This episode is sponsored by Transcend, a veteran owned and operated performance optimization company that I introduced recently as a sponsor on this show.
Well, since then, I have actually been using my products and I've had incredible success.
There was initial blood work that was extremely detailed, and based on that, they offered supplementation.
So I began taking DHEA, BPC157 for inflammation, based on the fact that I've been a stump man and martial artist and a firefighter my whole life, lots of aches and pains,
dihexer to help cognition after multiple punches to the head and shift work and peptides.
Four months later, they did a detailed blood work again, and I was actually able to taper off two of the peptides because my body had responded so well to just one of them that it was optimized at that point.
So I cannot speak highly enough of the immense range of supplementation that they offer, whether it's male health, female health, peptides to boost your own testosterone, which I would argue is needed by a lot of the fire service,
or whether it's exogenous testosterone needed, especially after TBIs or advanced age.
Now, as I mentioned before, the other side of this company is an altruistic arm called the Transcend Foundation,
which is putting veterans and first responders through some of their protocols free of charge.
Now, Transcend are also offering you the audience 10% off their protocols, and you can find that on JamesGearing.com under the Products tab.
And if you want to hear more about Transcend and their story, listen to episode 808 with the founder Ernie Colling, or go to TranscendCompany.com.
This episode is sponsored by a company I've literally been using for over 15 years now, and that is 511.
Now, my introduction to their products began when I started wearing 511 uniforms years ago for Anaheim Fire Department.
And since then, I have acquired a host of their backpacks and luggage, which have literally been around the world with me.
The backpack where I keep all my recording equipment is a 511 backpack, and then most of my civilian gear, the clothes that I wear are also 511.
Now, more recently, they've actually branched out into the brick and mortar stores.
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So if you want to hear more about 511 and their origin story, go to episode 338 of Behind the Shield podcast with their CEO, Francisco Morales.
Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing, and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show the world's strongest firefighter and Ohio's strongest man, Marcus Waugh.
Now, in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from his journey into law enforcement, working in the jail system, powerlifting, his path into the fire service, making the first responder family work with his wife as a firefighter in the same department, strong man training in the tactical athlete, his powerful spiritual moment that bolstered his faith, and so much more.
Now, before we get to this amazing 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 950 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 Marcus Waugh.
Enjoy.
Well, Marcus, I want to say two things. Firstly, thank you to our mutual friend, Will, for making the introduction and secondly to welcome you onto the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Thank you very much. I've been looking forward to this for a couple months now.
Yeah, me too. Me too. Where on planet Earth are we finding you today?
I'm in Tweedle, Ohio, in my home, in Delta, Ohio, which is about 20 minutes outside of Tweedle, out in the country.
So my wife's from, I know it's not close to you, but she's from Ohio, but in the North Canton, Cleveland, so that part of the state.
Yeah, it's gorgeous.
About two hours away.
So let's start the origin story then. Tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings.
Okay, I was born here in Tweedle, Ohio.
My father, Tom Waugh, my mother, Pam Waugh, were high school sweethearts.
They grew up in Norwalk, Ohio, which is actually really close to Canton.
The North Canton area. I have two siblings, a brother and a sister, both older than me.
I'm the youngest and the biggest. My brother is small, my sister is small, but what they lack in size, they make up for, and just how fierce they are.
It's a pretty cool dynamic, all of us together.
Let's see here. Like I said, born and raised in Tweedle, Ohio, I ended up playing college football at the University of Cincinnati.
I got a scholarship there, moved on and played a little bit professional in the arena league out in Chicago.
Come from, my father, he played college football as well. He played for the Ohio State University.
My mother, after high school, she kind of just followed my dad and went to cosmetology school in Columbus.
They've been together for 49 years now, something that you don't really see anymore.
But before my father, I come from a line of military. My grandfather was in the army. My great grandfather was in the military as well.
So the military service kind of broke after my father, but I wanted to serve my community in some way after football was over.
So that's why I chose to be a firefighter, and I've loved it ever since.
I think it's important that our generation now and the older generation relays the World War II generation, because we've literally got a handful left.
I'm about to share a video I found of one of my friends who's behind the rifle, and they sat with a 106-year-old French soldier, World War II veteran.
That's an incredible voice. I know he was kind of perturbed at the way that some of the French were deemed as running away from it,
because I'm sure there was obviously so much courage within the French army as well.
Did you have any conversations with your grandfather about his service before he passed?
I did. He actually fought in the Korean War, and he talked about mostly basic training. He talked about how hard that was.
He always said how the generations now don't know how hard it was when he went through.
He said I would have made a great soldier. I had two choices in high school. It was either get a football scholarship or go military.
At that point in time, I didn't want to fight. I still wanted to serve, but I didn't want to fight.
So I worked my butt off and ended up getting a scholarship to play football, but I still think it was one of my greatest regrets was not joining the military.
I want to get some Korean veterans on here because it's funny. Literally a little animation was on social media a few weeks ago,
and then I happened to watch a documentary on the plane on the Korean War, and that was actually where this animation was from.
But they call it the Forgotten War. You've got your World War II vets and you've got your Vietnam vets.
Obviously in between, we had a lot of incredibly courageous combat from our veterans back then, but Korea was almost completely overrun by North Korea.
Literally the southeastern tip was the only bit that wasn't conquered, and it was the allied nations that came in and helped the South Koreans drive everyone back.
This is, I think, a story we need to tell. Obviously we have more Korean vets than World War II vets, so we need to give them a voice as well.
Absolutely. So going back to the siblings for a second, what age were you when, annoyingly as a younger brother, you were bigger and stronger than your older one?
So my brother, he is 44. He was a senior in high school when I was a seventh grader, and that's when I finally took over him.
I got all my dad's size. My dad was 6'2", you know, 265 pounds. By the time I was in seventh grade, I was already 5'11", 185 pounds.
I thought I was a running back, so I was athletic. When that happened, my sister has always been tiny. She's like 5'120", silk and wet, but she was always super strong.
My mom is only 5'1", so my mother got her jeans passed on my brother and my sister, and then everything about me is my dad other than my eyes.
If I put glasses on, me and my dad are the same, like we're the same person. So one seventh grade hit, that's when I finally took over my brother, and wrestling kind of turned into I was winning now, not him.
You must have been one of those kids that we see in the videos of why you shouldn't have contact when you're in middle school because there's that monster, that one guy on the team that looks like he's 57.
Seventh grade is when they stopped having weight limits to run the ball, so that's when everything changed.
So talk to me about that. What was your progression from first trying the sports as a younger kid through to arena ball?
So football has been ingrained in my family. My grandfather played at Bowling Green State University here in Ohio, and my dad played for Ohio State, and I played for the University of Cincinnati.
But having that family lineage of Division I college football being played in our family played a big role in my love for it and almost obsession for it.
And with that obsession came my obsession for the weight room, just wanting to be bigger, stronger, faster than everybody else I could, and to put in that hard work to move on to the next level.
So after high school was done, I did like six camps over the summer going into my senior year to get a scholarship.
I finally got a scholarship offer from the University of Cincinnati and absolutely loved my time there.
I played football. I played fullback and some linebacker. Did some great things there, won two championships and ended up going to two big time bowl games, one in Florida for the Orange Bowl and one in Louisiana for the Sugar Bowl, where we played at the University of Florida with Tim Tebow, if you know the name.
We got absolutely crushed by him, but just being in that atmosphere was really cool and going against some elite athletes. And then I got a tryout with the San Francisco 49ers.
They brought me on during the summertime. Didn't end up making the team, but my agent called right after I got let go and said, you know, the Arena Football League in Chicago, they want you to sign you.
So I signed with them and that was like playing hockey on turf. It was a real small arena.
They got the walls up so you could smash people into the walls.
And I think football players are a little demented when it comes to one net physical contact and dealing out punishment.
So it was one of the funnest years I ever had playing ball.
But injuries caught up. I've had ACL surgery in my left leg, shoulder surgery, labor on my left shoulder.
It was just time to stop. So once I stopped with my dogs playing in the background, once I got done with football was over.
I still had this, you know, want to compete.
And that's when a buddy of mine who's a powerlifter here in Toledo, by the name of Jason McNett, he said, hey, why don't you try powerlifting?
And I got into powerlifting and absolutely loved it. So you're still pushing that pushing your body to limits that are that seem unobtainable.
And then that kind of just blossomed into now going in the strongman.
Going back to, you know, high school, college, one of the observations that I have when I first moved here and I've said this many times.
So I apologize to people that heard me give this prologue or epilogue, whatever is the right word.
I realized that there was a lot of Uncle Rico's and I mean that, you know, fondly I do.
But these guys that were in their mid 20s, you know, maybe 30 and I would have, could have, should have if it wasn't for the ACL, the labor on the, you know, whatever it was.
And when I look back at the UK, we didn't play at this high level.
We didn't have weight rooms.
Certainly when I was younger in schools.
Now, some people obviously went on to play high level rugby and football, you know, soccer.
But most of us just played.
And I think that then carried over into adulthood.
So you had pub leagues and local leagues and all these kind of things.
And so grownups kept playing the sports that they played in school.
What appeared to be the case, and it's always interesting getting athletes and coaches perspective of this, is that performance was eeked at such a high level in school and colleges in America.
That sometimes that was actually at the detriment of the health and longevity of the athletes.
What is your perspective through your journey?
Just the fact that you see it now more than anywhere else is that the kids coming out of high school look like grown men.
I played, I coached at the, at Amtey Wayne High School, which is a local high school here.
When I was in school, like I was one of the biggest guys in the team at 225 pounds and 5 foot 11.
Now I'm seeing kids 6 foot 6, 300 pound guys that run as fast as I was in high school.
And you see that, and obviously that has, you know, your advances in diet and nutrition stuff, supplementation, and the weight room.
Because the weight room wasn't even very, very big when I was in high school.
It was just me and my dad lifting in our basement.
That was my lifting program in high school.
But I think seeing how fast these kids are excelling when it comes to their size, strength, and speed.
I think the equipment hasn't caught up to it.
And that's when you see a lot of longevity issues with, you know, concussions and ligaments being torn.
Because the, you know, your quads are getting so big and so powerful, your ligaments haven't caught up yet because you're so young.
You know, I think I read somewhere that your ligaments and your tendons don't really gain full strength until you're like in your late 20s and 30s.
So these kids are getting so fast and so strong and so powerful so quickly that you're going to have those ligament tears, those tendon tears,
and the muscles basically pulling off the freaking bone.
It's crazy to see some of these injuries I've seen with some of these young kids.
It's because of how fast they have accelerated in such a short period of time.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's interesting even from the other side, you know, you get the very, for lack of a better word, obese kids that are brick walls on a football field.
But, you know, if the coach is telling them, oh, you know, keep eating, stay at that size,
well, that's all well and good for you to win that season of games.
What's that doing for that kid's health when they're 20, 30 years old?
Are they going to be even bigger?
And we see this sadly.
There's a lot of big football players that were probably quite athletic when they were younger and now they're obese, you know, and they've got heart disease.
So I think that there's a gray area, you know, there's a middle ground that you can eke performance and still glean longevity, still add health to a young person.
But I think sometimes those lines are blurred and organizations are focused more on the win than on the holistic health of the child.
I fully agree with that.
There's a lot of short-term outcomes instead of long-term care for their athletes.
They want the wins to make themselves look better and then it's a detriment to the kid.
But you see a difference now coming to light where these coaches are really caring about their kids' longevity in the sport.
And afterwards, too, like you see a couple of buddies I played with after college was over, you know, they slimmed down, they looked like whole different people.
And they're doing great.
They're running marathons and stuff like that.
Me, I went the opposite way.
I gained a little bit more weight, but I gained muscle to do stuff I like to do.
Well, while we're on that subject, just a tangent, what I've noticed is the world's strongest man that I started watching when I was young.
So Jeff Capes, for example, was one of the legends back then.
Oh, yeah.
But they were usually big boys as well, you know, big round boys, extremely strong.
And then you see Eddie and some of these other ones now that reached this incredible peak.
But then they're in this battle to regain their health.
But then, you know, you got other athletes that seem to actually have been able to stay lean whilst they're still winning championships.
So what have you seen as far as, I guess, body composition, for lack of a better word, and health within the strongman community specifically?
Well, it's definitely making a switch before, you know, a lot of the events were more static strength.
And so you're, you know, you're Brian Shaw, six foot nine, feel 400 pound guys who won it four times.
I think the change started with Marius Pujanowski, who was only 290 pounds, but just 12 pack, just ripped dude.
And now Mitchell Hooper, who is, because he was an Olympic lifter and turned strongman, stays lean, very explosive, very quick guy.
And now he's winning a bunch of championships.
And now with Tom Stolman, who just won it this last year, is a more leaner guy, more explosive guy.
So I think strongman is changing from just not just static strength, but also now your strength endurance, which is helping the sport when it comes to longevity.
Yeah, I'd love to get the Stolman brothers on one day.
I think that'd be a fascinating conversation.
The thick Scottish accents.
All right, well, what about back to the school age, career aspirations?
Obviously, you're excelling in football.
Were you dreaming of becoming professional?
Was there another career in mind as well?
I'm always the dream to play in the NFL.
I wanted to do that and I wanted to coach one day and be a teacher was actually the initial goal.
When I got into college, I ended up taking exercise physiology and realized quickly that that major was going to be very tough for me in playing football.
I was sitting in the front row of one of my classes and the teachers asking or professors asking, who here is pre-med?
People were raising their hand.
Who here is for physical therapy?
People were raising their hand.
I'm sitting in the front, as you're supposed to as a football player, is looking at me and goes, where are you?
I'm like, exercise physiology.
He goes, you're going to have a rough time.
I'm like, oh, great.
I ended up switching.
Actually, a good friend of mine, a former coach of mine, Colin Botroll out in Arizona, I lived out there for a little bit.
He was in the FBI and he was also in Bureau of Criminal Investigation for a while and he was a homicide detective.
That really interested me, catching bad guys and stuff like that.
I went into criminal justice after that with an emphasis in prison reform.
I wanted to be a prison warden and help with prison reform.
After I got done at a college, I was done playing football.
I was doing some personal training.
I ended up getting into the sheriff's office here in Lucas County in Tweed, Ohio.
I was a sheriff's deputy for a little bit and working corrections in the jail.
In five years of that, I was done.
I lost all taste for the criminal justice field and found out the fire department was hiring.
Got on there and that has been the greatest decision of my entire life.
I had a guy on a couple of times now.
We became friends, Tom Erbihard, and he was the governor of Bastoi Prison in Norway.
That was one of the models.
It's like a community.
There are real murderers and violent criminals in these prisons.
Obviously, Norway in itself, the culture is a little bit different.
The way they looked at it was one day these people are going to move back into your street down the road.
What can we do to maximize the chance that they don't go back to their behaviors?
They had to live together, cook together, clean together.
They didn't have their freedom.
They're on an island, but apart from that, it was like a normal life.
They could be educated on new trades. They could take classes, all these things.
Their recidivism rate was so low.
What was your perception of the lens that you had in the jails?
Jail is always a pre-sentencing facility.
I didn't work in the actual prison part.
It was actually the county jail.
I was in third shift booking, so you got all the guys that were fresh off the street, angry all the time.
I was there for five years because I was a big guy.
They wanted me there to be a deterrent for violence.
It was just fighting every night.
Guys drunk high off different things.
They were riled up because they just got arrested.
They wanted to take it out on me.
I'm like, hey, I didn't book you in here.
I'm just here to process you, get you to your court date, and you can either go to prison or go home.
What's one of the two?
Seeing that every night for five years, it takes the love out of it.
My initial love for it was to – I hated the way that our prison system was set up to where you're just locked away for every single day.
You're not going out anywhere.
You're not learning anything.
By the time you get out, you have no skills.
You've been away for so long and you just right back to it, right back to crime again because you can't get a job because you don't have any skills.
You just got out of prison.
You were a felon most likely.
I wanted to reform the prison system wherever I could to make it to where Norway is a great example of that.
It was like a community.
That's what I wanted it to be, where you actually have a sense of pride for yourself and what you're doing while you're serving your time.
Then when you're done, you're actually productive in society.
Yeah.
I think it's amazing hearing most, not all, but most people in law enforcement, their perception of prisons, their perception of drug prohibition.
Most of the people wearing the uniform, most people in the court system feel the same way.
Like this is not working.
It is not working.
But they say about insanity.
You're just expecting different results.
This is exactly the same with the fire service.
Why are we not fixing cancer and mental health problems?
Well, we're still working in the same way.
Worse now because of the hiring crisis.
But I digress.
I won't go down that road quite yet.
It's really amazing to hear all these voices because I feel like people that listen to this show and other podcasts and obviously watch documentaries,
you start layering on the truth rather than what the news is telling you or the propaganda from your department.
And I mean that again, fondly, but a fire department or police department is going to tell you we're tough on crime or whatever the slogan is.
But that's an empty gesture if it's just not working.
The war on drugs is an epic failure.
So I think it's really important that we hear voices like yours, the men and women that were boots on the ground.
I appreciate that.
Thank you.
So five years in the jail, which is interesting because I know a lot of the Californian departments, they have to do that first.
I think jail and or prison, I forget which one now, then they get to go out on the streets.
So it gives them a very interesting perspective on that world prior to patrolling.
What was it that made you take the switch from that to the fire service then?
The times I were out in the field, just the hate you got all the time.
I want to help people.
That's always something I've loved to do with coaching, with personal training, that kind of deal, mentoring kids in college.
I worked with the Boys and Girls Club of Cincinnati to just mentor kids.
And that's what I wanted to do.
I wanted to make a difference in people's lives.
That's what I thought I was going to do with being a police officer.
And it was the exact opposite.
The second you got on the street, everyone's like, F you this.
They don't trust you.
They don't like you.
Even if you're nice to them coming up, they don't trust you.
And every time I saw a fire come up, everyone's like, oh, the firefighters are here.
This is great.
You're here to save us.
We love you.
I'm like, man, I picked the wrong field.
I'd rather get liked when I come on than getting yelled at.
So when I saw they were hiring, I took a test and ended up getting on my first chance.
And it was definitely a blessing.
I used to cringe when you'd work with some of those people in the fire service that were just dicks.
They just should have retired years ago because that was exactly that.
Most people admire us.
Most people like us.
Most people are glad to see us.
But then when someone goes and screws that up just with a bad attitude or arguably some mental health issues they haven't dealt with,
just be nauseating because, man, you're going to take us into the police world if you keep yapping like that.
Yeah, absolutely.
No, I think we talked about the mental issue stuff and mental problems that people have.
It's not talked about and it's not dealt with in the proper fashion.
And you take that stuff to the job with you.
It's 24 hours.
There's no reason why you can't get on your job 24 hours and work with your crew like a family and get through the day
and then afterwards not take that stuff home, to be able to leave it at work and to be able to talk about it
when you need to talk about it to get it off your chest.
So for so long it's been suck it up, buttercup, and fight through it, don't talk about it, be a man, whatever that means.
But it's gotten to a point where some people can't let it go and it affects their everyday life and affects their job life.
To where you get that miserable dude that has been on the job for 23 years and he hates being there
but he's there to collect a paycheck and it ruins it for the rest of us
because now the public sees that guy and thinks that's how all the firefighters are, unfortunately.
Well, even though I've seen this a lot locally, like the young guys see that guy and think,
well that's how you're supposed to be, now you've got some 23 year old acting like a 20 year salty vet so pissed off.
Dude, you've been working three years, what the fuck are you angry about?
Yeah, you should be happy to be here.
Yeah. Well, one of the things, the least discussed elements of mental health in our profession
is what happened before we ever put the uniform on.
For you, for example, you had five years in the jail and then prior to that you had a life.
When you look back at your formative years, were there any elements that would contribute to adding to the trauma
when you actually put the uniform on itself?
Oh, not really. I had a great mother and father who, my mother was always big on wearing your heart in your sleeve.
My dad was more of the, because he came from a military family,
he was a little bit more reserved when it came to that kind of stuff
but I never once felt that I wasn't valued or loved in my household.
I went through a little bit of trauma going through a divorce.
My ex was in the military but we ended up not working out
but my wife I found now, she's a firefighter as well
and having that at home, it makes a difference when it comes to your mental health
where we both see the same things and we're able to talk about those things openly
and a lot of traumatic stuff that happens in the fire service that we don't talk about
and to be able to talk about it with somebody who understands it,
not just someone who can just listen, but someone who understands it and can say
I'm really sorry about that, I really know what you're going through.
It makes for a very happy household.
I think that's why ER nurses and firefighters and medics do well together
because it's a slightly different setting but the same kind of trauma.
Absolutely.
So you mentioned going back prior to the fire service,
you mentioned getting into powerlifting.
So walk me through your strength journey
and then how did that factor into your success as a firefighter?
So going through college was my first real introduction into an all-out weight program.
Programming, nutrition, that kind of deal like that.
And I was immediately addicted to that, the strength gains and stuff like that.
My max bench in college was 450, my max squat was 650,
and my max deadlift was around 550.
I've always been a better squatter than deadlifter for some unknown reason.
Everyone says they have a stronger deadlift and squat.
I'm the exact opposite.
But once I got into powerlifting and learning new techniques
and how to use my body more efficiently when it came to the lifts,
seeing those numbers jump up, back in 2020 I squatted 850 pounds raw
and benched 520 pounds raw and deadlifted 720 pounds raw.
And that feeling right there, seeing at 30, let's see on 36 now, 37 now,
38 now, oh my God.
I'm just aged two years right in front of me.
So 32 years old or 34 years old, squatting 850 pounds
and just that feeling of getting stronger and stronger
and learning new techniques and new ways of doing things
is an addiction when it comes to how you feel during those workouts
and seeing the difference in your body.
How did that factor in when you started doing the job, the academy
and the probationary year as far as working with the implements
that we have to on scene?
So I had to make a little bit of a switch when we got into the academy
because it was all push-ups, sit-ups and running.
But the second we got out of it and on the probation,
stuff we do, carrying the ladders and the different extracations
that we have to do.
My first week on the job actually, the probationary period,
I'm green but I want to work, I want to help
and we get a car extracation, they can't get the door open,
they can't get the door open and it's on the side.
So we knew it was shored up and stabilized
but I jumped on the top and actually dead lifted the door off.
Pulled back one side so we could get a better look into it
and that's when I really thought this is all the power lifting
finally coming to fruition, what I need to do.
So that was the first instance of where my power lifting
is really transferring over to the job.
But it wasn't until I got into Strongman
that I really found that full transition
into what it does for the job.
I've always said this, one example would be
an ejection where someone or a pedestrian ends up under a car.
I was talking to one of the road rescue gurus the other day
about the kind of overdone, sometimes in the fire service.
Now if someone's got no issues as far as being crushed
and breathing, you've got all the time in the world,
you set the airbags up, you set the cribbing up.
But there's other times, just like you see the cops
drag someone out of a car with their bare hands,
there's other times where you've just got to go into fast mode.
And I think that the ability to dead lift, for example,
would allow a crew to raise a car off someone
so that you can drag them out.
If they're being crushed, if it's on fire,
you don't have time to set up spreaders
and all these kind of things, you needed to get the person out.
So I think that that kind of raw strength,
kind of guerrilla ability sometimes
is just on a rapid extrication is needed.
Not just that, but when we get in,
we have a week after our one world's strongest firefighter,
we actually had a life safety fire
right down the street from our fire station
and there was two people in there.
One of them was a very plus size human being
and we would need multiple people in there
to grab them and get them out.
But with the job, I was able to get my arms underneath them
and just pull out as hard as I could
to drag them out without having really any more help needed.
And just that amount of time,
because full smoke, guys getting smoke inhalation,
he's already hypoxic, he's starting to talk,
getting gibberish and stuff like that,
and trying to fight us off him.
So time is oxygen, time is brain activity,
that kind of deal, so to be able to get them out as fast as possible
and I attribute that to the Strongman stuff.
I love the Strongman movements
and I teach a free class here and I am not a Strongman competitor.
I'm not a Strongman compared to you, for example.
Your numbers, like my max deadlift is your bench press, for example,
or was your high school bench press.
However, I remember doing a video a while ago now
and I had, I think it was like exactly
kind of what you talked about with your bench press numbers,
about 400, 450 on a sled.
And it was just doing sled drags
and I love sled push drags, sandbag carries
because I think they're so functional.
But the comment was, I can pull my heaviest firefighter out of the fire.
The question is, can he pull me out?
You know, because it's, I mean, it's,
I want to be able to pull you out if we're partners.
But as you know, in some departments that don't hold fitness seriously
and allow a massive level of deconditioning,
that person becomes a liability
where they're struggling to get themselves out
and sure as hell wouldn't be able to extricate someone else.
Yeah, I love and hate our union.
I love our union because it takes care of us,
but I hate our union because we'll never have fitness standards
because they won't vote it in
because too many guys would probably fail it.
And it's sad to see because when I look at a firefighter
and I taught two academies ago,
I taught, I was the drill instructor when it came to physical fitness,
I wanted the guys to be able to pull me out.
If you can't pull me out or the biggest guy out,
what good are you?
I can carry you like a suitcase,
but if you can't pull me out, I'm going to die
and you have to tell my family that you can't get me out.
And for most of our stuff when we had to,
teaching rapid intervention training,
I would volunteer myself to go be the victim.
You got to pull me out as the down firefighter
because I need to know you can pull me out
if you're good enough to do this job.
Yeah, yeah, I think, I mean, this is such an important conversation.
I was actually thought of analogy the other day.
The lowering of standards in the fire service
would be no different than an ocean lifeguard organization saying,
as long as you can doggy paddle, you're good.
You know, absolutely insanity if you put it that way,
but that's exactly what we're doing.
You and I have got to put on 100 pounds of gear for a high rise strip,
climb 20 stories and then go to work
and then search for people and then advance hose lines.
And so it's not for everyone.
And the opposition of fitness standards drives me crazy
because if you imagine going to SAS selection or BUDS
and being like, yeah, this is kind of hard.
Can you can we just lower the standards?
You'd be thrown off the beach in a heartbeat.
You know, most elite fighting, most elite fighting force.
Can we not swim that far?
Exactly.
But we're the most elite, you know, rescue force in the US.
We're it.
You call 911.
We are who shows up.
And so, you know, you can't pull someone out of the line of fire
in Vegas or you can't make it up, you know, to halfway up the world
trade. I mean, then what good are you?
This is what's so maddening.
And the fact that we have organizations that beat their chests
and say that they're the greatest union in the country,
they can't even figure out getting a work week that needs to,
you know, that creates longevity and health and performance
or a fitness standard that promotes the ability
to use the tools that we have on the fire ground.
I find that fucking disgusting, to be honest.
Yeah. And I get that everyone on the service has their role.
My wife is five foot one, five foot two, 115 pounds.
But she's going up in the attic.
I'm throwing her in the attic and she's going to put out the attic
fire or she's going to go into a confined space.
My big ass is not going to get into any confined spaces anytime soon.
But I'll be a damn good anchor for that rope, though.
Yeah.
Well, I think this is a conversation I've had on here a lot.
When we talk about diversity in the fire service, of course,
you know, ignoring underserved populations is wrong.
And I think that the mentorship programs are exactly how we fix that.
We go into underserved populations and then we find the best candidates
that would become great firefighters, police officers, whatever it is.
But the other side of diversity is just like you said,
the small people that go over the wall, you know,
the large people that are there breaching a door
and then, you know, the kind female firefighter paramedic
that you need to put in the back with the domestic assault victim.
You know, there's got to be that personality and cultural diversity, too.
But those all still demand a level of performance.
And that's the missing part of the conversation.
Absolutely.
Yeah. Like I said, I'm all for, you know, everyone has their role.
But at least in your role, you better be damn good and damn good in shape to do it.
Let's talk dummies on the fire ground for a second.
This is another thing that's driving me crazy.
The worst case, my last department, they did a confined space drill
and they had a 30 pound, I think 30 or 60,
regardless, not human size dummy.
And now you think about the US and it's sad because I was just in.
Where was I? I forget now, but somewhere recently.
And I'm just looking around and male and female.
No one was really below 250, you know, most people.
And so we have these mannequins that we train in
and the heavy ones, arguably, are like 180.
Usually they're even lighter than that.
And again, I feel like that does a disservice to, you know,
I'm not expecting one person to one arm drag a 400 person,
you know, 400 pound person.
So if an average American is 250,
then maybe that evolution demands two of you going in there.
But I think that that's a real level of ignorance
when we underestimate what a, quote unquote,
casualty would be in training.
And I totally agree with you.
That's one thing that we made a point of the doing this last
Academy that we taught in is that we're going to use real people
as our victims to get them out.
When it comes to Denver drills, you know, getting a guy out of a window
when it goes to finding a down firefighter, it's one of us.
It's going to be one of us.
It's not going to be a small person.
We wear 100 pounds of gear, you know, as CBA, everything.
And you better be able to get us out in a timely manner
or find out how to get us with somebody else.
So problem solving.
And once again, you better get your butt in shape
because you're pulling a real person out, not a dummy.
If you were king for a day,
what would the fitness standards look like for the fire service?
I'm a big proponent of the push up parts.
Good.
I don't we don't run.
I think it should be some sort of stair
work in the you're on a stair stepper with 80 pound vest on.
You got to do it for so long.
That type of deal or a lot of push up things.
But I like it in gear, not just in by yourself because you once again
you're we're in 80 to 100 pounds a year.
You should be able to do push ups with that on.
And then some sort of drill with a sledgehammer,
that kind of deal with that moving either a heavy tire or something
like that, like acting like you're breaching a wall
or breaching a door to get in stuff like that.
That actually pertains to the job, not just running
because we don't we don't run very often, but we do do high rise.
So I think we should use the steps in that as well.
Yeah, 100 percent.
I think that's how you then avoid people.
People are always scared about lawsuits and making it fair.
Just use the things that we use.
If you got to move a ladder over here and then throw it
and then drag this hose and pull this dummy and climb these stairs
with a relative amount of gear on you, then no one can say it's not fair
because it's the very tools that are on your engine, your truck, whatever it is.
So we've already got the standardization simply in the tools
that we have to use every day.
A 24 foot extension ladder is a standard weight for most departments
if it's the metal ones, if you're not in San Francisco or somewhere.
So just create that standardization because then it doesn't matter
if you're black, white, gay, straight, male, female.
It divides people into the line that should be.
You either can or you can't.
And that's the only prejudice that actually has value in the fire service.
Yep, I 100 percent agree with that.
And the the different stuff we use, the different apparatus
we use, different equipment use has no bias.
No. And the people that we're going to rescue don't care what color we are,
who we sleep with, where we pray.
They just care if we're going to get there and get their kids out.
That would be very awkward coming in.
Oh, are you straight?
Yeah, I don't want you pulling me out of there.
I see a tattoo.
You need to get out of here.
All right. Well, with the Strongman, talk to me about how you transition
from powerlifting to Strongman and then what are you seeing as far as the value
of that training in the fire service?
I was powerlifting and my first Strongman meet I did was in 2017 called Battle of the Borders
in Mount Peleer, Ohio, which is another 40 minutes west here, right on the Indiana border.
And I figured I'd try it out because a buddy of mine I worked out with
at the gym I was at by the name of Mike Fortress, he was doing it.
And he was a strong man.
He goes, why don't you come out here, use your first one, have some fun with it.
I ended up winning.
So I ended up being very good at it.
And I really liked the movements we were doing.
We deadlifted a car, which was really cool.
We squatted with an axle on our back with big tires.
It was really cool to see, log press for the first time, then doing Atlas stones,
which I'd never done before.
But it's much more cool stuff to do, more fun.
And I realized while I was doing it, man, this is more functional strength,
more what we call farm boy strength, and full body strength,
not just a squat, deadlift, and a bench, but it's all those little muscles,
those little stabilizer muscles, and you're doing stuff for as many reps as you can
in a minute, not just one rep.
So now you're getting the cardio aspect into it and strength endurance into it.
This is our job, our job of picking dead weight up from the ground up to your chest,
or deadlifting a car from the ground that's lifting something off the ground off of somebody.
Just seeing how, or feeling the movements and then knowing that it's retained to the job
more than I ever thought possible, that really got me that transition
of loving powerlifting to really loving strongman.
What about the cardio element?
I've had a few people from the strongman community and strongwoman community on the show
and if I'm remembering rightly, they kind of looked at the medley side of competition
to really forge that, as you said, muscular endurance.
Yeah. When you go into a fire and you're doing overhaul at the end,
you're pulling ceiling, you're breaking down walls, trying to find hot spots, stuff like that,
it is taxing. Your shoulders are destroyed.
You're breathing heavy.
It's, yes, forced air coming through your SCBA, but you're still sucking wind.
Or if you're in the initial fire attack, you're moving, advancing a fully charged hose line
that's 250 feet if you're doing the long bank through a house.
It's not light. It's not easy.
Or if it gets kinked, the hose gets kinked on a corner, you're sitting there yanking at it
or someone else is going to help you advance that line.
All those is that strength endurance part.
And feeling that with the medley stuff that you're doing, five different overhead presses,
straight shoulder work right there, you're pulling hose down or you're pulling ceiling down.
When you're having to do deadlifts for as many times as you can in a minute.
So one of my last competitions was 600 pound deadlift as many times as you can in a minute.
I ended up getting 12 reps and that's just that constant movement,
that constant strain on your body is what we do when a big emergency is happening.
What are you seeing when you travel around the country and you interact with fire departments?
What are you seeing as far as the more progressive fitness philosophy or culture in some areas?
And then what's the kind of opposite side of that?
So me and Will talked about this already because I asked him what kind of stuff they do at FDNY
and they're transitioning big into strongman stuff.
Even when it comes to their academies,
they've got guys out there with sledgehammers hitting these metal poles for as long as they can.
It goes down this rail line. It's so cool to watch them do it.
And they're doing sandbag stuff for deadlifts that pick up the dead weight.
Seeing that transition I think is going to be more beneficial to firefighters.
We're trying to do that here in Toledo.
My wife started a strongman group for the women of Toledo Fire
and she's got like six girls that come and work out with her
and just to see their strength gains.
My wife is once again 115 pounds maybe
and she just lifted 180 pound atlas stone to her chest.
Incredible.
Seeing how that's transitioning now to the fire department
or on the job is really cool.
But then you see the opposite side where you get the traditionalists where
oh we got to go out and run six miles today or run two miles today
and we'll just do some light bench and we'll do some stair stepper
or we'll just do the rower.
That's my workout for the day.
But yet these guys have no muscular endurance
when it comes to actually getting after it.
They're the first ones to walk out with a low air alarm because they're sucking wind.
When you mentioned the atlas stones, I did combat arts for a long time
and got rocked, got you know saw stars but never was knocked out.
The closest I've ever been to being knocked out was lifting a damn atlas stone.
I guess I just held my breath and the whole world went down to a tiny little tunnel
and I literally I sat down before I fell.
But yeah, I've never never had that before.
I bagled out like never before.
It was crazy.
I think I did the sandbags.
I think just the nature of the stone and the fact it doesn't give a toll pushing on your chest.
I don't know.
But yeah, I literally knocked my ass out, my own ass out.
It's one of my favorite apparatuses to use those stones.
It's unforgiving and it tears up your forearms.
If you're not careful, like I said, you'll vagal out in a heartbeat
but it's that super dead awkward weight from the bottom
and just lift it up to a pedestal.
It's pretty cool.
What did I do wrong?
How do you avoid that vagal response when you're lifting?
Is it exhalation?
Yeah, so the initial pickup, you hold your breath.
When you lap it, you got to take a couple good breaths to get you going again
and then just a quick belly breathe instead of a chest breathe.
You press that Buddha belly out against your against your belt
and then lift.
My problem every time I vagal is when I take a chest breath instead of a belly breath.
That's probably what it was.
I had no belt as well.
All that blood rushes to the head.
Yeah, exactly.
I almost end up wearing a stone.
All right.
Well, the other thing that I found served me incredibly well was CrossFit for a long time.
And I've actually met the gym that I train at,
which if you're ever in this area, I got to get you there
because they've got a whole strongman competition they do every year as well.
Awesome.
But we've actually switched it switch now to the Wolf Brigade programming.
It's a lot more kettlebells and maces and that kind of thing.
But alongside both the training that I do and then I teach again,
it's not strongman competition training.
It's taking what you guys do and just applying it at a more of a weekend warrior level
that I think balances it out.
But whether it's CrossFit or even the Wolf Brigade,
the danger I think in the gym is you tend to just stand still,
whether you're deadlifting or pressing or swinging a kettlebell, whatever it is.
And what I loved about the sleds and sandbags
is you're actually carrying weight over distance.
And I think that that's a piece that's missing in a lot of programming.
Yes.
I've had a great coach for the last two years,
Coach Ben Pauley out of Rochester, Michigan.
He was a big powerlifting coach, but he has transitioned into strongman
and he's done some crazy things experimenting with me
when it comes to different movements.
And today when I go into the gym later on,
I'm doing sandbag front squats with a 350-pound sandbag on my chest.
So we'll see how that goes today.
But just the different ways of targeting different stabilizer muscles
and core strength.
The other day I had to do viper presses with a log,
eight sets of three with only 30 seconds rest in between.
I wanted to just murder myself.
Or I thought that one of those reps
where the log was going to come right down on my head
because I didn't have any more air.
But just the different things we're doing now.
It's basically what I feel like some of the strongman stuff we're doing now
is that it's CrossFit type programming, but with strongman events.
And I think the mixture of the two would be fantastic.
If you think about the new strongman that's coming in
is just really heavy CrossFit.
Yeah.
Have you ever heard of Julien Peneau from StrongFit?
Yep.
Yeah.
I actually trained with Julien years ago.
I heard him on barbell shrug, the original barbell shrug.
And was blown away again the way he was talking.
He's a mad genius.
He's going to come back on again talking about how now they're using movement
when it comes to trauma release and PTSD and all kinds of stuff.
But I was just amazed at the way he was talking.
And he talked about the weaknesses that the CrossFit community were creating.
The lack of development in the hamstrings and posterior chain
and the rear delts from all the kipping.
And it just made perfect sense to me.
And I'd actually had a back injury,
had rehab using a thing called foundation training,
which is a movement practice which is phenomenal.
And Julien was actually offering a free training session
if we could track down a Dragon Ball Z coffee cup that changed
when it got hot.
So I found one on some Chinese site and sent it to him.
And I happened to be going over to California to take foundation training's
because I was so impressed that it worked with me that I became an instructor.
But I did the training with him.
And that kind of again like the movement over distance,
not only from a strength conditioning point of view,
but also an analytical point of view.
And one of the big movements that he loves is the overhead yoke carry.
So your arms are completely extended.
And if you film that person from the back,
you can see if we're kicked over one way,
if one shoulder is higher than the other,
if the lats are engaging.
So I find a lot of that not only is great from the training side,
but also the diagnostic side.
Yeah, we're doing that with a bamboo earthquake bar with hanging weights.
And I'll hold it over my head and walk with it
and you can see where I need to be more stable or what's lacking.
So it's a lot really cool to be doing these movements
that I've never done before and actually working on deficiencies
and seeing how that it carries over to my competitions.
So talk to me about the progression in your training
because ultimately you ended up winning Ohio's Strongest Man
and then we'll get to obviously the Arnold Classic.
So what began to separate you from other strongman competitors
that allowed you to be so successful?
So back in 2022, I was teaching in the academy
and I ended up doing a charity flag football game,
speaking of weekend warriors.
I caught a football and went to plant
and totally ruptured my achilles, my right achilles, snapped it in half.
And I went to a surgeon, orthopedic surgeon,
a trauma surgeon by the name of Dr. Tank.
And he said, you know, I'm going to get you
so you can be a firefighter again,
but I don't know if you'll ever be able to compete again.
Back in 20, so the early 2022,
I got third place in the World's Strongest Firefighter.
I haven't done anything else strongman since that.
And when he said I wouldn't be able to compete again,
that instantly started a fire in my brain
saying I'm going to prove you wrong, not just you wrong,
but everyone else saying that I shouldn't compete again.
I want to prove them wrong as well.
So that's when I hired Ben when we met through mutual friends.
And so what's supposed to be an eight month recovery,
I got back to work in three months
and I was training again in four months.
We had a plan.
We set a plan together saying
you're going to win Ohio Strongest Man in 2023 in August
and then in March of 2024,
you're going to win World's Strongest Firefighter.
And we stuck with that plan.
A lot of experimental exercises to get my leg right again.
A lot of single leg, a lot of stuff on bozu balls
and foam pads just to get just that,
the small muscles, stability, flexibility, that kind of thing.
And August came around and I won Ohio Strongest Man
and then a couple of months later
and that went in World's Strongest Firefighter.
I think it was a mixture of just sheer grit
and will to prove people wrong.
And to my faith, if I get emotional, I'm sorry.
I went to World's Strongest Firefighter in 2023.
I was invited to just watch because I couldn't compete in it.
And I don't know if you're a man of faith or not,
but I was standing there watching them
and I heard a whisper like someone was standing right next to me
and the whisper said, do you trust me?
Just literally like it was me and you talking right next to each other.
There was a whisper that said, do you trust me?
And I literally looked and turned around and didn't see anybody.
And I've always been a religious person,
but not really too into it.
But from that moment on, I just gave trust
and gave it to him.
Rest is history.
That's amazing.
I mean, the number of people I've heard that have had that voice
and I am very, I have a deep faith.
I don't subscribe to a specific religion,
but I absolutely have a deep faith.
Even this book I'm writing right now,
I'm trying to bear my soul to the universe
and God and the souls of some of the people I'm writing about now.
Being that in tune, I think is beautiful.
And I think this is it.
Whatever you call that thing, it's real.
I truly believe it's real.
And you hear these experiences,
especially on someone who's struggling
and that voice is actually holding their hand
and then pulling them back towards a beautiful place.
I think it's so good to hear those stories.
Yeah, my sister has been in the church for a long time.
She actually sings in the choir.
And when I told her the story, it gave her chills.
And I can't thank God enough for the position he's put me in
and the path he's put me on.
And I heard a quote the other day that said
there's nothing more dangerous than a man who knows his purpose.
Amen to that.
Dip your knuckles in broken glass and let's go.
Let's go.
All right.
Well, speaking of injury, I've had this conversation
with quite a few people,
but the one that really stands out is Stuart McGill,
the back mechanic.
I was asking him about sleep deprivation,
the shift work that we do and injury.
And he goes, well, it's not if it's when.
And this is so apparent to me
because how many times have you heard people say
it's always the fit guys that get hurt.
Well, the fit guys and girls take their job seriously.
They're out there drilling on the back apron.
They're in the gym trying to take the job seriously
and be fit and strong and prepared for someone's worst day.
But when you dive into the world of strength and conditioning,
everyone's favorite athlete is not awake for 24 hours every third day.
They're resting and going ice baths, doing all the things.
What have you observed about shift work and training
and then what tools are you trying to bring in to offset
some of that negativity
when it comes to the work that we do?
Well, it's your diet.
This is the biggest thing, nutrition, what you put in your body.
We as firefighters and first responders,
a lot of times we eat real hearty meals
and we snack all day and we try to sleep when we can
and it's very detrimental to your health
and weight and your fitness level
because you're eating real hearty meals,
heavy carb meals, heavy fats meals,
that kind of deal like that.
And on your days off, you're still eating like crap
because you're tired.
I just did 18 runs in 24 hours
and four of them were after midnight.
I'm not going to sit and meal prep and eat something healthy.
I'm going to grab the quickest thing to me,
scarf it down and then go to sleep.
So that's the negative outlook that I've seen
when I first got onto the fire department.
But I'm thankful to have a crew of guys
who we are all very health conscious
and fitness conscious.
One of the guys, Brian Henry,
he could be a competitive biker.
He does long distance stuff. He wants to do Ironman,
that kind of deal.
Another guy is a bodybuilder by the name of James Jekolini.
Another one, Matt Hendricks,
wants to get into Strongman with me next year
after he gets surgery done.
So I have a great crew that wants to be fit,
that wants to eat healthy.
We do eat healthy and fantastic cooks.
And you get a lot of that too in the fire department,
some fantastic cooks, but they cook the wrong stuff,
not the good stuff.
So I'm thankful to have a crew.
And if you have a crew that's tight like that,
they all have the same outlook and the same goals.
They've come to every competition that I've competed in,
whether it's in state or out of state,
they make their way there.
It's that family aspect we're looking for.
And having that makes it so much easier to stay on track.
And we all talk to each other outside of the fire service of,
hey, you go to the gym today,
hey, what do you eat today?
That kind of deal.
That kind of accountability helps too.
How did you forge that tight knit crew?
Was that just by accident or did you have a kind of leader
pulling everyone in?
So Station 21 is the oldest station in Toledo.
It was built in 1930 and it is a crap hole.
There's like black mold in there and stuff like that.
But it's really cool because of just the history of it
and still has the original slate on the roof and stuff like that.
It's really cool.
Looks like some of the Gothic times.
And the district we're in is pretty busy,
which that's what we want.
We all want a busy area.
I was the first to bid in there.
And then I had a buddy of mine who was in my class,
that's Ciccolini James.
He got into it because I did.
And then we kind of just recruited from there,
getting all the other guys, young guys.
We're all young crew.
All of us have been on eight years or less
and we're all hungry and we all get after it.
Yeah.
I always found that you've more often than not found
the most cohesive crews in the busiest parts.
I always bid the most struggling areas usually apart from the last place,
which is the theme park.
So there weren't really any struggling areas there.
But before that, I just always felt like that's not only where you get the most
fires, but it's the people that get the least compassion normally.
So the homeless and the sex workers and some of these other ones,
you might be the only person that's kind to that individual the entire day,
the entire week.
So I always felt that there was more value protecting
the society's most desperate than it was working in some bougie area where you ran
two calls a day.
Yeah.
It's nice to have that every once in a while, but I want to help people.
I don't want to sit around all day and do nothing.
I'd rather be busy all day and have the day go quick and make a difference in someone's life.
We don't get a whole lot of fire.
Our job is 95% EMS.
But when we do have a fire, it's usually a good one because we're on the south side
of Toledo away from a lot of people.
So it takes a while for them to get there.
So we're by ourselves for a while every time we get a good fire.
But I wouldn't call it a good fire.
But as we call a good fire.
Yeah, exactly.
It's going to happen.
You want to be there to help.
Yeah.
So what about the sleep side?
What do you do on your days off to try and maximize your rest and recovery?
So unfortunately, having a rough district where you do get a lot of calls and me
training, I try to stay consistent training for some sort of competition.
And in three or four months cycles that I am going right to the gym right after work,
usually at 7 a.m. with sleep or no sleep.
And then I have a 16 month old at home.
And I'm very glad that I have a mother and father who love watching their grandson.
So they usually are watching him so I can get a good nap in.
But I usually go right to a workout right after work just for the fact that I think
it's actually better for my sleep cycle to get that work in and then get those glycogen
stores taken care of and that kind of deal from any food that I'd eaten the day
before and then I can get some good sleep afterwards because if I just try to go home
and sleep, I'm not going to be able to.
And your wife works in the same department?
Yep, same department.
And she's on a different shift.
So I work C shift and she comes in on A shift.
So I see her every morning.
Just I don't get to spend any time with her every every third day.
We get to finally spend time together.
And how do you make that work, that relationship dynamic?
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?
I mean, we don't see each other very often.
So we do see each other.
It's we're training together because she does strong land as well.
And we're spending time with our son after we get done with the gym.
And I love our our schedule right now.
Yeah, it's kind of chaotic.
We don't see each other every day.
But the times we do see each other, there's never a dull moment.
There's no just time.
We're just sitting down and there's nothing to be said because we always got
something to talk about. We didn't see each other in two days.
What's the shift pattern that you guys work in Toledo?
24 on 48 off.
Okay.
And Kelly's.
Yep.
Every three weeks.
Okay.
Because my one of my drums that I beat, you know, like a dead horse is the fact
that firefighters work so many hours.
And I think it's insanity.
And we just devolved from when we did just go to fires.
You know, we were sitting around and shooting the ship for 24 hours.
And I think this is your family dynamic is a perfect example of why one of the
many reasons why we need to address it.
You know, not only is it the mental and physical health issues that we're
seeing that are evident.
And then you add on the recruitment crisis from people not wanting to do
this as much because they see the things I just mentioned.
But also you've got not just firefighters, you got husbands and wives
and your mothers and fathers.
And so this is time with your children.
So my my gold standard up would love to kind of hopefully get the entire
nation to kind of buy into is just the 24 72 to 42 hour work week, which is
what every other person bloody works, you know, and I think then in your
situation, for example, you'd see each other twice.
You know, if you work day and she works, see you'd be off, you know, on off
on off, you know, and you'd get so much more time, not only with each other,
but with your child, which I think is owed to our first responders.
If we're going to ask them to be awake 24 hours a week or sleep.
Absolutely.
And what's nice is that someone's always home with him.
His name is Dexter.
He's fantastic.
He's getting huge.
He's already wearing two tee clothes at 16 months.
It's crazy how fast he's growing.
Hopefully takes after me when it comes to strength and her when it comes to
looks, but but someone's always home with him, which is nice.
You know, we don't ever have to pay for childcare, which is astronomical.
But he doesn't get to see us together a whole lot, which which kind of he's
young now is not ready to be detrimental now.
But later on, you know, we'd like to get on to where we're in the same shift
so that there are two days where we're with him the whole time.
I think that'd be better for him and then better for our sanity as well.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, the dominoes are falling.
The departments here in Florida are starting to go on.
My phone blew up for a while from all over the country.
Were people wanting to know how these departments did it?
And I've got another one coming out in about a week or so.
Gainesville next to us is just about to go to 24 72.
So people are realizing not only the health benefits and the hiring, the
recruitment benefits, but also the financial savings.
So I hope this is something that sweeps across the country because, you
know, you're either with it or you're against it.
You know, if departments around you start going to it, then you're not
going to hire anyone.
So we may as well change it now.
Yeah, we're frightening.
Less and less people setting up to take these tests.
And it's sad to see because it's one of the most rewarding jobs we've been in.
Yeah.
This is what I've talked about.
People that got hired, you know, when I did, it was just, you know, around
the beginning of 2000 is we were all competing against literally thousands
of, you know, candidates, thousands for a handful of jobs.
And now it's couldn't be further from the truth.
So the beautiful thing is, all right, well, we were there only 20 years ago.
So we can absolutely get back there again.
What has changed?
And I think the answer is information, the access to information, the
curtains being pulled back on mental health and cancer and all these other
things that is the dark side of the job, which needs to be acknowledged,
but it doesn't negate the good side of the job.
So if we can address the things, you know, obviously things like
decontamination and climate events are definitely a step forward, but also
you create resilience in the human being by giving them rest and recovery.
So you address that and then obviously you're saving money because your
firefighters aren't breaking or, you know, taking their own lives.
Now you're going to have these people lined up again, and now you can choose
the best of that group rather than the entire group, because you're desperate.
Yeah, absolutely.
No, I agree with you a hundred percent.
Rest recovery is going to be probably the hardest thing for us to achieve
as firefighters for the fact that, you know, the run volumes are really
getting higher and the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,
you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the.
And so it's, it's really, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a tough call.
Because it's, it's, it's a tough call, you know, it's a tough call you
have to make.
And so we're not gaining any more people.
No one wants to hire any more people, gets more money that have to spend.
And unfortunately it's the firefighters, the first responders
were the ones that suffer.
Yep.
Well, and the crazy thing is that I'm not an intelligent guy, especially
people and then you'll save, I mean, hand over fist to the point where you could put
more people on more engines.
You know, if you've closed down stations, you can reopen them.
So it's just a courage that's needed from the leadership to identify where they're wasting
money and proactively put it in instead.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, then I want to shift to some closing questions before I let you go.
The first one, is there a book or are there books that you love to recommend?
It can be related to our discussion today or completely unrelated.
Both books by David Goggins.
I really read those religiously.
They are just the stuff he went through and what he talks about with mental toughness
and that kind of deal.
That's huge for me.
Reading those has helped me through a lot of issues I've had in my life.
But yeah, those are the two that I would recommend anyone read, at least once.
Brilliant.
Yeah, I've read his first one.
I haven't read the second one yet, but he was supposed to come on.
Fantastic.
I need to circle around again, see, because yeah, I know he did some wildland firefighting
for a bit too.
Yeah, he's a fantastic motivational speaker and every time I listen to a video from him,
I just want to run my head through a wall.
All right.
Well, what about films and documentaries?
Any of those that you love?
We don't get to watch a whole lot of TV or movies because we're either training or we're
with Dexter, that kind of deal.
I'm a sports fanatic.
I love Barry Sanders.
His documentary that just came out on Amazon was one of my favorites to watch.
Just because how humble he was his whole life and all the things that he accomplished through
his career.
Small town country kid that is probably the best running back to ever play the game.
He quit before he even had a chance to break the record because he just didn't want to.
It's really cool.
It's inspiring to me to see a guy that worked so hard and was so humble and achieved great
things.
I just had one of the guys on the show from one of the Rangers that was actually in the
same platoon or battalion.
I'm not going to get that right, but it's Pat Tillman.
Again, that's another powerful story.
Even though obviously the way he was killed was tragic because it was a friendly fire.
It seems like an ironic statement that took his life.
Again, what an amazing man.
He has the opportunity to make millions and millions and he decides to go serve his country.
He was an undersized guy too.
He was an undersized linebacker, moved to safety.
That's the epitome of a guy that earned everything he got.
He still gave it up for a higher purpose.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, speaking of amazing people, is there someone you'd recommend to come on this podcast
as a guest to speak to the first responders, military, and associated professions of the
world?
A guy by the name of Harry Walker.
He is a wildland firefighter.
He also serves in the Marine Corps.
He just got back from Africa for a deployment.
He was helping local military defend against poachers.
He's a fantastic guy.
Guy's a big personality.
I competed with him in the World's Strongest Firefighter and I'm looking forward to competing
with him again this year.
Guy's a little bit of a nut, but he's so much fun to talk to and just a great guy.
Brilliant.
Are you able to make that connection?
I will.
I'll reach out to him.
That'd be amazing.
All right.
Thank you so much.
All right.
Within the last question before, I'll make sure everyone knows where to find you.
What do you do to decompress?
My decompress is actually the training itself, like going to the gym and any type of trauma
I've been through when it comes to the fire service and in my life, I take it out on the
weights.
Physical fitness and working to straight exhaustion is one of the best feelings you can have to
just let things go.
And my second favorite thing is just sitting down and talking with my wife.
We're able to decompress together and talk about things that normal people don't talk
about because we're both in the fire service.
So to be able to share that with somebody, we're basically best friends too, so that
really helps out.
But having that at home really helps decompress what's going on.
And then I love coaching football.
I did that for the last seven years.
I took this last year off from having Dexter and I'm taking this year off because I just
want to be a dad and have fun with him.
But I still help out with the local high school.
Actually today we did the hero workout at the Anthony Wayne High School where I've done
it for the last seven years where we bring out local fire departments and police departments.
We put the football team through workouts that pertain to the job and kind of give them
perspective of what we do on an everyday basis and that's their favorite day of the year.
So doing that and mentoring kids is a great way to decompress as well.
Have you had any of those young football players enter the profession?
We have four became firefighters, two became cops and another four more went military.
Beautiful.
Because I think again, back to that mentorship conversation, that's one of the solutions
for recruitment.
You've got to go out into the community and not only find the ones that want to do it,
but give kids an opportunity to realize that they don't want to do it.
That's what happened with my stepson, my bonus boy.
He tried it, he got immersed, he was good at it and he's like, no, this isn't for me.
Good.
Now you wouldn't have wasted your time going through an academy.
Yeah.
And like you said before, mental health services is very neglected when it comes to military
and fire and police as well.
And I want to be able to do as much as I can to fix that and make it a norm to be able
to talk about it.
And another thing to fund services that can happen to reach out to those people who need
it.
Again, King for a day before we wrap up from the mental health side, what would you put
in the fire service at the front door and then the people that are already in?
Well, it's changing culture.
It's the culture of the fire services.
Don't talk about it.
Suck it, you know, just swallow it down, bury it, you know, go have a drink or, you know,
laugh about it later on with a dark joke or something like that.
We started EAP program at Toledo, but it's all it is if you go through a traumatic event,
they offer to have people come out and talk to you.
But once again, our culture is don't talk about it.
It needs to happen.
So King for a day, I'd want to change that culture to make it.
You have guys out there who look like they're, you know, the biggest baddest dudes and actually
have them talk about things with people and basically start the conversation because that's
what that's what has to happen.
You need to start the conversation.
And I guarantee once you start that conversation, people are going to open up.
The more time's gone on, the more I realized that one of the things missing in the mental
health conversation is the hope from post-traumatic growth.
So working through those struggles, those traumas.
And on the other end, you know, you're a better person.
You got a clearer mind.
So therefore you're going to be a better police officer, a better firefighter.
And to use your analogy, it would be like doing a really shitty deadlift, you know,
with a rounded back over and over again.
I'm just going to pick it up.
One day you're going to break versus taking the time, you know, lifting properly, eating
and sleeping properly.
And now you continually get better.
So I think that getting people excited with the fact that if you do talk about it, whether
it's around the dining room table, whether it's to a counselor, whether it's through
a psychedelic retreat, whatever your thing is, that there is a better version of yourself
on the other side.
And I think that hope is what will get people, you know, to stop shying away from it and
actually be excited about some of these therapies that work.
Absolutely.
I agree with you.
Excitement and hope.
And then just starting the conversation.
You got to, someone's got to open up or it's never going to be talked about.
100%.
All right.
Well, then the last question, where online can people find you if they want to follow
you or reach out?
My Instagram is nc35fb, that's C-I-N-C-I-3-5-F-B and also wallstrong, w-a-u-g-h-strong.org.
We are doing a charity strongman here in Toledo, Ohio, where we're raising money for veteran
and first responder mental health services.
We paired with the VA out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, the Lucas County Anti-Suicide Coalition, Task
Force 20, and now the Congresswoman Marcia Catter's office as well.
To raise money, we haven't even taken formal donations yet.
We're somewhere around 20 grand.
So it's just a good start.
And so we're going to go up from here.
And when is the competition?
August 3rd here in Toledo, Ohio at Whitmer High School.
Beautiful.
Well, I'll make sure I put those links on the website for the show as well.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Well, Marcus, I want to say thank you so much.
I mean, it's again, thank you to Will for connecting us, but such a unique perspective
with the strongman and law enforcement first and then obviously your journey into the fire.
But there's been so much kind of value to be gleaned from this conversation.
So I want to thank you so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the
Behind the Shield podcast today.
I appreciate you having me.
I was very excited for this.
I've listened to some of the episodes you've had and it only made me more excited to be
here.
Thank you so much.