Chapter 9—Maintaining Fitness and Health

Field work and firefighting are not without risks. We must do all we can to prevent illness and injuries, to treat firefighters properly if they are injured or ill, and to ensure the firefighters' successful return to work. This chapter will help firefighters prepare for the fire season and maintain their fitness and health during the fire season.

Maintaining Fitness

Staying fit during the fire season requires working or training to maintain the strength and endurance for normal tasks, with adequate reserve to meet extraordinary demands such as escape. Some firefighters, such as incident management team members and fire camp personnel, may face special challenges when trying to maintain their fitness for specific jobs.

Incident Management Team and Camp Personnel

For overhead crews and those primarily stationed in a fire camp, the fitness challenge during the fire season is scheduling daily activities to manage stress and to maintain basic fitness, health, and weight control. This may be especially challenging given the large servings at the catering trailer, hot weather, busy schedules, and uninviting conditions for physical activity.

Team members must find time to walk briskly, accumulating 60 minutes a day of moderate activity equivalent to brisk walking. Exercise periods can be as short as 10 minutes and don't require changing into training clothes. A walk around the camp every hour or two will do, as would 15-minute walks in the evening after dinner or during breaks. Research studies show that short activity breaks improve productivity and promote healthy hearts.

Fire camp personnel should consider using one of the training programs in appendix A to maintain their fitness. While a more formal aerobic program will require dedicated fitness time, it may be possible to stay fit by performing tasks around the fire camp that require physical labor or by hiking or jogging.

Supervisory Personnel Who Work on or Near the Fireline

If your job requires hiking in the fire area, you need to maintain fitness throughout the fire season so you can hike effectively while carrying line gear. If you spend a lot of your time driving while working at a fire, you may become less fit for your duty at future fires, where arduous hiking may be required. You also need to maintain a fitness reserve in case you need to escape or help others do so.

There is no substitute for hiking. Sometimes you may have to supplement your standard hikes with jogging 2 to 3 days a week. Or you may have to hike in the hills more than your duties require. To maintain reasonable aerobic fitness, spend 30 to 40 minutes 3 days each week hiking briskly, walking at an easier pace the rest of the week.

Type II Hand Crews and Other Outdoor Work Crews

During most duty cycles, your work will maintain or even increase your fitness and improve your ability to keep working. However, you may have assignments that don't require heavy labor or you may have a number of weeks between fire assignments. To maintain your aerobic and muscular fitness, find some time for physical training, including running and upper body work. The startup program in appendix A works well.

The simplest way to maintain fitness is to be sure that you find a job that you would classify as moderately hard to hard or train for 40 to 60 minutes every other day. The more job specific the task, the better. Many fit individuals have lost their fitness during light fire seasons.

Type I Crews, Including Smokejumpers, Rappellers, and Hotshots

The optimal way to maintain fitness is to alternate 1 to 3 days of hard work with 1 to 2 days of lighter work. If you work extended hard shifts for too many days in a row, your body may begin to break down. Your fitness and performance (as well as your safety) will suffer. If you have too many light days in a row, your fitness will also suffer.

Figure 9.1—A study that followed a Type I crew over the course of a fire season showed that
the fittest members of the crew actually lost aerobic fitness over the first half of the season,
while the least fit members improved, until all crewmembers had reasonably similar levels of
fitness. One of the last fires of the season required greater fitness with lots of steep hiking,
line digging, and long days. Many members of the crew regretted they were not as fit then
as they had been earlier in the season (sustainable fitness is the maximum day-long
work rate).

In many ways, smokejumpers have the perfect job for optimal fitness. When smokejumpers perform initial attack, they work long, hard days for 2 to 4 days, then come back to the smokejumper base for a few days off before the next fire jump. During slow periods, they have time for physical training.

For all Type I crewmembers, maintaining fitness specific to the job is vital. Crew bosses need to cycle the work, whenever possible, making sure that their crews have an easier day or two after 2 to 3 days of hard work. When crews have extended periods of light work, crewmembers need to do physical training or find jobs to maintain their fitness. The ability of the human body to adapt is amazing: fitness is lost when work decreases and regained when work increases.

Maintaining Health

Hard, Then Easy

While it is rarely possible to control work duties on a fire, whenever possible the duties should be cycled so crewmembers have an easier recovery day for every 1 to 3 days of hard work. Crew leaders, division supervisors, and incident management team members should try to cycle work intensity to maintain crew safety, function, and health. Studies show that crews who practice this principle have missed fewer days of work and have been more effective than crews who become overfatigued.

Figure 9.2 shows the complex relationship between daily work and increases in the fatigue index (resting + exercise + recovery heart rates) between the fitter firefighters (dark dashed line) and the less fit group (dark solid line). Activity monitors worn throughout the period allowed the total energy expended each day to be estimated. Energy expenditure was very high (more than 3,800 kilocalories per day) for 5 days out of 6.

Figure 9.2—Fatigue index and energy expenditure (EE).

The fatigue index on the morning of day 6, after the easier activity on day 5 (1,800-kilocalorie energy expenditure), was just slightly elevated in both groups (lower and higher fitness), suggesting that the crew had recovered overnight. Both groups had high fatigue indexes on the 9th morning, after high-intensity work on days 6, 7, and 8, showing that they had not recovered.

Activity was moderate on day 9 (2,850 kilocalories). The following morning, the fitter group had nearly recovered to baseline levels on the fatigue index, while the less fit group appeared to remain fatigued. The less fit group also had significantly depressed levels of salivary IgA on the morning of day 10.

Eating and Hydration

Supervisors can make food and drink available, but the firefighters themselves are responsible for making sure they eat and drink enough. Firefighters who aren't doing so can be a hazard to themselves and their coworkers. Supervisors should schedule fluid replacement every 30 minutes during hot conditions and workers should eat frequently. On very hot days, firefighters may need to drink up to a quart of water an hour. When firefighters are drinking a lot of water, it's best if they drink an occasional sport drink containing electrolytes.

The old adage "Drink Often" should be replaced with the new adage "Eat and Drink Often." MTDC studies, as well as military studies, have shown that workers who eat regularly (about 40 to 100 kilocalories every hour) are able to do as much as 35 percent more work during the last 2 hours before lunch and at the end of the day (and recover better before the next shift), think clearly (and presumably be safer), maintain their blood sugar and immune function—and they feel better (figure 9.3).

Figure 9.3—Firefighters who eat regularly during
the day are able to consistently work harder
during the few hours before lunch and late in the
day. This figure shows the total work activity
(measured by activity counts) for the entire day
with and without regular snacking. Total daily work
increased the equivalent of 1.75 extra hours each
day when firefighters received 40 grams of
carbohydrate per hour.

Hand Washing, Water Bottles, and Cleanliness

When you are living in a crowded fire camp, or even when you are spiked out with your crew, be careful not to spread germs. Wash your hands before meals or before handling food. Don't share water bottles. If you share water, pour the water from one water bottle to another. Studies have found high concentrations of bacteria and other micro-organisms in water bottles that are not regularly washed. Firefighters who use sipping hydration systems need to wash the reservoirs, hose, and mouthpiece. To avoid encouraging the growth of micro-organisms, never mix flavored beverages containing sugar in sipping hydration systems (see "Hydration Strategies for Firefighters," Domitrovich and Sharkey 2008).

Fitness

Workers with higher aerobic fitness do more work (figure 9.4), recover more quickly, and are better able to handle their jobs without compromising their immune function. Proper preparation during the off-season will reduce injury and illness.

Figure 9.4—Aerobic fitness (VO₂ LT1) and work output (measured by activity counts). The
firefighters' first lactate threshold (LT1) is an indication of sustainable fitness.

Maintaining Weight—While most fire crews and incident management teams do not bring a bathroom scale with them, checking weight each morning is a good way to ensure that firefighters are maintaining hydration. Gradual weight loss during fire assignments can indicate the firefighters are not eating enough or that they're not drinking enough fluid.

Check the color of your urine in the morning. If the urine is dark, you need to drink more. If your urine is normal and you're losing weight, eat more, especially during the shift. Rapid weight loss almost always indicates dehydration.

Fatigue—Exhaustion makes firefighters more susceptible to upper respiratory infections. To prevent fatigue, maintain fitness, eat enough, keep hydrated, take frequent breaks, and get enough sleep.

Preventing Illness and Injury

Work Hardening

Work hardening uses a gradual progression of work-specific activities to bring you to the job ready to deliver a good day's work. While training provides the foundation for fitness, training is no substitute for job-specific work hardening. Work hardening ensures that the muscles and connective tissues used on the job are tough and ready to go. Feet are hardened when you hike and work in the boots you'll use in the field.

Hike up and down hills and on sidehills at the pace you'll use on the job. Do some extended hikes with a loaded pack to prepare your back and shoulders for carrying loads. Test legs and boots on steep uphill climbs.

Feet, hands, back, joints, and muscles need to adjust to prolonged arduous field work. The early season training programs in chapter 8 incorporate examples of work-specific training. Using tools frequently during the offseason will improve your readiness. Blisters, sprains, strains, and muscle soreness are indications that you need more work hardening.

If you will be building fireline, do some work with a handtool like the Pulaski to prepare trunk and upper body muscles for prolonged work in the position the tool demands. This work will also toughen your hands so you won't get blisters the first day on the job. Come to the job hardened and ready to go, but be prepared to treat blisters and other problems that hinder performance.

Work and Rest

Fatigue can cause accidents. Breaks— short or long—are one defense against fatigue, sleep is another. To perform well at tough jobs like wildland firefighting, workers need to average 1 hour of sleep for every 2 hours of work. This rest-to-work ratio means that a 14-hour work shift is about as long as crews can work and still get the sleep and rest they need. The shift should allow time for eating, showering, and getting ready for work. Sleeping conditions should be quiet, warm, and dry. Night crews need protection from noise, light, dust, and other conditions that interfere with restful sleep during the day.

Return to Work

After a short illness or injury resulting in absence from work, an employee may return to duty under these conditions:

• Physician approval (if needed)
  
  
• Absence of fever for 24 hours without use of antifever drugs (such as aspirin)

After prolonged illness, a worker should follow a gradual transition to full work activity or be reassigned temporarily to less arduous duties.