Episode 25: STRONG is Never WRONG with Sarah Johnson, CSCS
A random story on IG is what brought Sarah into my life! I'll never forget her repost of one of my videos and her comment, "I want to be FireSQFitness when I grow up!" {FireSQFitness was my previous business name.}
I reached out, and we've been friends ever since.
Sarah Johnson is a firefighter, strength athlete, and strength coach in Winston-Salem.
Before becoming a firefighter, Sarah earned her degree in exercise physiology from East Carolina University. While at ECU, she interned with ECU’s strength and conditioning staff and at CrossFit Tier One. Shortly after graduation, she earned her CSCS and began coaching for Mash Elite Performance.
Sarah coached athletic performance, strength sports, and general populations with athletes worldwide while coaching for Mash Elite. Since joining the fire department in 2020, Sarah has continued to coach athletic performance and works primarily with athletes in a one-on-one setting.
Sarah has also competed and medaled multiple times nationally as a weightlifter and powerlifter. Recently she began training for strongman and plans to compete and train for that discipline for the foreseeable future.
Sarah believes that strength training and a focus on overall wellness have carried over to her work tremendously and allow her to perform her duties as a firefighter more efficiently.
So what, now what?
You can never be too strong in a job actively trying to kill you. Sarah meshes weightlifting, powerlifting, and strongman training to become an absolute beast!
Check out Sarah on IG
Watch Sarah clean 280#!
Gym Aware Use code mash5 for a discount! Thanks, Travis!
-
Annette: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to episode 25 of the Fire Rescue Wellness Podcast. I sat down with my friend Sarah Johnson, who is an insanely strong monster of a woman. Sarah competes in weightlifting, powerlifting, and most recently strong man competitions. Sarah is a career firefighter and a wonderful human.
I hope you enjoy the podcast.
Thank you for joining me on the Fire Rescue. Wellness Podcast. I'm your host AZ. I find the research and resources and then provide the fire service with the so what now, what? To ensure the health and wellbeing of every member of our profession together. Let's thrive.
Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of The Fire Rescue Wellness Podcast.
I am here today with my friend Sarah Johnson. [00:01:00] Sarah, say hello to the podcast people.
Sarah Johnson: Hey everybody. Hope y'all are having a great day.
Annette: They're gonna be having a great day after this conversation cuz they are gonna absolutely love it. I am excited about this one and Sarah and I have known each other for a couple of years and we met, of course via Instagram, but we have met in real life too.
So Sarah's an amazing young woman, just a monster in terms of strength and performance, and I'm excited for this conversation. So Sarah, we're gonna start with the hot seat questions. Are you ready?
Sarah Johnson: I think so. I hope so.
Annette: She just took a big slurp of coffee. I saw it. Yeah. All right. Who is Sarah Johnson?
Sarah Johnson: Oh I'm a coach, a firefighter, and my biggest goal with all the things I do as a friend, as a dog mom, is to just positively impact others every [00:02:00] day. To make a positive impact. That's always been my goal no matter what, even as a strength athlete. So that's who I am.
Annette: And Sarah, you absolutely do that. I know you bring a lot of joy to a lot of people.
I personally love watching you lift heavy things and post pictures of your dog named Doggie on Instagram. I should mention that Sarah does work for a fire department. She works for a relatively large fire department in north Carolina. So the views that Sarah expresses today are her own and don't represent those of her employer.
So Sarah, what sets your soul on fire?
Sarah Johnson: So you sent me these questions a couple of days ago cuz I asked and I'm glad that I got you to send them to me cuz you know I've got some there's the little shallow things that make you happy, set you on fire. Like when I hit PRs, big PRs, especially.
That fires me up, right? Like you get a huge adrenaline dump if you're around a crowd. They all get fired up, they [00:03:00] give you high fives. I love to cook, especially stuff in the smoker. So if you cook something that's really good, that first bite, you're like, heck yeah, like this turned out 11 outta 10.
Annette: Amazing.
Sarah Johnson: But I think the thing that gets me the most is when you're coaching and you're starting to see all the pieces come together. And then one day it all clicks and they had this big breakthrough where they finally reached that goal that they've been trying to get for years. And they've been stuck when that happens.
And you finally get to see them experience this huge, amazing thing that does something deep inside of me that lifting never did. And that really sets me on... Ugh.
Annette: That is a magical feeling as a coach. I can definitely relate to that. And Sarah, I'm gonna go just a little bit deeper into this question for one second, because you said that setting PRs and lifting heavy things is one of [00:04:00] the things that sets your soul on fire.
I watched you via video. I wasn't there live, but I watched you lift some crazy weight at Summer Strong and people were just, oh yeah, going nuts. Sarah, what was that lift? What did you do?
Sarah Johnson: So I did two lifetime PRs at Summer Strong. One of them actually, both of them were unplanned, but one of them was a lifetime PR clean at 280 pounds.
And one of them was a lifetime PR deadlift at 430 it was a conventional PR it I've actually sumo deadlifted a little bit more, but oh my gosh. It was like, it's what I imagine if you took adrenaline and just mainlined it into your , that's what I think it would feel like, or like lightning
Annette: Well, , and again, I wasn't there.
I didn't get to see it in person, but I've spoken to a lot of people that were there and they said it was just the most [00:05:00] electric experience that many of them have experienced in their life. So super cool, Sarah. Super cool. Thanks for sharing. All right. Third question. Sometimes people think this is the hardest one.
How are you changing the world?
Sarah Johnson: Okay. So I talked about that a little bit in the who am I? And I changed the world by having a positive impact on others by especially with younger kids, I've noticed people in their early twenties, teens, when I'm training with them they'll say something, they'll say, oh, I'm gonna try this today, or, I don't know about this today.
And I'll say, no, , you're gonna do it. There's no trying, we're you are going to do this. Talk about yourself the right way. Like you are strong can achieve anything that you work hard for. And you and I do that sometimes at work. Not as much at work cuz I am newer. when I'm coaching or training with people you gotta bring good energy.
And that's how I do that one person at a [00:06:00] time.
Annette: So what Sarah's saying is basically she's Yoda. Either do no or do not. . There is no try.
Sarah Johnson: My first weightlifting coach had that poster in his office and that's where I took that from. And he would say that to me and say, no, we're not trying it. You're going to do it or you're not gonna walk up to the bar at.
Annette: Okay. That's an unbelievable mindset. So cool. Sarah, so you compete in two and technically now three strength sports, but let's talk about those first two. Weightlifting and power lifting. And I want you to tell cuz some of the listeners probably don't know the difference and they probably also don't know that most people do not cross over in those two sports.
So tell me about those two sports.
Sarah Johnson: Okay, so weightlifting is an Olympic sport and it is comprised of two different lifts.The Snatch, which is taking the bar from the ground to overhead in one movement. And [00:07:00] then there's the clean and jerk, which is. You take the bar from the ground to the shoulders and then overhead.
So it's two separate movements, and at those meets you get three attempts at each lift. And then power lifting is the squat, bench deadlift, which most people are familiar with. You go to most YMCAs, you're gonna see people doing those three movements. And Olympic lifting is much more technically demanding and much more demanding on your mobility.
So if you don't.have Good rhythm and you don't have a lot of mobility. Those can be very hard and they take a long time to get good at. Power lifting I think is a little faster to pick up most. That's, which is why most people do that.
Annette: And my perception, Sarah, is that power lifting, although technique is involved, of course, always with any sport, but power lifting is so much just pure [00:08:00] strength, whereas the weightlifting has a larger finesse and power component, would I be accurate? And if I'm not, tell me I'm wrong.
Sarah Johnson: It's pretty close. And you're all right. You have to have you do have to have some technical skill when you do the power lifting because if you look at really good bench pressers, really good sumo deadlifters, they have really good technique and they've learned how to.use The body type that they have to lift the most weight. But with Olympic lifting, you could be an amazing lifter and if you miss your overhead position by a centimeter, you're probably gonna miss, a lot of times when I miss, I'll feel it drift forward off the floor. And you already know it's either you're not gonna make it or you're gonna have to do something sketchy to save it. which is not a good feeling.
Annette: I kind of wanna sing a song right now. Time to do some sketchy shit, doo-dah. Huh?
Sarah Johnson: Anyway, every time I lift
Annette: Me too. Sarah. Me too. And so because of [00:09:00] the different demands of those two different sports, it's my perception. That because they truly are different. That's why most people don't cross over and dabble into both accurate.
Sarah Johnson: Okay. Yeah. Accurate. Accurate. Yeah. Yeah. That's why most people don't cross over. They're very different and they're very different people that do them. I think. I would agree.
Annette: I think one of the my favorite clients I ever had, in fact, and he was a nutrition client. He was not a sports performance client. He was a nutrition client, but he was a weightlifter. And I'm telling you, I was so invested in his meets and so invested in his performance, and my whole firehouse would sit around and watch, here's a little shout out to Will Easley. They would sit around and watch. And there, it's just, there's so much grace and so much power involved that it's so impressive.
Sarah Johnson: It is. [00:10:00] That's, there's actually a weightlifting team called Power and Grace because of that, and they're one of the better teams in the country I'm pretty sure that my invitation for power and grace got lost potentially cuz I have no grace. I'm not sure Sarah , I'll follow up. Okay. I hinted at the fact that you were also dabbling in a third sport. Tell us about that.
So I've been thinking about stopping weightlifting for a while now. Mostly because. Hard on your joints, which I say all that and strongman is hard on your joints too. But I've gotten burned out on weightlifting. I've been doing it for a while and I've had some of the same issues and same problems pop up and I've had a couple of coaches tell me, Hey, you should do strongman people that are really good at this and really good at that, but maybe not the best. Usually really excel at strongman. I also think it's gonna [00:11:00] carry over to work the best, which is another reason I wanted to do it. So I signed up for my first meet, which will be April 1st at Myrtle Beach. Super exciting.
And I went full send. So in, in strongman you can do novice, which means you've never competed before or you can do open and then pick your weight class, which is people that have competed, potentially people that have pro cards. And that's what I signed up for. Of course you did.
Who knows. Who knows what I'm getting into because why not?
Annette: All right. I'm actually gonna tag Keith Hare in the show notes. Keith is the strength and conditioning, health and Wellness guy at Horry County, which is Myrtle Beach. So I'm gonna make sure he comes and watches you compete. Amazing.
Sarah Johnson: Yeah, we, he, we met at Summer Strong.
He was,
Annette: probably cheering you on one of the nicest guys in the world.
So Sarah, how has your training in all of these strength sports [00:12:00] either helped or hindered your career in firefighting? Tell me about that aspect of it.
Sarah Johnson: I personally believe that being a weightlifter and a power lifter has only made me a better firefighter. . But I do think that being a firefighter definitely affects my training.
Not always in the best way, because at the end of the day, I'm not making any money weightlifting or power lifting. And if the tones go off at two in the morning, I can't say, oh, tomorrow's max out Friday. I can't. I can't get up. You guys are gonna have to go without me. No, you have to get up and you have to go to the call and run the lift assist or the fire alarmor the house fire and then watch the sun come up and then you go home and get a nap and hope for the best and
Annette: And smoke something and yeah, hope for the best .
Sarah Johnson: Yeah. Yeah. But I do think it's helped a lot because when we would do any type of physically demanding things during recruit school or anything during work it was never really a problem for me to [00:13:00] know, I had to learn the technique but I learned how to flip a ladder up on my shoulder and throw it that way, which is, that's a pretty physically demanding task that not everybody could do. Or picking up a bunch of heavy stuff and carrying it from point A to point B. Never had any issues with that. I do really well on the abilities test every year.
Anytime we have to go do a lift assist on a larger patient, all the guys always joke. They're like, oh, just let Sarah pick her up, pick he or she up. It's no big deal.
Annette: So it's true and it's really good. It's in the technique and you have the technique. That's amazing. Yeah. So tell me, you have actually been a firefighter since I've known you.
I did not know you prior to firefighting. So how did you come to be a firefighter?
Sarah Johnson: I found out what the schedule was, which was very appealing to me. I was like, oh, they work 10 days a month. I have so much time to train, which is true. I do have tons of time to train [00:14:00] and I hate desk jobs, cannot stand them.
I love helping people, so you can already see it's checking the boxes off. It's like I get to do cool stuff all the time. I was just like, this is perfect. This is perfect. , I get to train as much as I want. I get to help people. I get to do cool stuff. I don't have to sit at a desk. And then I went and I applied in the city I work for and got hired and I have absolutely fallen in love with it.
It has been the best thing ever and I still get to coach, which is another perk I still get to do. I have the two best jobs in the whole world in my.
Annette: And Sarah, you mentioned your schedule and sometimes that helps your training and sometimes it hinders your training. Are you on a 24 48 schedule?
Sarah Johnson: We work on modified 24 48.
During the business week it's 24 on 48 off, and then on the weekend you're either on a four day weekend, which is what I'm on right now, [00:15:00] or you're 24 on 24 off. So you either work Friday, Sunday. Saturday, Monday or you get all four of those days off. So those four days off are really nice and you can do a lot of stuff in that time period.
Annette: So I'm trying to do the math in my head and it's not working very well. How many shifts or battalions or whatever you wanna call it, how many groups do you have in order to cover that schedule? In other words, I'm on 24 48 and we have three battalions. We have three shifts.
Sarah Johnson: So let's see. So this morning I'm on shift three.
So shift three got off. Shift one came in, and then shift one and two will flip flop back and forth until we come back on Tuesday and then it'll be back to the normal schedule.
Annette: Okay? You know what? I've never heard of this.
Sarah Johnson: It's weird. It's a very weird to explain. [00:16:00] heard this from other firefighters.
You just your body starts to know when you're supposed to go to work and when you're not supposed to be at work, .
Annette: So, with that schedule, Sarah, do you know how many hours that adds up to per pay period? I'm at 99 per pay period.
Sarah Johnson: 112. 112 per pay period.
Annette: Okay, cool. And just continuing on with your firefighting career.
Are you in North Carolina? Are you on a pension system? And if so, how does that work?
Sarah Johnson: We are, if I understand it correctly, they take 6% of our pay every year and currently we're on a 30 year system and they're pushing for new legislation that would change us to 25. So if that goes through, that'll be a game changer cuz that'll shave five years off my retirement
and I would retire at 52, and if they'd leave it at 30, I'll [00:17:00] retire at 57, something like that.
Annette: and it is a young person's job. I'm telling you. I'm in my early fifties now and yeah, things are painful, . All right, I'm gonna start asking you for some advice now. So let's start. We're gonna break it down.
We're gonna break it down into, I'm interested in power lift. Or weightlifting and then we'll move on to, I'm interested in firefighting, so okay. We have a young, or even a middle-aged person who says, I would love to start competing in one of these strength sports. What would you say to that person?
Sarah Johnson: I would ask them why they wanted to compete first and figure that out.
Once you figure out the why, then we can figure out everything else. Because if it's, if you tell me, let's say it is a younger person and they say they want to compete for. Versus, Hey, I want to go to nationals, I want to train for the, those are two very different things and with two very different ways that you're [00:18:00] gonna push them and talk to them.
And you still want it to be fun, obviously, but things are a little more serious if you're training to make a world team compared to I'm doing a local meet just because I want to, then I would tell them, okay, we know that we're if they're asking me in person. , I'm gonna say, Hey, do you wanna work with me or do you wanna work with one of my coaching friends?
I have several in this area if they're not local and they're messaging me from far away and I've never done it before. If you've never Olympic lifted, I personally think it's better to have somebody that's hands on right in front of you, queuing you and working with you, cuz it I've coached people online that when I worked for Travis Mash that didn't have a lot of weightlifting experience and.
it can be hard to try to get them to grow and technically learn and become very proficient in the movements. Just through a video. It can happen and [00:19:00] you'll make improvements, but it's, I don't think it happens as quickly as if you're standing right in front of them. And I know coaches all over the place, and if I don't know somebody, I know people who will find them.
So I can find you a. Oh, this sporting world is a very close and very it's an, it's amazing.
Annette: I, if I remember right, Sarah, I had reached out for you or to you to , get a coach for someone who had recently relocated from Illinois. And it was like two seconds later you had a bunch of suggestions.
Sarah Johnson: Yeah, that's absolutely reach out to someone who knows what they're doing and they can get you lined up with someone to work in person.
Annette: I think that's great advice. Yeah. So now let's flip it over, Sarah, and say, I am a young male or female, and I'm considering a career in the fire service. What would you tell that person?
Sarah Johnson: I would ask them once again, why do you wanna be a [00:20:00] firefighter? Why? and not because I want them to not be a firefighter. I've talked to tons of people that wanna be a firefighter. How do I become a firefighter? First thing you have to apply, obviously. Second is you need to realize that this is a mentally and physically demanding job and that you need to be ready for that.
Then I would ask them if they want help. If they want help, they again to work with me. Once again, I know tons of different gyms in the area that train people. Tons of different ways I can. , you can come train with me at my gym, or you can go to another gym or work with another friend that I have that will help you get physically ready for the Abilities test because you don't get an interview, I don't think you get an interview anywhere around here if you don't pass the Abilities Test and then you gotta be ready for recruit school.
We do PT three times a week. I personally don't help with the pt, but doing PT three times a week and then you've got the fire classes. That's [00:21:00] a lot. It's very stressful on your system. You need to be ready for that. So I would tell them that they need to start getting physically prepared to work really hard for six months and they need to be in really good shape.
That'd be my biggest advice. And maybe find somebody that's already in the fire service to help them with.
Annette: And that's great advice. Whatever you're trying to do, start a business. Build a house, find someone who knows what they're doing, ask them for advice, and then do what they told you to do.
That's the key. That's the hack. And as you were speaking, Sarah I was thinking, what do you wish you knew about the fire service that maybe you didn't know before you got into it? .
Sarah Johnson: Let's see. What did I not know? That's a good question.
Annette: Maybe you knew it all.
Sarah Johnson: I did not know it all.
I definitely did not know it all. I wish I had known how many different things that we do and the different I [00:22:00] didn't know that we ran the kind of med calls that we run. I didn't know we ran life assists.. I had no idea. Not that that's bad. I just didn't know I didn't know. at most jobs it's eight to five, you start at eight, done at five.
You might have to answer an email at 5:30 and then you can turn your phone off and nobody bothers you at work. And they told us during the interview Hey, you might be doing crazy stuff for 24 hours straight. And that is 100% true because we switched a truck over at 10 o'clock last night,
And who would've ever thought that sometimes I look at stuff, I'm like, who would've thought this is what I'd be doing right now? or one time we landed a helicopter for a class full of kids to do an air care presentation. Who I was like, who would've ever thought that I'd be doing this right now?
This is so cool. And then sometimes it's not cool, but mostly it's really cool stuff. I wish I had known the scope of things I would be getting into cuz I thought firefighters just ran fires. [00:23:00] That and car wrecks.. I had no idea that we do all the pub eds that we do. I didn't know that we go to schools.
I didn't know that we do all this med stuff that we do. I did not know I was gonna have to be an emt. I didn't even Google it. I just was like, like they asked me at the interview, they said, did you look at our website? I was like, I did not prepare for this interview. . It's not a good idea.
I don't know. It's a good thing I'm strong cuz I did not prepare
Annette: Sarah. That's gonna be the quote of the day. It's a good thing. I'm strong cuz I did not prepare. And if you're listening, here's a tip. Do make sure that you check out the fire department's website, you can see how many calls they run a year.
How many stations and all of that stuff. And so Sarah, you already , answered my question, but you said you have to be an EMT and I'm assuming an EMT basic.
Sarah Johnson: Yes. W e currently do not run any squads or [00:24:00] paramedics or ambulances. We have county ems, they do all that. So we do the initial care.
We help them get loaded up on the ambulance. Then we go back to the station. Sometimes we'll ride in if they don't have enough people, and it's a pretty traumatic call, but that doesn't happen very often. .
Annette: Okay. And then you told me before we started recording, you have about 330 employees. How many stations and what square mileage do you cover?
Sarah Johnson: I'm not sure what our square mileage is. We have 19 stations and we have one that is supposed to be opening soon. So we've technically got 20 stations, but one of them doesn't. There's nobody in it yet. They're supposed to be in a while ago, and it just hadn't happened.
So it's a pretty, it's a pretty good sized department. I don't know what our average call volume is either. [00:25:00] I'm not sure.
I know it's in our reporting system. Our reporting system's cool. It'll tell you how many of the cities run, how many each station is run, and then there's another way up there to look to see how much, how many each firefighters run, which is really cool.
Annette: That's very cool. I was just about to start transitioning to closing questions, but I thought of something else.
In your 19 stations, what types of equipment do you have available for physical fitness? So that's part one and part two. What are your department policies in terms of working out on duty?
Sarah Johnson: Oof. So right. in our stations, if you have exercise equipment, it is something that somebody else has brought in. So a lot of the stations just have hand me down stuff or someone's uncle was getting rid of this elliptical.
Let's put it in the bay. Or, Hey, I'm not using this weight bench at my house. At my station, we have [00:26:00] a plyo box and a 20 pound dumbbell, and that's it. So any, I think I've posted two or three videos at the station I'm at now of me lifting weights with bumper plates and a bar and all that stuff. I would bring all that stuff in my car and unload it into the bay, use it, then load it all back into my car.
Some of the stations, pretty sure a couple of the stations have squat racks and dumbbells, but it's like it's all stuff people have brought in. We do have a training center downtown. , it has either two or three racks, bars, some bumper plates, some very simple, basic stuff. And we're supposed to be doing a peer fitness trainer class in two months, first weekend of the first week of March.
And we're gonna get all the equipment from running that class. And that'll be we're trying to shift the culture in the department to a more Wellness. Physically [00:27:00] cultured department where we want to work out and we want to train and we want to do all these things, but for a long time it just wasn't that way, and so now we have to transition to it.
They put out a policy this year about our Abilities test, which is a reason we're running this peer fitness trainer class. They said, if you don't pass your abilities test, you come off the truck for X amount of days, which is the first time they've ever put anything like that in our policy. We do get an hour a day to work.
I would say a lot of stations, if you do work out, it's one or two people. It's not the whole crew. I know there are exceptions to that. There are crews in the city where the entire crew works out or the entire crew is into physical fitness. But it's just a it's gonna have to slowly change.
It's not gonna be a fast thing. And it, I went to the coaches conference last week and I talked to a couple of different vendors about equipment and then hopefully even. , we'll get some of that equipment into these stations, and even [00:28:00] if it's a squat rack, a sled, and a sandbag, just something simple, but very limited right now.
Annette: And I'm sad for you that you don't have a lot of equipment, but I am really pumped that you are allocated that time because in my opinion the department, giving you time is, that's the biggest barrier for entry. So I am pumped about that. Great things coming on the horizon for you guys too.
I love that. Sarah, if I were to say, what did I miss today? What did I forget to ask you? What were you hoping to share? That I just blew it. Do you have any parting thoughts?
Sarah Johnson: I wouldn't say you missed anything. I do like to talk about how I train, but that's if people want to hear about that, I can, I could talk about that all day.
Literally all day. . Literally all day.
Annette: Give me the wave tops. I wanna hear how you train. I really do. But not all day.
Sarah Johnson: Okay, so my [00:29:00] coach is Travis Mash. If you've never heard of him, go look up his page Mash Elite Performance. He is super strong and also super smart. Just a little brag on him.
And his big thing is that he has taught me and given me, and it has been very helpful as a firefighter, is velocity based training . That has been a humungous game changer for me and for a lot of the kids that I train with at Lenore Ryan. That's their big thing too. So velocity based training, essentially you have a strength curve, and so lightweights move fast, heavyweights move slow.
That's, I think they teach that in every biomechanics or physics class that you take. All velocity based training says is that, hey, your 70% is usually is, it's gonna move at this speed, 90, 95, a hundred percent. It's gonna move [00:30:00] at this speed and you're gonna fail if you get below this speed. And so you can set parameters for the day and say, Hey, you can't drop below 0.45 meters per second.
And I've got, it looks crazy. It looks like something out of a science fiction book, but it's a clip that goes on the end of the collar and it's got a laser beam that comes out of. and it bounces off a reflective mat and tells me how fast the bar is moving. And you wanna talk about a game changer on days where you don't feel good or you didn't get enough sleep.
It's outstanding. And there's some days I'm, there's three different types of athletes. There's fast and weak in the middle, slow and strong. I'm slow and strong, so I'll make a squatat speeds that most people would not make it at. I'll deadlift so slow the thing won't pick it up. And so I know, hey, I have to cut this off if I'm working up to a heavy single before I get to that point.[00:31:00]
And if you're somebody that is power lifting and you've got a little bit of extra money and you want to enhance your training, I don't really use it for my Olympic lifts much, but my squatting, pressing. It's really good. I would encourage you to look into. Look into the Gym Aware equipment. If you're a department that has some extra money and you want to enhance your training for your firefighters, get some flex collars.
I wouldn't leave them in the stations. I would make sure there's one person who's in charge of them, because they're pretty sturdy. They're not gonna break if you drop 'em, but they're pretty small, so they might get lost. And then there's the gym awares with the tethers, and those are basically indestructible.
I don't have one of those, but they're really cool too. So I just got back on one of Travis's programs, but before that I was running if anybody knows what Louis Simmons and conjugate is, I was running a conjugate program. And so I'd have a heavy squat day or a heavy good morning day with [00:32:00] accessory work.
Same concept for upper body. So I'd do a heavy bench press with a specialty bar or. Heavy overhead press. I do a ton of accessory work and then I have a speed day with bands or chains for both. And that one it works really well with our schedule because you typically are gonna get, you're gonna work a day, then you're gonna have two days off.
So you get two of your training days back to back, then you get another day off and you come back and you do your speed days. So you get enough of a break that you can still train really hard. I would do my heavy lower day and then have my next day off and then do my heavy upper day before I went to work.
So my legs usually weren't dead when I'd get to work. Cuz that's important too. You can't just fry a firefighter and then send them back to work.
Annette: Sarah, I heard so many things here. First of all, you said there's three types of athletes, but you didn't mention my type of athlete, which is slow and weak.
Sarah Johnson: No [00:33:00] that's not true.
Annette: So there should be four types.
Sarah Johnson: No, there's definitely not .
Annette: The other thing Sarah mentioned, putting the collars, having one person be in charge of them. This is because we know firefighters operate in this way. You can put a firefighter in a lockedroom with 3 rocks.
And come back. And they lost 1, ate one, 1 and broke one. So that's just how we work. Okay. But now I have a serious question, Sarah, because I don't have a lot of background with velocity based training. And I wanna make sure I understood it. The velocity based training predicts more or less that if the bar is moving too slow, you're going to fail.
Did I hear that right?
Sarah Johnson: Yes.
Annette: Okay. And so using velocity based training for a firefighter who's tired is going to help them know they have to take weight off the bar in order to move fast enough not to fail. Is that right?
Sarah Johnson: Absolutely. Yeah, [00:34:00] absolutely.
So you could take a group of firefighters and you could say, Hey, we're gonna do a five rep max. I want you to stay. , you can pick a number. 0,5, 0.4 depends on your group. And then you can say, Hey, if you're you're gonna see a little bit of drop off, sometimes you say, Hey, if you're doing your five rep max and you hear below 0.5 is what we want to hit. But if you get below 0.45 before below 0.4, you're cutting it off, you're done.
And we have to take weight off the bar. Cuz you don't want to see that big drop. The way Travis explained it to me is if you see over a 20% drop in the velocity from the start to the finish, it trains your slow twitch fibers instead of your fast twitch fibers.
Annette: Also, I'm feeling like Travis should be maybe presenting this topic at NSCA tactical.
Sarah Johnson: I think he would really enjoy. He's, he really enjoys the tactical population. He just specializes in weightlifting, [00:35:00] powerlifting, strength sports. But we talk about it quite a bit and that was one of the big reasons he wanted me to do it is because right when I got out in the stations, it's a big adjustment.
He said, you need to get this. I actually got hurt. And then he's said you need to start doing this so that you don't get hurt anymore. Cuz if you can't train and then you're hurt and you miss work and you can't train, that's not good. So we need to stay away from both of those things, which is, it's another reason to use the velocity basis cuz it helps prevent those big injuries.
Annette: That is such good information, Sarah, and I wasn't even expecting that today. Thank you. Also, please tell Travis that the deadline for application for this year's tactical annual is January 28th, so he still has time. Okay, let's get him there. Travis Mash.
Sarah Johnson: Yeah I know he went to the coach's conference to run the Gym Aware booth.
I wonder if he's gonna be at that one to run the Gym Aware booth as well. I have to ask him. [00:36:00]
Annette: Yeah, definitely ask him. Cuz I think that's a topic that you, police, fire, and military all could benefit from that topic.
Sarah Johnson: I think everyone, I'm biased cuz I love it and it's, I probably use it a little different than Travis does just because I'll squat until I get really slow and then just keep going because I need to hit heavy one rep maxes.
But on speed days, especially if it gets below a certain. , I'll take weight off the bar. It's changed sometimes it'll change what you're gonna do for the day, so it's very beneficial for first responders in military.
Annette: I just, I love this topic and I'm gonna put in the show notes, I'm gonna put Travis's website.
I'm gonna put a little blurb on velocity based training and also a link to the Gym Aware. People can get some more information. All right, one final topic, Sarah, then I'll let you go. I need you to tell the people [00:37:00] about Doggie. Tell us about Doggie.
Sarah Johnson: Oh, sweet. Doggie. Sweet, sweet, Doggie. So adorable. Where do we start?
Right now, doggy lives with her Meemaw and her papa because I had to move. And my roommate is allergic to dogs, but she gave me a really good deal on where I live, so until I buy a house or something like that, she's absolutely living her best life at Meemaw and Papa's, like she goes on car rides every day.
She gained a ton of weight while she was there, which I don't know if you guys know this or not, but apparently labs, some labs have this gene that makes them never feelfull, so they just eat nonstop.
Annette: I have that gene.
Sarah Johnson: Same. Okay. And Doggie and I are, almost the same person. She's my spirit animal. And so my parents have other dogs, and what she was doing is she would eat her food and then they would leave some food in their bowl and she'd go on cleanup, patrol, and then Meemaw would give her table [00:38:00] scraps.
So I told Meemaw no more table scraps.. But she is just this, she's this sweet black lab. I rescued her when she was six months old. I was in college, so she's been my dog of my twenties. She's been with me through college, through weightlifting, through injuries, through moves, through just anything and everything.
Just living her best life. I'm trying to give her best life. She gets a steak on her gotcha day, and she gets a steak on her birthday. So my mom's birthday and her birthday are very close together, so this year on my mom's birthday, I went home and I brought home do you guys have a, we have something called Harris Teeter.
It's a grocery store. You can go in. It's I don't know what it would compare to where you are, but anyways, you go to Harris Teeter, they usually have a cut on sale and they had Porter. I want six. I want six porterhouses, one for everyone in my family and one for my dog. I want 'em all an inch thick.
So I get [00:39:00] home and my dad goes, why do you have six? And I said, oh, one of 'em is for Doggie . One of them's for Doggie. She gets a porterhouse too.
Annette: How did he not know that?
Sarah Johnson: I don't know. I don't know. It's Doggie's birthday too. Dad. Come on.
Annette: And what I'm hearing, Sarah, is she's been through with you through, like you said, college and injuries and everything and now you're with her through thicccc Girl summer and fall.
Sarah Johnson: Absolutely. And she did go through a thick phase with me too, cuz I wasn't measuring her food. I didn't know you were supposed to do that. Why is my dog so big? It's oh, I'm feeding her too much. But I put her on a diet right before she moved with myparents. I was cooking her food. So I'd cook, I'd meal prep all her food, and I'd meal prep, all my food.
And then we were going on walks every day. We made friends with some of our neighbors. It was pretty cool. My one of my old roommates picked on me. She said that I had a boyfriend down the street because this, he's probably in the [00:40:00] seventies, one of my neighbors. And he would always come out and say hey to me and talk to me for 10 or 15 minutes.
And he was like my neighborhood boyfriend. All thanks to Doggie.
Annette: Sarah this has been such a pleasure. I was looking forward to it for so long. You mentioned that Instagram was the best place to get ahold of you, and I will put your handle in the show notes. Follow Sarah for weightlifting. Strong man powerlifting and Doggie adventures and you will not regret it . So again, thank you everyone for listening. No specific calls to action other than if you have someone interested in firefighting or these strength sports, please share the episode. Sarah and I would both appreciate it and with that....
AZ and Sarah are officially out.
Sarah Johnson: Bye.[00:41:00]
