Episode 64: Watering the Horses with Annette Zapp, CSCS*D

Listener Roy asked, "Regarding firefighter and fire department training questions, my issues are less with leading the horses to the proverbial water and more with getting them to drink it. Strategies I see are usually focused on getting career firefighters to exercise on shift, but there are notable nuances between career and paid-on-call/ volunteer departments that result in those strategies falling flat in departments like mine."

I did clarify with Roy. He is a paid-on-call department.

“I’m hoping to crowdsource and or brainstorm ideas with others like me at the upcoming NVFC Summit do you have any thoughts or experiences?"

I sure do! Listen to this episode to find out some of my thoughts.

So what, now what?
Most people don't love to exercise, so meeting them where they are and lowering those barriers to entry are two big ways you can help them drink the water. Also, keep in mind that your job isn't to convince. You're not a used car salesman!

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• Episode Transcript

  AZ: [00:00:00] Hey listeners, it's AZ. Welcome back to episode 64, of the Fire Rescue Wellness Podcast, and today it is a solo episode where I am going to be answering a listener's question, but first, a little bit of a life update for me. Couple of things going on. As you may or may not know, I had a total knee replacement on June the second, and I'm gonna be honest with you, the first week was absolute hell, and I did not sleep at all.

  And the sleep issues are still ongoing. So yeah, that's a big one for me. Not getting any sleep is a big deal. I feel like I was relatively behind hitting my benchmarks. Finally yesterday, which as I'm recording this will have been [00:01:00] five weeks post-op, I was finally able to get full revolutions on the bicycle.

  Now most people are doing that within a couple, two to three weeks is what I'm understanding. So I felt like I was really behind, but I now feel like I've made a breakthrough again. The sleep, oh my God, the sleep is not good. It's a common complaint of people with knee replacements, but I really gotta get my poop in a group with that sleep cuz I, I look bad. I feel bad. My brain hurts. My eyes hurts. I'm just tired. So that's where we are with the knee. I'll probably send out another email update maybe next week or the week after, so look for that.

  In addition to that, I did sell my home. I moved locally, and [00:02:00] now I live under an airport. So you're probably gonna hear planes going by while I record my podcast episodes now.

  Sorry about that, but it adds character.

  All right, so let's dive into the question today, and it comes from Roy. And Roy asks, I'm just gonna read it from the Instagram chat. "Regarding firefighter and fire department training questions, my issues are less with leading the horses to the proverbial water and more with getting them to drink it. Strategies I see are usually focused on getting career firefighters to exercise on shift, but there are notable nuances between career and paid on call/ volunteer departments that results in those strategies falling flat in departments like mine."

  I did clarify with Roy. He is a paid on-call department.

  “I’m hoping to crowdsource and or brainstorm ideas with others like me at [00:03:00] the upcoming NVFC Summit"

  National Volunteer Firefighter. I don't know what the C stands for, but he recently was presenting at that summit.

  But he says, "do you have any thoughts or experiences?" Of course I do, and I'm happy to share.

  So I truly believe that some of the same issues exist in both career and volunteer, which is, like Roy mentioned, you're showing the horse the water, but you can't make them drink it. There is this perception out there that I think is somewhat inaccurate. There's this perception out there that many or most career fire departments have fitness standards.

  They have fit for duty. They have benchmarks that people need to hit in order to quote unquote keep their job. And as far as I know, that's just not the case. There are [00:04:00] very few departments that I know of personally that have any sort of fitness for duty standards. If you scroll back in the episodes to when I interviewed. Vanessa Frost Piadrahita in January. Her department has a very elegant sort of fit for duty ish program, which works really well. But again, that is a full-time career department. But the first point again I wanna make is that we see similar problems in career departments as in volunteer departments. So how do we overcome these obstacles?

  The first one that I would like to point out to you is that I can't convince you of anything. I can try, but the more I try to convince you, the less likely you are to be convinced, [00:05:00] because at some point it starts to sound hollow. It doesn't ring true anymore. And so the strategy that I've been using is simply giving people the information and helping them understand why they might want to care.

  And once they know that they might want to care, then they have that sort of impetus or push to actually do something with the information. So let's use a non-exercise example.

  I love creatine. I think the supplement is one of the most important ones that anyone could consider taking. We know good for building bigger, stronger muscles. We now know that it is involved in bone health, brain health, cognitive abilities while sleep deprived, [00:06:00] depression and anxiety. The laundry list goes on and on, and the research is still ongoing and they're still figuring out ways that creatine is important. But if I just go after it by convincing and giving you the hard sell and telling you the benefits and trying to get you to take it, You're gonna be less likely to take it than if I simply just talk to you about all the benefits and let you sit with it.

  So in some respects, we can do the same thing with fitness. It's very difficult. I say this all the time. You can't bully a grown adult who willingly walks into a building on fire. You just can't do it. Bullying isn't going [00:07:00] to work, and so if you can present the information in a compelling and non-aggressive way, I think that can be very helpful.

  So giving the crews the information about how important exercise is for cardiovascular health and how critical our cardiovascular health is to keep us alive when we're doing this job, both on and off the job. I think that can be really helpful, but then we have to throw in the following, which is: People hate to be embarrassed. They hate to feel like a failure. They hate to have other people, quote unquote, outwork them, show them up. And so we need to bring in that factor of [00:08:00] meeting people where they are and keeping things down to a, not the lowest common denominator, but perhaps a lower common denominator. For example, you might think, oh my gosh, it would be such a great idea if the crew did CrossFit style workouts together.

  Or you could also refer to it as high intensity weight training style exercises together or workouts together, especially if maybe three of your five crew members already have that capability. It's really tempting to go for that higher common denominator. But what's that saying and what's that doing to the two other people that are at a lower common denominator?

  So I wouldn't necessarily cater to the absolute lowest common denominator because then you're gonna [00:09:00] lose some interest from the people that have greater ability. But maybe bring it down a notch or two. So instead of a CrossFit or high intensity weight training style workout, maybe something more like some farmer carries some pushups, a walk slash run around the block some body weight squats that people can add a kettlebell and make it a goblet squat.

  It's still a similar type of training session, but it's catering to a little bit lower common denominator, so there's not exercises in there that are just gonna be very difficult for a beginner to master. You're not gonna be wanting to try to teach someone who hasn't exercised for 25 years how to [00:10:00] do a snatch.

  It just doesn't make sense. Is the snatch a great exercise? I believe it is. Is it a great exercise for all firefighters? I truly believe it is not a great exercise for all firefighters, especially firefighters that have never done a snatch before. It's just not a great place to start. So bringing it down to a lower common denominator can help capture the interest of, I believe a larger percentage of the crew.

  And the other thing that you wanna consider is you can overwhelm people, but you can also underwhelm people. And even if what you're asking them to do is the right thing for them to do. If they feel underwhelmed by it, they're not gonna wanna do it.

  So here's an example of that. Say you've got a firefighter that [00:11:00] is a solid 50 pounds overweight, has not great eating habits, not great sleeping habits they're just not that healthy overall. One of the things that would be a great starting point for them would be simply walking a 10 or 15 minute walk after every meal, or a 30 minute walk every morning, or an hour long walk every other day.

  That would be a fantastic place for that person to start, but also in their brain, they're gonna be underwhelmed by this. In their brain, they're gonna think that isn't gonna make a difference. It's not enough. And so I'm not gonna do it because it's gonna be a waste of my time. I

  know it's not a waste of time, You know it's not a waste of time. But [00:12:00] for that person that is very unfit, if they perceive it as a waste of time, they're not gonna want to do it. Now on the other end of the spectrum would be taking that same person and then putting on them on a five day training cycle that's very intense. They're gonna be very sore. That's overwhelming, that's too much.

  But we need to be like Goldilocks and find something in the middle. That'll be just right. So it's a maybe a little bit more than we think that they should do, but also to them, it feels like they're really getting something done. So you have to meet them where they are. Talk to them. Ask them. Ask them, do you believe that this program that we're putting together for you [00:13:00] is going to be effective?

  And if they say no, that's a problem. So you need to have more conversation. So meet 'em where they are. Be careful not to overwhelm them. Also, be careful not to underwhelm them.

  The other thing that we need to consider is barrier to entry. And I talk about this. I don't know how many podcast episodes I've talked about this on, but if the barrier to entry is high, people aren't gonna do it.

  This isn't just an exercise, this is anything. I have a podcast. It took me five years to start a podcast, but what I needed to do was make the barrier to entry low enough so that it felt doable. What did not feel doable for me is editing my own podcast. I know it's easy. I believe all of the people that [00:14:00] tell me it's easy, you can totally do it.

  I believe them, but I don't believe them. And so for me, finding someone to edit my podcast, decrease d that barrier to entry. Now, once I'm up and running on my podcast, now they're telling me, you gotta be on YouTube. You gotta have the video too. No, I'm not gonna do it. The barrier to entry is too high.

  It's the same thing with exercise. It's the same thing with going out on a date. If someone makes it too difficult to schedule it, or God forbid they would maybe want me to go downtown Chicago on a Friday night at seven o'clock when I don't know what the parking situation is. Immediate, no, the barrier to entry is far too high. Same thing with exercise.

  So we have to decrease that barrier to entry. [00:15:00] We have to make it easier. And Roy asked specifically within the volunteer and paid on call departments how do we make this work in those departments? And although admittedly I have never worked for a volunteer or paid on-call department, I wonder if it would make sense to... it's my perception that they have weekly training. Maybe it's biweekly, I'm not sure, but it's my perception that they have that training. So why not start with tacking on 15 minutes before or after the training just for something simple, teaching them foam rolling, teaching them some mobility exercises, some stability exercises.

  Start there. Once they're doing that, then you can start teaching them exercise routines, quote unquote, that they can take back, do [00:16:00] at home do at their other job. Or if the actual department has exercise equipment at the department, I would actually put together meet meetups and say, I will be here at six o'clock Monday and Thursday working out anyone who wants to join me, please come on down.

  It will be all abilities and so I will have a main workout, but I will have progressions and regressions for everyone so that everyone can have an effective and safe training session. It's only twice a week. But twice is way more than zero.

  So this, we're gonna keep it short this week. I feel like I gave you a couple of ideas and the last thing that we have to just remember is that most people don't [00:17:00] love physical fitness.

  I personally love it. I thrive on it. It makes me happy. I am very sad right now because my gym is in pieces scattered over the greater Chicagoland area. That makes me sad. I went and tried to join a local gym the other day and I couldn't even manage to get joined at the gym yet.

  I crave movement. It's part of what I do, but most people don't give a flying crap about exercise. It's like vegetables. They know that they should eat them. They know that they should do it, but they don't want to. And so it's gonna be the last thing on their list, the last priority that they have. And so this goes back to the education and giving them a reason to think about [00:18:00] why they might want to care.

  I hope this has been helpful. If you enjoyed the podcast, I would really appreciate it if you would leave me a review and a rating on whatever platform that you listen. And then also, as always, share it with another firefighter that you know.

  This has been AZ and we are out!