For about as long as we’ve been keeping records of LODDs,
sixty percent of our mortality statistics have been attributable to
cardiovascular disease. Heart disease is now being eclipsed by cancer, but it
is still a huge statistic both in the general populace and specifically within
the fire service.
CAD (coronary artery disease) has a familial (hereditary)
component and a lifestyle-related origin, meaning that it’s not contagious, nor
do you “get it” acutely (instantly). Usually a person has symptoms, but not
always. Coupled with hypertension, it can be a silent killer. However, one of
the indices is poor fitness, which is anything but silent.
In the manual labor world of work such as construction or
mining, virtually all of the heavy lifting has been assisted through
hydraulics. But what differentiates fire fighting is the fact that the single
heaviest object to be carried is a fellow human being and they continue to get
heavier and heavier- and they don’t come with wheels or straps. It is the
ability to perform arduous physical activity that differentiates firefighters
from the host of other manual jobs. The weight of water is not going to change
and for the foreseeable future, this is a job that requires physically capable
people.
In the face of this evidence, the best that we can offer is
the moniker, “Everyone Goes Home.” Part of the problem is that a lot of our
people should have stayed home. Can we reasonably expect different results by
continuing to do the same things over and over again?
The lack of fitness, or even a reasonable expression of
fitness is evidenced in our hiring practices. Fitness, in many cases is not
even a component in the selection process. We play games with people’s lives
when we substitute interviews for real measures of physical ability. Imagine
interviewing the place kicker for a position on an NFL team.
We spend valuable public resources in providing remedial
physical fitness in recruit training rather than hiring the people who are
already prepared for a career that requires stamina and strength. Published
research has already demonstrated the economic benefits of a lifestyle that is
based on adherence to a self-motivated program of regular physical activity.
And to cap it off, there is no expectation that firefighters
“recertify” with any degree of periodicity in the area of one of the most
job-related and perishable skills: physical fitness. But we do retest for CPR
skills. What’s wrong with this picture? It’s pretty clear to any outside
observer that physical fitness gets nothing more than lip service. Until we get
serious about intervention strategies that really matter, it’d be better if we
just dropped the pretext that we really care. There’s nothing so helpless as a
person who won’t help himself. The bitter pill is the expectation that
firefighters get out of the lazyboy and start working out.
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