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 have had incredible
success. There was initial blood work that was
extremely detailed and based on that they offered
supplementation. So I began taking DHEA. BPC
-157 for inflammation based on the fact that
I've been a stuntman, a martial artist and a
firefighter my whole life. Lots of aches and
pains. Dihexa 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. Welcome to the Buy and
Shield podcast. As always, my name is James Gearing,
and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome
on the show strength and conditioning coach and
the public safety wellness coordinator for the
city of Virginia Beach, Aaron McKissick. Now,
in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics
from his journey into the world of strength and
conditioning, the transition from sporting athletes
to the tactical athlete population, injury prevention,
rehabilitation, the 24 -72, team builder, and
so much more. Now, before we get to 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 1 ,100 episodes now. So
all I ask in return is that you help share these
incredible men and women's stories so I can get
them to every single person on planet Earth who
needs to hear them. So that being said, I introduce
to you... Aaron McKissick. Enjoy. Well, Aaron,
I want to start by saying two things. Firstly,
thank you to Melissa Mercado for initially suggesting
that we connect. And then Virginia Beach, Sean
Betts, that reached out as well, made this connection.
So thank you to both of them. And then I want
to welcome you onto the Behind the Shield podcast
today. Thank you. Appreciate you having me. So
where on planet Earth are we finding you this
afternoon? In Virginia Beach, Virginia, at our
fire training center. You know, in just one of
our offices, you know, this is a pretty big complex.
A lot of people coming and going around here.
So sometimes it's hard to find places to do things
like these. And then I'll warn anyone that listens,
you might hear some jet noise. We have Oceana
Jet Base right behind us and it gets really loud
around here. So sometimes it's even hard inside.
So forewarning. Beautiful. All right. Well, very
first question. I want to go back to your origin
story, as it were. So tell me where you were
born and tell me a little bit about your family
dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings.
Yeah. So I grew up in really rural Pennsylvania,
northwest Pennsylvania, in a small little town.
I jokingly, when I talk to everyone, I tell them
I graduated with 52 kids. um so you know me moving
out and and everything has been quite an eye
-opening experience my mom worked in a hospital
setting and my father was a forest warden um
so from an early age i was very active either
hiking or whatever not um and then obviously
got into sports um what thought i was going to
go into medical field kind of following my mom
a little bit i actually started school as wanting
to be a pa did some shadowing in pa and uh did
it in real rural settings so i all i saw was
like it's not in those little kids and stuff
like that and i was like this isn't interesting
and i made the switch to pt uh and then uh once
again real rural setting and all i saw was a
lot of temporal knee extensions of you know 70
and 80 year old ladies and guys i was like well
this is really boring i was like i won't like
that either so i was kind of running out of line
then finally i had a professor say, hey, why
don't you try strength and conditioning? You're
an in -shape guy. I think you like it. And kind
of stuck with it. And it's kind of really evolved
just from strength and conditioning. I slowly
came through the whole myriad of things, I'd
say. So I started with working with post -bariatric
surgery patients coming out of college. Then
I was lucky enough to, at the time, meet ODU's
team physician, Dr. Anad Kapoor. And he got me
in. working at ODU, doing an internship and seeing
how I'd like that. So after I spent some little
time there, I transferred over into the private
sector and got lucky enough to where I got to
train anywhere from professional athletes to
Olympic athletes. And then it slowly matriculated
into actually training a police academy out of
the city of Hampton. So I trained them for eight
years, mainly focusing on their recruit side
of things. And then I was lucky enough to gain
a job with the city of Virginia Beach overseeing
all their public safety when it came to their
health and physical wellness and nutrition and
stuff like that. So it's been a long haul, I'd
say, from where I started. Well, going all the
way back to where you started with such a small
graduating class, it seems like one of the. the
biggest problems that we face at the moment in
society is we've lost that tribal element and
i mean the positive tribal that kind of it takes
a village mentality how do you look at that kind
of rural closeness if it was there compared to
for example the urban life that you're in now
yeah uh you know everyone knew everyone um where
i grew up uh you know me working the volunteer
fire department was at the very bottom of my
street You know, so when we were kids and growing
up, that's kind of a meeting point for everyone
and kind of broke out from there. Our baseball
coaches to our football coaches, everything,
everyone was kind of out of there. So everyone
knew everyone. And jokingly, you know, if you
got in trouble, someone's going to find out.
So it's helped. And I think the other good thing
is it taught me to really understand and foster
close knit relationships. And it's helped me
really in the fire service and first responder
world because what I slowly learned, these guys
don't trust the outside person. Like you don't
see what we see every day. You don't understand
what we're doing and stuff. So I've kind of taken
that close home net community that I'm used to
and infiltrated that with the fire service and
being like, hey, I want to understand what's
going on in your life and see what kind of like
things that we have in common so we can grow
this bond. and see how i can help you and in
the turn part they can help me too i've learned
a lot from these guys uh you know not just in
the fire service or police like just daily everyday
things it could be mechanical work things you
can do on your house so uh it's it's very much
um close to what i grew up with blue collar we'll
say that did you have any amish communities close
to you i did not uh they're on the other side
of the state one of my one of my groomsmen however
he's from the heart of uh Amish country. So I
like to throw some jabs at him. I've seen just
some beautiful videos recently. I think one of
them was one of the storms or one of the fires
and the communities got together. And I think
even maybe even the North Carolina tragedies
and there were groups of Amish people just throwing
houses up at a crazy, crazy rate. But, you know,
it's funny how. And society tends to look down
on certain cultures. And then you look at that
culture and go, wait a second, they're actually
doing a lot of things a lot better than us. So
have you had any exposure to that culture? And
if so, what are some of the beautiful things
that you've seen? So I can say that. So my sister
lives in the southern part of the state. And
so they have a lot of Mennonite slash Amish communities.
That's a derivative, I'd say, of that. And very
close knit. they they come together like you
said like i've never seen a house or a barn put
up faster in my life you know it's crazy but
they they work together i think they're they're
really open to uh each other's i in in the community
each other's ideas and helping out and understanding
that it takes the the family right or the community
to build everything and make everything work
the way they want and you know i commend them
in the fact that they have stuck to their beliefs
for all this time and they have an infiltrate
or rather have an infiltration of like hey some
outside belief like they've really stuck to it
where uh you know unfortunately good and bad
a little bit in the fire service you see that
you know sometimes like sticking to your guns
can be good but sometimes there's too much outside
influence hey this is what this department's
doing and and and that can create animosity um
but we can talk about that more so we go but
it's just interesting that you made me think
about that when um we talked about communities
and working together well it's just i think What
I'm learning as I'm getting older is just how
important humility is. And so, for example, if
you listen to Sebastian Junger talking about
the Iroquois tribe in his book, Tribe, there
were a lot of people that were taken by the Iroquois
originally, you know, in the 1800s or whenever
it was. And then they were air quotes rescued
by. the Westerners and they ran back to the native
Americans again, because their culture was actually,
you know, more enjoyable than the one they'd
left in the city. So just having the humility,
no one's doing everything right. That's the thing.
No one is, has got it down pat. They are perfect.
So what is it, you know, that we've lost in,
you know, modern society at the moment and maybe
the Amish, for example, because a number of people
that you see struggling. where now both partners
have to work it's absolutely you know just destroying
them financially for the daycare and the problem
is because we've lost that village mentality
back in the day you know the hunters were out
the gatherers were out and then there was a certain
group of people that were helping take care of
the kids while everyone else was gone because
they were working together now we're so indoctrinated
that you've just got to take care of you and
your house and that's it that now everyone is
kind of reinventing the wheel and having to pay
the full cost rather than sharing all the kind
of responsibilities and costs with an entire
tribe or village. Yeah, no, I think you're spot
on. Now, since you've got me thinking this way,
like there's a huge difference in how I grew
up in a small town and the likelihood of, you
know, my parents or my mom was working and me
be able to go to someone's house. It didn't have
to be a close like relative. It was, you know,
it could be someone that's. three streets over
right and like my parents might have talked to
him at that baseball practice or something but
they were totally comfortably fine with me going
and going to their house after school or or whatever
not so yeah so i i think in that close to coming
uh close -knit community that i grew up in that
you you see that a little bit more a lot a lot
of trusting you know a little less issues um
people coming together when you need help and
it wasn't a big thing so Yeah, absolutely. Well,
staying with your childhood, what were you doing
and playing as far as exercise and sport? I grew
up playing baseball. I did like baseball for
a while. Then I ended up getting contacts and
I couldn't see the ball for junk for a while.
So I had to give up on that. And anyone on here
that listens knows anything about Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania is a huge wrestling state. when
i was six years old all the way up to when i
graduated high school i i wrestled and it's kind
of like a year -round thing up there i did some
track and cross country but that was primarily
to stay in shape for wrestling um and get me
a little bit of rake i i did take one year where
i played basketball but i'm you know i'm five
eight so you know my basketball career is not
gonna last very long but it was fun but you know
primarily um that's what i did uh i do like to
cross country ski or rather i did when i when
i lived in pennsylvania and stuff like that now
since i moved down here uh you know i'm real
lucky the firefighting community here is very
healthy um you know we do a lot of mountain biking
on the other side of state guys like to hike
my family my my wife and kids they like to hike
too so i i you know i'm a big outside guy i grew
up in the middle of the woods um for the most
part um so yeah um i didn't have a whole lot
of organized sports like other than your traditional
ones uh we didn't have soccer in my high school
we didn't have uh male volleyball lacrosse anything
so like when i when i got to college and people
were like what all did you have i told them i
was like you know it was like your four main
sports mine's hockey sorry but yeah we didn't
have tennis anything so i think there's a lot
to be said just about a culture of movement and
being out in nature and you know um just play
doesn't have to be organized specifically when
i was in um my school in bath which is you know
it's a city in england but we didn't have a good
sports program as far as well let me rephrase
that we didn't have a strong competitive sports
program but there was a culture you're always
doing something p whether it was you know literally
like the victorian wooden beams that you're doing
pull -ups and climbing ropes or if it was cross
-country runs but It created a culture of movement
and we would play football, you know, soccer
out on the concrete. And then we play rounders,
which is like one handed baseball with an old
table, excuse me, a chair leg that we had in
a tennis ball. So you didn't have to have all
the fancy stuff. People were just being out there
and moving. And I feel like that's because I
grew up in a rural setting, too, on a farm. I
feel like that's what we've kind of lost on the
countryside. We've become so focused on winning.
know and squeezing performance and i've said
this for many of the coaches on here arguably
at the expense of the high school athlete or
the college athletes longevity and wellness and
almost dissuaded kids to simply play yeah i i
definitely agree with you there um i think you
know i'm a big multi -sports belief where everyone
should play different things and and you know
you don't have to do year in year out um baseball
basketball whatever and i i think the other benefit
of that as you talk about communal here is you're
going to meet different people doing different
sports you know if you strictly stick to basketball
you're going to see the same basketball people
over and over and over and over and it's not
going to help you especially in our field as
you get older and you go and you meet different
types of personalities individuals like you you
better learn how to talk to different people
real fast if you want to make a connection but
if you're only used to one type of person and
and you know This is how the elite basketball
players and this family and that. I don't think
it helps you. I think going and meeting different
people and different family structures and all
that can go a long way. And then just having
common ground to talk and meet people, I think,
is a tough part for some people to do nowadays.
So they're so stuck in their beliefs and their
mindset that they're being open. Absolutely.
Well, you mentioned about the kind of rural setting
that you were initially exposed to when it came
to medicine. I've had conversations with some
people as far as almost like healthcare deserts
now. A lot of these facilities are closing down
and some of our rural populations don't have
healthcare accessible anymore. You kind of grew
up in that. What are you seeing, if anything,
as far as the deterioration of rural medicine?
uh you know i don't i don't make a home a whole
lot um i can just speak firsthand so you you
know where i grew up i'll tell you i had a bad
motorcycle accident i have a rod in my leg like
for me to have the rod put in they put me on
a helo and they flew me you know to erie pennsylvania
to have it in so like that's the economy of the
difference of like the rural health care versus
you know when you get into more of a metro style
health care and the specialties that you have
now i do know that our hospital system or small
hospital where i live like they are obviously
absorbed by university of pittsburgh medical
so like what you're finding is big companies
are coming in and taking these on now i don't
know what that means to the quality of health
care or anything in these areas um but yeah so
you know so was it physical therapy that you
found yourself in initially after you kind of
graduated It was actually, I wanted to go to
school to be a PA. I thought, you know, I wanted
to help people. But then when I, honestly, like
I said, I saw this 90 -nose little kid for, you
know, person after person after person. I was
like, oh, this would just be boring. And then
I was like, oh, physical therapy would be cool.
You know, helping people get in shape, you know.
And then once I went in and it was just. All
right, we're going to put you on an arm bike
to warm you up. Or, you know, we're going to
give you a heat pack at that time to warm you
up. And then it's all right, stretch. All right.
All right, Ms. Johnson, move the knee 10 times.
I want to say this. My wife's a physical therapist.
So if any PTs, like, listen, I love your job
and everything. But I tell you, it's just not
for me. Like, maybe if you're working on the
professional level. or you're you know working
on a high level like special ops guys or whatever
where it's a little bit different and you're
getting them back to where they need to do do
or what they need to do for training missions
versus your active daily lives right um i joke
with our guys as like you know pts are great
but they don't understand the job of a fireman
right their job is to get you back to where you
were and so you can i jokingly say so you can
wipe your butt right Their job is not to get
you to be able to climb to the 36th floor of
the Westin under gear, everything like that.
That's not what their objective is. That's what
your objective is, to make sure you can do that
efficiently. But their objective is not that.
And so I, as you know, I'm that bridge to that
position. Absolutely. Well, we'll take a deep
dive in that because that's exactly what I encountered
after meniscus surgeries and a back injury as
far as the PT side. you mentioned about taking
care of people after bariatric surgery um firstly
i want to talk about some of the options that
are available now as far as people in obesity
but just talk to me about that experience in
general yeah so uh that was very interesting
because you could have someone coming in that
could walk through the door right and this was
usually six weeks post bariatric surgery um you
have someone walk through the doors fine and
i've had people come through on rascals right
little cars you know and you're like okay you
got to help them and teach them and educate them
on what kind of exercises they should be doing
you know that's within their capabilities so
i had to learn real fast early in my career how
to be creative you know because if you can't
get some up out of a out of a wheelchair like
what are you going to do if like your whole mindset
says oh we're going to do these air squats or
whatever not so It taught me how to be real creative
and learn and use whatever equipment I have around
me, so to speak. So that was very interesting.
And then I think what was more challenging for
me was to understand their psyche. These people
obviously wanted to get better, right? Now, to
the level that they want to get better, I couldn't
really tell you. Sometimes I felt like, yeah,
they want to make lifelong changes. personality
changes and that's what it was going to take
to be really healthy right a psychological change
of how you handle your your daily lives but i
think there's then others that just wanted a
quick fix right oh i want to lose some weight
and whatever and then okay i've lost this weight
now i can go back to eating how i normally do
because now i'm skinny so it was very interesting
to try to get a better understanding of their
psyches you know when we're going through this
whole process so you know learning different
ways to train individuals talk to people and
understanding psyches was a huge part of just
my bariatric experience in general um that yeah
once again it's helped me in this in this field
in this career you know because some people want
to go and become the fire chief and some people
want to stay the base level guy that's on that
wants to just ride the truck for 30 years so
it's you have to understand that everyone has
different goals admirations and everything but
at the end of the day Just like the bariatric
person wanted to lose weight, this guy wants
to be a fireman and wants to be good at his job.
So you find the core of what they're trying to
get out of. Did you ever kind of come across
what seemed to be common denominators between
the backstory of some of these people that were
grossly obese? You know, unfortunately, I would
say a lot of them. came from less than affluent
communities or families. I wouldn't say I had
people coming through the door that told me that
on a normal day, they were like, I make six figures.
The majority of the time, it wasn't those people.
It was people that were on Medicare, Medicaid,
stuff like that, unfortunately. And it was reactive
to things and health issues that have happened
in life rather than the proactive side. which
I think is a whole nother day of discussion as
far as how medicine treats us nowadays. I'm more,
let's be proactive. Now we'll get it on the backside.
So, but that's primarily what I found is like,
you know, like I said, like there wasn't a lot
of people that were, in my experience now, I'm
not saying this is nationwide, like that these
are individuals that tend to come from a little
harder situations, you know, so. Yeah, I think
it's such an important point. And it mirrors,
again, going to the fire service. When I talk
about firefighter fitness and firefighter fitness
standards and that kind of thing is, yeah, ownership
is part of it, but environment is the other part.
So, for example, if you have woeful understaffing
because of decades of mismanagement, and now
you've got people working 56, 80 -hour work weeks.
then that's setting them up for failure. And
I know we're going to take a deep dive into that.
And it's the same though, with, you know, obesity
in America, it's all very well for me to stand
on some, you know, ivory tower and say, well,
everyone should just make good choices. Well,
I grew up on a farm in England where we had vegetables
and we had animals and, you know, I had movement
woven into my everyday. If I wanted to go to
the bus stop to school, it was like a, I forget
exactly, like a mile and a half walk each way.
You know, if I want to go to town, it was more
like two miles. you know i my environment was
very different than someone that grew up in the
inner city where maybe the bodega or you know
the local you know liquor store was where we
got our food you know what i mean and then you
know the local place to play maybe was riddled
with gangs so very very different so unpacking
the why behind it rather than shaming people
for being obese you know we've got to say are
we setting up an environment for health and post
covid we should have figured a lot of this out.
We should have really kind of doubled down on
local organic food and bolstering the farmers
there and removing the shit food from school
and putting real food in and PE programs and
pedestrianized downtowns. But none of that was
done. And so this is what really saddens me is
we'll talk about certain incidents based on race
or whatever it is, but obesity is killing millions
of Americans. And you don't see any of these
kind of ethnic figures standing up advocating
against that or fentanyl overdose or all these
other areas because this is a product of the
environment. And you can't just make good choices
when your entire baseline is completely related
to this distorted reality that you've been raised
in. Yeah, no, I agree with you. It's tough. When
you look at this, you have to look how people
are raised. uh what kind of community foods they
like to eat and so like there's a lot of a lot
of stuff that comes into just poor health decisions
it's not just they woke up one day and they're
like i just want to eat doritos right like i
feel like eating habits are kind of built like
i have two two six year old twins right and their
eating habits are going to be slightly based
off of what me and my wife feed them right let's
be honest uh so i i think that's important to
know like you know if you have a little one you
know get them used to eating the vegetables.
I'm not saying you got to feed nothing but vegetables
to them like they're little kids, right? But
like, introduce them to different foods and activity
and play. Going back to what we talked about
earlier. So that's one thing I even though my
girls are six, I in my head, I can't fathom.
I'm like, why do you want to be inside? Like,
all I remember when I was a kid as I was outside
in the neighborhood playing with everyone, you
know, riding bikes or doing sports and stuff.
I was like, I can't you're you have a twin sister
and you guys don't even want to play outside
kicking the ball around i'm like like oh well
we did that all day at summer camp i'm like so
what so it you know i just find it interesting
when you look at this all together and just like
how shifts in community and you know technology's
been good but technology's been real bad for
us as well um so what about the successes of
the bariatric patients i've lost a fire academy
classmate and my wife's best friend to side effects
and bariatric surgery. And, you know, I think
that it has a place if you are literally at death's
door, it's kind of a Hail Mary on the surgical
side. But I feel like, I mean, certainly both
of those two were no means, you know, morbidly,
morbidly obese. They were overweight, definitely
maybe clinically obese, but not. to the point
of, you know, an emergency action needing to
be happened. So what is your perspective of the
efficacy and the dangers of that particular routine
surgery? So that's a great question. So, you
know, I've, I've seen as old into like, I think
61 or 62, and I've seen as young as 18. Right.
I think doing at 18. So. I remember I had one
doctor who was like strictly against like doing
young. He's like, no, they still have time to
make life choices and changes. I think exactly
what you talked about. If it comes to a point
where, you know, you're starting to knock on
death's door, right? Let's go ahead and do those
measures. However, I do think that if we had
health care programs in place, right, that would,
you know. allow you to like use your use your
insurance right to go get fitness to go get uh
nutrition food training whatever i think it would
go a long ways versus paying i don't even know
what the amount of what how much it costs for
bariatric surgeries now but you know paying let's
just say fifteen thousand dollars to have this
surgery done right um i just i just think it's
it's the wrong way to look at things like let's
be proactive right and the cost the long -term
cost is a lot less right versus okay we'll keep
feeding you diabetes medicine all this blood
pressure medicine up this and then okay now we're
gonna throw this huge price tag surgery on you
at the end right just to kind of bring you back
down to where you should have been had we been
proactive right off the bat so you know i i think
it's tough um i i get it you know people want
to try to make better health decisions and sometimes
they wait too long into the game but um i just
think we need to be more proactive especially
when it comes to bariatric surgery and stuff
like that so yeah i mean certainly the proactive
side like i said you know that's where we should
be at but after a pandemic if still no you know
no action happened then i don't i don't know
when it's going to happen so it's up to the people
on the ground to really push and vote with their
dollar as well but i had a guy on johan hari
talking about a zen pic he wrote a whole book
on it okay and what's interesting about that
you know i'm Again, opposed to anyone who's just
trying to lose a little weight using that because
it just doesn't make any sense to risk, you know,
pharmaceutical when you just need to be patient
and diligent. And if you've got the tools and
you've got the ability to do that, then that's
hands down the best route. But if you are now
getting towards the more obese side. I think
what's good about Zempik is it's a much safer
alternative to bariatric surgery. And it does
seem to be very effective as well. So I think,
you know, again, there's no black and white.
I think that's the middle ground for those kind
of drugs. You know, if you're trying to get to
3 % body fat, then you probably shouldn't, you
know. But, you know, if you're, you know, you've
got 100 extra pounds on a 5 '4 frame, then maybe,
yeah, that is the one to get you back down to
kind of reset. And as you're doing that, you're
starting to develop the exercise habits and the
nutrition habits and the mental health practices
so that once you get to that healthy weight,
you can come off and hopefully sustain after
that. Yeah, no, I think you're spot on. And I
know a couple of people on Ozempic, but they're
not trying to lose. They need to lose weight,
but they're not trying to lose hundreds of pounds.
But much like you talked about, the Ozempic is
doing all the work. I don't necessarily know
if they're always changing their eating habits.
I can tell you, I know most of their exercise
habits don't normally change a whole lot. So
it's like the free ride, so to speak. So it's
tough. One thing I don't like about my time during,
now this is probably about 15 years ago, my time
working with bariatric surgery patients is that
the nutrition, I think the nutrition counseling
was hard because these people went from eating
nothing to being on a strict no carb, pretty
much keto diet, diet, right? High fat, high protein,
stuff like that. And then, okay, and then they
start introducing carbs back. So we're, in my
mind, you're talking about three different diets,
like in a relatively, let's say, in a six month
span, right of eating anything to eating nothing
straight. And then we're like, okay, now we're
going to teach you go. So I think psychology,
psychologically, that has to be tough. I know
be hard, tough on me. And I'm in shape to go
from this diet to that diet to this diet. The
only type of people I know that normally do that
are someone that's getting paid for how they
look on a stage. But there's a difference in
that. They're getting paid to do it versus someone
that's doing it for other reasons. Yeah, absolutely.
I had something I was going to say. Let me just
get my tiny brain to recall what I was about
to say then. Oh, that was it. Well, I think the
other thing that we have to be mindful of, and
again, Johan Hari gives an example in this book.
He talks about, actually, it was in one of his
other books. There was a weight loss study. They
did just IV nutrition. And they had this one
woman who was an absolute rock star of the study,
lost the most weight of everyone. And then one
day she just disappeared, fell off the wagon.
And they found her and she started eating again,
put on a bunch of weight. And one of the members
of the study had kind of taken the time to actually
sit down with her and have a conversation. Let's
see if we can unpack what happened, what went
wrong. And he got to the point where he was talking
about her early life. And he said, well, how
old were you when you remember eating the way
you eat now? And she said, I think it was like
10. And he said, was there anything that happened
that was significant in your life around that
age? And she said, yeah, that's when my grandfather
started sexually abusing me. And so what they
realize is as this woman lost weight, she started,
you know, gleaning the attention of men again.
And she didn't like it. It was a negative in
her psychology. So the thing that bariatric and
the Zempik isn't addressing is what was that
underlying psychological element when it came
to the weight gain. And so if you're not simultaneously
addressing, you know, some of the issues that
obviously you've stuffed down and you're filling
that void with food. then you are going to start
eating again and you are going to reverse your
bariatric or the weight loss that you got from
a Zempik. And now you're going to be diving back
in again and probably getting even worse. Yeah,
no, like I said, when I was there, we were doing,
before you even had the surgery, you had to go
through a psychological eval. And what that entailed,
I don't know. Obviously, they wouldn't know you,
but I just know that you had to go through one
and you had to be approved. they go through but
i didn't you know unfortunately i don't remember
too many people being told no you know um and
do i i couldn't tell you whether there was a
follow -up as far as the psyche eval um for it
after like so like you said in in your example
right if someone like that came through did they
do it then do the bariatric surgery and then
did they continuously have psychological follow
-ups to make sure that they're really getting
at the root of the issue as far as why they're
eating so i don't know but i i think that is
a total sign of a lot of issues right um food
is comfort let's be honest right food's comfort
so you know if if you're feeling bad or or whatnot
you'll tend to go to the cupboard to eat to make
yourself feel a little better and stuff and then
eventually it goes the opposite way right where
now food is starting to make you feel bad right
both mentally and physically you know how you
move how you look and stuff like that And it's
just a vicious, vicious cycle. Absolutely. Well,
it's funny because it mirrors the fire service
as well. The psych test that I was given, all
four departments, is called the MMPI, the Minnesota
Multiphasic Personality Interview. And as I started
getting deeper into this and, you know, critically
thinking more because I'm learning from all these
guests, I started asking the psychologists, psychiatrists
about this test and said, hey, this is what we're
given. And hands down, every single one has said,
well, that was never meant to be a standalone
test. Definitely not to define someone's ability
to be a first responder. So even when we are
given tests, like you said, it may appear like
it's official. Doesn't mean it's actually doing
anything. And in this case, that really isn't.
learning about that person and discovering if
they have the ability to do this job. And then
you're talking about ongoing, you know, in a
bariatric setting, it's the same with us. You
do one at the front door and that's it. Congratulations,
you're in. Good luck. Not talking about what
you brought into the job, not allowing you to
unpack as you go through the job. So there is
a similarity, that box checking version of psychology
versus actually trying to heal the person. Yeah.
Now you made me think whether or not, I don't
know, like does every professional firefighting
department, do they do exit clinical evals? Oh,
no. I've never heard of one doing that. So that's
why I'm just curious. I was like, I know of none
that do it. So, you know, like, oh, we're going
to put all these programs in place and whether
or not. But as soon as you put your papers in,
best of luck. You know, that's unfortunate. When
you really look at it, that made me think about
that. Well, I've always said this on the show,
we don't have a VA. And so when you see numbers
of supposed line of duty deaths or fatalities,
they're truly the tip of the iceberg. Because
the moment you walk out that back door for the
last time, you cease to be a statistic. If I
dropped dead today, I wouldn't appear on a firefighter
death. So we're missing the magnitude of the
issue. by exactly what you're talking about,
just casting people off and being, all right,
good luck with all your physical injuries and
your mental injuries and you're not a problem
anymore versus the military side where it may
not be a perfect system, but at least it's set
up to continue to care for our veterans. Yeah,
I think that's an excellent point, right? You've
talked to us about the schedule change and everything.
You are just wrecking your bodies. interesting
they they did the the numbers on our department
and if you work a full career you know uh in
comparison to the police officers like you're
gonna work 12 more years in total time and comparatively
if you put over a 30 -year career in right so
oh you worked an extra 12 years hey best of luck
here's here's your paper thanks for your 30 years
of service right uh it's on you now to take care
of yourself right and that that's unfortunate
yeah there's some heart and lung bills in there
but like outside of that like you know it's not
like you have the va where you can go to or anything
like that it's like you know i hope you learn
something and you know to take care of yourself
from people like myself and stuff but yeah it's
challenging i will say this our department we
invite um our retirees to come back and and partake
in exercise sessions and stuff like that and
me and Another gentleman here, Mike, he's here
to help too. So we'll answer any questions that
we can have and give you support and what we
think you should probably go about doing and
whatnot. So we're trying to be on the forefront
on that. But in terms of big health, you know,
knees, hips, backs, all that, no. But yeah, it's
unfortunate. Well, even this is what people don't
understand. If FD works 12 years more than PD,
people will understand that that's for the same
salary too. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We always, you know,
bid. Oh, we're trying to stay with PD. Yeah,
but you work 16, 18 hours more than police does,
depending on, you know, what you're and that's
without mandatory overtime. So, you know, this
is the big kind of smoke and mirrors. And it
wasn't originally from malice, but we've really
got to take a step back and go. But why? Why
do these guys that have an even broader skill
set than a law enforcement officer, because we
do the fire and the EMS simultaneously, why are
they working 12 years more than a police officer
in the same department? Yeah, it's interesting.
When departments want to talk about or cities
want to talk about parity, right? Is it real
parity or are we just talking about a monetary
number that's parity? Because if we're talking
about true work. one guy's away from home a lot
more than the other individual, you know? So
it's very interesting. You know, as you know,
we're working through the numbers right now in
our department and stuff, and it's very eye -opening,
you know, to understand. I've heard people say
that, you know, just in our community and whatnot,
be like, what, you guys work, wait, you're at
the fire station all day, all night, 24 hours?
I'm like, yeah, they don't go home after eight
hours like I do. You know, they're there all
night. and stuff like that. So it's interesting,
right? Especially when you get into like sleep
deprivation and all that. And like, they're like,
oh, well, he might get up once. I'm like, no,
they're getting up on average of five times,
you know, maybe a night. Like how much sleep
are you getting up? I wake you up five times
throughout the night. Cause it's not going to
be, oh, I get called at midnight. I get called
at 12, 12, 15, 12, 30. It's not that it's stretched
out from 12 to seven and it's just rough on their
bodies, you know? So I hope we see this push
nationwide into changing the schedule for these
guys. So, you know, after they've gave all this
time and effort and loyalty to the community
that they get to reap some benefits on the back
end, you know, when they go and retire and everything
like that. So it's interesting. You know, I think
as more departments throughout the country go
to this, you'll see it open up a little bit more.
And I think it will make people more aware of.
what these individuals in these fire departments
are doing other than putting out fires and saving
people's lives. There's aspects to all that on
their own end, be it sleep deprivation to the
mental health aspects. Yeah, 100%. Well, I want
to get to that in a little bit. Before we do,
though, let's kind of get to your journey. You
were dealing with, or dealing with, that sounds
terrible. You were treating bariatric patients.
I take that back. What was the road to training
a tactical athlete? And then how did that ultimately
bring you to Virginia Beach Fire and Police?
So the truth is I kind of got lucky. So I was
working on bariatric patients through the company
I worked for at the time. And I had a boss that
had previously came from Exos. And he decided
to transfer me to a different facility because
he thought I just had a better skill set than
what. i was being used for so to speak so you
know transfer me to the boo williams complex
in hampton um which is a very ripe aau program
of anyone ever listened to this though they probably
know alan iverson or something like that um so
people like that lonzo morning have all came
to the system so i went to their facility um
to train out of and during that time they obviously
they were trying to grow the business and one
of the things that came up was hey why don't
we try to get into the first responder area So
we had reached out to City Hampton and we're
like, hey, we'd like to run a pilot program free
of charge. You know, we'd like to run your organized
training for your police academy and maybe it
would come up with something more. So we did
it for one year. They found very positive results
in the fact that their injury rates went down
during during the academy because it was a structured
class. So so it started that and then expanded
out to. We'd have RDs come in and talk to these
guys about not only how to pack lunches for an
academy, right? Because in an academy, you know
you're going to be there eight hours a day and
you're going to come in at six and leave at four
to, all right, now you're in the streets, right?
You don't always get to have all the time you
want, right? So you're going to have to pack
snacks. So it was an educational process through
this whole thing. So it's very similar on the
physical side of it, right? We trained you. to
get through the academy but with an understanding
of here's the same movement patterns you can
do to help you in your career right you'll be
wearing a vest you'll be sitting there your hips
hips are going to get tight backs and get tight
vest is going to affect your shoulder range of
motion so it was a lot of education as well as
we went through it um and we kept all kinds of
stats on injuries and performance and stuff like
that and turned it into their brass It ended
up becoming a contract for well over the 10 years
I was there, and then they continued on when
I left. So, yeah, so that's what got me to kind
of to Virginia Beach. And a small little snippet
in there is I left the Boo Williams facility
and became a manager of multi -facilities at
that point. And the one facility that I was at,
there was firemen coming into there, and they
talked about the position. to being open um to
be honest with you the first time it came open
i uh did not apply my other friend who works
with xos he works with the players association
there he was like he got he got offered position
didn't want to move from arizona in the end turned
down he's like you should apply so i did apply
um i got lucky enough i got the job and then
since there it's been all uphill um in a good
way um of learning um the fire service just in
general But yeah, I've loved my time here. It's
been great. As I told you when we talked before,
I might be a strength coach here in the fire
service, but they have allowed me to go through
a fire academy. So I am now a certified firefighter
in the state of Virginia. My girls like to say
I'm a firefighter. I tell everybody I'm a paper
firefighter. If this building catches on fire,
I'm the first one out the door. I can tell you
that. So but yeah, so. Where I think the benefit
of that is, and we touched on it earlier in the
smaller community thing, is that I think going
through a fire academy or a police academy or
indulging yourself in that, and you see this
a lot of times with guys in military training,
you need some sweat equity if you want guys to
buy into what you're saying. So I've gone outside,
I've been in a burn building, I've gone through
the same recruit schools, did all that. I understand
what it takes to be a recruit. in the virginia
beach fire department and what it takes to get
through it i know what it's like on the civilian
side of it um and the fact that i had to go home
at night when my daughters were like two years
old i had to sit and i had to read the textbook
so i could pass the state test pass the test
that goes on so i really understand that and
when i get up in front of these recruits um but
here in a couple weeks when we have another one
come in i'll be able to tell them listen i understand
what you're about ready to go through i understand
what it takes on the family side and whatever
not um so i i think that creates buy -in they
trust me to to help them and then it helps like
when they go out to the field they're willing
to come back and ask us questions because they
understand that we know what they're kind of
going through now i don't know what it's like
to be on scene and and see a dead body or a limb
laying over there and i don't pretend to be like
that but outside of that it helps them to come
back and be like this guy understands probably
the physical pain that i'm in because i've been
wearing this gear for 18 years and it's been
wearing me down and everything like that so i
think that that's helped a lot um you know so
i digress and i'll let you ask your next question
no no it's just brilliant one of the things that's
always intriguing when someone comes from another
area of strength and conditioning to you know
the first responder profession specifically is
maybe some of the myths that were busted or some
of the challenges that they didn't realize they
were going to face when they started working
with our community. So talk to me about that.
Yeah, I thought you had a good one. I was kind
of a little worried to go to the fire service
coming out of a sports performance, like not
knowing anything. I was like, well, what do they
do? I was like, I had the picture of the volunteer
fire department at the bottom of my street. Right.
These guys just sit on the front of the truck
drinking coffee or drinking soda or whatever.
And like, you don't have to be in shape to be
fire, like to fight a fire. Right. Then I got
here and I realized there's a huge difference.
All right. You know, climbing to the top of a
36 story building that we have in Virginia Beach
here in full turnout kit and stuff like that
is much different than I expected. it to feel
like i'll be dead honest with you like that boots
are heavy helmets heavy well you know the glove
you can't grab stuff like you normally would
um wearing fire gloves so there's a lot of things
that kind of changed my mind about the fire service
in general and what what i like to do is we have
a huge internship program here our interns come
on and they had very they have very much the
same approach that i did like oh what what's
this right and then you get to put them in turnout
gear and they get to understand how hot it is
how heavy it is. And it's an eye -opening when
they come out and they're like, yeah, that's
hard. I was like, yeah, now imagine having to
do that on sleep, deprived sleep, right? And
then have to go home and be the best dad in the
world that you can possibly be to your kids and
your family and your wife. I was like, and then
come back in the next day, oh, by the way, and
do it again. And now you might run into a call
where unfortunately the little kid looks like
the same little kid that you go home to every
night, right? I was like, there's just a myriad
of things that are just going to come down the
pipeline at you that you're going to, unfortunately,
block it all out. Why? Because the taxpaying
civilian expects you to, unfortunately, because
they don't think about that. All they think about
when they call 911, that someone's going to show
up and be their hero and take care of all their
problems at that time. Right? Absolutely. So
let's start at the very beginning. We'll kind
of work through, you know, someone even applying
for a fire department and then we'll talk about,
you know, probation and all the way through.
So at the front door, talk to me about the importance
of, you know, whatever kind of physical tests
that you have to ensure that you've got the right
fitness level, but also beginning the journey
to injury prevention as well. Yeah. So with our
department, we start and, you know, we run CPAT.
And I think it's a good starting point for anyone
that want to get into the fire service. So if
you're listening and you want to get in the fire
service, at least Google or go on YouTube and
find out what CPAT is so you get a better understanding
of it. I joke with people that come in that,
you know, this isn't like any television show
you've seen, right? It's not simple, right? And
if you get through CPAT, I'm like, congratulations,
you passed the bare minimum standard. that we
have in the fire service so from there what we've
done to help attrition rates and to help people
get in better shape as we've talked about is
we have an eight -week prep academy so once you
get through you know the cpat and your offers
and everything like that and they come out we
then email out every single person that's on
our hiring list and right now i want to say it's
50 people and we invite you to come to a voluntary
prep academy I know some cities do the same thing,
but they make it mandatory. But we do it voluntary.
So what you're going to do is you're going to
spend an hour at 8 a .m., just like you will
for the next seven months. Once you enter our
academy, you're going to spend an hour with me
and you're going to PT. And we kind of use that
as a little bit of a buffering point to find
out how this group is going to be come day one.
Right. So we spend an hour PT. And then after
that, you're going to go and we'd like to use
some captains that have been down in the training
center before. What they're going to do is they're
going to give you a low -level dose of what fire
school is like. They're going to put you in some
turnout gear. They're going to induce you one
week maybe to some confined space, and then the
next week it's going to build and it's going
to go to ladders and to hose streams and to mayday
and to search. But what we found is individuals
that come in and they get through the system
all the way to that point, they will get an eye
-opener real quick of how much physicality there
is just in four hours. of fire school and the
expectations you know and we make it known like
right now this is all this is all friendly right
this is all calm talk right but come day one
of fire academy there's an expectation from the
fire service of as in this department and the
citizens of virginia beach of what they expect
of our firefighters right and if you're not willing
to meet that you know our standard and the city
standard of the citizens that may be this isn't
for you right at this point in time it's nothing
wrong with saying i'm not in shape to do this
right i'm not ready to commit into this let me
go get my things in order and i can apply again
next year right there is nothing wrong with that
in my mind i just think people need to come in
here with the expectation that you know this
isn't easy right this this isn't for everyone
you know and it's tough i love the way that you've
made that voluntary because that requires some
skin in the game by an individual for a start.
Secondly, there's kind of like a spectrum of
programs out there. I always give massive props
to Ocala Marion here. Chris Hickman, my friend,
started it up. They have a mentorship program
because there are underserved communities in
areas. And it might just be that no one in their
area is even talking about being a firefighter.
Maybe they don't really see themselves in some
of these departments, you know, culturally. And
so I love the fact that you enable it. You put
a lighthouse up. You say, if you just show up,
we will give you training. We'll put you in gear.
We'll prepare you for an academy. There's scholarships.
Because what that does is it empowers kids to
try. Some of them end up thriving and becoming
incredible firefighters. Some of them, as you
said, maybe need to go back and do some work,
evaluate what they really want to do. And some
of them go, oh, hell no. This is definitely what
I do not want to do. All of those are a win.
And so that kind of prep, exactly what you're
talking about, has an absolutely essential place
where I think it's sad is when you see these
long, long, long CPAP preps and they fail again.
Oh, you can just do more and more. We'll help
you. There has to be a point where you're like,
you just aren't the right kind of person right
now. Like you said, it doesn't mean that you
won't be one day. But right now we can't keep
lowering the bar or holding your hand. There's
got to be an ownership level too. So you can't
exclude people by having no mentorship or no
on -ramp. But at the same time, where do you
draw that line where it's like, just like you
said, okay, you just, you're not me in the bar
at the moment. Thank you for trying. We'll be
here if you want to try again. Yeah, no. So I've
had discussions with chiefs. Like we can, I would
say you can teach anyone to be a fireman. I can
teach you the skill sets to be a fireman. However,
you need to show up day one with the capability
or capacity to do that. And that is where we
have some issues. Now, the city here, they have
a cadet program where they work with the local
technical part of the high school. So they have
an entry program there as well and stuff. But
still, I think it's tough. Like, no, we do not
need to keep bringing the bar down so we can
get. more numbers uh you know of all around through
the door you know i think it's tough but um i
like kind of where we're at like me personally
come a fitness guy i would like the the entry
exam to be harder right um just because i still
see attrition in the academy of like the physical
strains to you know first three weeks or two
weeks of um a an academy guys are like i'm just
beat up I'm like beat up. I'm like, we're doing
body weight stuff. Like we haven't even put you
under load yet. Right. Which by the way, you're
going to be 85 pounds under load every day when
we hit fire school. Right. And you're not going
to take off your bunker pants and boots and all
that while we're in between sets and reps. Right.
You're going to still be wearing some of that
stuff. So I don't know. It's tough, but I just
wish we could find a way to get the information
out there of the true expectation. Now, maybe
it is out there and the people that are wanting
to do it aren't going to the right resources.
I'll put it squarely on our shoulders. I think
the fire service has done a terrible job of educating
the public on what we actually do. I really do.
From obviously the EMS side, I mean, most municipal
areas have been doing EMS for like 50 years now.
And you still get people saying, why is there
a fire engine? It's a medical call. There's just
a complete... lack of understanding and then
like you said with the physical side you know
with that bar coming down i mean i just saw on
my facebook memories it was six years ago now
so i was 45 but um i was getting ready to just
have my ducks in a row in case i needed to go
back to the fire service for the fifth time after
i left to do this full time and so you know being
humble enough to be like well i don't know let's
let's find out let me test myself i did the c
-pat And it was seven minutes, 20 seconds. And
I don't say that to brag. I've never been the
best at anything ever, but it's just at 45 years
old, if my skinny ass can do a 720 CPAP, then
scraping through or trying to get 1020 for the
third time, you know, again, there's that bar.
And if you look at the departments that set the
bar high, they're the ones that get the right
candidates. But the last place I worked, you
know, they, oh my God, they. I vehemently opposed
any sort of fitness standard. Next to my fire
station was a 30 -story high -rise hotel. Now,
a high -rise strip, the things I would need to
fight fire on the 30th floor is 100 pounds of
gear on my 168 -pound body. So 60 % of my body
weight. And then you're climbing 30 stories,
and then you go to work. So it's not people making
up some crazy... faux physical you know gauntlet
for no reason it's needed because on our worst
day we are expected to do something that you
know is of elite athleticism doesn't mean that
we're the fastest strongest whatever but like
you said that mental toughness and that teamwork
if there's a you know a floor full of people
about to burn up on the 30th floor we are the
only chance they have and if you know four of
us tap out on the 10th floor now they become
the victim and we we've got to then take care
of them rather than the people that are burning
on the 30th so these fitness standards absolutely
have a place and just like you said our fire
academy is labeled minimum standards and i say
this over again that tells you this is the shittest
you should be your entire career so then to turn
around after five ten years and say it's not
fair that we need you know you're saying we need
fitness standards Well, you're ignoring what
you went through the front door of the fire service
in the first place. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy.
I think everything we should do fitness -wise,
and this is my belief, especially when it comes
to testing, it should be under load constantly,
right? I read a lot of Rob Orr's research and
stuff like that. He's great when it comes to
load carriage and stuff like that. But it's important
to know that effect that it's going to have on
your body and stuff like that. uh we can go back
to see that normally what happens is you put
people on a step mill right off the bat under
load and they crumble right because like i'm
like we don't fight fire in gym shorts and cut
off t -shirts all right so i i think that's a
large eye -opening thing um to people and then
you know as you said see that like you're you're
you're running with a uncharged hose like Let's
be honest, like the hardest part about a hose
line is when it's charging, you're taking it
upstairs, right? And that's firefighting. You
know, it's not hauling empty hoses around. So,
you know, I think it's good because I jokingly
say this, you know, and I jokingly say this to
my police officers as well, because unfortunately
here they just started having a fitness. I said,
the only difference between us and you guys is
our CPAC gets the sludge off the bottom of the
barrel. Like we don't get those guys because
CPAC eliminates that. However, if we had nothing,
that would still be in the running of our process.
And that most likely is going to be what I call
nonproductive stats. Those people are going to
be injured. They're going to be on light duty
a lot of the time or calling out sick, right?
And that's not what the citizens of Virginia
Beach pay for. I had a police officer on the
show who does background checks now. And he was
talking about a story where he was in a conference
and someone else was speaking. And they were
talking, again, I think about the dollar amount
of certain areas when it comes to recruitment
and retention. And he asked his speaker, how
much does it cost to get rid of a bad employee,
someone that you ultimately probably should never
have hired? And the guy said, half a million
dollars. So when we're talking about, well, how
do we afford a D -shift, for example, 24 -7 -2,
that's just one of many, many columns of downstream
money that you can pull from. If you have that
person who really had never met the original
standard before it was brought down, and now
that becomes a repeated injury issue. And I kept
myself in great shape. I still had meniscus tears
on both knees and a back injury. with diligence
and yoga and strength and conditioning and chiropractic
and everything else. So yeah, so we've got to
think about that as well. There seems to be this
kind of complete denial of proactive funding
and we just lean into this false economy of what's
good for a budget year, but that doesn't work
in business and it doesn't work in the first
responder professions either. Yeah, no, you're
right. I joke, I'm like, listen, if the fire
service most years was a privatized entity, we'd
be broke and bankrupt in probably two years,
right? But that's not the world that we live
in. But you're right, though. When we were looking
at staffing matrix and everything, when you were
looking at leave time and stuff like that, the
biggest killer to our staffing matrix is light
duty, right? Because those are the ones that
you can't plan for, right? In a budget, you can
plan for annual leave and sick leave. But you
can't plan for someone to go on like four or
five, six people on a shift to go on light duty.
And so those are callbacks. Now that starts to
wear the system. You know, we used to discuss
to us when we met with you. Yeah, absolutely.
All right. So we talked about the front door
and the entrance standards. What kind of strength
conditioning and screening are you giving these
new recruits once they get hired? Yeah, so. we
we try to be very proactive on that um so what
we do is obviously from from his general side
they do an occ health screening um come through
that uh then we we do a lot of force plate testing
at our department right so we want to see how
not only do you um put out load but how do you
absorb load right because we talked about carrying
gear you know if you're not good at absorbing
load I've seen injuries happen, guys jumping
off the truck, stuff like that. So you need to
learn to absorb load. We use it also on the shoulders
to figure out if you have discrepancies on internal
and external rotation of the shoulder. So that's
one of the things that we've added in. We recently
just purchased a DEXA machine too. So we used
to use a bob pod to do body comp for people,
but we're switching gears and we're going to
a higher level. We want to figure out what kind
of visceral fat individuals would have. We pulled
some data in our department on individuals on
their MET scores, on their body comp, and whatnot.
And we extrapolated that out over five years,
and we looked at individuals in our department
that also had had some form of medical event.
And most of the medical events were cardiovascular
in nature. And what we found was, in our data
now, was that the majority of those people that
had those events two to three years prior out,
they had a spike in body comp and fat rather.
So, what we want to do is we want to get ahead
of that and maybe figure out like, hey, is there
also an uptake in visceral fat or is it just
overall fat? And then we can also use it for
a myriad of other things such as like guide recovery
from injury, like are they having good balance
in their musculature? our females in the department
as well like you know we can do bone density
scannings with it and stuff like that so we're
trying to be very proactive and stay ahead of
the curve on everything that we're trying to
do but i think those are our big brass tax ones
uh we do still do a little bit of nfpa uh testing
but not as much that really we just stick to
the mets testing we want to try to find our own
parameters and then i'll as well real quick with
the force plates we can kind of use that data
a little bit with our recruits and kind of figure
out like hey are we beating them up a little
bit too much right because there's some responsibility
on our end to get an understanding of what what
our athletes um are kind of going through and
maybe we need to tailor it back because you know
yesterday was a a tough day out in the field
and maybe we we tailor back you know it's our
job to keep them healthy as well so That's another
kind of misnomer that I was raised with, you
know, all the milk commercials that that makes
your bones strong. And we now know that exercise
makes your bones strong. That's it. And sleep
again. So, yeah, I mean, getting that misinformation,
especially with the postmenopausal female firefighters,
I can see that would be something you have to
think about. Yeah. And in my experience with
firefighters, I'll ask them, like, do you have
a primary? a PCP. And they're like, no, I go
to the health doctor once a year. I'm like, hey,
man, I was like, that's all well and good. But
I'm like, you should probably have a primary.
So I think it's good that we're taking these
extra steps and whatnot. We've actually switched
up this coming year. We will actually be using
a company outside to do all our blood draws,
our physicals and stuff like that. However, we
will still be doing the force plates and all
that. And because we have an outside company
coming in and doing our physicals as well. what
we will do is we're going to actually add in
a uh a work performance exam um with all our
firefighters where we'll put you in turnout gear
and you'll do a myriad of tests um dragging hoses
dragging dummies uh climbing stairs uh completely
non -punitive but we want to do some time and
kind of figure out uh how everyone in the department's
doing and and find out whether or not you know
we're doing the right stuff in our department
to make sure everyone's healthy and they can
do their job not only uh just do it but can they
do it efficiently right and can they can they
make sure if they do it right and let's say they
they do the work performance then if we gave
you five minutes could you do it again because
in the real world you might have to right i don't
we don't need you just be able to do it one time
right you're gonna if you're gonna be the station
for 24 hours you might have to do it four or
five times unfortunately right so so that's that's
some of the stuff that we're trying to figure
out on our end we're trying to pushed the needle
forward and we're um you know we're always trying
to find what other departments are doing and
that's why podcasts like yourself here are great
because we can listen to what other people are
trying to uh push through and their initiatives
that's what's interesting with creating an annual
fitness test i mean ideally you know punitive
or forging such a culture they don't even need
it to be punitive anymore it's just a culture
of fitness When you think about law enforcement,
some of these other agencies, you can see how
maybe it would be a little bit harder to put
something together. But, you know, our implements
don't care if you're, you know, 18 or 55, you
know, black, white, gay, straight, male, female,
whatever the thing is. And so this is where,
whether it's the CPAT or the fire sled test or
whatever, you know, a work -related circuit.
No one can say it's not fair unless you make
it some ridiculous scenario that, you know, it's
24 hour hose drag or something. But, you know,
so then no one can say it's not fair. So this
is what I always, you know, kind of struggle
with. Either you get it's not fair or you get
the strength and conditioning guru is like, all
right, we're going to do, you know, max jump
and then max deadlift. And like, well, timeout,
you know, that doesn't apply either. Let's just
do the same kind of movements that we did in
the academy. Take some hose upstairs, you know,
some weight, you know, move a hose, move a dummy,
carry a ladder, throw it, you know, whatever
the basic tools are, because that's it. I mean,
if you can do that and you show aerobic capacity
on, you know, I think the stair mill is the best
thing. All right. Then overall, it looks like
you're still doing well and we're still staying
on track. So the opposition to an annual fitness
standard, I find just maddening because. Firstly,
the ability to do the job, to get to that 30th
floor with 100 pounds of gear and facilitate
that rescue is imperative. But in the same breath,
you're also forging longevity in your employees
when you hold them to a fitness standard. Yeah,
no, I think you're spot on. And I think your
fitness changes when you're in gear. I can tell
you in our programming for our academy, every
Friday, we put you in gear one way or another.
So it could be. So let me back up real quick.
In our academy, normally you're going to start
off with EMT school, right? And then you're going
to go through EMT school and then you're going
to go to fire school for the last half of it.
But even when you're in EMT school, that very
first Friday, we put you in turnout gear and
we make you crawl around. We make you do air
squats. We make you do whatever, right? And every
single Friday, we call it combat PT. You're going
to do something. And then eventually what happens
is you're going to mitigate to out back up to
the burn building, to the props. Then you're
going to be asked to carry stuff, drag hoses.
But every single week during the academy, you're
going to be wearing turnout gear and stuff like
that. So you come back to the incumbent side.
Every single week, shouldn't you be putting on
your gear and doing some form of training to
make sure that your fitness level is up? Yes,
but do they? Probably not. Yeah. Well, the problem
we've got now, and it's a valid one, is not only
the carcinogens, if you haven't got a good decon
program, but now you've got these PFAS in the
gear as well, which is just adding to that perfect
storm of carcinogens. So getting down the road,
at least, either a PT set of fire gear that's
not fire resistant, but mimics the heat, or getting
ideally PFAS free gear where now you can safely
PT. Because I get the argument for and against.
But you can't be a structural firefighter and
not spend time suffering in your gear. It's just
otherwise you're going to get to a fire and you're
going to fall apart. Yeah. It changes a lot,
too. Your VO2 changes and everything. And if
we're worried about people, like you said, falling
apart, falling out, whatever, on fire ground,
then you might want to be accustomed to what
you're getting into. So we've talked about some
of the kind of methods of training as far as
gear and that kind of thing. What about principles?
What are the movements that you like, the training
philosophies to start building the aerobic endurance
and the strength capacity of these first responders
that you're working with? Yeah, so I'll speak
heavily on the recruit side of things. So we
spend about four weeks in a GPP phase, and normally
it's totally unloaded. um a lot of body weight
exercise body weight movements we want to see
how these guys can move right does the majority
of class have shoulder range of motion issues
or can they can they squat properly you know
um so we spend about four weeks just doing unloaded
stuff um every wednesday we like to get out and
take field trips so we go running around the
city so to speak or we'll go to the beach or
or something and do different stuff um and then
probably after about four weeks we we start to
educate uh our individuals on barbells right
on different barbell movements um that's going
to be expected of them uh we because you have
some people come in they've never touched a barbell
right um they've never touched a kettlebell dumbbell
whatever so we want to see what these guys look
like right using an unloaded barbell and what
kind of movement patterns they have so then what
we can do is better look at our groups right
and try to put like people together um a little
bit And then what happens is when we first get
into weight training, right, we are able to put
better eyes on individuals that might need more
help. You know, our training staff helped us.
But, you know, when you're at when me and Mike
have a class of 50 or 60 people, it's hard to
watch everyone. Right. And, you know, safety
is our first thing. So we try to use that. And
then if we have any individuals in our academy
that have. training experience right and after
we've seen a little bit we'll let them help out
you know um just keep eyes for safety but uh
but so after we go through our barbell stuff
we use a little bit of caldeets triphasic um
methodology and like our first two weeks we do
a lot of eccentrically focused compound lifting
and the reason is it's because we want to see
how you can absorb load because you're going
to be put under load right so we want to see
if you can absorb load and normally about after
two weeks of that then we go into a more stabilization
so we'll go into quick movements into uh isometric
holds for extended period of times because well
in the fire ground you're going to be asked to
hold stuff under load could be a hose could be
a ladder so we want to see if you can absorb
load and can you stabilize load if you can do
those two things then i know you can produce
force so normally what happens after those two
weeks then we go and do more traditional uh contractile
movements you know through full range of motions
and stuff like that and we get more into your
power and explosion and we run through that whole
myriad and then probably about two weeks before
going out to fire school we start to unload you
and and just start to work a more traditional
um power and speed and and all that stuff so
we kind of follow that mentality but what allows
our guys to do is before they're getting i jokingly
say this before they're getting ready to get
their teeth kicked in in fire school that it
allows their body to kind of recoup for two weeks
so so we beat you up we've gotten you stronger
we've gotten you used to uh absorbing load and
stabilizing your load and be able to pick heavy
stuff up and move it because people aren't getting
smaller nowadays so so we get to that point and
then what happens is okay we're going to unload
you and we're going to try to get you moving
moving around moving fast and stuff like that
so then when you hit fire school you should be
refreshed and ready to go talk to me about rest
and recovery so before they even go on shift
what advice you giving these young recruits so
they can recover as much as possible for the
next day Yeah, so we go over, we do sleep lectures
and make them understand like what different
sleep cycles look like and how to understand,
you know, your drowsiness and much like we've
talked before is that a lot of times these young
recruits don't, like they're young and they're
able to go, right? The battery stays charged,
I jokingly say longer. But the problem is, is
if you go out to this, your first shift at your
first station and you're up. you know half the
night you know and then you're you're excited
and you're amped and then you go home and you
want to tell your family about it right just
know like you might only have 24 hours where
you got to rinse and repeat that whole cycle
again so it's so it's tough so you need to go
home make sure you get your stuff together right
uh get your stuff packed up and try to get in
bed early enough because you need to come back
in the next morning uh and you know replace the
next guy but i i think a lot of times these guys
don't understand the wear and tear it takes on
their body um but we try to educate them that
and i i'm as chief i know you talked to chief
has he explained our schedule to you at all um
i think he has but not certainly not you know
we haven't heard it on here i don't think so
let's unpack it yeah so it's crazy it's a 21
day cycle um and then that first week it's pretty
much you're on you're off you're on you're off
you're on you're off you're on you're off and
you know and then you're you're off for three
days and you're on you're off you're on I'm messing
this up probably a little bit, but you guys exceptionally
get this, right? And then you're off for two
days, then you're on, you're off. It's roughly
something like that. But as you can see that
first week, right? They call it hell week. You're
getting your head kicked in, right? So you're
up a lot at night and you're asked to go home
and rinse and recover and stuff like that. So
what we try to tell our individuals, yeah, during
hell week, you're probably not going to get good
quality sleep, unfortunately, right? However,
when you hit your two days off or your three
days off or your five day off, It is imperative
that you take some time out of your own schedule
and get recovered, get good quality sleep, maybe
not go out with your friends. Definitely try
to stay away from drinking alcohol because we
know already alcohol destroys our whole sleep
cycles. But that, again, is tough because, unfortunately,
I joke with people in the fire department, what
do the firemen like to do? All our social events
are usually involved in alcohol, right? So we
got to get ahead of that. To get back to your
question, we just do a lot of education, and
we try to explain to them the downfalls of not
sleeping and how it's going to affect you. We
educate them on caffeine and adenosine and all
that. I think it's tough because when you get
out to the station, you're trying to keep up
with the senior guy, and you still want to go
home, and you want to go hang out with your buddies
that are your age. I think it can be very tough.
Absolutely. Well, we mentioned mutual friend
Melissa from TeamBuilder. So you've talked about
50 recruits, for example, in the class, and you've
got all the people that are already on the floor,
as it were. Talk to me about the applications
as far as TeamBuilder with your department, and
then what are some of the areas that you love
about it? Yeah. So I think the biggest thing
I say we really have gotten from TeamBuilder
is the fact that we create surveys for all our
recruits in the morning and these surveys um
ask them to put down the amount of sleep they
got what their body weight is what their urine
color is their respiratory rate their heart rate
their blood pressure what's their subjective
stress level um just a myriad of things but it's
it's really fast and efficient they can do it
on their phone um but the one good thing about
that is if we get a better idea of truly how
their health is right and then um when it comes
to nfpa standards you know are they falling within
npa guidelines to be able to do training you
know right off the bat um are these guys coming
in hydrated right and if they're not coming in
hydrated then it's on me and mike to make sure
hey we're going to make sure you're hydrated
before you go out to do burns or something like
that so that's the biggest onus that we've gotten
from teamboat as far as the recruit side now
we've been lucky enough to be able to take that
data and give it to universities such as george
mason and joel martin's crew up there and they
they've created some readiness um studies out
of it as well um now the other good point is
we're a decent sized department um you know i
can't get to everyone and i can't get to every
fire station in the city so good thing of the
technology everyone has a phone we're able to
write programs uh being if you want to get in
shape are you coming back from injuries um you
know as we've talked before we do a lot of return
to work based off of what we get from doctors
and their scripts and their um indication of
the counter indication so what we can do is we
can say okay we see that you are six weeks out
of surgery uh your pt says you're able to do
this this and this but stay away from this so
we can able to then go and program it So you
can either do it at home or you can do it in
the station. Every station that we have is outfitted
with a rogue rack, rogue weights, kettlebells,
rowers, treadmills, crazy. We're pretty committed
to the fitness side of things up here. So we're
able to program things out for them as well.
And the good thing about Team Builder, if they
have an issue, they can always message us through
it if they want to or whatnot. So yeah, Team
Builder has been very good to us. are you able
to see trends with all these surveys and all
this data you're collecting are you able to see
for example if you're implementing certain programs
like an overall improvement in areas yeah you
can so so that's a good thing um you you can
we can track weight trends and stuff like that
so that's one thing we're pushing a little bit
more for in this upcoming academy is to get a
little bit better of having our guys actually
track some of their their compound lifts so we
get a better understanding of really if these
guys are pushing themselves um in that aspect
and when i come back to the survey um we have
we have used it to consistently track uh weight
gain and weight loss in the academy or for the
better part weight loss we've never really seen
anyone gain weight in the academy however what
what really came from it is we were able to use
that data and then go upstairs um to our senior
staff and be like hey listen on on average these
guys are losing seven pounds right not body fat
of a fluid weight during their first week of
um of the fire academy uh so i think it'd be
a good idea to maybe that we invest in an ors
like a drip drop or a liquid iv you know what
i'm saying like so we've gotten good feedback
from our department like okay well do you have
data well yeah here's data from the last five
academies so to speak you know and this is why
we should use it and and why not so we we use
it quite a bit um to collect data i think that's
the easiest part for us because guys can go on
there click it in go there you know they weigh
in the morning so that that portability is a
huge thing for us that's something i've heard
quite a few people in the show mentioned is uh
you know dehydration the use of energy drinks
and the rap though that they're seeing in some
of these recruit programs yeah we've we've had
it um you know and it wasn't necessarily um through
a pure exercise standpoint. What happens is when
they hit fire school, that's a whole nother level,
right? And it's not cold here in Virginia Beach.
So we've had to run some, you know, during the
summer, late fall and stuff. So guys will hit
fire school and they'll come in and be just borderline
enough to pass as far as what their body weight
was the day before, right? So we know that most
of that weight gain back is going to be fluid.
so they'll come in you know they'll be going
through and they're already beat up and what
we've had is we've had two or three cases where
we've had to move people out in a box um amulets
um just so i'm not confident that's good yeah
right yeah thank you just yeah yeah so you know
we had to go seek better medical treatment you
know than what uh like emts here on site can
treat just because they're so severely dehydrated
and why not but um you know there's there's the
other side of that like we asked them hey are
you do you feel all right you know you're just
borderline to where we like you to be as far
as hydration yeah i'm good to go well we kind
of got an idea it's probably gonna happen doesn't
always happen but um kind of idea that yeah most
of these guys are gonna end up being severely
dehydrated and then they get shipped off and
we know what's going to happen, right? You're
going to go to the ER. They're going to test
you. You're going to come back. You're dehydrated.
Your levels are up and it's going to be okay.
We're going to hold you for two days and we're
going to release you, right? And it's because
they've been working hard, right? They're pretty
much in the middle of a high intensity workout,
let's just say, right? So everything's crazy.
So yeah, there's definitely rhabdo cases. Like
we try to stay away from it as much as we can.
We've gotten to the point now where... We give
longer breaks. We got a slushie machine, you
know, that we make slushies and we give out like
to help drop that core temperature to help keep
them colder as well. So yeah, we've tried to
mitigate it a lot of ways. You know, you can
lead a horse to water. You can't make them drink.
That's what I've learned with recruits. You know,
we can educate the heck out of them and you're
still going to have some cases, unfortunately.
I mean, you can have a great team and you see
pro athletes. It still happens with pro athletes,
unfortunately. Speaking of education, that was
a good segue. One of the things that I've realized,
certainly on the shift side, and I'll get your
take on the strength and conditioning side. On
the shift side, there's very little research
being done on firefighter shifts. And sadly,
what I'm realizing is now there's a need for
culturally competent researchers. Not just people
who are kind of on the outside looking in, but
people like you said, that have gone through
a fire academy, had done the job, that really
understand, okay, this is what it feels like
to do a 24 -48 or the shift schedule that you
guys do. And so you end up with these studies.
They're very, very small studies. They're on
one type of department, and then the whole country
runs with it, and they end up advocating for
a worse schedule than they were in before, i
.e. the 48 -96. And it's very dangerous. any
fault of the the researcher but it shows that
the same parallel so many of our guys and girls
that go to a mental health practitioner and that
person has never worked with one of us before
more often than not it makes it worse not better
it's the same thing with the research so whether
it's the the shift sleep or whether it's just
strength and conditioning what are you seeing
as far as the research world and the the um i
guess the culturally competent element of truly
understanding what we do in the research that
you are reading and exposed to at the moment?
Yeah, research is always funny to me. I'm all
about it. Our guys in our department would like
to be involved with more research. Normally,
though, they want it to either be sleep -based
or performance -based. And I always think about
it's all back to performance in the end because
they're linking their sleep to their performance,
either in the fire station or how they're performing
on their workouts or whatever, not. So I think
that's a big thing that would help the fire service
if we were able to get a better understanding
that I think a lot of our guys, when they think
research, they're thinking research on the athlete.
And that's what they want to see. How will this
research better help me perform at my job or
whatever we do? If it helps you perform better
at your job, more than most likely it's going
to have health benefits to you. That's what I'm
going to guess on that one. right so i i think
that's a good thing um like i said like i've
worked with joel martin a little bit i i work
extensively with dr eric ryan out of unc or university
of north carolina and their in motion lab um
primarily right now we're working on slip trips
and fall um study they'll be back up in two weeks
to finish some stuff up but i he's he's just
getting going and niosh and stuff like that and
we talk all the time about some different things
that um that they can work on i know one of his
phd students is going to work on um i'm going
to mess this up a little bit but it has to do
with exercise fatigue on firefighters with cancer
um so he's trying to go that route and just get
a better understanding on like different the
different myriads of the fire service but he's
very committed um to like anything and everything
when it comes to the fire service and the physical
uh well -being of it so uh great great crew there
um but yeah so i i think if we want to get more
research well i think people are willing to do
it especially if you get into the young guys
because the young guys have grown up more with
the woops the auras the the i'm the iphones uh
you know so they're used to looking at their
metrics or or whatever not versus i think i found
personally that older guys tend to be like how
are you going to use this against me? I'm like,
no, we're not using this against you. You understand,
like research is used to help get funding, right?
And funding can be for health metrics. It can
be for a ton of stuff. And, you know, so I think
that's tough. But I do think if we were smart
as a fire service that we would dive wholeheartedly
and get into the research. I believe some chiefs
are apprehensive as well to get into it. I don't
know why. yeah, I mean, someone else is coming
in and doing all the work, but they're going
to work around your schedule, right? They're
not going to be like, oh, no, you can't go on
that call. We have to do this blood pressure
test right now, right? They're like, okay, we'll
get it another day or another time. So, yeah,
so I don't know. It's a great question because
I've never wondered, I'm sorry, I was like, I've
always wondered why more departments don't get
involved with research. I think one of the biggest
barriers that I see is that, you know, because
again, when you're asked for research in some
areas like we don't need research for that like
for example as i say all the time that a 24 72
is going to be healthier than 24 48 i mean do
we need to go to a lab for that an extra 24 hour
recovery period between shifts of course it's
going to benefit people but i think there's a
fear that it's going to expose you know all these
things that do need to be fixed and you know
you need more staffing and you need to have fitness
standards so there's action required But the
juice is worth the squeeze. When you, you know,
really verify what we already know and you set
those standards and you, you know, reverse issues
that are preventing recruitment and you fully
staff your department, you know, you're just
going to be operating at a higher level and you're
going to have a healthier workforce. So, you
know, sadly, I think a lot of that resistance
comes from fear. And even going back to the old
guys with that minimum standards thing again,
you as a firefighter, if you're scared of being
asked to do your job. you're in the wrong job.
It's just that simple. If you're scared of being
tired, this is something one of my guests said
recently about exercise. People are scared of
being tired. And it's like, well, think about
that. Do you want the guy that's scared of being
tired in the passenger side of your police car
or in the back of your fire engine? No, you don't.
You want the person who got tired two days ago
when they were working out and pushed themselves
and is ready to climb that 30 stories with 100
pounds of gear on their back. So no matter how
you look at it, You know, the truth is there
and it's just, okay, you really got to look in
the mirror and go, am I truly wanting a solution
or am I really putting roadblocks to stop this
research, these innovations from happening because
I'm worried about my own journey? And I think
most people, you know, if they look in the mirror
and evaluate, they're like, okay, I've kind of
deviated from the initial thing, which was I
want to help people. I need to get back on track.
I don't think there's too many people in these
positions that are really malicious or that uncaring,
but we've definitely kind of slipped away from
the mission, which is delivery of service and
making sure everyone goes home, not just goes
home, but goes home every day they were supposed
to go home rather than being forced to work all
these extra shifts. Yeah, I think you're nailing
the head with the fear thing. Like we've did
gallery testing here for cancer and I know. Not
everyone did it. One guy I talked to, he said,
I just kind of fear the unknown. If I don't know
about it, I don't know about it. I'm like, well,
wouldn't you want to know about it to get ahead?
So I think you're right about the fear thing.
Absolutely. All right. Well, then a couple of
quick areas before we go to some closing questions.
Firstly, talk to me about... uh the aging first
responder the aging tactical athlete as i mentioned
before doesn't matter how old you are if you're
on the ground doing the job you still need to
be able to do you know what is required of you
should you be a triathlete or a world champion
power leader a power lifter of course not but
still be able to do the job but as i also know
sitting here at 51 years old you do get a little
slower. Those injuries do add up. So what are
you doing in your programming to try and foster
resilience in the older firefighters in your
department? Yeah. So I think the biggest thing
is like, we want our guys to move. And that's
what I kind of get with them, right? And I'm
like, find what you like to do, right? Like,
yeah, we'll throw in some strength, like suggest
some strength training, right? Because you still
need it. But more importantly, I'd rather you
just not come to work and just sit there all
day. right get up walk on the treadmill do something
like you know is walking on the treadmill the
best thing no but it beats sitting on the couch
watching tv for 24 hours right so we like to
get have our guys get up and get moving um we've
tried um some different health classes as well
to get people in um i think sometimes not for
excuses but i think with our department how spread
out it is throughout the county. Sometimes it's
tough to get people to one central location.
That's why team building works so well. But yeah,
it's working mobility, right? Getting these guys
moving and then getting them some strength training
as well. Much like you spoke about yourself,
a lot of these guys are beat up. Lower backs
hurt, right? So they don't want to be lifting
heavy loads. they even like we talked about turnout
gear like they like to limit unfortunately how
much they wear their turnout gear but we got
we got to keep them moving right and i what i
found the best approach is find out what bothers
them right and how can we alleviate those aches
and pains if we can alleviate those aches and
pains then they start moving better right and
then they want to try more things and new things
so i that's kind of how i approach the the aging
firefighter um but i also think it's most importantly
it's to meet them halfway, right? I'm not going
to go and be pushing on them because they're
going to eject out of me, right? I want them
to like, hey, remember, we're here to help. And
then they're like, hey, I have this thing in
my back and my back's bothering me. All right,
well, let's try these things right now, right?
These stretches, whatever. Well, how's that feel?
Yeah, it feels better. Okay, well, let's keep
doing those, right? And then as you start feeling
a little better, we'll add more and more. And
that's kind of that trajectory of getting them
comfortable with you and trusting you and getting
them back moving again. What I found on my personal
journey, I'm not looking to lift more than I
could 10 years ago, whatever it was, even though
ironically in some areas I do now just because
of efficiency and the training I've done, but
it's less about adding more and more about addressing
imbalances now. Because if I'm hinging properly
and I'm able to do a deep squat and engage all
the muscles that you should be using for a squat,
I can lift the same or more just simply by...
addressing the things that are broken adjusting
the things that are tight and i'm not there yet
by any means so this is what i'm finding as i
progress into like 40s especially 50s now is
you know shoulders and hips and ankles and knees
and you know neck all those things if i'm tuning
them up i've already done you know decades of
strength conditioning that's still there in the
bank it's just now about helping my body move
without pain because you know anyone that's had
a rock in their shoe it's so distracting it doesn't
want you know you just don't want to walk It's
the same thing. If you can take the pain away,
all of a sudden that negative element of the
workout starts to go away. Now the red line workout
is still going to suck, but enjoying moving again,
just like we talked about with kids years ago,
that's what we've got to refine. But if it's
painful, then you move less and you get tighter
and it's just this vicious circle until you become
that couch potato that has a heart attack in
the middle of a fire ground. 100%. Yeah. I wish
we could get everyone in their later years of
the fire service to have that mentality and go
forward. Unfortunately, a lot of times I hear,
I've been doing it my whole career. I haven't
ever worked out. One thing I hear in my department
is, you can't strain fat. I'm just like, all
right. I don't necessarily have a comeback for
that one yet, but I'm like, what are we talking
about here? yeah but if you're fat the probability
of you dying at a younger age normally goes up
so i'm like you know i'm like you want to just
retire and then that's it like i don't know if
i when i retire i want to go live a long prosperous
life as much as i possibly can so maybe it's
better off to stay moving if an ocean lifeguard
doggy paddles towards your drowning child they're
still going to get there they're still swimming
but is it the right way No doubt. Yeah, I mean,
it's a crazy thought. So, but no, I, you know,
I'm lucky. I brag on the department I work for.
I'm lucky. We are young, and we have a very good
culture of health and wellness and fitness, right?
So I would say our majority of those individuals
is relatively small, right? So a lot of my guys
are in in my ear on my email asking me for new
equipment bigger weight like you name it right
hey can we get this new piece of equipment i'm
like no unfortunately we're a fire service not
not a gym right so so but i like i said i'm lucky
in my situation when it comes to stuff like that
brilliant that's good to hear all right well
the very last question before we go to closing
questions talk to me about physical therapy and
bringing back people back to work. Because as
you mentioned, like when I live now in Ocala,
it's Florida, a lot of retirees. Every time I've
been to PT after a surgery or after a back injury,
which I didn't have surgery, which was amazing.
You know, I'm alongside pensioners who have had,
you know, hip replacements and things like that.
And so they're, you know, fit for duty, if you
like, fit for the retirement home is simply,
can they stand up from the toilet? Mine is 100
pounds of gear, 30 floors up. So, you know, they
are great, great facilities. And the one I went
to mainly that was super humble and they would
allow me to kind of throw things into the mix.
So we got to that point where, OK, now I can,
you know, first first call when I walk through
the station door on my first day back. God forbid
it's that one. We're ready for that. So talk
to me about this background as far as the physical
therapy side and how you're able to foster that.
that performance level from the person before
they're signed off and walk back through the
station door yeah uh you know i'm lucky obviously
i stated my wife's a physical therapist and a
company i work for um mainly doing bariatric
surgeries like that was based primarily out of
multiple uh physical therapies um places um so
in in the area here that i work like i know a
lot of physical therapists so normally when i
get paperwork from them i we can kind of ask
questions and they're really open to letting
us to really kind of push the issues long if
it's coming off surgery just have staying long
uh along their protocols but they they know they're
like hey what is this that they're talking about
like like pairing gear like like how much is
that and i'll explain it to them right hey this
is this is what it takes you know this is what
they'll be doing and stuff like that and like
yeah uh okay we're gonna do we're gonna work
with them for two more weeks then we're gonna
release them because at that point they're good
to go for us but that's all we can do we're gonna
give them to you to kind of finish it off so
we're also our department's really good in the
fact that let's say you were released from pt
right and you were mentally felt like you weren't
ready to go back to duty. You could tell our
safety chief, right, that, hey, I'm not comfortable.
I don't think I'm where I should be. Can I be
given a little bit of a time frame to work with
Mike and Aaron and kind of get back? And normally
they'll give us two to three weeks to kind of
really start. And not that it gives you enough
time for physical adaptation, but we can mentally
push you a little bit more, right, and see how
you are day in and day out, right, and get you.
So we'll start in a weight room, right? give
you some weight on the load then we'll get closer
and closer and then we're like all right let's
start putting on some turnout gear right and
we'll go out back um to the burn building or
or one of the props and we'll have you do some
things how do you feel after that right i feel
all right well my back's tight or whatever all
right well let's tomorrow let's see if you can
come back in tomorrow and do it because the goal
here is that whatever we do today it's not gonna
be too crazy i want you to be able to do it tomorrow
so the goal is to build upon that now the lucky
thing for me is if we're not to that stage yet
and the PT is not comfortable and they're like,
Hey, here's the list of things that you can do.
Right. And if they, they put something on my
shirt, I just like text my wife or someone. And
she's like, yeah, like this is what the normal
protocol is for this, or this is what you want
to look for. This is like the movement dysfunction
that tends to come with something like that.
So this is what we should do. So it really helps
us on our end to kind of have. those types of
people that we can go to now there's some departments
in the u .s to have pts and pas and whatever
and they're they're ahead of the game and it
creates that bridge program right to where they
can go from one point to another to the other
but we're we're not that but we're we're a poor
man's version of that i like to say right so
i think that's the big thing is it's like if
you if you can create that what your risk management
and your safety officers right that you can set
up a program like this and then you can create
enough um friendship between local pt clinics
and whatever not and where they can call and
they trust you right and trust is not hurting
their patients right so if if you do it enough
right they're going to start have a better understanding
what your capabilities are and they're going
to give you a little bit more leeway to hey push
them here because we don't have the necessary
things to do our heaviest weights here are 20
pound pink dumbbells right most firefighters
would say they wish everything in the fire service
was only 20 pounds but unfortunately like you're
driving a pair of tools right it's not 20 pounds
so and i think that's one thing that kind of
uh pts don't really understand like they see
the firefighter right but they don't see them
with the high -rise pack they don't see them
with the expectation tools like you know they
don't understand that world that you live in
they don't understand that the lift assist let's
even just say go that far right they don't understand
like Hey, there's me and three other people are
going to pick up this 500 pound person, right?
They don't look at it like that. So it's on our
job where we are to get you to, once they start
to release you, like, okay, let's ramp this up
and make sure that you're able to do this without
getting injured and being a repeat offender,
not a true offender, but a repeat person on light
duty. I had a, I think it was a PT on a while
ago now. And they were saying that when an injury
feels like it's healed, it's actually only about
80%. And that's why you get a lot of re -injuries.
And I see pressure from departments to get their
people back fast. And then there's also this
kind of almost like faux heroism where it's a
badge of honor that you came back before the
timeline that your doctor gave you. And I think
this is something for people to understand as
well. Getting to the point where it doesn't hurt
anymore, where you feel like you're moving well
and then allowing yourself a buffer because,
you know, you need to really kind of round off
that healing before you go back. And again, sleep
deprived, get some, you know, bomb burner and
a dragon hose and you tweak or pull whatever
it is and you go down. Yeah, you made a good
point about the injury. Like, you feel better.
Like, this is the best thing I ever learned from
PTs. Like, they would truly explain to me, like,
what a graft was like or anything like that.
And they'd be like, yeah, it's... you know they
you think it's healed but really it's still gelatinous
in there so this is why we can't do this so it's
really helped us now when we come to the fire
service to have a better understanding of like
something like oh no no i feel fine i can do
this i'm like yeah well there's a reason why
you're not doing that yet in pt and this is this
is this is why versus yeah yeah there's some
real alpha dogs in the fire service there and
we go getters right and like those are the ones
that you sometimes got to watch out for especially
if they get hurt like oh no my shoulder feels
fine i can do this i'm like yeah but you're not
supposed to be doing that Yeah, absolutely. All
right. Well, I want to go to some closing questions.
The first one I love to ask, is there a book
or other books that you love to recommend? It
can be related to our discussion today or completely
unrelated. Probably most people have read this
one, but I love the book Culture Field. I thought
it was just a great one. You get to get a better
understanding of how different cultures work.
I think that's the fire service in general is
that you're taking and you've probably experienced
it firsthand. One station is totally different
to another, to another, to another. There's an
overall culture of the fire service, but there's
a bunch of mini cultures in there. And you better
have a good understanding of how each one of
those mini cultures work. And there's just, they
jokingly A shift to B shift to C shift, you know,
different culture there. So that's probably the
book that I think most relates to the fire service
because you hear so many different cultures and
how people took aspects of it and building stuff
off of it. Brilliant. What about films and documentaries?
Oh, I'm a big doc guy. Oh, man, you would ask
me that one. Oh, I like Seven Peaks. He goes
and he does all the seven peaks. It's just the
reason on why he does it and just how he does
it. I think that's amazing. Like, you know, you're
talking small groups of individuals accomplishing
big things. which is what the fire service is,
if we're talking about fire service. We're talking
about guys, an engine truck of three or four
people, and they're going in there and they're
saving lives, right? In an ideal environment.
So I think it kind of resonates that way with
it, right? Like small groups of individuals accomplishing
big things. Was that Nim's Die, that one? Yeah,
I think it was 14 Peaks. Have I got that right?
Yeah, I apologize. No, it's just for people if
they're going to Google it. I think it was 14.
Brilliant. All right. Well, speaking of amazing
people, which I had Nimza on the show, by the
way, he was phenomenal. Lucky you. Yeah, exactly.
So speaking of that, is there a person that you'd
recommend to come on this podcast as a guest,
speak to the first responders, military and associated
professions of the world? Yeah, I mentioned him
earlier, just because I think it would get a
better insight into the research side of things.
As someone like Eric Ryan, Dr. Eric Ryan out
of North Carolina in his InMotion lab, I think
you get a... understanding of where NIOS and
the research is trying to go and why it's important
to get your department involved in research,
how to go about doing that. My experience with
doing that was at an NSCA conference and Dr.
Ryan's wife was there because one of her PhD
students was presenting and I went up and asked
her a question about female firefighters and
menstrual cycles and whatnot. um and she's like
oh well you i think you'd be really interested
in talking to my husband so i i think that'd
be good i i think this would give people uh around
the country around the world maybe opportunities
to understand how to get involved in research
what's the benefits of getting involved in research
um yeah so just so it's not me trying to get
the fire service involved research well i appreciate
it thank you All right, well, the next question,
is there a person that, oh, my God, I just went
on autopilot then. I haven't done a thousand.
Let me write that down. Oh, my goodness. 145.
All right, let me try that again. Well, the last
question before we make sure everyone knows where
to find you, what do you do to decompress? Obviously,
I like exercise and whatnot, but probably mountain
biking is my big thing. the decompress I like
being in nature I grew up in the middle of the
woods I love hiking I love uh camping stuff like
that that's that's kind of my uh go -to uh my
wife jokes she's like she don't understand how
I can work with people all the time and then
want to be like this solo bird out of out in
nature I'm like I don't know just I think it
helps me in my day job then so yeah that's kind
of my my big thing I'm just getting out and um
and doing stuff out and out in nature whatever
not so that's my big decompressor Yeah, I think
my answer is because I work with people all the
time. That's why I want to go to the woods now.
Right? No doubt. All right. Well, then for people
listening, if they want to learn more about you,
find you on social media, reach out, where are
the best places online? Yeah. So we have our
own social media, First Do Wellness. And if you
just want to find me personally, my personal
Instagram is amekiss. So it's AMCKIS at 1983.
That's my personal one. And then our other ones
first do wellness. So you'll see a lot. We let
our interns do a lot of posting on different
health aspects, things that we do in our fire
academy, things that we might do at EMS. You
know, we're just here to try to educate people
as much as possible. Are we, you know, we're
not saying we're the gurus of anything, but we
just want to spread the. spread the knowledge
to first responders primarily. You know, I think
they're an underserved community like we've talked
about. You know, I think just recently, you know,
they've gotten more into health and wellness
and hiring people like myself and whatnot. But
yeah, like we've tried to start intern programs
to get them out to other departments. I just
think it's a good thing. Like these guys give
their lives to the community, right? Literally
their lives, both physically and mentally to
the community. And then at the end of the day,
what do they got? Like we talked about earlier,
don't have anything, right? So I think this is
a way for us as a community, as a fitness community
and whatnot, to give back to them for everything
that they're doing for us. Like I said, please
fire EMS. It could go into the tactile setting,
but either way, it's a way for all of us to get
back. And this stuff isn't just necessarily for...
um the first responder like there's information
on there that a family member could look at and
get and learn and go from because they're in
the trenches too right the wife the daughter
the son everyone like you know they're the ones
that have to be away from the family as well
so it's tough