SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
Damage Control
When it comes to fitness standards, doing nothing is more damaging than taking action
By Jeff & Martha Ellis

Editor's Note: This article ran in the August 2009 issue of FireRescue magazine.

It isn’t easy to stand up for what you believe in when your voice feels like a small minority against the masses. For years we’ve preached the benefits of fitness in the fire service and the necessity to promote, monitor and require minimum fitness standards within every department. The topic of firefighter fitness has also been a political hot potato in the fire service for decades, but logic and politics don’t mix, so the debate over how to implement fitness standards continues. And as long as human beings are a factor in the fitness debate, they’ll always be part of the problem as much as they are the solution.

The Attention Deficit
Most firefighters agree that fitness is an issue that needs attention, but many disagree on how to define “attention.” The jagged pill that most choke on is the notion of a fitness standard with punitive ramifications. But a standard without punitive ramifications isn’t a standard at all. It’s more like a suggestion: “Gee, we’d kind of like you to be able to do your job …”

If a paramedic can’t pass a recertification exam, we don’t tell them, “That’s okay, just continue being a medic anyway.” There’s an expectation of competency.

Firefighters are notorious for shooting themselves in the foot. If all the firefighters in this country simply took responsibility for their health and fitness levels, we wouldn’t be writing this article. But they continue to neglect their health, which leaves administrators to figure out how to measure or assess each member’s physical ability and use that assessment to determine who works the line. Without a process in place, administrators, in effect, continue to ignore the glaring issue of an ill-prepared workforce.

That said, can we continue to act surprised when firefighters die of heart attacks or run up workers’ compensation insurance costs with debilitating injuries when we aren’t willing to take definitive steps to correct the pattern?
Is it possible to prevent every heart attack and injury? Probably not. But if our axes are sharp, our apparatus are well maintained, our fire stations are clean and our medical equipment is in a ready state, is it really too much to ask for our greatest assets to be prepared as well? For some mysterious reason, everything in the fire service has been given higher priority than what actually constitutes the fire service: people!

The Flip Side
The flip side of neglecting our personnel: protecting firefighters from the overzealous fire chief who thinks it’s a good idea to develop and implement a fitness test in draconian fashion. It’s hardly fair for chiefs to expect years of complacency to be reversed in a month or two or to fire anyone who can’t meet the new standard without an opportunity to rehabilitate. But fair or not, it is happening and it is a legitimate concern.

But even if your chief is playing fair and doesn’t expect full compliance to happen overnight, the fire service is still struggling with how to properly develop, implement and sustain a fitness program.

The Volunteer Issue
This problem is far reaching. We’re dealing with volunteer, part-time/full-time and paid/full-time departments, all complete with their individual inherent problems. So the question arises, “How do we force volunteers into a fitness program? They’re volunteers!”

Yes, they are volunteers, which demonstrates an entirely different level of commitment to the fire service. But volunteers are required to train and learn how to pump the engine and attack the fire. They’re required to have some level of medical certification if they’re responding to medical calls. So why shouldn’t they also be required to maintain a certain fitness level so they can better perform their job? Why shouldn’t a fitness standard be as accepted as maintaining other certifications or performing regularly scheduled drills?

Administrators of volunteer departments can keep doing the same thing—ignoring the problem—and getting the same results—out-of-shape volunteers who may become injured or worse because of their poor fitness level—or they can take a stand and start moving toward a solution by providing training in fitness and nutrition, equipment in the stations and eventually a performance standard that’s going to validate a firefighter’s physical ability to do the job.

That said, we understand that volunteering is a very noble act. Volunteer firefighters take time out of their busy lives to protect their community, and it’s challenging to find the time for physical fitness and additional training, but we can’t afford to neglect it. Paying more attention to what you eat and taking 30 minutes a few times a week to exercise should be everyone’s priority.

Not sure how to get started? Try incorporating fitness training into your usual fire-training regime. If you’re working on certain evolutions, try coupling a few of them together and performing them like an interval. For instance, you can take a plug, grab the ladder and raise it, then pull a charged hoseline 100 feet. If you have a group of people training, each person can take a turn trying to complete the evolutions as expediently as possible. While some people rest, others take their turn or help reset the course. Run through this “obstacle course” three or four times.
Another quick but effective group workout is running stairs. Continuously run up and down for 20–30 minutes or set up an interval workout where each member takes a turn sprinting up the stairs. Do this at the end of one of your regular training sessions when you’re already hot and sweaty.

Don’t Look to Someone Else
The volunteer arena definitely provides unique challenges to program implementation, and it’s nowhere near as conducive to a comprehensive program as our paid full-time departments. For them, we struggle to find any legitimate excuse to not implement a full-scale program. The common issues we hear: money and labor. As far as the money goes, if you aren’t willing to finance the wellbeing of your greatest asset—your personnel—we question your judgment as a leader in this industry. The fire service is all about saving lives and property, so why not work to save the lives of our own personnel?

Some may get frustrated with our political leadership for not taking a stronger position in favor of performance standards. There’s one good reason why you shouldn’t wait for our political leaders to provide an incumbent performance standard that could have punitive ramifications: It’s never going to happen, because it’s not their role.

The IAFF, for example, has done a great deal to promote fitness through its Wellness and Fitness Initiative (WFI), but for them to develop a test that could potentially lead to the dismissal of one of their members would be like eating your young.

The IAFF’s role is to ensure equity in process, protect and defend members from illegal or unwarranted acts, ensure safety within our work environment and represent their members in the national political arena. They should not be in the business of developing performance standards. That is the role of each individual jurisdiction.
This may come as a surprise to some of you, but there are a lot of union fire departments in this country with incumbent fitness standards with consequence. In some fire departments, labor works with the administration in the best interest of the job and the membership. As far as we know, none of these departments have been banished from the IAFF. Would a union member have union representation if they felt they were dismissed unjustly? They should, and rightly so.

No More Excuses
So what’s it all mean? It means that individuals and fire departments must start taking responsibility for these critical components—all components—of organizational maintenance. There are no more excuses. The simple fact that there are success stories out there waiting to be duplicated is one tell-tale sign that pleading ignorance is no longer an option.

NFPA 1500 clearly states, “The fire department shall develop physical performance requirements for candidates and members who engage in emergency operations … Members who engage in emergency operations shall be annually qualified as meeting the physical performance requirements established by the fire department … Members who do not meet the required level of physical performance shall not be permitted to engage in emergency operations … Members who are unable to meet the physical performance requirements shall enter a physical performance rehabilitation program to facilitate progress in attaining a level of performance commensurate with the individual’s assigned duties and responsibilities.”

These statements leave little room for interpretation.

Get With the Program
When first developing a program, it’s crucial that you bring all the stakeholders to the table in the early phases, and partner the membership with the administration. Work with the opposition to develop a plan that all key players can agree on. This doesn’t mean that the strongest personality in the room bulldozes their ideas through with no regard for the others. It means everyone gets to speak freely and voice concerns without aggressive opposition. Doing this early in the process will keep you from having to duplicate your efforts in the future. The bottom line: Everyone must bring something to the table. The members bring participation; the administration brings support, fair timelines and implementation planning.

Through this discussion, develop a plan and prioritize steps or hurdles that must be addressed. One good place to start is deciding who should be involved—administration, labor, training, risk management, human resources, the city attorney?

Although test development is a critical component of your program, even more important is deciding how you’re going to support the program, because it is a program, not just a test. The last thing you want is to run your incumbents through an annual test without lending them support both before and after the test date. Provide time and equipment to train with, for instance. (For information on how to train on a budget, read “Finding Strength in a Weak Economy”). You also have to have a plan in place to address what to do if someone doesn’t pass the test.

A rehabilitation program designed to assist members in improving their fitness level is crucial to the overall program’s success. Many departments choose to train several firefighters to be certified fitness coordinators or peer fitness trainers. These people can work with individual members and assist with exercise prescription and nutritional counseling. Note: You’ll get better buy-in with your local if you provide a means of improvement for the individuals who may struggle initially to pass the test.

Sustainability of the program will depend on your administration’s commitment. Policies and procedures must not only be written down, but also adhered to. Note: If your department struggles with adhering to policies and procedures now, this may be the most challenging part of getting your program to work. Written policies and procedures that aren’t followed might as well be moved to the rest room where they can be better utilized. If you have bad policies and procedures they should be rewritten, not ignored.

Will you have to make some adjustments as the program unfolds? Of course. Don’t be so rigid in your execution that you stifle the project altogether. The key is to follow up and make sure the folks who aren’t passing the test aren’t being sent back into combat, or worse, dismissed without the opportunity to improve.

Important: Don’t try to re-invent the wheel when developing your program; it’s been done successfully in the past. The key is to model your efforts after any number of the success stories in this country. (We won’t disclose company names or specific departments in this article, but we’ll gladly share our thoughts via e-mail, if you’d like to contact us.)

A Final Note
The objective of fitness standards isn’t to fire people who are unable to pass a test, but rather to help those struggling to identify areas of weakness so they can improve those areas and, therefore, work toward demonstrating competency.

The opportunity to improve comes with the fitness program that supports the test. If a member is unable to pass the test, but continues to participate in rehabilitation, shows improvement and eventually passes, that’s a major victory for everyone. If an individual puts forth their best effort, but they don’t improve, then administrators need to sit down with that individual and ask what’s really best for them and the department.

It’s not easy. We’re dealing with human beings. But the perspective must be positive. A dark cloud shouldn’t be cast over a department because it implements a physical ability test and fitness program. It’s a time of life-changing opportunity and growth that we all should embrace. We are lifesavers. The time has come for us to put as much or more effort into saving our own lives.

Division Chief Martha Ellis has been a firefighter with the Salt Lake City Fire Department (SLCFD) for more than 14 years, serving as a firefighter, engineer, media technician, ARFF training officer, airport fire marshal and currently the fire marshal for Salt Lake City. She has won the Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge Women’s Division five times, and held the world record for 8 consecutive years. She also works as a certified fitness coordinator for the SLCFD.

Captain Jeff Ellis of the Murray (Utah) Fire Department (MFD) has served for more than 23 years as a firefighter, engineer, hazmat technician and shift training captain. He has been a certified fitness coordinator for the department since 1996. As a competitor in the Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge, he has won two overall world championships, three Over 40 world championships and helped MFD take the team trophy. He has been active in teaching all aspects of firefighting, including swiftwater rescue and fitness and nutrition in the fire service.

E-mail your fitness-related questions or comments to Jeff and Martha at fit2serve@gmail.com.