Ah, Rest!

After slogging on for an unprecedented 12-week, no break stint, Time Off! Some of you Challenge addicts might be in withdrawal, but the hard-working members of the Crüe welcome the time of respite.

One of the most overlooked components of physical training is rest. It’s an integral part of the General Adaption Syndrome (GAS). I continue to believe that a large number of our die-hards still adhere to the adage: No Pain, No Gain. No one ever got fit without sweat. There is no magic pill or plug-in the wall thing that’s going to take the place of the Work Out. But muscles require rest to recover.

Pain is nature’s way of telling you to back off. DOMS (delayed onset of muscle soreness) comes from microscopic tears in the cellular fabric of muscle cells. Leakage follows with edema, putting pressure on nerve cell endings. Extreme workouts can give rise to rhabdomyolsis, a potentially lethal condition where protein leaks out of the cells and interferes with the ability of the kidneys to process urea. We’ll talk more about rhabdo in an upcoming Blog.

But, back to the rest thing. Periodization is the process of allowing certain muscle groups to recover between workouts. For a muscle to gain strength, it must be stressed beyond the usual daily loading. Power, not to be confused with strength quickly becomes refractory to improvements after fatigue. Depending upon the severity of the workout, one day might not be enough. With advancing age, your recovery curve becomes a lot longer. Ah, the benefits of youth.

Regrettably, without the ability to look at blood serum enzymes, it’s difficult to know where you are. Staleness has some subjective cues, like “how do you feel?” Listening to your body takes some time. If you’re rolling out of the rack in the AM and feel sore and stiff, you’re not ready to pound your body into some kind of submission.

The major risk of overtraining is a susceptibility to connective tissue injury. Muscles can also tear, but because they’re heavily vascularized, they heal quickly, especially if you help out with rest and ice. Anti-inflammatories like Motrin are effective. Tendons and ligaments take a lot longer to repair because they have very little blood flow.

I think it would be interesting to look at our injury rates for this sport and compare them to say, softball. I think that we’re well ahead of that cohort. But it does trouble me when I hear of injuries to our competitors, regardless of where the injury took place. Sometimes its doing an innocuous activity that you would never guess had any risk- like walking up stairs.

The Sportsmedicine model of active rest and light range of motion activity has been proven to greatly accelerate the recovery period. No one who’s doing anything active is going to escape musculoskeletal injuries. We just want to be smart about it and remember that rest is the missing variable in a lot of workout routines.

From Whence Came the Challenge?

For the uninitiate (a person unfamiliar with a specific topic or subject) upon first seeing the Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge, the likely question: “What is this and where did it come from?“ Good questions, both.

Back in the dark ages of personnel selection, fire chiefs believed that big(ger) people tended to excel at the avocation. Ergo, there were minimum height and weight standards. No one considered that women would ever want a career in this most male of occupations. Disparate impact was an unfamiliar term in those days. So, in 1975, Chief David Gratz who was the director of fire-rescue service for Montgomery County (MD) and Dr. Leonard Marks paid us a visit at the Sports Medicine Center of the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health, Department of Kinesiology. They wanted to know if there was a way to measure what it took to, for example, climb a ladder and chop a hole in a roof. “Sure,” we remarked.

FEMA was still a distant gleam in someone’s eye, but the formation of what would become the National Fire Administration was gaining some traction. This new agency under the Department of Commerce would have money to fund research. A research proposal was cobbled together and submitted with the backing of our US Senator, J. Glen Beall. For the modest sum of $87,216 we embarked on a project that would become the first study to link empirically physical performance constructs with simulated job tasks for structural firefighters.

One-hundred greater Washington area firefighters were randomly selected by age and political jurisdiction strata and underwent laboratory-based tests for aerobic and anaerobic kinetics as well as other demographic data. The results were correlated against performance on a series of linked fire ground evolutions. Technically, we used mutliple-regresson and canonical correlation to create a model of success. In other words, a profile of fitness that could predict performance on frequently performed, non-skill dependent, arduous fire suppression tasks.

The Criterion Tasks were nominated by the Training Officers subcommittee of the COG Fire Chiefs Committee. These tasks were corroborated through surveys and have been replicated in numerous jurisdictions across the US. The objective was to focus on a core of Essential Functions that were ubiquitous to the fire service, much like hanging a door would be for carpentry. Local jurisdictions might feel strongly that they would want to add logical accessories such as the ability to swim where water was a part of the first due equation.

Morphing into what would ultimately become the Essential Functions Test (EFT), hundreds of fire departments across the nation in the early 90’s were signing on for the use of the “Combat Test” as a selection, or in some cases, retention test. In 1991 we held our first Washington, DC Council of Governments (COG) sponsored competition at the Maryland Fire-Rescue Institute. Never intended as a race, but rather as a personnel selection instrument, the EFT received kudos as being age and sex neutral (in other words, age and sex were not factors in scoring). But, you know how firefighters can be and speed to completion ignited a game.

The general premise in personnel selection is that your natural abilities can take you wherever you wish to go. The Constitution of the United States affords you with equal opportunity. The results are on you. This called the Merit System- the novel idea of hiring people based upon objective data.

With the rapidly ascending popularity of the Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge, the major focus of our efforts became the fine tuning of an International Sports competition. For several years, the great unanswered question was, “Can someone actually do this under 2:00?” Mind you, most firefighters would walk through the course in around five minutes. The very practical application of the EFT has been overshadowed by the 10-year run on ESPN, and the 20-years of a 24-stop annual US tour. There are still departments that require their personnel to walk through the course each year. The measurable benefits are increased safety by reducing line-of-duty musculo-skeletal injuries by fielding a fit workforce. Sounds like a plan to me. No one in our shop ever thought that these insane times would become the de rigueur.

Hopefully, this little tutorial might clear up some misconceptions that continue to linger on the still current and compelling need for physically fit firefighters.

Bottoms Up

The number of heat records set this summer have shattered many that have stood for decades. It’s estimated that over 200M people were affected this year. All the while, the mighty Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge has bravely soldiered on. On a positive note, we’ve had one transport- an individual who admitted self medicating with Creatine.

I hear a lot of comments from spectators that it must be brutal wearing all that gear. And it is- if you had to wear it for periods longer than a few minutes. Fortunately, the time on the course does not add appreciably to the thermal load. The body has an amazing thermoregulatory system. Within a few minutes of maximum muscular contractions, core temperature can climb 1°C. We all know about the heat-injury-illness paradigm. Core temperatures of 104°F are consistent with heat stroke- except when it isn’t. Like in well conditioned athletes who can tolerate running a marathon with this range of core temperature without any consequences.

There is, however, a critical part of the equation: hydration. Your water on board has more to do with maintaining homeostasis than anything else. Even a well-conditioned athlete can’t make it without replacement. Another adaptation is retaining electrolytes. Well fit athletes lose less electrolytes than do unconditioned people.

Sports drinks such as Gatorade provide essential electrolytes as well as fuel. But these are poorly tolerated in the presence of arduous physical activity. I continually remind people that the thirst mechanism is about 20 minutes behind the power curve. In other words, but the time you’re thirsty, it’s too late. Sports drinks should be taken at least an hour before, and not again until the event is well over.

It’s rewarding to watch all the Challenge athletes walking around with their gallons of water. Proper hydration needs planning and you need to start the day before the event. Urine color is the best indices of your status. There is a risk of overdoing it and creating a condition of hyponatremia- where you’re losing electrolytes because you’re overwhelming your kidneys. While a rare phenomena, it can have grave consequences.

Staying out of the sun, ingesting about one pint per hour (to make up for insensitive fluid loss) is the preferred pre-race preparation. Training in the heat is the fastest way to become acclimatized to heat. But, the old adage: “everything in moderation” works every time. Oh yeah; and on the point of beer, it is not a good hydration source. You do not buy beer, you rent it. Alcohol will dehydrate you- before AND after the Challenge.

What Motivates You?

I’ve been doing the Tuesday Night lecture thing at the National Fire Academy in Emmitsburg, MD since the beginning of this year. If you’re not familiar with the EFO (Executive Fire Officer) program, check it out at http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/nfa/efop/

In this week’s lecture, I discussed fitness (of course) and the practical reality of maintaining a fit workforce when we really only have control over employees 10 days per month. Of course, the people reading this post are the very ones that “get it.” They understand that personal fitness is a personal responsibility and that duty extends beyond just the days that they’re clocked in.

As a card-carrying member and Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine, I’m rightfully proud of the body of literature that has been amassed over the last five-plus decades. Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of peer-reviewed research studies on how to get fit, stay fit; benefits of being fit. But, from a practical perspective, we probably don’t apply 10% of what we know. What we’re missing is that link, the trigger that creates the desire to be all that you can be. To know that you have the physical capabilities to get the job done. The self-confidence that comes from knowing yourself.

Ayn Rand wrote: “A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others." I would submit that this adage was never more in evidence than at the Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge. People who are unfamiliar with our sport marvel at the camaraderie. Now, if we could just somehow figure out how to bottle this stuff and vaccinate the rest of the fire service- now that would be something.

Up In the Air

After World Challenge XIX, we administered a survey to all attendees and an unprecedented 400+ responses were received. I read every single comment and am now responding to a minority, but important concern about costs to attend.

Since the critiques were not specific, I can only adjudge that complaints about expenses were driven by airfares, since lodging prices were ridiculously cheap. Mike Medeiros and I did a little study, looking at R/T airfares from several major cities. Myrtle Beach was a very reasonable destination with round trip fares less than $300 from a number of cities.

The caveat is, “when?”

Answer, “Now.” By that I mean that if you have qualified, or are pretty sure that you are going to qualify, this is a good time to start shopping for airplane tickets.

As a member of a number of airline award programs with over 4 million miles on one airline alone, I know a little bit about how these tariffs work. The idea is to fill every seat on the plane before departure. Once the plane leaves the gate, that seat is now worthless. Airlines have very sophisticated software programs that track sales for every flight. A 737 might carry 140 people, with very few of the passengers paying the same price for any given seat.

What we know is that typically, the lowest price point is a couple of months ahead of departure. The closer you get to departure, the more expensive the ticket. For example, we saw a price bump on a flight jump 400% over night. Apparently there was a push after we checked the fare and the next thing we knew, the demand had pushed the price through the roof. There are exceptions. For example, if a flight is not filling up and departure is within a day or so, they may drop the price. If you purchased a ticket for more than the cheaper price, you are entitled to a refund of the difference (on most airlines like Southwest).

Where all the carriers get you is for changes (except Southwest). So, be reasonably sure of your dates. I realize that this presents a bit of a risk. Cancellations on non-refundable tickets are exactly that: nothing. But you are allowed in most cases to rebook, at a “modest” fee of more than $100. (Except Southwest.) And, of course, they nick you for checked luggage. (Except Southwest.) This is why we are partial to a particular airline (Southwest).

Speaking of this airline, they fly to Charleston. And, you can rent cars and drive to M.B. Just one suggestion on how to make your bucks go further. We want everyone to optimize their cash by getting as far out ahead of World Challenge XX as possible- at the lowest possible price.

I hope this has been helpful. I’d like to hear of any deals, thoughts or suggestions you might have that can be shared with everyone. See you in Myrtle Beach this November.

Colorado Mountain High

Only someone who just arrived on the planet Earth would not know that increasing elevation impedes performance. It’s not that the percentage of oxygen is lower at higher elevation; it’s that the partial pressure (PP) of air is reduced the higher you go. Barometric pressure is what drives oxygen across the membrane of the alveoli and onto the hemoglobin of the red blood cells. The higher you go, the more “disbursed” or spread out are the molecules.

So, what are the implications for competing at altitude for the Challenge? And, doesn’t the SCBA help? Since many of the competitors run the course in less than 2 minutes, the energy requirements come from a breakdown of ATP to ADP, and from
ADP to AMP. These are energy bonds that do not require the presence of oxygen to create energy. But, the payback, or recovery system is aerobic. The positive pressure SCBA helps slightly, but everything is relative. Since the second stage regulator operates on a slight “delta” or difference above ambient, you’re not getting much of a boost.

Theoretically, if you could maintain the PP of sea level inside the face piece, altitude would not be a factor. On a similar note, I’ve written a short proposal on climbing Mt. Everest in a Scott SCBA. If you could keep your sea level atmosphere with you, you could scamper up the peak in short order since the distance and terrain from the last pitch is pretty much a walk in the park. What makes things so difficult is that every step. even on bottled oxygen represents a near-maximal contraction. So, even breathing 100% oxygen, you have only about one-third of the pressure driving the molecules across the alveoli’s membranes. Of course, switching out bottles presents the logistical challenge. You’ll need a lot of Sherpas.

Our recent experience in Vail (8000’ or 2438M) precipitated an acute metabolic acidosis response in everyone. While we claim the Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge to be the “Toughest Two Minutes in Sports™” at sea level, it can be a real butt-kicker at elevations above ≈3500’.

We noted that about 30 competitors who played last year did not make the return trip this month. We think we get it. If you already have your ass kicked at sea level, imagine what altitude will do. Vail is a world-famous destination. Many of us have tagged a white water rafting trip to the event, or found other exciting forms of recreation. To keep this venue alive for the out years, we need to hear from you. We have a simple survey form that will help us better plan for the future.

Please follow this link to take this one-minute survey.
http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22CLG2NDAKX/

Maybe this venue should be exclusively the “Colorado Rocky Relay Championships”? Take just a few minutes and tell us what you think.

What's Drugs Got To Do With It?

The CBS 60 Minutes story on alleged doping by Lance Armstrong has spawned countless newspaper articles, several of which I have read. I’m not an expert on the topic, but I do have an opinion.

While at the University back in the ‘70’s, I had two graduate students who were on the US Olympic and Junior weight lifting team. At the time, the official position of such organizations as the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) went something like this: “these attempts at enhancing performance through the use of drugs do not work.” All the while, the East Germans were kicking our collective asses.

I was administering IM (intra-muscular) legally prescribed anabolic steroids to these lifters and observing the addition of 30+ pounds of lean muscle mass in the matter of a few short months. So much for the official position of the scientific-medical community.

Fast forward forty years and we now are awash in an epidemic of ergogenic aids. Sports figures have gone to jail and more will follow. This was the era where rampant steroid use was in vogue in the NFL; while we were not testing at the time, (I was a consultant to the Washington Redskins for 8 years); many players had all the clinical manifestations of anabolics.

About a dozen years ago, one of my sports medicine physician friends remarked that we needed to start drug testing. This was validated by some of our competitors who were complaining about benefits that were not attributable to just working out. Naively believing that signing a waiver that included language to the effect that “I am not using any banned or illegal substances,” would do the job- and finding it not so, we started testing- to the strenuous objections of some competitors who were never seen again. A couple of my physician friends said that as an organized sport “You know you’ve made it when it becomes so important to win that you’re willing to cheat.“

At, or about that time, one of our standout competitors stated that he didn’t care if people used drugs; “let them do whatever they want,” he opined. I’m not sure he would have felt that strongly if he was routinely getting beat by someone that was obviously “on the sauce.”

With the advent of drug testing, we began to catch people. In fact, for a while, we were running an unbroken string of positive tests were in people who may have actually believed what they were taking was “clean.”

Most recently, we have not uncovered any users. The sophistication of drug testing spawns all sorts of counter measures, and so goes the vicious cycle.

I believe that some of the positive tests were in people who may have actually believed what was written on the labels of the products they were taking. There are so many products out there that the FDA simply can’t police the entire market. We have always maintained that it is the competitor’s responsibility for what they put in their body. Alternatively, there are products that bear the seal of a reputable testing laboratory.

A few years ago, I attended the NFL Combine in Indianapolis where drug testing was one of the scientific-legal topics. To be approved by the NFL, a supplement company has to post a $.5M bond. That pretty well separates the wheat from the chaff.

So, back to Lance. No one has even come close to his accomplishments, not the least of which was a near-death experience with cancer. No one has his physiology- the subject of a scientific session some years back at the annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine. No one athlete has been subjected to the numbers of tests for drug use, and he has passed every one.

On the down side, with the resources available, you can be sure that there will never be a drug test, the results of which Lance did not know before. The “positive” test criteria is liberal and you can detect the presence of synthetic anabolic steroids. People have become educated on when to cycle off to ensure that their values are within “normal” limits.

It’s disturbing to see someone that you’ve admired for years be accused by eyewitnesses. In a sport where the likelihood of winning without pharmacological assistance is a remote possibility, claims that “he’s using” are to be expected. The practical reality is that if you don’t do what virtually everyone in cycling is doing, you’re not going to be a contender.

So, why not just say, “Screw it. Do what you want. We’ll lose a few people each year”- but wait- we’re already doing that. One of the major unintended consequences is that you’ve opened up the entire scholastic sport system to unmonitored use. We know that this is going on in high school, but who has the money to test? And without any semblance of illegality, the problems are magnitude.

A sports psychologist did a study on Olympic athletes, asking if they would be willing to take a pill that would ensure victory while cutting five years from their life. Most said “yes” they’d take the pill. It’s a shame that sport has become so contaminated. It’s also tragic that it has taken professional sports so long in the face of bitter adversity, to take a lead in enforcing a drug-free competition. It’s a shame that there are always a few bad apples that want to cut corners, be it banned substances or illegal gear. The relevant question is, “are we any better?” I hope so.