We're not getting any younger.
Not just we as individuals, but “us.” The fire service. As we attract fewer young recruits and seasoned personnel stay active longer, our average age has climbed to 48, and more firefighters are over 50 than under 30.
"Getting old ain't for sissies," Bette Davis said. While simply aging is easy, aging well - staying strong, healthy, and capable - takes effort. Let's look at three facts that can boost our fire service longevity, allowing us to perform at high levels well into our careers.
FACT#1: Physical decline results more from lifestyle than age.
On average, muscles and bones shrink 5% every decade starting in our 30s. This should be of major concern to firefighters needing strength and stamina to work a blue collar job where trips and falls can fracture weakened bones.
Broken bones aren't as common as sprains and strains. Our risk of those climbs with age, as does our recovery time. Meanwhile, joints become stiffer and less tolerant of impact, making crawling, climbing, and reaching tougher.
"Compliant aging" is the idea that resistance is futile, and we should just accept these things are going to happen to us. But all of these changes - all of them - have far more to do with staying sedentary than with getting old.
Listen up, fellow dinosaurs: strength and resilience is possible well past our "silver years". Muscle and bone can grow at surprisingly old ages, and joints can get healthier, stronger and more cushioned.
The adage is true – use it or lose it. Avoid exercise and expect feeble arms, rickety knees, and a bad back. If, however, you push past your comfort zone, you can slow time down and choose your retirement date, instead of being forced out of a job you love by a body you don't.
So how do we spend the later years of our careers feeling strong, steady, and fire ground ready?
Simply put, getting stronger makes life easier. Muscle is correlated with higher quality of life, and just 30 minutes of weekly strength training lowers all-cause mortality by 10 to 20 percent.
At any age, cardiovascular training improves heat tolerance, blood pressure, and resting heart rate, helping you work better, stay on air longer… and get out of rehab faster.
So training fights the aging process, but training as if we don't age invites calamity. This brings us to our second fact.
FACT #2: Aging bodies need smarter training and better recovery.
Trained older athletes (firefighters are tactical-operational athletes) can continue to perform at high levels - up to 80% of their adult peak, even into their 70s. Our biggest problem isn’t performance, it's recovery. As we age, rest days need to be part of the weekly cycle or we risk overuse injuries.
Do a daily "personal 360," checking your physical condition and needs, and sizing up your "fires" – life stressors that can affect how your body responds. If you’re approaching flashover, go transitional and reset that fire with "active recovery" - a low intensity workout that keeps you moving without stressing your body.
Workouts shouldn’t be all-out all the time. Use the "hard - light - medium" principle: The first weekly workout is "hard,” with a lighter mid-week, and "medium" effort to finish the cycle. This balances intensity with recovery, and varies work across energy pathways.
For those seeking “gains,” evidence shows moderate intensities don't promote soreness-inducing muscle damage, yet are still effective at encouraging muscle growth.
Moderate intensity cardio, too, is hugely beneficial. A 2001 study showed walking briskly (think "breaking a sweat") for 30-minutes four times a week can lower even a sedentary person's heart disease risk to "cardio queen" levels.
This can change the game for firefighters. Being overweight and sedentary (which most of us are, according to the data) compounds our job-related risk of cardiac events. Add age, and you're essentially begging for a heart attack. If we can slash that risk by simply walking, why wouldn’t we?
As endurance improves, adding 30- to 60-second intervals of hard effort (think "difficult to talk") improves endurance for fireground tasks like axe work, carrying heavy patients, or forcing doors, and slows declines in aerobic fitness as much as 50 percent.
De-conditioned personnel are ten times more likely to get hurt. Your overall "conditioning" depends on your strength and your cardiovascular fitness. So don't skip out on either!
Personnel with poor joint mobility and balance are also more likely to get hurt, which brings me to my third fact...
FACT#3: As we get older, small stuff is huge.
Mobile joints and better balance may seem like small stuff, but for aging firefighters they’re huge. Think how often fireground tasks require stability - climbing, walking uneven ground, carrying loads. Balance naturally declines with age, and gait studies show that wearing SCBA and boots diminishes it even further. Add tools or a water can, and we old-timers might as well wear pendant alarms for when we've fallen and can't get up.
Fix it with daily single-leg balance practice, and by making balance part of workouts with lunges or tailboard step-ups. A few laps around the bay floor carrying a pail of foam builds balance, plus stability and endurance through the “big 3” - the hips, back, and shoulders, which suffer most as we age.
Immobility through these areas can make it harder to crawl, climb a ladder, or pull ceiling, so I've included some simple exercises on my website to help you start fixing it. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.
"We live in a youth-obsessed culture," Jack Lalanne once said, "that wants you to believe once you hit 40 you can expect only a steep, continuous physical decline." If we resist the idea that a "steep, continuous physical decline" is inevitable, we might surprise even ourselves with what we're capable of. That, compounded by our experience and wisdom, can make us "dinosaurs" some of the most valuable assets in the fire service.