as trainers or whatever you want to use, and then then you filter out the chaff, you have the people that like oh my god if you know I fell off the wagon a little bit. I'm going to put the work and I'm going to get myself back to where I need to be and then you had the
people that never had any intention of getting in shape, and they go to prevention or EMS only or whatever whatever you know divisions you have well you fucking fire him because they can't meet and don't want to meet the criteria and people's kids are going to fucking
fight me because you can't perform. So that's you know that this kind of like, let's do nothing because you're taking our jobs bullshit is again another fairy tale, it's it's it's a cowardly way of approaching an issue.
Let's do nothing that sounds great. Yeah.
And then meantime our men and women are dropping dead from as you said cardiovascular and everything else.
And I don't know what you said I couldn't agree more, and I've said this. No one can say it's not fair if you ask them to move a ladder from A to B and then drag a hose from B to C and carry a dummy that said, yeah, let's be honest the dummies are usually way fucking
lighter than an average American. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but it's just maths.
So asking them to do these basal tasks. You did it in the academy to get the piece of paper that said you could work as a firefighter so it doesn't matter if you're male female, you know, 18 or 50.
You either can or you can't there's nothing unfair about that at all, unless you transition to prevention when now you're, you know, riding on a SUV with a clipboard.
You don't need to be in shape anymore. If you're on an engine or a truck or a rescue. When, when did you decide that you didn't need to be in shape. So this is what blows me away.
And one of the tools that I love I got a friend Rick Segrist who makes the fire sled, and it's the fire said the publisher and the ladder mill.
You can do an entire, you know fit for duty test every year with that and not have to touch anything on your rig, because I get that too you know you're pulling all the hose off and everything that people are like well I've only got three rigs in our city we
can, okay well then invest something that you can, and you can also incrementally load those. So say, you know, because this job beats us down I'm always very fair like we are set up for failure in this profession a lot of us, you are more likely to put on weight and have issues because
of the situation. So now you can incrementally load the fire side for example and make it, you know, have light then a little bit heavier a little bit heavier and before you know it you've cumulative you worked way up to being back in shape again, which is beautiful.
So, I love that versus the CPAP because CPAP you need a fucking warehouse to do with the fire sled or you know if you want to do it even cheaper, just sleds even cheaper still a palette with a hose wrap around it or an old tire whatever stop making fucking excuses.
Find something that simulates what it would do to be a fire ground tasks and no one can look you in the eyes and say, Oh, but that's not fair.
And that is because these are the tools you use in the academy period, you know mic drop. Yeah, yeah, I would never do, you know, we have a skills assessment at my fire department and it's, it's, I mean it was, it was a great start I believe I firmly believe
that it's it's it's something. And, and that's the good part of it could it be better. Yes, and.
And I think that's kind of what I least if, if you're looking at this you have nothing start with, get something going. You know if you're, if you're listening to this you're going, yeah, I see what you guys are saying but you know, well, one thing you could do is if you're
a fire, if you're an officer to create your own where you want to put your crew through it, you know, start that way or put yourself through it first you know just a little five or six different movements back to back to back go on here, start, you know, there,
do it yourself make sure you're, you're, you're, yourself is, you know, you personally can do it.
Get your crew to start doing it and before you know you start to get by in at a station, you know, and then from there, work, work through training I believe I, I, my personal take is that the training department is the most important department in, you know, in an
entire fire service organization. Everything including health and wellness needs to come down through them because the way that the fire service has changed the way that the fire ground has changed.
We're continually needing to do education, you know, even now, talking about monitoring post fire.
The IFF had just come out with a statement that said, we can't really measure all the different gases that are still, you know, are all the different things that are off gassing at a fire scene.
Our recommendation is don't even use a sense of monitor. If you're doing overhaul you should be on air.
That, that's should come through training because our policy isn't updated on that yet. And I know a lot of other departments is not are not as well so training needs to say, hey, let's, we need to implement this rule make sure everybody knows it same thing with
annual medicals.
We need to educate our members. This is why it's so important.
This is why we need to do it. And then that can be handled through other departments, but the training and of our own individuals on the health and wellness side needs to be delivered the same way we do EMS needs to be delivered the same way we do fire, because
and typically what I mean by that is when we do EMS training or we do fire training the fire service is very systematic, right, we you teach a to B to C to D, and then you review, and then if there's changes to it you go systematically at ways to disseminate that information.
That also needs to happen with health wellness and fitness. And what happens that I see is that like oh cancer is really big we'll put something out cancer.
And now, you know, you know, annual medicals get your annual medical.
And now we're talking about particulates. Let's talk about particulates. It's just whatever the, the, you know, sleep whatever it is the kind of the topic of the year they kind of just kind of, hey, look at this.
But that needs to be systematically taught in our, in our academies, and then needs to be brought forth in policy, and then an update it just like we are doing with fire just like we're doing with EMS so you know when we talk about this then I think training needs
to come up with this minimum performance assessment, you know, in, in conjunction with your fitness team in conjunction with your unit. But if you're training division and department can continually run that and educate people as to why we're doing it and I just
think that you, we have the systems already in place we just need to dedicate some some resources and some time to it and and really I think any department could actually do it whether you're big or small just you, you, and most departments already have
the resources that are willing to, to try and to be those subjects to start. You know, we, we've been very fortunate like with your podcast and then I know I've been around you a little bit at the, at the seminars and we have a lot of people who are coming up going
yeah I'm trying to get our department to do this we're trying to get our apartment do that, you know, and I, and I know when this is a message for, for those of you that are that person don't give up on it.
What's the best thing to do then, like, make sure that you can do those things, start, start playing around with them doing yourself to have your crew start to do them, push your training division maybe to do a drill on it, and try to push those around you to continually
try to, to implement these things.
So, and then on the other part about the people that don't want to, right, I think this is what happens in the fire service. We all believe we can do the job.
If it's in, if there's a burning building in front of me I know I can do what it takes to get the job done.
And for the most part I agree, we probably or you will probably do that now, the time that it takes you to do that job, the efficiencies in which you do it, and the ramifications that will have on your body are totally different.
If you're in shape, been practicing, you know training, you're going to do that job efficiently, and we know time is life saving time is very critical, moving efficiently is really critical.
The other part about it is the after effects of that fire, not only mentally but physically on your body.
Those things for somebody that's in shape and has taken care of themselves.
You can manage.
The other part is, if you're not in shape, you finally get that fire.
Yeah, you probably do the job. Yeah, you probably get hurt. Yeah, you probably be slow. Yeah, you'll probably be a detriment, which means other people are going to have to come and take over for something that you can't do.
And then the recovery from that is twice or three times as long, which means you might have to be pulled from the field, you know, and I got to work with Dr. Kyle Ebersol and UW Milwaukee and he said, you know what they're finding is, yeah, they're putting data to the fact that,
hey, firefighter A is in great shape, and they go to a call and they do A, B, and C, and they do it efficiently, and they recovered pretty well from it. And here are like their heart rates and blood pressures.
You take an out of shape firefighter, they do do A, B, and C, not as efficiently. They may even get injured, and it takes them a really long time to recover and sometimes they don't recover at all, meaning like,
you have a career ending shoulder surgery or shoulder injury or something. And so I think what happens is in our head as firefighters, we say, hey, I can still do the job.
And what I mean by minimum performance assessment then is, okay, show me you can do the job.
Every year, you just show me you can do the job. You got to go on here. You got to do, you know, those tasks. Same thing with like bailouts. I think that's a, like we bail out once or twice in the academy and then
they give you 50 feet of rope and they say you'll have to bail out in a, you know, a situation. Well, we should be doing a bailout every single year. You know, we should be measured on these things because
if you as an organization, and Frank Lieb, I just did a great interview with him. He just said, you know, the organization is going to set a minimum standard.
Right. We as humans will do that. If you as an organization don't set it, your firefighters and everybody else will, and it's not going to be as high as you'd like. So, you know, I think organizationally, we have to understand
all those different things I just said. We need to, you know, come together and say, hey, here is a minimum performance assessment. Nobody's going to lose their jobs.
We're going to provide resources to train, to get people to do it. And the union's going to buy in and say, yeah, that is our job. And when you can get all those particular parties to agree on that, then it's just the implementation part.
And I think it can be that easy. It really can. It's just we've got to get it our own ways. You know, I know very long-winded, but you get me all fired up, buddy.
No, I'm glad you were talking because I've been yapping way too much. I don't normally talk as much, but you got me fired up first. So it's your fault.
Too much coffee.
Well, firstly, I'd Frank on as well. And I love that perspective. You know, who do you want to set the standard? You know, do you want it as a leader in an organization or do you want, you know, the lowest common denominator to be your new baseline?
I agree 100%. And one of the things that I've talked about, John Spear and some of the other guys talk about, you know, would you want you rescuing you? And it's a great phrase.
But for me, being someone who focuses on other people, that doesn't even resonate hard enough. So I always say, how would you feel if your family died because the responder hadn't trained?
That is way more fucking sobering to me that imagine that you took it to your grave, that you knew that family died because you couldn't get through that window or up those stairs or drag them out of the Vegas shooting or whatever it was because you hadn't trained.
So to me, someone said to me once, I think it was one of the seals, like, you know, if you, you know, if you're with the right group of people, you don't even need standards. And I agree 1000%. Anaheim didn't have fitness standards and most of the guys in the department were in great shape.
And we would train all the time. And we would, you know, not only fitness train, but train train. And we did bailouts all the time. You know, we did all these things.
Every time we go on calls before you know it, you know, as a medical call, next thing we're on the roof talking about cuts and it was it was such an amazing culture. But if you don't have that, you know, if you're not careful, like my last place, the lowest common denominator will be completely out of shape scared of confined spaces doesn't want to put on their mask gets tired after three floors. And fucking Murphy's law, that's going to be the shit bag that's called to your family's fire.
Yeah, yeah, that doesn't that doesn't go up the stairs, you know, doesn't check they don't check the third floor. And you know, someone probably listen is going Oh, my god, you guys are being so dramatic. Well, look, we get one chance you might get one chance in your career to make a safe one time, like Olympics, Olympic athletes train for four, six, seven, eight, 10, whatever years for 11 seconds in some cases, right? We're kind of the same way. We get one chance in
some some people get two chances or three chances. But you want to at least look yourself in the mirror and look at your crew members and say I did everything I could man I did everything I could because shit still happens right you might be searching and, and you may miss that person
right like that does happen. But at the end of the day, if you're doing everything, if you're trying to minimize the risk, if you're trying to maximize your performance, it's easy. It's easy to move easier to move on. It's not never easy. But and I think that's just what I if anybody's listened to this, I just want you to think about a yourself personally, are you doing everything you can? Are you taking care of yourself? Or are you using the excuse of I'm taking care of everybody else? So I don't need to because I think we hide from our
ourselves. And that's a whole nother big topic. But I think, you know, in the fire service, well, I give myself to my family, and then I go work my side job. And then I go do this and then I go do that. And, and I don't have time to work out and I don't have time to eat right. I don't have time to, you know, go to the doctor because I'm giving to everyone else. And I in on paper, that's probably true. But when you look in the mirror, are you really doing everything for themselves? Are you running for something? Are you just running because you don't want to make the habit?
Or, or, or really figure out what's going on with you, you know, and I think that's hard, man, it's it's tough to do, especially when, you know, hey, everything's probably going well, from the standpoint of, you know, I'm helping people and I'm doing okay at work. But in the meantime, are you really well, I mean, and that that kind of gets into like the whole definition of healthy to, you know, you look at somebody who's maybe six foot two, you know, 12% body fat,
but their, their relationships are shit. And they, they, they really don't take time to work on themselves. They eat like crap. And they're doing nine, you know, monsters a day versus somebody who's maybe 20 or 30 pounds overweight. But they do their own your
medicals. And they, they, they try to eat right, of course, they have their occasional cheat. And they really try to connect with people and have good relationships. They go see a counselor every six months just to make sure they're shit straight. To me that that
individual, even though they're you're not gonna put them in the calendar is a lot more well rounded and healthy. And in which, right when the shit starts to hit the fan, that's the individual that I think is probably more better equipped to do the job. And so that's the other part of this is that, look, we got to look in the mirror and say, Am I at my best in order to help all these people around me? And if not, what can I do to try to improve today? What can I try to what can I do to improve tomorrow?
Now, people are listed as exam. A it's not easy for me be the probably think, well, you're a hypocrite, because, you know, you're not that good of a firefighter. You're right. I'm not a good firefighter. Thanks, mom and dad. And, you know, I do crush tequila and ice cream, sometimes. So yeah, I'm just like everybody else. It's it's a, a journey a battle every single day. But at the end of the day, did I do what I promised my
crew? Did I do what I promised my my family that I'm going to try to optimize every single day? Some days better than others. But, you know, it's a work in progress. And if you're listening to this, again, I've said this on numerous times, because I think this isn't just about you and I
have a conversation. This is about what we see and what we've heard from 1000s of other interviews and 1000s of other firefighters that go through the same shit, right? We all go through try these these ups and downs and undulations in our health mentally, physically. And battling them is, is part of life, man. And you're not alone. And it's not easy for James. It's not easy for me. I fucking hate burpees. I don't like running. But before this interview, I was on the treadmill because I knew he was going to ask
me if I did my workout today. I owe it to my crew. I want to see video proof. I'm not an Instagrammer. You know, nobody wants to see me. Then I look right after that. Yeah, I look like a puppy trying to fuck a football on that treadmill. Sorry. It's not pretty. But I did it. I got it done. And so and that's what I guess that's where my passion is. If you're listening to this, you're like, oh, whatever, Zam, it's easy for you or, you know, I've tried everything. Look, I've
given you my email address, I fire rescue fitness.com. If you go contact, that's me. If you go to my website, or if you go to my Instagram, it's get FRF, I will I'll try to help you. I'll give you a free workout program. I'll send you some messages to try to coach you. I'm 100% into this like, you know, I'm almost I'm 50. So it's not easy, man. And so if you're if you're battling the, you know, the journey, that's all right, man, you're not alone. But the goal,
is to just try to approve. And I've come up with this thing. And I don't know, I'm gonna let me, let me run this by you. I like this whole one degree idea, or plus one, like one for the one degree. It doesn't necessarily mean elevate one degree or can you know, because I think what 210 degrees water doesn't boil at 211 it does. So that one degree makes a huge difference in that case. But I was watching my robo vac the other day. And you know what it does? Like,
it hits a it hits a barrier, and it just changes one little degree hits it again, one little agree one. And over time, all of a sudden, it gets by that, that particular barrier, and it continues to move on. You know, the only problem with that is that someone goes, well, yeah, but it still goes through dog shit. But you know what, we all go through dog shit. If we just work on either elevating or changing, whether it's your outlook, or, you know, some part of your plan, with the intention to try to
improve, I think every single day, you're gonna, you're gonna get better. Same thing with your health, it doesn't matter with your fitness. And it and your and or your nutrition, just work a little bit every single day, systematically create that habit. And man, oh, man, it's, it's amazing at what stuff can become of that. I mean, look at you, like you didn't start with podcast 800. And whatever you started at podcast one. And you probably look at those and go, man, I was shit. I didn't, I didn't know what I was doing.
But I just decided to do it and grow. And, and I think same thing with anybody listening to this, your fitness, your mental health, your life, your relationships, just keep working on it. And you're not alone. Because, as I said, this does not come easy for me. I don't enjoy it all the time. I enjoy it some of the time. But I enjoy the process of trying to improve. And that's what I've really, the last couple years just said, it's not that I'm not satisfied with who I am. It's just I
think if I'm, I can make myself better to better serve. And that's really the goal. You know, so I think, you know, the one degree thing, I don't know if it'll catch on. But I like it. It's what's been motivating me lately, you know?
Yeah, I like it, too. And then going back to what you were saying before about this kind of to and fro. I just made a new shirt every couple years. I'll do a shirt. I'm not I don't have it in stock. I literally genuinely make a limited amount. And when they're gone, they're gone.
And we just move on. So this one I'm wearing now was from that's my first one. So I got six years ago now. Five, something like that. But anyway, the point being, I came up with a new idea for this this latest one. Because I'm like this, it just hit me. This is what we all struggle with, whether it's your fitness, your diet, your sobriety, you name it. So it says on the back self care and sabotage. And it's got a heart with a grenade pin on the top. Because that's it. Every single one of us. And you know,
Jocko and David Goggins, all of them have bad days. I don't care what is put on Instagram. Every single one of them has days when a family member dies. The dog gets sick, they get sick, whatever, you know, we are in this constant tug of war. And the moment you pretend that you know, you're this this kind of Robo cop version of firefighter nurse, whatever you do, you're setting yourself up for failure. And this is why I'm always so careful when I talk about firefighter fitness. And, you know,
the obesity and all these things is to add in the other side, we are working in an environment that is set up for us to fail. And it's not doom and gloom. It's fact the same way as a surgical resident is working insane amounts of, of, you know, insane work weeks. And there's one of my favorite books is about a neurosurgical resident.
And he ends up getting cancer and he writes this book before he dies. And you think about sleep deprivation. Ironically, the thing that he loved doing was probably the thing that killed him. But if you so if you don't give yourself grace and understand that no matter who you revere, they have the same fucking tug of war going on in their head than you do, they might have better discipline as far as, you know, creating habits. But they wake up every day and they don't always choose excellence. Sometimes they choose turn off the alarm and roll over. So that's why I love that concept. Because,
you know, it's it's all of us. I'm not putting a t shirt saying, you know, like you said, be the 1% now be be a fucking human. Give yourself some, some compassion. And whatever you've fallen off, it's okay. All you have is today. So just start today. Be gentle with yourself.
Yep, right. Don't don't beat yourself up over tomorrow. I mean, if you have a crew and you're in the firehouse, they're gonna do that for you. Right. Firehouse humor never hurts. But yeah, you're I love it. You summarize that perfectly that yeah, today's a new day. Whatever you're going to do with it, you know, not to sound too preachy, but it really comes down to that. And I think, you know, when you get into this habit of starting to blame everything else around you, you need to just look in the mirror and go, okay,
yeah, is this shit? Is that shit? Yeah. Okay, what am I gonna do about it? You know, I had therapy, one of my when I got I got divorced, I'm long, long time ago. And I hated my therapist, because she just looked at me and I just said, Look, my, my significant other, I think she's cheating on me with her boss. And, and she just looked at me, she said, So, I'm like, but don't you don't we shouldn't we address that? Should we talk about it? And she just looked at me. She's like, What do you? What can you do about that? What are you going to do? Like locker in the
basement? I think she even said that you can lock on the basement. And I hated her. I hated her. But it was the best lesson I could have ever heard at the time, because it said, that's that you can't control what they're doing. You can't control a lot of things in life. But what you can do is you can figure out what you're going to do how that that's going to make you respond. And I think when you break it down, all right, when you add the sleep deprivation, when
you add, then we're tired. So we reach for shitty food. And we reach for shitty food. So it actually depletes our energy depletes our cognitive function, we don't have enough energy to work out. That starts this vicious kind of cycle in within a firefighter's career. And we both kind of said, Hey, you're not alone with that. I think we all experienced that from time to time. Look, I worked a long shift on Saturday, I didn't work out Friday or Sunday.
Because I was basically just trying to find my my head again, you know, because I was recovering. But you damn well, but right, you're right. But that Monday, I was back in the gym. And today I was in the gym. And tomorrow I'll be back in that gym. And in my eating is reflecting that too. So eating is a little bit better. And I think that's one thing like if you were to ask me my biggest regret. When I started talking about fitness is that I used to just be like, hey, fitness can cure all. And I didn't understand it. And I apologize to a lot of people said, Hey,
if I ever gave you that meaning that fitness can cure all the ailments in the fire service, then I apologize, because it can't. Now I see over the years and experiencing and having great conversations with you that it's encompassing EMS really like we have to eat, move and sleep to optimize performance. And if we don't focus on, you know, the sleep part of it, we wind up making up for it, try trying to make up for it.
With how we eat, you know, the, the cravings and the high sugar and the, and the poor decisions and the caffeine. And then if we try to move and we move too much, or we don't move correctly, or don't move enough like that, that also plays into how we sleep and how we recover. And, and so, you know, going forward, I want people to really look at, you need to exercise, you need to exercise functionally, you need to hydrate first of all, you need to be able to move.
And you need to eat and make decisions based on performance. And every once in a while, if you're going to go on a cruise or celebrate, yeah, man, have had it have a good old time. But don't let that turn into, you know, one week turn into one month, two months, three months, seven months, you know, we just have to understand to the correlation between what we eat and how we feel and perform.
How we sleep or how we don't sleep and how we perform and lack of movement and how we don't perform or do perform or feel or, or even think, because I think what, what happens in the fire service is we lower that optimization.
And we all of a sudden kid ourselves by telling us we're fine. But yet we're not moving very well, we're injured, we're assholes. In a lot of cases, we don't have a lot of patience with people, we don't have a lot of patience with our loved ones.
And, and so that's kind of prompted me to come up with this new little challenge, by the way, which I've talked to you about, I'm hopefully, we'll kind of put our heads together a little bit and try to help change the fire service a little from the standpoint of, it's all about creating healthy habits and establishing, I think I like to call it my system, my system for success, my system for optimization, where it's eating right, sleeping, or focusing on what we eat.
Or focusing on sleep the best you can and getting exercise. And so I came up with like a little 50 day challenge where you got to exercise 30, 30, just 30 minutes a day, you got to hydrate.
You can focus on any following any diet plan, no cheat days or cheat meals or alcohol.
And that is a challenge in there. So there's 10 different things that I list and you choose seven of them. And then you hold on and you basically achieve those seven things every single day for 50 days.
The way that I'm going to do it through firerescuefitness.com, you can sign up, it's free. And I'm going to provide resources and links back to a lot of your podcasts and some other organizations are starting to support it.
And that's free with the intention of building these habits for 50 days will lead into another 50 days, which will lead into another 50 days. And as you keep going, you kind of change your goal up a little bit more.
You're like, hey, I want to focus a little bit more on this, or I want to focus a little bit more on that. Or I'm going to take off a week, but then I'm going to start my new 50 starting Monday.
And 50 is just a little over seven weeks. And it's something that I think we all can do and obtain. It's also a timeframe in which you can really feel the difference that making and establishing a healthy habit will do.
And it's just kind of a, it's our, it's my take of the 75 hard because I believe little challenges like that can help a lot of firefighters because we're that type A kind of personality.
We love a challenge and I'm hoping that that it can help some people along the way. I mean, I'm doing it. I'm starting it right away. January 1st, because there's some things I still want to work on.
Part of that too is, you know, there's 10 minutes of I stole this again. Some of these like were based off what Andy Frazile did with 75 hard and some of the other challenges, but I love the 10 minutes of self improvement reading every single day.
I believe that just correlates and transfers to every aspect of your life. You know, for me, I'm going to, I'm, I really have always wanted to learn Spanish.
So I was on a call where I couldn't communicate with a patient and it bothered me because that patient was in dire need and, and, and was in pain.
And so I'm going to take 10 minutes every single day and learn Spanish. You know, but the goal is that's, that doesn't have to be your goal. It could be whoever, you know, 10 minutes of just reading, you know, fire or listening to great podcasts or whatever it is.
But I, I believe that is a way just to get people to, to focus on these other, you know, avenues of health. And, you know, they exercise 30 minutes a day. I know a lot of people are like, Zam, I don't want to, I thought you had to rest or recover.
Well, that's part of it, right? Yoga, deep breathing, stretching, mobility, all that stuff can be done in a corner for 30 minutes, whether it's an off day or not, you know, or going to take a walk with your family, your dog playing, you know, some pickup hoops, whatever it might be.
Right. Like, um, surfing that's exercise, but trying to get moving every single day. So what would you add to that, buddy?
I think it's a great idea. And we talked about it when we were in Ohio. Um, and I've heard a lot of good things about, and he's actually, I'd like to get him on one day, but just because of that, I mean, you know, I know he's got the supplement lines and other things, but I think just coming up that with that idea has been great.
Um, you know, I've seen a lot of people do really well on that. I've seen people do the, the 48, was it the four by four by eight or whatever it is. Yeah. The David Goggins. Yep. Yeah. I'm not such a fan of that for the firefighters. I see doing it because they need to sleep.
Yes. Getting, getting a firefighter to understand what it's like to suffer for two days straight. We already live that. So for me, I'm a little last week. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, to each their own, if people want to do that, absolutely knock yourself out. But when it comes to 75 hard, you know, I see the application.
I've got, you know, a lot of friends, male and female first responders who've done it and they're like, it was amazing. It reset, you know, my caffeine, my alcohol, um, and then the reading too. I think that it's really hard for us to read because we're so tired.
And so just making it a little bite. And it's the same when I write, I don't try and sit down and write for four hours. I'd write for an hour at the moment and try and then it, then it builds up. You normally get in the flow, but I think it's a great idea. Just learn something.
And even, even podcasts, when you're driving to work, you know, don't listen to the fricking political news, put on a podcast, whoever you like, learn something, Tim Ferriss, Joe Rogan, you know, whoever. Um, and, uh, yeah, just absorb something. So I think, I think those are all great things. And I wouldn't, there's nothing I really add. Just, you know, the, the more you get into it, the more rabbit holes you go down, the more, like you said, you're going to lean towards one way or another. And that exercise fixes everything element.
I think we're now in the, in the fitness space, realizing that, that you need undulation. And if you come off a 24, which I used to, you know, then then do Murph, that might not be the best idea. So understanding that you can take that 30 minutes or an hour, whatever you end up doing and do, you know, what do they call active recovery?
So do mobility, do go for a swim, go for a walk, you know, hike, whatever it is that is equally as important. You don't have to be smashing yourself to pieces every single workout.
Yeah. The, the accelerator doesn't need to be stuck on go because what happens is eventually it just breaks. And, you know, and that's something I, when I was my younger self, I'd tell me, you know, I was that, you know, the old bull, young boss, the young bull just running down the hill constantly.
And I have to run back up, you know, to catch back up with the old bull. And, you know, the whole thing is just walk down at a good pace and, and monitor and you know what happens on the bottom. But, but, and I, and I would love to talk to Andy because I'm, you know, look, I love the concept of it.
The hard part of that, I get some first responders to be like, well, he had, I think they had 45 to 45 minute workouts when he had to be outdoors. Well, if you're on shift, you feel like, ah, I can't, can't do that. You know, so that's why even on shift, you can divide that up.
Like, Hey, 10 minutes, and then you get a call. All right, come back to another 10 minutes, get a call, come back to another 10 minutes. You can at least feel like you're making progress. And it goes back to that. Hey, just plus one or 1%, one, one degree.
I'm sorry, one degree. And that's just, Hey, at the end of the day, did I, I did these seven things that's working on improving myself, both physically, mentally, through the EMS kind of concept. And I, I can go to bed today, you know, and I'm going to focus now on sleep, trying to get a little more efficient at that.
Wake up tomorrow, do it again. And I believe that once we start putting those things together and people start to understand it, you know, the sky's the limit on where we can take it. And, you know, next thing we know, we're back here a year and a half, two years from now, we're talking about how the MPAs are now taken off.
And most departments are doing a four shift and they're, they're, they're assessing every single year, either ladder ops or fire ops or engine ops. You know, I think that's where it begins. So, you know, it's, it's unbelievable to talk to you again, brother, like, see, this is what happens.
Like, I think the first time you're not on the phone for like, must have been about an hour, hour and a half. And we kind of just chuckled. We're like, we should just record this. It would have been great.
Absolutely. Well, I want to go back to a couple of things you talked about, and then I want to get your perspective on working out on shift, you know, versus not. But firstly, you said, you know, that people would say, oh, you're being so dramatic. And we're talking about this.
And it popped into my head immediately. And it's sad. Well, you know, what if you were that person that made the decision not to go into a Valdi or you were that SRO that never made entry in Parkland because of your fear, your lack of training, et cetera. It's not dramatic.
But you said that one call people could die. That's it. So asking a first responder to be fit, asking a union to have a standardized level of fitness, asking a department to hold the bar high and maintain it is not dramatic. It's not unfair. It's what's expected, especially by the people that we serve.
So I just want to put that out there. You also talked about, you know, people that appear busy, but their life is kind of, you know, in shambles. And this is what I've seen.
It kind of had an aha moment probably a couple of years ago now. One of the least talked about mental health, poor coping mechanisms is busyness. And we all know that, you know, to coin the term the overtime whore, we all know that guy or that girl.
And we're like, why are you not going home? And it's because there's a void. And if they sit with their family or sit at home, they're going to have to address that thing.
But if you keep busy, which is at the detriment of your mental health and probably the detriment of your physical health, well, then, you know, that's a huge red flag.
So if you are the person taking all the OT, and then you're doing all these side gigs, and barely seeing your family, that's another great opportunity to self reflect and go, do I need all these things? Or am I, as you said, actually running from something?
Yeah, what is it really getting me and and and where do I want it? You know, I think sometimes we just get so involved with it, that, you know, when you pull someone aside, what is your goal? You're like, what is your, what are you trying to accomplish?
And is it is it well, I'm trying to do this for my family. Well, what if your family doesn't appreciate what you're doing anymore? You know, like, how do you and I know that's it sounds kind of crass, but, you know,
Susie and Bobby and Billy have everything they want, they just don't have daddy around. Like, how is that or mommy in this case, it could be as well, you know, and, and it's it's it's a hard reality face. Like I, like I said, I go back to that, that counselor that I had one one time ago, and they when she threw it back in my face, and I just freaking hated despised her.
But goddamn, she was right. Because I went back again. And I went, you know, I just got to tell you, I don't think blah, blah, blah. And then she did it again. And then I was just like, Yeah, you know what, after a while, it hit. And, and I think the sooner we I personally believe the epiphany that people need is, is that when they look around, and they go all this shit is happening to me. It's, it's never going to stop. You know, like, I, I always hate the old like, well, let's get this
together when things calm down a little bit, or I'm going to start working out when things calm down, because everything should be fine. And, you know, January, once you get through the holidays, or whatever it is. And look, over the course of my 50 years, I've heard that's 1000s upon 1000s of times, you know, how many times it's actually gotten calm when they thought someone said it, it never it never does, because there's always something else. And if there's not something else, sometimes we create that something else to avoid it. And that's kind of my point, right? Like,
the best time to take action on your health and fitness is right now listening to this. Right? Like, walk on a treadmill and listen to the rest of this. You probably get 30 minutes in Holy cow, boom, that's one thing you just did go take a drink of water, then go take another drink of water, and then avoid that sweet tray or avoid that sweet area, you know, like those are all things that are will help with will have will make you happier and make you more healthy. And, and I think you
should we just got to get into this. It's not all or nothing. It's little tidbits here and there make a big difference. And yeah, I you know, the whole thing about being dramatic. Like we just had a call where we had a structure fire and it was vented through the roof and you know, as a long structure and the crew, I think in the lieutenant, I, they did an unbelievable job because they looked and there's a car there. And they said, we got to go in, we got to go look, we got to do, we
got to see what the conditions are inside, we got to control our airflow in, but we got to take a look, we got to see if there's someone laying there. Like, it's our job, you know, and they got in and they got about 5060 feet in, it was a little too hot for them. But you know, they did a search along the way they came out when they needed to and then it got really bad. But I'm like, you know what, damn it, those that's awesome. That's that's what training gets you. It gets you the confidence to say, there's a car, it's 430. This thing is about ready to go, we got to do what we can. Because what if that's
that person is right inside that door? What if that person is in a livable area yet, you know, secluded and if they did find someone there, look, at least you look at your crew in the eyes and say, we did what we could. We did everything we could. And I think that's where training and fitness and just being optimized helps. And that's one call that I knew of in the last two weeks. And so I think everybody, when you look and break shit down, you can say it does matter, you know,
you gotta be ready for it. Absolutely. Well, I know another one of the conversations and not those right or wrong, unless it's simply being used as an excuse not to work out at all. But to work out on shift to not work out on shift. To me, you know, my personal opinion, I loved working out on shift because I was with a bunch of friends and I put together workouts and we do them. No, we wouldn't do Murph, we wouldn't murder ourselves. But you know, more often than not, you got through the workout and I was always
at busy, busy stations. But you know, if you're trying to carve out, carve out, you know, 30, 40 minutes for a higher intensity workout, chances are you'll get, you know, 80% of it done, 90, maybe all of it. Other times you'll be one rep in and a call comes in. All right, well, then when I get back, we'll try it again. And then some days like, all right, it's not going to happen. It is what it is. At least we tried. Other people have, you know, this is the one pushback I've heard. Well, what if you're tired? And I'm like, to be honest, even
if I'm tired, I'm still going to be one of the fittest people on the fireground because I'm diligent. And if we do get that structure fire right when you're done with a wad, I haven't, you know, killed myself. I got to hydrate, got to try and cool down the way to the, to the call. But, you know, as you know, the fit you are, the faster you recover too. So you can do a pretty solid workout and your breathing will be fine by the time you even get off the rig. So that's kind of my, my perspective on some of those conversations. What about you? You nailed it. And I think I was just at the NSC
a conference, strength and conditioning conference for tactical athletes. And they were saying that there really is no, uh, you know, they tried to find some data that supports the fact that you, that you burn yourself out after a high intensity workout, then having to do fire ground operations.
They found really doesn't, especially if you're in shape to start now, if you're not in shape and then you're doing that type of workout, well, that's just, doesn't make sense. You know, you shouldn't be doing that high intensity from like not working out, going to a high intensity workout, especially at the firehouse. I have two takes on it. One is that work on the thing that you know you need to work on that you just don't like to do. And I think for most of it's it's mobility.
And flexibility. So I, every time I work, I, I'm at the firehouse. I'm, if it's not a scheduled workout, like where I have it as part of my plan, it is a active recovery mobility workout, meaning I work on, you know, 15, 20 minutes on a cardio machine at a nice pace. And then I'll do, believe it or not, truck yoga, as I like to call it. But it's, you know, it's some yoga moves, some mobility moves, because, you know, 50 years old, first thing that goes is mobility.
And the more efficiently you move, the better you are. You know, the easier it is for me to lift my leg up, the less energy it takes me to lift my leg up. You know, the more I, the easier it is for me to crawl, the less energy I have to exert. So that means I have more energy down to do other things. So if you don't like doing the mobility stuff, do that on shift, get it in then.
The other thing is what's wrong with working fire ground related tasks in a circuit with your crew? 30 minutes of activity, 30 minutes of rest or 30 seconds, 30 minutes, 30 seconds of activity, 30 seconds of rest. Do your crawls, your carries, your stairs, your sledges.
You know, you can set up a circuit of six or seven different movements, start with three minutes of just doing some active mobility training. You know, I love to do like just some, I call them Spider-Mans, where you're in a push-up position, you step to the outside of your arm and works your hips. So work, you know, some lunges, some squats, just to work mobility, and then set up six exercises or seven exercises. You know, one can be a core, one can be steps, one can be a pull-up.
Slams, one can be pulls, one can be crawls, one can be, you know, just carries, one can be, you know, any fire ground related movement. Set your crew up 30 seconds of work, 30 seconds to transition. You do three rounds of that's 21 to 24 minutes. Add a little group stretch. That's a 30 minute workout. You work on fire ground related tasks, crew com comradery, and you work some mobility.
Some guys will do some more after that. And I mean, to me, that's a great workout. And the other part of this is if you don't have a plan, that's, that's your first mistake. So I plan, I know we all know when our shifts are going to be. So I plan my high intensity workouts, typically a day or two days, hopefully post shift.
And then I'll try to do more recovery based stuff on duty. And then the next day is usually one that I could switch out so I can switch intensities. Because if I didn't get any sleep, the last thing I want to do is go to the gym and do a high intensity workout. So I may actually have a just an active recovery where I take the dog for a walk that day. And we always do some stretches at the park and or whatever it might be. So I think, you know, when you look at training on duty, yeah, don't make it so point where you burn yourself out. You know, you're not going to be able to do that.
work on those things you don't like to work out on integrated and fire ground related movements, try to get your crew involved, make sure you hydrate before, after and stretch. And then make it part of a big picture plan. If you're not having that if you're just going Hey, what are we doing today? Well, it's chest and tries. It's Monday, bro. And then like Wednesday, what are you doing? Let's legs. Oh, let's skip that. I don't like to be legs, you know, and then Friday is Beachbody Day, you just do biceps and abs, you know, you're not helping yourself at any
That's not optimizing performance, that's not being functional.
So you got to have a plan also with this.
So I mean, I agree 100% with what you were doing.
And especially with crews, even if you don't like to do it, the cool part is if you say
you did crawls and you have three different members on three different fitness levels,
look the 30 seconds, all we want you to do is just crawl around.
Just do it at your own pace, your own intensity.
You may just crawl like 15 feet, but you know what?
Someone else is crawling 30 feet.
And so the next time you go, guess what?
You crawl 20, 25 and you wind up pushing each other a little bit.
It's a great thing to see.
So that's what I would recommend to do.
Well, I think the working out together is shared suffering.
It's kind of like being the academy again, you know, it pulls everyone together and you
know, and there's always moments where you're laughing.
Like one of my lieutenants in Orange County, he used to finish, you know, he absolutely
out of shape, drank Mountain Dew, like it was water.
And he was a smoker, but we got it to the point where he would work out with us, which
was awesome.
But then he'd sit on the row machine and have a cigarette after.
So, you know, it's like, you know, you have those moments too.
But the other thing you talked about 30 on 30 off.
So the EMOM, you know, which is what I try and kind of aim for is about 20, 30 second
rest every time.
That's such a great pattern for us as a workout, because what we don't talk about enough in
the fire service is we have a finite amount of air on our back.
And yet how often do you hear people talking about breath work, regulation, all these things
to make yourself efficient?
So your fitness is part of it.
But what I love is you've done, you know, let's say you had to do eight cleans and you've
made it to like 30, 35 seconds into the minute.
Now you've got 25 to work on getting your heart rate down, your breath down and off
you go again.
So I love that pattern because it makes us think about our breathing as well.
Yeah.
And that's really mimics.
I mean, when you're on the fire ground, it's like, go, go, go.
Okay, stop a second.
Go, go, go, stop.
You know, even if you're doing a search, it's go, go, go, go, go.
Wait, do you hear or see anything?
No, let's okay.
Let's go.
Let's we're out of here.
Let's go to the next room.
You know, pulling hose line.
Let's say 20 to 30 seconds ago and then where are we at?
Do we need more?
And even car accidents, you know, it's hurry up, hurry up, hurry up.
All right, hold on.
Let's stabilize.
Let's figure out what we're doing.
But you're right.
Focusing on breath.
And that's actually one of the things that I include in the Resilient 50 is just doing
a simple one minute exercise of breathing in through your nose, five, six seconds, pausing
for four or five seconds, and then out for one or two seconds more than what you brought
in.
And I think that there's some great research that shows how that can change from, you know,
parasympathetic sympathetic pathways and really help with cortisol response.
And I think that is a great tool for any firefighter, whether it's working out or just in a stressful
situation, just taking a couple of deep breaths, going to a call can really help reset you down.
And I mean, that's something we didn't even talk about.
That's a whole nother great podcast topic just to talk about the psychology and the
physiology behind that and breath work.
And so, you know, on your recovery days, definitely.
That's why I like yoga, because it works mobility and breath work on one, which we can all use.
Absolutely.
Well, I want to hit one more area and then we'll go to some closing questions.
But it's such a difficult conversation to have about working out in gear, because especially
now not only are there the carcinogens, but when we were at the conference, some of the
panel talked about PFAS as well.
I had Rob Bellot on the show, who was the guy that really exposed that in the first
place, the guy behind the film Deep Waters or Dark Waters, excuse me, Dark Waters.
And it's a real thing, you know.
So we have the carcinogens in our gear, we have the carcinogens in our gear.
But at the same time, if you're not working out in gear at all, you know, you're not going
to be prepared to actually, which is what drives me crazy again, with these insta heroes
that we have, they have a little leather helmet and then PFAS B uniform crawling down a fucking
bay spinning a spinning a hose.
Like you're not simulating anything.
Where's your gear?
Where's your pack?
You know, go up some stairs.
Now show me your your duck walk.
OK, now that makes sense.
So what is your perspective on?
Because it is a difficult conversation.
But you know, what do you tell your people about gear workouts?
Well, I think.
You know, we're paid to respond in gear.
Look, the research I've dug into and I get I get both sides and where we just we don't
under we don't know exactly what what our dangers are wearing our gear, you know, obviously
over long periods of time it is that there is obviously there's some exposure there.
But for a 20 minute workout, you know, like we just talked about to me, that's still what
we're paid to do.
And and the people that don't want to do it, I guess here's the question I have.
You know, if someone on my crew said, Sam, I just don't want to be in my gear that much.
I'd be like, OK, I'd be like, well, when's the last time you were in your gear?
Like, are you still doing something because we still have like you can't stand outside
the truck and go, Sam, I'm not going to wear gear into that fire like you like that.
That's not what we're paid to still go in.
So I do believe we still need to do our trainings.
Do we need to hang out in them as much?
No.
Try to get out your gear then as soon as the the the drill or the workout is over with.
But I what I've seen is a lot of people go, I don't want to do shit in my gear because
I'm like a cancer.
And yet they're still chewing tobacco.
They're not watching what they eat.
They haven't done their assessments.
They haven't done any cancer screens personally.
And you know, they they haven't really monitored and watched their own health.
So are you using that as a crutch to get out of things or using that with a with a real
genuine concern?
But if you had a real genuine concern of your health, why would you still be chewing tobacco
doing 17 different, you know, power shakes or whatever, or monsters every single day?
And you know, so I look at that and I go, OK, so you're you're the you're you're you're
concerned about wearing our gear.
Yet on your last fire, you didn't wear your damn SCBA.
To me, you're a hypocrite at that point.
To me, you're just trying to find some point of emphasis to ruffle feathers.
So I guess my first thought on it is, look, we've got to look in the mirror and say there
are so many other things that we can be doing to combat cancer right now.
Everything from wearing our SCBA all the time, getting your annual medicals, staying well
hydrated, eating more fruits and vegetables.
You know, and and I think what's being overshadowed is all the preventative measures that we should
be taking on a day to day basis.
Instead, we focus on whether or not we need to wear our gear for a training or whether
we should be wearing our gear for, you know, workout or not.
Now if somebody is got all their things in a row, they're really, really focused and
emphasize emphasizing their own personal health and says, am I have a real concern over this?
Then I would say, OK, I got you.
Yeah, you don't.
If you don't want to wear your gear on this this fitness drill or whatever, I would maybe
think about accommodating, but for most of us.
Look, don't be in your gear when you don't need to.
You don't need to be wearing it in this store.
You don't need to be wearing it in a parade.
You don't need to be wearing it, you know, around the firehouse.
Get into it when you need to get into it.
Get out of out of it when you don't need to be into it.
And yes, you still need to train in it because that is our job.
And until that does not become our job or until the gear changes, we have to be ready
to respond in it.
And if you are one listen to this and you have a genuine concern, look in the mirror.
Are there other factors you can control?
Work on controlling those because eating a good healthy diet can control and reduce 30
percent of all cancers, especially the ones that we get.
Not chewing tobacco can reduce a lot of out of those cancers.
Focusing on sleep can also and trying to really get better sleep can can help reduce cancers.
So what I don't like is that the fire service sees an issue and pinpoints one particular
fucking thing and says we need saunas, fire wipes and not to be in our gear to prevent
cancer.
Yet people are still auto shape, overweight, not focusing on nutrition, and we don't talk
and teach about that.
So to me, yeah, it's a valid point of discussion.
But what can we control right now?
That's what we need to put place emphasis on.
And so that's kind of, I think, my whole take on it.
Well, I love it.
And it really mirrors something I've talked about, you know, with the mental health stuff,
people talking about, oh, it's what we see.
And then with the cancer side, it's like, you know, it was carcinogens, which and again,
these are all pieces of the pie chart.
But there's PFAS one, everyone jumps on that.
And again, it is a piece of the pie.
And I've had guests talking about this, but where's the conversation on shift work?
Shift work is a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization.
Where's your fucking conversation?
Oh, but that's going to, yeah, we just like to blame other people.
We don't actually want to put the work in and change things.
We just want to blame these companies.
So those bloody corporations, you know, and it's back to the same conversation, having
the courage to actually stand up and change all the things.
And some of those mean that you're going to have to unify and question the way that we've
always done it and go, wait a second, we've been telling ourselves a lie, you know, one
on two off 10 days a month, all this shit.
All these civilians are working these, these, you know, these shifts and they're not dying
and they're not taking their own lives the way that we are.
Why do I, why am I not worthy of having the same health as these people when I put my
life on the line for these people?
So I agree with you 100%.
And with the gear workouts, the other thing, just as a caveat, it's also choosing what
you're going to do.
I love the class that I teach every Monday.
I got a free class that I do at the Prosfit here in Ocala and it's tactical strength and
conditioning, tactical athlete strength and conditioning.
And it's sandbags, sleds, kettlebell carries, stair climbs, tires, you know, sledges, because
that's what we do on the fire ground.
I don't need to put gear on and do muscle ups and snatches because that's stupid.
You know what I mean?
So again, it's, it's not black and white.
There's a middle ground that makes sense.
And if you haven't been in a gear for a while, then do some stairs, you know, but then when
you get to the top, do something finite as well, like add some realism to it.
When you get to the top of your 20 story stair climb, make someone tie three different knots,
you know, whatever it is.
I like adding that in too, but yeah.
So if you haven't been in gear, you need to be in gear and John Spiro actually, I don't
know if it was happened to it, but he was talking about creating a prototype for a kind
of gear that wouldn't be your bunker gear, but would simulate it that you would wear
when you work out.
And I'm like, that's, that's a great solution to the problem.
But until we get there or until we find a way of making our glean gear, like clean,
clean, we kind of, like you said, rock in a hard place.
So I agree a thousand percent, you know, if you're not talking about all the wellness
and the sleep, that is a huge contributing factor to the, to the cancer and you're just
putting all your chips on PFAS.
Yeah, you do need to look in the mirror.
It doesn't mean you need to wear your gear and ignore the PFAS conversation, but understand
that it's in your water resistant clothing.
It's in your saucepans and frying pans.
It's in all these things too.
It's not just in our gear.
Yeah.
Furniture, it's all around us, you know, and then same thing with, you know, the diesel
fumes, you know, do we have operable, you know, ventilation systems within our stations,
you know, and then, Hey, are we using them?
You know, it's the same thing with seat belts.
I've seen this and I, I'm not, people are like, Hey, Zam, you're hypocrites sometimes.
Look, I'm, I don't do everything, you know, a hundred percent perfect, but I, I'm really
working on just trying to improve and be better.
And seat belts, one of those things, because it's something that look, you get an accident,
you don't have your seatbelt on.
How is your administration going to cover you?
Right?
Like everybody knows that one.
That one's pretty easy.
So where's where your seatbelt?
Same thing with gear and SCBA.
Like cancer, it says, where your SCBA?
And you know, for me, if I'm on the fire ground, I got it on, I'm just gonna freaking keep
it on at some point, like, cause they're even now with research that shows you those engineers
back at the panel are still being exposed to a lot of person engines.
And so, you know, we need to just start thinking about, you know, what we can control and stop
pointing the finger at one particular issue.
And then like you saying, hanging our hat on that and saying, Oh my God, there's PFAS
in our gear and I don't know, like I shouldn't wear my gear.
And yeah, but what about those things you can control?
And it happened when like, when the cancer thing came out and everyone said, Oh, everybody,
we need saunas and these firewives.
And I'm like, you need, you need fitness and nutrition and sleep.
Cause those are the three biggest factors that can, can help control and combat and
reduce it.
You know, granted these other things help, but we don't even know if they help.
We don't even know to what degree here's all of this stuff that we got.
We know like you and I can reach, we could, we could come up with 30 different articles
that correlate sleep deprivation and cancer.
We correlate nutrition and cancer and the lack of exercise in cancer or in cancer.
So, you know, to me as a fire service, it's great to get these conversations out about
PFAS and about cancer, but we also need to place emphasis on what are the controllable
things that we can do?
What are the things that tasks that we should be doing and focusing on every single day
to reduce our chances and risks of cancer and to reduce our risk of, of dying of sudden
cardiac arrest and stroke.
And to me, that's where the no brainer is.
And if, if, if we don't get that, or if somebody doesn't get that, send me a message.
You could tell me I'm on something or onto something, but you know, it's just, it's so
glaringly obvious when you start to say data and research.
Well, also, if you have in the conversation where my gear's got PFAS, but you're wearing
leather helmet and the leather radio belt that's right against your throat on every
call, you know, I mean, these are, these are other parts of the conversation.
I also had the two firefighters, Stefan and David from the healthy firefighters group.
So it's the Swedish ones that came up with the clean cab concept.
And I love that idea.
Does it need to be surgically clinically clean?
No.
You know, there's always going to be an element of that.
But one of the big things I was a tiller man in California for a few years, and when you're
in the dog house in the back, you can't have your pack in there.
It's too small.
So your pack is in a compartment down at the bottom of the ladder.
So you steer your way to the call.
Obviously you've got your gear, your bunker gear on, you steer your way to the call.
It takes six seconds to throw a BA over your shoulders and snap everything in.
And then, you know, you're on a truck company.
So this whole thing about clean cabs stops grabs.
I've never seen anyone leap like a ballerina from an engine straight through the front
door.
Like some fucking, again, here we go again, Instagram superhero mentality.
No, you get off, you survey the scene, you listen to your officer.
They're going to tell you what to do.
You grab whatever tools you need from your rig.
You know, then you go quickly slap your mask on.
It doesn't take that long to fucking mask up.
No matter what, everyone tells you that you've got to have your helmet on your throat and,
you know, do it in three seconds faster.
Come on.
It's easy to fucking mask up.
So mask up when you're ready, you know, and then make entry.
But these are back to the Swedish guys.
I asked him about the sauna.
I'm like, you know, Scandinavia, that's kind of your, your world is cold plunges and saunas.
And they were like, yeah, that was never supposed to be the after a fire.
They're like, when you go in a sauna, your pores open.
So now it's going to absorb everything.
Now decon, you know, like not in the fire station later.
Yes, you can sweat stuff out, but you just want to scrub yourself.
You want to shower.
And they said even the shower shouldn't be hot.
It should be kind of tepid lukewarm so that you can wash everything off.
So when you listen to all these people, and again, these are two men that wear space helmets,
you know, listen to them.
It like that makes perfect sense.
But back to your point with the seat belts, what I realized is every time I wasn't belted
in going to a call, it wasn't putting my bunker gear on.
I step into my boots, snap everything up, throw the throw the jacket on.
And by the time the engineers ready, I'm bunkered up.
When I take my seatbelt off is when I'm trying to get the, the SCBA on.
SCBA.
So you take the SCBA out for decon purposes and safety purposes.
Now you're in a chair.
It's a regular seat.
It's not digging into your back.
And God forbid you have a wreck and you get brain by your SCBA.
You climb out, you grab your SCBA, throw it on your back.
And then like I said, a matter of a few seconds while you're surveying the scene and listening
to what your lieutenant wants.
Now you're ready to go.
So to me, the pack and you know, the, the, the carcinogen pack conversation and the safety
belts are all related to the fact that at one time it probably made sense to put packs
in there.
But now in 2023 we're realizing they don't need to be in there and add to the fact musculoskeletal
injuries, how many people with that extra incumbent load then fucking mess up their
knee or their, their ankle or their back stepping off, you know, with all that shit.
Cause let's be honest, most of our cabs are an absolute state with all the extra bags
you've got to carry.
So it makes sense on so many different levels.
Yeah.
And you know what, and I noticed too, like I personally, like I liked, I was all about
the, oh yeah.
You know, we are we missing time getting, you know, putting our SBBs outside.
Well now I'm sitting in the officer's chair.
I got the tick.
I got keys.
I got everything.
I have never been able to get out of that front seat without looking like, like I'm
in, you know, something always gets caught, you know, some buckle or something because
the cabs seem to get, be getting a little bit smaller and, and you know, thinking about
that.
So I take my belt off, grab what I need to grab, step outside the rig and then, and look,
we can challenge the engineers to come up with a system, you know, where it's like a
little panel right outside each, each door where you just open that up.
There's your pack.
You grab it.
The other thing is that, you know, when you're sitting down and you're putting that pack
on, sometimes your jacket is not in the proper position anyway.
So you wind up getting yourself out of, you know, you're getting all wanky coming out
of that, that, you know, seat and your gear is all over the place.
I just think, you know, are we, are we gaining time from the standpoint?
Yeah.
The, the time that the pack is on is faster, but the amount of correction that you have
to make and, or the chance of injury is, is not worth that extra two seconds or one second.
I guess that's the argument I would have to, you know, the, the, the people that are about,
you know, Hey, you got to have that SCBA in the cab because you can make that grab.
And yeah, but, but you also for a second need to figure out what's the best way to get to
that grab.
What's the best way to get away from that grab?
You need a second to talk to whoever to say, my baby is in that apartment or that window
right there.
You know, you're not just getting off the rig and running into a building and there's
someone, like there needs to be a pause also to see, like you said, you've got to do that
quick.
Okay.
What is my situation here?
What is my situational awareness?
And if you're, if you're just saying my pack is on, I'm running in, we're going right here.
Wait a minute.
Did you confirm that?
Is that just what you got on your MDC?
Because I know nine times out of 10, my MDC is not right.
So you know, if I'm outside putting my pack on for a brief second and someone runs up
to me and says, they're in that window.
And I said, wait a minute, our reports say this window.
They're like, no, it's my baby.
I just left it in that window.
Right now, all of a sudden, where's your argument, right?
For keeping the packs in there.
You know, how much more did I really save?
And I think we do have to look at the total picture on it.
You know, just like we do with all the health related things, there's always going to be,
and I've noticed this in the fire service, probably even to this podcast, we're probably
not going to be liked after this because we're saying too many things that, you know, require
change and or people to open a different eye or a mindset.
And look, I'm okay with that.
I'm 50 years old.
I've been in the fire service for 20 years.
I love it.
I love every aspect of it.
I love the fact that you and I have this conversation because we're both passionate about it.
I love the conversations with people that don't agree with me because even though they
don't agree with me, there's a passion there.
There's a passion to help and there's a passion to help each other to which I challenge then
people if you don't agree with this, tell me why.
Tell me where I'm missing.
Tell me what we tell James where we're missing out, but have a conversation with us.
Don't just talk shit behind her back or an Instagram post to tell us like, Hey, I don't
agree with it.
I was on a call where thank God I had my pack on and we were able to rescue someone.
I would be like, okay, that's awesome.
Great in that particular case.
Has it happened?
Maybe I'm missing out.
Maybe there's 150,000 people that have made grabs all because they had their SCBA on.
I want to know that.
So then we can, I'd change if you show me where I'm wrong.
I'm all about changing my mind.
Look, like I said, I'm 50.
I don't have an ego anymore because I know I'm not athletically gifted.
We've established that.
I'm just trying to give back to this wonderful thing I call the fire service because I've
worked shitty shitty jobs and been a part of bad professions, but not this is not one
of them.
And if we're hitting some buttons with people, that's awesome because hopefully then they
they talk about it and they have conversations about the four shift and they have conversations
about optimizing themselves, looking in the mirror, doing their own annual medical, challenging
each other to be a little bit better in the next year through 50 day challenges or through
the resilient challenge or just, Hey, I challenge you to read something every single day, 10
minutes, make yourself better.
That's really what it's about, man.
And like I said, we're probably not going to be toted as the most favorite people in
the fire service because God forbid we talked about shifts, helmets, annual medicals, minimum
performance standards.
I mean, what else, what other faux pas thing did we not?
I do.
I mean, as I'm traditional or I guess I like history in some areas, I think fire engines
should be red.
That's my favorite color.
You know what I mean?
So yes.
And I wrote a kind of like a yellow one in my last apartment.
But you know, but that's all superficial, you know, tongue in cheek stuff.
But no, I think this is it.
And the same way as someone might go, well, if you don't like America, because I talk
about, you know, for example, the last two couples of choices that we've had for the
president, everyone said lesser of two evils.
And so I talked like recently, we got a complete leadership void.
We know.
And I would imagine some people were like, well, if you don't like America, why don't
you just go back to England?
It's like because people that love this country stay here and make it better.
And that's how I see it with the fire service.
I could grow a mustache, put on a leather helmet, make fun of European firefighters
because we're so fucking heroic in America and do all the things and get the reach around
from all the other fucking fire groupies.
Or I can ask the difficult questions and bring people of all backgrounds to get their opinions
that work with high level athletes that work with SEAL teams and astronauts and all these
things.
And then maybe just maybe we'll go, oh, you know what, maybe it is time that we start
doing it a little differently because like you said, for that one grab, how many firefighters
did we lose from cancer?
How many firefighters went flying through a fucking windshield?
You know what I mean?
Because they weren't wearing a seatbelt because of the off chance that one prima donna was
going to leap out the fucking door and then make it on the front page of the paper again
with their pipe pole in front of someone's burned out house.
So it's an uncomfortable conversation, but like you said, we are passionate.
I haven't worn a uniform in five years and my entire podcast is about helping save firefighter
lives and improve firefighter lives and the relationships and other first responders and
military and civilians and everyone else because I give a shit.
And if you give a shit, sometimes you got to be a disruptor.
Sometimes you got to stand up, not just rock the boat, flip the fucking boat, make everyone
swim to the shore.
You know what I mean?
I think this passion is because we do care.
And if you really, really care, you don't mind if people are upset at you because you
know ultimately it's going to lead to good things.
Yeah.
And I think a lot of like, if you're upset about this, I guess the question is, what
are you upset about?
Like all we're trying to do is improve the thing that we love.
Right?
Like you said, like, I'm not telling you don't ride around in a fire truck, don't take pride.
All I'm trying to get is to ask the question, are you doing everything you can to be the
best firefighter EMT paramedic that you could be?
And if the answer is no, then I just implore you to do that because you love the fire service,
because you are that brother and sister, make yourself better, make those around you better
and focus on having conversations that need to be happening in order to make the fire
service better when you leave it.
And I think, right?
Like fire has changed more in the last 15 years due to data, due to plastics and now
due to lithium ion batteries.
Yet the way that we fight fighting them and the traditions that we're holding onto, it's
all about not changing.
And we can't.
We can't do that.
You know, accounting changes as technology changes.
NFL has changed, right?
The NFL changed their policy on, on concussions and helmets and equipment and every single
corp, like industry changes.
And yet the fire service, we're the fire service.
We have to wake up, we have to change and we have to adapt because what we're seeing
now is a lack of leadership.
We're seeing obviously now for the first time ever, we're not getting people coming through
our doors.
And in some environments, in some communities, we're losing support because we do stupid
shit.
So we got to wake up, we got to be our best.
We have to embrace our traditions.
We have to look around us for what's working and how we can utilize technology, how we
can utilize our own members better.
And I think it's the all starts with just looking in the mirror and you know, you and
I, like I said, I appreciate you having me on brother.
This is, we could, we could do a whole nother day of this.
And, and, and if people want us to come speak together, we certainly would do that.
I love to do a panel where people could say, Hey, what about this or what about this?
Have you ever thought of that?
To me, that's the essence of making everybody improve and making people think it's just
to ask these questions and, and, and spur those conversations.
Absolutely.
This is why I love the podcast format too.
You know, and even when we were at the, at the conference, I got to interview Jeff Orange
and Raul Reaver, excuse me, Raul Reaver, sorry, Raul, you know, and then talk about the pulse
incident, the pulse shooting.
Raul was a SWAT member that killed the turd and Jeff had set up Orlando's peer support.
So, you know, it was a beautiful little kind of perspective of it, but this is it, these
conversations.
And I agree, like if there was a Q and a and you know, whether it's virtual or in person,
I mean, this is what we want.
We want discussion.
We, we, when we have good leaders, we follow without question.
You know what I mean?
But there is times to question and times not when we're making entry and you've got a great
captain or lieutenant that you trust and a BC and they made decisions.
You just do the thing.
You do what you're trained to do.
But the same way as if you had a poor lieutenant, you know, in, in some of these working environments,
it's really important for us to question.
And if someone explains it and it makes sense, okay, no harm, no foul.
But if someone can't explain it, I love, I heard Tim Ferriss had a guest on years ago
and it was, I think he's Brazilian or somewhere from, you know, central South America.
But he said that he had a thing called the three wise.
And so you ask, you know, so, so, you know, why do, why do firefighters work 56 hours?
Well, you know, because we've always done that.
But why?
Well, you know, and then you go, well, because we used to just fight fires, but, you know,
now we do all this EMS.
Well, then why do you work?
And then when you go back in the third, why you can't, if you can't explain it, you have
to question it then.
And I love that.
Right.
You know, not once.
Ask three times.
You know, one step, one step, one step.
If it's always, you know, why do you drink war?
You're going to find out that you need to drink war, but why do we work 56?
You're going to get to the second Y and go, why the fuck do we work 56?
And that's where the gold is.
Yeah.
And I love your whole statement.
Like everyone else around us works a 40 hour even.
And you even see that like when they, you know, when COVID was out, they said, Hey,
everybody in the 40 hour work week gets XM&E one or two or three days off.
And then they were like, well, wait a minute.
They gave us the same as everybody else for days off, but we work more hours each week.
So that's not necessarily fair.
And they're like, Oh yeah, I guess, I guess we got to look at that a little differently,
you know?
And, and you're right.
Like why are we working 48 hours when, you know, 40 or 42?
And then anything above that, maybe we should be working that, giving that over time, you
know?
And I think these are questions.
Like I said, why are you worried about your gear when you haven't gotten your own assessment
or even done any cancer screens?
You know, why are you worried about whether a sauna works or not when you haven't worked
out in two years?
You know, why are you worried about, you know, an annual medical requirement when yeah, you
haven't, you haven't taken care of your own stuff, you know?
And I think there's so many different wines that we can use to challenge people.
And, and like I said, you got to start with yourself, start with those around you and
then make, make that organizational change through, you know, that, that, that movement
from within.
We've seen it happen and it's happening down south.
Like you were saying down in Florida, I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't one day a chief woke
up and said, I'm going to switch to four chief, four shifts.
It was organizationally, people got on board with it, that union got on board with it and
they made that happen.
And I think that can happen in a lot of different places, you know, and I think the same can
happen with fitness and the same can happen with nutrition and, and realizing, a, it's,
it's going to be tough, but it's certainly worth it.
And B you're not alone, you know, and that's why we're here.
They can, they can reach out to you.
I know you answer your emails and you answer the questions on the podcast.
And again, people can reach out to me at firerescuefitness.com or zam at firerescuefitness.com.
Hit me up on my Facebook.
I mean, I'd love to have more discussions about it.
And if people need help with health and fitness, I'd more than happy to help them out with
programs.
Beautiful.
But I was going to ask you where to find you.
You just did that for me.
So I just want to say thank you.
We've been chatting about two hours now.
Didn't go into your life whatsoever.
Ended up just, you know, like you said, kindred spirits really just kind of batten the ball
back and forth, but it's an important conversation.
Sometimes I like doing this, you know, get away from, from the blueprint that I do a
lot of the times.
But so, yeah, we'll have to do another one down the road, but I want to thank you so
much, mate.
It's been a great conversation and important conversation.
And I hope it does just could light the fire and some people and be like, you know, I deserve
better.
My family deserves better.
So I want to thank you so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the
Behind the Shield podcast today.
Hey, likewise, brother.
Congrats on just the impact you've made.
Like I said, you're the OG podcaster, brother.
And so it's an honor to be on your show.
I've always watched all your social media stuff.
I think someday I'd like to be on it.
You know, I like to reach out and, and you're, you're just as genuine as you appear to be.
So congrats on that.
And thank you for having me and enjoy your having a little vacation.
So enjoy it, by the way, take a little R&R, but I look forward to our future conversation.