Training for the Firefighter Physical Ability Test

Forcible entry firefigther test – I bet you’d kill at that right now with all the rotation strengthening you’ve done – particularly the chops/lifts and ½ kneeling anti-rotation presses. On days when it’s not raining, we can add rotational med ball tosses to just nail this.

Addressing poor shoulder movement

It’s a concept of how we should position our shoulder when doing any sort of lifting with our arms. Now some will say that this is ridiculous – we just move our arms and that’s how they should move. I could get behind that line of thinking. Except for one thing: many of the people that come and train with me don’t actually position their shoulder properly when moving their arms, and then they complain of pain or discomfort in their shoulder or neck when doing exercises like pushups, rows, and planks. But when I help them to position their shoulder properly, they proceed to exercise without pain or discomfort.

Are you strong enough to slow down?

What is it that makes us ignore the very clear signals our body provides? I talk about this without judgment, as I have been there. I know what it’s like to include “vitamin I” as part of my daily nutrition (in fact for me it evolved to Celebrex). But most of these long term injuries are completely preventable. If we listen to, and respect, the pain signals our body gives, we can avoid months (sometimes years) of pain and medical expenses. The irony of course is that our effort to not miss a few days or weeks of our beloved sport leads to missing weeks, months or even years of our beloved sport.

Preventive maintenance for your workout?

About an hour later I started thinking about the many, many people who train themselves. In some cases, people who train themselves have good and smart programs; in others, not so good. If you train yourself, hopefully you fall into the former category, but either way, the quality of the movement is very important. When was the last time you got an objective view of your form?

Article in the Ontario Health Promotion E-Bulletin

My goal with the article was to help people understand the core values of quality exercise programming so that they can help their clients understand what exercise is best for them. I suspect health promotion professionals touch many more people than most trainers do, and was excited at the opportunity to help spread the message of quality exercise.