Episode 80: Conversations on Fitness 'Testing' with Annette Zapp, CSCS*D
Fitness testing is only meaningful if it's reliable and actionable, so it's not the place to start a health and wellness program.
Top tips if you're convinced fitness testing is right for your department:
*Make sure it's proctored by a credentialed and competent professional who can explain not only the testing process but also the results.
*Ensure that steps are in place to create action on the results. A candidate tests poorly on the strength tests? Who is going to mentor them so they can improve?
*Do not treat testing protocols as a box-checking exercise.
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Episode 80
[00:00:00] Listeners, hello, it's AZ, and this is episode 80 of the Fire Rescue Wellness Podcast. It's hard to believe that we are already on episode 80, incredible. So I feel like it's time to thank you. If you've been listening for a while, if you've been tuning in for over a year to the Fire Rescue Wellness Podcast, thank you.
And also if you are a newer listener, I appreciate you. I'm going to give my somewhat standard disclaimer as of late. If it sounds like there are airplanes buzzing my house, there are in fact airplanes buzzing my house. It's, it's a whole thing.
All right. Today, I think is going to be relatively short episode. I'm going to give you a couple of life updates before we get started. First one, if you joined us last night, (if you're listening [00:01:00] to this on the day it releases, it would be last night) for the seven-minute science webinar. I appreciate you. I am so grateful that you took time out of your busy life to join us for the webinar.
We appreciate you and we are looking for ways to bridge the gap between theory and application in fire research to the firefighters- boots on the ground. And so if you did attend the webinar, I would love it if you would reach out, let me know how you liked it. Would you go to another one? How would you rather receive the information? And you can send me a message on Instagram, that'd be great, or you could email me info@firerescuewellness.org.
So, speaking of more updates, I have experienced a couple of last things in the last 24 [00:02:00] hours. So, as you may know, I am retiring. I do have an official date in my head of March 24th of ‘24. And so I'm starting to experience those lasts.
And yesterday I did my last driving course. I killed a couple of cones. I’ve got to be honest. I killed a couple of cones. I usually don't do that. It's that serpentine. It got me. I think I killed one on the forward and one on the backward, but. That is the last time I will be doing a driving course.
And then this morning, I got my blood work done for my annual physical. My department does a great job of providing very comprehensive annual physicals. And it's, it's really interesting. We used to have to go to the hospital for both the part one, the blood draw and the urinalysis and all that stuff. And then they would bring us back to the hospital for the part two, where we talked to the doctor, got our EKGs, any other sort of, you know, invasive, like X-rays or [00:03:00] something like that. But they decided that it was really kind of a royal pain in the ass to be sending companies five miles away to a hospital. And sort of balancing that clown act in terms of getting the companies there on time and back on time and getting people rotated through that a few years ago, they started doing the part one physicals, the blood work, the urinalysis, blood pressure, spirometry, actually at our headquarters station.
So that works pretty well, except I always call it the pee walk of shame because you're walking through the halls of the firehouse holding your own pee. For me, that's the equivalent of making your dog carry its poop after you put it in the plastic bag. But anyway, so this was my last Fire Department blood draw, physical pee walk of shame. So I am counting down those last things that are happening in my career. [00:04:00] So it's pretty exciting actually.
Today's podcast is ultimately going to be about fitness testing and fitness assessment, but this is where it came from. Last night, I received a message in my Instagram DMs from someone who I don't follow. So I think they follow me, but I don't follow them back at this time. And so their message went to the folder where you don't immediately see it. And they had responded to one of my “shit my firefighters say” posts. And that post was about the Gerkin protocol. Now, for a little perspective, if you've ever done the Gerkin protocol, it starts out with a nice easy walk for three minutes at three miles per hour.
And then either the speed or the incline increases every minute until you reach [00:05:00]the predetermined target. By your age, but the first speed after 3 miles per hour is 4. 5 miles per hour. And I walk pretty fast, but I walk comfortably at 4 miles an hour. So walking at 4.5 is hella difficult for me, but it's way too slow to run and it's really awkward.
So one of my firefighters had said at one point, “who's the idiot who picked this speed?” So that was my shit my firefighters say post the other day. And so this person that I haven't met reached out and said, “Are you aware that the Gerkin protocol overestimates VO2max?” Again, I don't know this person, and I've been on social media long enough to know that homie isn't interested in picking any fights with people. I just, I don't want to fight with people on the internet.
And so I simply answered and I said, “yes.” [00:06:00] And so then he came back and he said, basically, what are your thoughts? I think is what his question was. Now, I, again, homie isn't interested in fighting with anybody on the internet, and I wasn't quite sure what the intention of the question was.
So I wasn't going to put a lot of intellectual labor into answering a question for someone I really don't know and I've never interacted with. And so I shot back and I just said, “can you actually sort of ask me a question rather than just, you know, broadly saying what are my thoughts on this?” And so, he obliged me with sort of a clarification.
And so the clarification was this, “what are your thoughts on using Gerkin knowing it overestimates and is only a sub-max estimated VO2?” That is a [00:07:00] very well formulated question. So that was easy to answer. And so I'm, I'm actually going to read my answer.
I said, What is the option? Medical grade VO2 max testing isn't available to most departments. Most departments do not have a metabolic cart. I think South Metro has one, but I sure as hell don't have one. A huge percentage of departments don't even have an embedded outside professional. So they have firefighters running this fitness testing. I said, and further, the Gerkin is what the IAFF/IAFC chose and so many departments are just, that's what they know. They're sort of enamored with it because that's what they know.
I went on to say I always clearly explain that it's only an estimation and likely an overestimation. I explain how the NFPA came to their guideline of 42ml/kg/min, and I tell them that for their physiological safety, they should [00:08:00] be aiming to well exceed 42 on the Gerkin protocol.
I also emphasize the value of recovery heart rate and keeping body composition optimal as those metrics positively correlate with cardiovascular health and recovery heart rate as well. And then I went on to say as well as general performance, time to exhaustion, sleep quality, etc, etc, etc. And he said he was just talking about his department and how, elite cyclists do really poorly on Gerkin.
Understood. He said there should be almost a translation of Gerkin scores to actual VO2. It's kind of impossible to translate it to actual VO2 because it is an estimation, but I hear this. And he was just curious on my take on the Gerkin because it's probably different when I'm advocating for the greater good for the greater population as opposed to just my local department.
And so I just concluded the conversation with better is always better. And then, of course, Matt Spaid’s going to [00:09:00] love this because I totally did an Annette Zapp/Lori Spaid some sort of typo. I don't even know what I was trying to say here. Better is always better with practice coding services. Oh my god.
I don't know what I even meant to say there, but you are correct. It's a broad spectrum. Have a great night.
So that leads me today to talk about fitness testing and I have a couple of points that I want to make about fitness testing and the first point I would make is regarding fitness testing is that I wouldn't use it as your entry point to a health and wellness program, meaning if you don't have anything going on, you don't have any programs, you don't have any services. You don't have any medical testing. You don't have any gym equipment. You don't have any time allocated. You don't have anything going on. That would not be my point of [00:10:00] entry, fitness testing, because if you don't have anything going on, what are you going to do with the fitness testing information?
In order to make fitness testing useful, we need to have a couple of things in place. And the first thing in place would be a qualified and competent person to conduct that fitness testing. And not only conduct the testing, but then explain the results to the personnel undergoing the testing. There is nothing more annoying than the perception that we're just checking a box.
So if, for example, I was required to go through an obstacle course, and let's just say, let's say it's ridiculous. It's a ninja obstacle course, and the last activity is to swing on a [00:11:00] trapeze and end in a pool full of balls. And then at the end, when I land in the pool full of balls, someone writes my name down, checks it off, and then says, Thanks, see you next year.
What was the point of that ninja testing that I just did? If we're just checking a box, why are we doing it? So, not only do we need someone qualified and competent to administer that ninja testing, but we need someone at the end to say, here's your time. Here's the time we would like you to have completed it in, uh, by the way, you did real bad on that spider wall thing, but here's a group of exercises that you can use to improve your performance on that.
And by the way, the reason you want to be good at that particular ninja skill is that it helps you do your job, perform better in your job [00:12:00] in X, Y, and Z fashion.
So qualified and competent person to administer the test, and then someone who can explain what the test means. If your department has an in body 570 scale, which is state of the art, it's amazing. It's a wonderful way to compare body composition changes over time. It's definitely not the gold standard, but it's easy to administer in the field. And there's great. There's great correlation with the DEXA data. My girl Katie Hirsch talked about that way back on an earlier episode, but it doesn't make any difference if you have this $10,000 piece, 10, 000 piece of equipment if no one can explain to the firefighter what the information means, because if the firefighter just looks at it and says, Oh, I gained weight. That's bad. [00:13:00] But no one's explaining. Yes, you gained weight, but you lost body fat and you gained muscle. Therefore, your $10,00 scale is worthless.
So qualified and competent person to administer the test and explain the results and give them the so what now what what are we doing with this information? You just made me go through the WFI, Wellness and Fitness Initiative, testing protocol. You measured my body composition. You stuck me on a treadmill.
You had me jump up and down on a mat. You had me do push ups and a plank and a sit and reach and maybe some other exercises. Some departments have adopted some other exercises and you showed me my results. What am I going to do with that information? Who is going to explain to me what that information means and what the action items are for it?[00:14:00]
And so, sometimes I get the argument, but AZ, something is better than nothing. And I really hate that argument. Especially in the case of fitness testing. Because really, doing fitness testing, absent the ability to tell the individual what to do with the information, I really believe is a waste of time. It would be like me getting my blood work this morning and then it popped up on Mychart right before I started recording and then no one ever talks to me about it, no one ever tells me what I could do with the information or how I could improve the numbers, we just check the box and move on to next year.
It's the same thing. So something is not necessarily better than nothing. And again, I just, I can't emphasize enough. What are you doing with the information? If you're not doing anything with it, why are we collecting it? Why are we [00:15:00] subjecting people to testing that we're doing nothing with the information?
The next thing that I would ask you is that if you are doing fitness testing, Are you able to make sure that the results you are getting are reliable and valid? So, if you are conducting the wellness and fitness initiative in the way, in the manner that it was meant to be conducted, the results should be reliable.
In terms of validity, there may not be a direct correlation with how well someone does on the test and how well they perform on job tasks. This is a, is a space for Dr. Mark Abel because he is very good at correlating testing with [00:16:00] actual, does this reflect in job task performance, but at least if you're doing the WFI, the results should be reliable. If you're doing them correctly, you should be able to look from year to year and say that test was conducted in the same way in 2022 and 2023. My results this year versus this year, they should be reliable.
The next thing that you need to consider is can you explain to the candidate The ideal testing conditions and why they need to comply with them. And so for example, in the wellness and fitness initiative, you need to make sure that the personnel's blood pressure is lower than 160 over 100, and you need to make sure that their [00:17:00] heart rate is below 100. And so the advice that I give personnel that are gonna be going through this testing is, A, if you are on a blood pressure medication, make sure you're taking it as prescribed, and B, let's maybe not binge on the monsters and Bangs before you come over for fitness testing because it's going to skew your data. So not only may you not be able to take the test because your blood pressure or your heart rate's too high, but if your heart rate is already at 99 just sitting on the chair during a heart rate check your Gerkin protocol, your estimation of VO2 max is not going to be accurate.
You're going to get bounced out of that test more quickly than you normally would because your heart rate is starting out high. So you're, it's going to take you less time to get to your target heart rate. [00:18:00] So being able to describe to the candidates, what are your best conditions and why.
The next one is being able to explain to the personnel why we are testing in the first place. So, the way that I explain to firefighters, why are we doing this fitness testing protocol? The first one is, we are doing this fitness testing protocol because your department has a long-standing relationship with this test, if I had been the one to choose the testing protocol, more than likely we would not be doing this testing protocol.
The next thing is I explain to them how each component of the test is measuring a different physical fitness [00:19:00] characteristic. So the first thing, of course, we're taking vitals. Blood pressure and heart rate, just making sure it's a screening process. Is it possible that this person has uncontrolled hypertension and doesn't know it?
It's possible. So it's a screening process, heart rate and blood pressure. Then we move on to body composition testing. And I also add in a waist to hip ratio because there is some pretty good data that waist to hip ratio is a predictor of mortality risk. And also it's just really freaking good to see from year to year, Wow. My gut got bigger and my butt got smaller. So, and, and they asked me, firefighters asked me, what can I do about this ratio? Well, it's really simple. We need to build muscle and lose body fat. That ratio will get better.
We, we then move on to the treadmill protocol. And again, the Gerkin [00:20:00] protocol is an estimation of VO2 max. It is likely a very big overestimation for most people. But if we look at it in trends from year to year, Last year, you scored a 48. This year, you're only at a 38. What changed? We can start digging and digging. And while they're warming up on the Gerkin Protocol, I explain to them, the reason we are doing this is for this reason.
Firefighting is very physiologically expensive. And if you are not cardiovascularly fit, it can be dangerous. You have a risk of dying from sudden cardiac death if your cardiovascular fitness cannot support, cannot adequately support this level of work. And so we [00:21:00] want to make sure that we're scoring at an absolute bare minimum, the 42, but I would like to see you higher because again, this is overestimating it.
We want to see you score at least 42, hopefully higher. Then, once you hit your target, we want to see how efficiently your heart rate goes back down. Because another risk of sudden cardiac events is a heart rate that doesn't recover quickly. So I explain to them why we're doing this. We're not just checking a box.
I'm not just here to put you on the treadmill so I can cross your name off. We're here to give you actionable information. And when they, when the treadmill shuts off and I see 36, we have a conversation right there, your cardiovascular fitness is inadequate to safely do this job. This is something that you need to start working on right [00:22:00] now, today.
No more screwing around. This is serious. So, after we hop off the treadmill, we move on to the grip strength. Dr. Mark Abel has done, again, some work with grip strength, especially in the gloves, grip strength seems to be something that's really tough. And as firefighters, we do need to have adequate grip strength.
What I'm looking for is making sure that they're within a kilogram or two from right to left. If they're not, why? I want to make sure that from year to year, they are maintaining that strength. And if they are not, we're having a conversation about how to improve your grip strength. We then move on to the isometric arm curl.
At this point, we do not do the deadlift, the isometric deadlift. Some departments want to, some departments don't want to, it's risk versus reward. I [00:23:00] go with what the administration of the department prefers, but with this, we're looking at mass, maximal muscular strength. And then we move on to the pushups, muscular endurance.
I'm sorry, the plank. I'm sorry, the plank is before the pushups, muscular endurance. Push ups once again, muscular endurance, and then the sit and reach and firefighters get really frustrated with the sit and reach and I explain it to them this way. We do the sit and reach because it's part of the protocol and it's been done since the beginning when you guys began doing this.
So the only thing that you can compare is you to you. I can't tell you a standard. I have a firefighter that's almost 7 feet tall. He can barely reach his knees. And there is no way that he can improve much. I mean, he stretches his hamstrings. He does all of the things. He does [00:24:00] functional range conditioning.
He does all of the things. And he could walk away being disappointed or he could walk away going, okay, well, I was just as good as I was last year. And this test doesn't necessarily tell me, is it my hamstrings, is it my calves from my toes being in dorsiflexion, is it my lower back, or is it the fact that my arms are too short for how tall I am?
And so, in terms of the testing, again, if I was picking the testing, I definitely would not include the sit and reach in there. But actually able to explain to the personnel why we are doing each test, what the results mean, and how to improve your results in the future.
So, I want to leave you with just one final point, and I've said this before on the podcast, and this can be in terms of administration. This can be in terms of [00:25:00] peers. This can be in terms of family. Wanting to help and actually being helpful are two very separate things. They're very different things. And there are many people in the fire service that I truly believe are trying to help. They are trying to do the right thing. They are trying to improve the culture and the health and the whatever.
Name it. They want to help, but they don't have the skillset and the credentials and the ability to really be helpful. And so if you do not have those personnel or civilians embedded in your department who can actually be helpful, in my opinion, there's [00:26:00] really no reason to do fitness testing at all.
All right, this has been almost 30 minutes.I thought it would be a bit shorter, but hey, sometimes I've got a lot to say. If you enjoyed the podcast, I would really appreciate a rating and a review. And third, the trifecta, share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
This has been AZ and I am officially out.
Listeners, hello, it's AZ, and this is episode 80 of the Fire Rescue Wellness Podcast. It's hard to believe that we are already on episode 80, incredible. So I feel like it's time to thank you. If you've been listening for a while, if you've been tuning in for over a year to the Fire Rescue Wellness Podcast, thank you.
And also if you are a newer listener, I [00:27:00] appreciate you. I'm going to give my somewhat standard disclaimer as of late. If it sounds like there are airplanes buzzing my house, there are in fact airplanes buzzing my house. It's, it's a whole thing. All right. Today, I think is going to be relatively short episode.
So I'm going to give you a couple of life updates before we get started. First one, if you joined us last night, if you're listening to this on the day it releases, it would be last night for the seven minute science webinar. I appreciate you. I am so grateful that you took time out of your busy life to join us for the webinar.
We appreciate you and we are looking for ways to bridge the gap between theory and application in fire research to the firefighters boots on the ground. And so if you did attend the webinar, [00:28:00] I would love it. If you would reach out, let me know how you liked it. Would you go to another 1? How would you rather receive the information?
And you can send me a message on Instagram, that'd be great, or you could email me info at firerescuewellness. org. So, speaking of more updates, I have experienced a couple of last things in the last 24 hours. So, as you may know, I am retiring. I do have an official date. In my head of March 24th of 24. And so I'm starting to experience those lasts.
And so yesterday I did my last driving course. I killed a couple of cones. I got to be honest. I killed a couple of cones. I usually don't do that. It's that serpentine. It got me. I think I killed one on the forward and one on the [00:29:00] backward, but. That is the last time I will be doing a driving course. And then this morning, I got my blood work done for my annual physical.
My department does a great job of providing very comprehensive annual physicals. And it's, it's really interesting. We used to have to go to the hospital for both the part one, the blood draw and the urinalysis and all that stuff. And then they would bring us back to the hospital for the part two, where we talked to the doctor, got our EKGs.
Any other sort of, you know, invasive, like X-rays or something like that. But they decided that it was really kind of a royal pain in the ass to be sending companies, you know, five miles away to a hospital. And sort of balancing that clown act in terms of getting the companies there on time and back on time and getting people rotated through that a few years ago, they started doing the part one physicals, the blood work, the urinalysis, blood pressure, [00:30:00] spirometry, actually at our headquarters station.
So that works pretty well, except I always call it the P walk of shame because you're, you're walking through the halls of the firehouse. Holding your own pee. For me, that's the equivalent of making your dog carry its poop after you put it in the plastic bag. But anyway, so this was my last Fire Department blood draw, physical pee walk of shame.
So I am counting down those last things that are happening in my career. So it's pretty exciting actually.
Today's podcast is ultimately going to be about fitness testing and fitness assessment, but this is where it came from. Last night, I received a message in my Instagram DMs from someone who I don't follow. So I think they follow me, but I don't follow them back at this time. And so their [00:31:00] message went to the.
the folder where you don't immediately see it. And they had responded to one of my shit my firefighters say posts. And that post was about the Gerkin protocol. Now, for a little perspective, if you've ever done the Gerkin protocol, it starts out with a nice easy walk for three minutes at three miles per hour.
And then either the speed or the incline increases every minute until you reach the target, predetermined target. By your age, but the first speed after 3 miles per hour is 4. 5 miles per hour, and I walk pretty fast, but I walk comfortably at 4 miles an hour. So walking at 4. 5 is. Hella difficult for me, but it's way too slow to run and it's really awkward.
So one of my firefighters had said at one point, like, who's the idiot who picked this [00:32:00] speed? So that was my shit. My firefighters say post the other day. And so this person that I haven't met reached out and said, Are you aware that the Gerkin protocol overestimates VO2max? Again, I don't know this person, and I've been on social media long enough to know that a homie isn't interested in picking any fights with people.
I just, I don't want to fight with people on the internet. And so I simply answered and I said, yes. And so then he came back and he said, basically, what are your thoughts on using it for, you know, basically, what are your thoughts? I think is what his question was. Now, I, again, homie isn't interested in fighting with anybody on the internet, and I wasn't quite sure what the intention of the question is.
So I wasn't going to put a lot of intellectual labor into answering a question for someone I [00:33:00] really don't know and I've never interacted with. And so I shot back and I just said, can you actually sort of ask me a question rather than just, you know, broadly saying. What are my thoughts on this? And so, uh, he was, he was, he obliged me with sort of a clarification.
And so the clarification was this, um, what are your thoughts on using Gerkin? Knowing it overestimates and is only a sub max estimated VO2? That is a very well formulated question. So that was easy to answer. And so I'm, I'm actually going to read my answer. I said, What is the option? Medical grade VO2 max testing isn't available to most departments.
Most departments do not have a metabolic cart. I think South Metro has one, but I sure as hell don't have one. So a huge percentage of departments don't even have an embedded outside professional. So they have firefighters [00:34:00] running this fitness testing. I said, and further, the Gerkin is what the IAFFIAFC chose.
And so many departments are just, that's what they know. They're sort of enamored with it because that's what they know. I went on to say I always clearly explain that it's only an estimation and likely an overestimation. I explain how the NFPA came to their guideline of 42 mils per kilogram per minute, and I tell them that for their physiologically, physiological safety, they should be aiming to Well exceed 42 on the Gerkin protocol.
I also emphasize the value of recovery heart rate and keeping body composition optimal as those metrics positively correlate with cardiovascular health and recovery heart rate as well. And then I said, I went on to say as well as general performance, time to exhaustion, sleep quality, etc, etc, etc. And he said he was just talking about his department and how, um, [00:35:00] elite cyclists do really poorly on Gerkin.
Understood. Um, he said there should be almost a translation of Gerkin scores to actual VO2. It's kind of impossible to translate it to actual VO2 because it is an estimation, but I hear this. And he was just curious on my take on the Gerkin because it's probably different when I'm advocating for the greater good for the greater population as opposed to just my local department.
And so I just concluded the conversation with better is always better. And then, of course, Matt Spade's going to love this because I totally did an Annette Zapp Lurie Spade. Some sort of typo. I don't even know what I was trying to say here. Better is always better with practice coding services. Oh my god.
I don't know what I even meant to say there, but you are correct. It's a broad spectrum. Have a great night. So that leads me today to talk about fitness testing and I have a couple of points that I want to [00:36:00] make about fitness testing and the first point I would make is Regarding fitness testing is that I wouldn't use it as your entry point to a health and wellness program, meaning if you don't have anything going on, you don't have any programs.
You don't have any services. You don't have any medical testing. You don't have any gym equipment. You don't have any time allocated. You don't have anything going on. That would not be my point of entry, fitness testing, because if you don't have anything going on, what are you going to do with the fitness testing?
Sorry, Jeremiah. I gotta pause again.[00:37:00]
You're gonna love this, Jeremiah. For some reason, my phone started dictating what I was saying. And so it was overwriting all of the notes that I was gonna use for speaking. So annoying. Why is this happening?
Back on track, Jeremiah.
In order to make fitness testing useful, we need to have a couple of things in place. And the first thing in place would be a qualified and competent person to conduct that fitness testing. And not only conduct the testing. but then explain the results to the personnel undergoing the testing. There is nothing more [00:38:00] annoying than the perception that we're just checking a box.
So if, for example, I was required to go through an obstacle course, and let's just say, let's say it's ridiculous. It's a ninja obstacle course, and the last activity is to swing on a trapeze and end in a pool full of balls. And then at the end, when I land in the pool full of balls, someone writes my name down, checks it off, and then says, Thanks, see you next year.
What was the point? of that ninja testing that I just did. If we're just checking a box, why are we doing it? So, not only do we need someone qualified and competent to administer that ninja testing, but we need someone at the end to say, here's your time. Here's the time we would like you to have completed it in, [00:39:00] uh, by the way, you did real bad on that spider wall thing, but here's a group of exercises that you can use to improve your performance on that.
And by the way, the reason you want to be good at that. Particular ninja skill is that it helps you do your job, perform better in your job in X, Y, and Z fashion. So qualified and competent person to administer the test, and then someone who can explain what the test means. If your department has an in body 570 scale, which is state of the art, it's amazing.
It's a wonderful way to compare body composition changes over time. It's definitely not the gold standard, but it's easy to administer in the field. And there's great. There's great correlation with the DEXA data. My girl Katie Hirsch talked about that way back on an earlier episode, [00:40:00] but it doesn't make any difference if you have this 10, 000 piece, 10, 000 piece of equipment.
If no one can explain to the firefighter what the information means, because if the firefighter just looks at it and says, Oh, I gained weight. That's bad. But no one's explaining. Yes, you gained weight, but you lost body fat and you gained muscle. Therefore, your 10, 000
scale? So qualified and competent person to administer the test and explain the results and give them the so what now what what are we doing with this information? You just made me go through the WFI, Wellness and Fitness Initiative, testing protocol. You measured my body composition. You stuck me on a treadmill.
You had me jump up and down on a mat. [00:41:00] You had me do push ups and a plank and a sit and reach and maybe some other exercises. Some departments have adopted some other exercises and you showed me my results. What am I going to do with that information? Who is going to explain to me what that information means and what the action items are for it?
And so, sometimes I get the argument, but AZ, something is better than nothing. And I really hate that argument. Especially in the case of fitness testing. Because really, doing fitness testing, absent the ability to tell the individual what to do with the information, I really believe is a waste of time. It would be like me getting my blood work this morning and then it popped up on my chart right before I started recording and then no one ever talks to me about it, no one ever tells me what I could do with the information or how I could improve the numbers, we just check [00:42:00] the box and move on to next year.
It's the same thing. So something is not necessarily better than nothing. And again, I just, I can't emphasize enough. What are you doing with the information? If you're not doing anything with it, why are we collecting it? Why are we collect, why are we subjecting people to testing that we're doing nothing with the information?
The next thing that I would ask you is that if you are doing fitness testing, Are you able to make sure that the results you are getting are reliable and valid? So, if you are conducting the wellness and fitness initiative in the way, in the manner that it was meant to be conducted, the results should be reliable.
In terms of [00:43:00] validity, there may not be a direct correlation with how well someone does on the test and how well they perform on job tasks. This is a, is a space for Dr. Mark Abel because he is very good at correlating testing with actual, does this. Reflect in job task performance, but at least if you're doing the WFI, the results.
should be reliable. If you're doing them correctly, you should be able to look from year to year and say that test was conducted in the same way in 2022 and 2023. My results this year versus this year, they should be reliable. The next thing that you need to consider is can you explain to the candidate The ideal [00:44:00] testing conditions and why they need to comply with them.
And so for example, in the wellness and fitness initiative, you need to make sure that the personnel's blood pressure is lower than one 60 over a hundred, and you need to make sure that their heart rate is. Below 100. And so the advice that I give personnel that are gonna be going through this testing is, A, if you are on a blood pressure medication, make sure you're taking it as prescribed, and B, let's maybe not.
Binge on the monsters and bangs before you come over for fitness testing because it's going to skew your data. So not only may you not be able to take the test because your blood pressure or your heart rate's too high, but if your heart rate is already at 99 just sitting on the chair [00:45:00] during a heart rate check your.
Gerkin protocol, your estimation of VO2 max is not going to be accurate. You're going to get bounced out of that test more quickly than you normally would because your heart rate is starting out high. So you're, it's going to take you less time to get to your target heart rate. So being able to describe to the candidates, what are your best conditions and why.
The next one is being able to explain to the personnel why we are testing in the first place. So, the way that I explain to firefighters, why are we doing this fitness testing protocol? The first one is, we are doing this fitness testing protocol because your department has a long standing relationship With this test, if I had [00:46:00] been the one to choose the testing protocol, more than likely we would not be doing this testing protocol.
The next thing is I explained to them how each component of the test is measuring a different physical fitness characteristic. So the first thing, of course, we're taking vitals. Blood pressure and heart rate, just making sure it's a screening process. Is it possible that this person has uncontrolled hypertension and doesn't know it?
It's possible. So it's a screening process, heart rate and blood pressure. Then we move on to body composition testing. And I also add in a waist to hip ratio because there is some pretty good data. Waist to hip ratio is a predictor of mortality risk. And also it's just really freaking good to see from year to year.
Wow. [00:47:00] My guts got bigger and my butt got smaller. So, and, and they asked me, firefighters asked me, what can I do about this ratio? Well, it's really simple. We need to build muscle and lose body fat. That ratio will get better. We, we then move on to the treadmill protocol. And again, the Gerkin protocol is an estimation of VO2 max.
It is likely a very big overestimation for most people. But if we look at it in trends from year to year, Last year, you scored a 48. This year, you're only at a 38. What changed? We can start digging and digging. And while they're warming up on the Gerkin Protocol, I explain to them, the reason we are doing this is for this reason.
Firefighting is very physiologically expensive. [00:48:00] And if you are not cardiovascularly fit, it can be dangerous. You have a risk of dying from sudden cardiac death if your cardiovascular fitness cannot support, cannot adequately support this level of work. And so we want to make sure that we're scoring at an Absolute bare minimum, the 42, but I would like to see you higher because again, this is overestimating it.
We want to see you score at least 42, hopefully higher. Then, once you hit your target, we want to see how efficiently your heart rate goes back down. Because another risk of sudden cardiac events is a heart rate that doesn't recover quickly. So I explained to them why we're doing this. We're not just checking a box.
I'm not just here to put you on the treadmill so I can cross your name off. [00:49:00] We're here to give you actionable information. And when they, when the treadmill shuts off and I see 36, we have a conversation right there, your cardiovascular fitness. is inadequate to safely do this job. This is something that you need to start working on right now, today.
No more screwing around. This is serious. So, after we hop off the treadmill, we move on to the grip strength. Um, Dr. Mark Abel has done, again, some work with grip strength, especially in the gloves. grip strength seems to be something that's really tough. And as firefighters, we do need to have adequate grip strength.
What I'm looking for is making sure that they're within a kilogram or two from right to left. If they're not, why? I want to make sure that from year to year, they are maintaining that strength. And if they are not, we're having a [00:50:00] conversation about how to improve your grip strength. We then move on to the isometric arm curl.
At this point, we do not do the deadlift, the, um, the isometric deadlift. Some departments want to, some departments don't want to, it's risk versus reward. I go with what the administration of the department prefers, but with this, we're looking at mass, maximal muscular strength. And then we move on to the pushups, muscular endurance.
I'm sorry, the plank. I'm sorry, the plank is before the pushups, muscular endurance. Push ups once again, muscular endurance, and then the sit and reach and firefighters get really frustrated with the sit and reach and I explain it to them this way. We do the sit and reach because it's part of the protocol and it's been done since the beginning when you guys began doing this.
So the only thing that you can compare [00:51:00] is you to you. I can't tell you a standard. I have a firefighter that's almost 7 feet tall. There is. He can barely reach his knees. And there is no way that he can improve much. I mean, he stretches his hamstrings. He does all of the things. He does functional range conditioning.
He does all of the things. And he could walk away being disappointed or he could walk away going, okay, well, I was just as good as I was last year. And this test doesn't necessarily tell me, is it my hamstrings, is it my calves from my toes being in dorsiflexion, is it my lower back, or is it the fact that my arms are too short for how tall I am?
And so, in terms of the testing, again, if I was picking the testing, I definitely would not include the sit and reach in there. But actually able to explain to the [00:52:00] personnel why we are doing each test, what the results mean, and how to improve your results in the future. So, I want to leave you with just one final point, and I've said this before on the podcast, and this can be in terms of administration.
This can be in terms of peers. This can be in terms of family. Wanting to help and actually being helpful are two very separate things. They're very different things. And there are many people in the fire service that I truly believe are trying to help. They are trying to do the right thing. They are trying to improve the culture and the health and the whatever.
Name it. They want to help, but they don't have the skillset [00:53:00] and the credentials and the ability to really be helpful. And so if you do not have those personnel or civilians. Embedded in your department who can actually be helpful, in my opinion, there's really no reason to do fitness testing at all. All right, this has been almost 30 minutes.
I thought it would be a bit shorter, but hey, sometimes I've got a lot to say. If you enjoyed the podcast, I would really appreciate a rating and a review. And third, the trifecta, share it with someone you think would enjoy it. This has been AZ and I am officially out.
