 At this point, the facilitator should have instructed you to complete the self-study assessment number one. After watching the video segment, you will be asked to complete an additional assessment. The wildland fire environment is constantly changing, and your safety depends on quickly recognizing and adapting to rapidly shifting circumstances. Your level of health and fitness influences how you adjust to these changes. To gather more insight on these topics, we sat down with two experts in their field. Firefighters have traditionally always been a real pull yourself up by your bootstraps kind of population, and that's good. That has a lot of benefits. We tend to be a real hearty bunch, but I think one of the downsides of that then is that at times, perhaps, we don't talk more about some of these more psychological or what oftentimes gets called the touchy-feely kinds of things with regard to what it takes to perform real well. And again, it takes a whole lot more than just being physically fit to be a real good wildland firefighter. You've got to be psychologically strong, and you've got to really have your things in order environmentally with regard to what surrounds you in order to really have the decision space and the mindset to be able to successfully do the job. The way I view performance is really kind of from a three-ring model, which is something that I was taught kind of during my graduate studies, and it's just always been something that's really resonated with me because it just makes sense, and that is basically that if you're looking at performance and overall performance, that it's really going to come from three different areas, which is physically, you know, how fit are you, how capable are you of doing the job and the tasks that are necessary. And then the other ring is the psychological side, so how strong are you, how mentally capable are you of dealing with some of the challenges that come with a job. And then the last one, like I mentioned, is kind of the environmental side, which is what's your support system look like and what are all those things that kind of surround you in your daily life like and how do they help kind of buoy you up with regard to performing. And when we need to perform optimally, optimal performance comes from where those three rings intersect. There's going to be a very small area where they share a piece of common ground, and that's optimal performance basically, but that's really hard to get to. But at times our environment asks us or even demands us to be in or very near that optimal performance zone. I think that as an organization there will be a long-standing relationship between fitness and our firefighters. If we look at the American population, obesity is on the rise, heart disease is on the rise, but the job isn't getting any easier, so fitness will always be a critical component of firefighting. No matter how we look at it, you have to have the work capacity to do the job, not only for yourself but for your fellow firefighters, because if you aren't able to do your job that means they have to pick it up and do that job for you. As an exercise program for a crew, it needs to be balanced and have both that aerobic fitness component, running, hiking, doing those sort of activities, and the strength. Pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups, lifting weights, you need to have that balance. As a firefighter, your job is to pack heavy stuff around in the woods. The best way to get ready for that is to pack heavy stuff around in the woods. In the springtime, get out, start hiking, get your boots on, start breaking them in. The National Fire Center, NFC and Boise has two publications regarding fitness training programs. There's the FireFit program in the fitness and work capacity. Both these programs help firefighters design a workout plan based on the job demands. Firefighting is a very specific occupation and the specificity of the exercise training to the actual job is very critical in helping a firefighter have the appropriate fitness during the season. The University of Montana and the work of Dr. Brent Ruby, they've gone out during the summer months to actual fire camps and tested firefighters, looking at the energy demands that firefighters have. And from their work, we found that firefighters spend four to six thousand calories a day, which is two to three times the daily American diet of two thousand calories. There's a tech tip produced by MTDC feeding the wildland firefighter that kind of gives a breakdown of what athletes, which firefighters are, should be consuming when they're working. Carbohydrates consistently throughout the work shift have been shown by studies from the University to improve job performance in the latter half of the day by up to forty percent. The studies on protein are that it is not as helpful as carbohydrates during long duration activities or events. When you think of athletes like a triathlete, you don't see them eating a steak on their bike when they're doing an Ironman. They're having energy bars, which are very carbohydrate dense. And if you're eating those constantly throughout the day, you usually don't have a problem, but people will have a candy bar and then not eat anything and they get that crash feeling afterwards because they have low carbohydrates. A big motto that we'd like to get out there is to eat and drink frequently. It doesn't have to be huge amounts and I think that's a big misconception firefighters have is they need to be drinking a ton of water. They just need to be drinking throughout the day to maintain their hydration status. It's not a set number that some people say you need to drink X amount of water bottles a day. It's just you need to be frequently drinking throughout the shift. And if you feel thirsty, you've already are behind the power curve. Your body's already about 10% dehydrated at least. The recommendations that MTDC has put out in the past are for every two or three bottles of water, you should have a sports drink to kind of keep that water and electrolyte balance in check. Meals have changed a lot since the old 55 gallon drums that used to just drop out and say, here's everything in a big stew, go to town on it. It's become a lot more science based and these are the type of things we need to see in our lunches. Keena butter and jelly sandwiches are a great carbohydrate source and if you can tolerate them, they would be a lot more beneficial to you than a typical meat wad that you see in your lunch. Hey, you got your Snickers in my mayonnaise. Oh, you got your mayonnaise on my Snickers. These are two great tastes, the tastes great together. This upcoming summer, hopefully, there will be a new lunch contract for catered lunches. So in these new lunch contracts, we're recommending that instead of a big bag lunch that you sit down and eat at one time, it contains smaller, almost snack like items that you can consume every hour and a half to two hours that are high in carbohydrates. And hopefully that will give firefighters the energy they need to be able to do that job at the end of the day. So just being physically fit, at least in my mind, is not enough. In order to do the job successfully and effectively, we have to be more than just a physical stud. We have to be able to handle the psychological challenges, whatever those are, whether it's getting along with your crewmates or your teammates, whether it's handling the stress that comes from an emerging incident, whether it comes from facing some sort of transition, be it on to another crew or into another position or whatever it is, and then environmentally dealing with all the things that go on outside of work. In order to perform optimally, we need to be able to do all those things. Oftentimes it's just a matter of doing a little map check and figuring out, all right, which one of them is my best area? That becomes my anchor point then. That's my strength. Which one of them is my area that most needs improvement? Well, that's the head of the fire, is the analogy that I use. That's the one that we've got to attack, obviously. And then the way we get there is up the flanks of it. And that's the area that is kind of a strength, but not our best strength, basically. So just kind of doing some self-analysis and figuring out, all right, where do I need work? Which one of those areas most needs my attention at this given time? And once we've figured that out, then that's where we go. That's the area we start working on realizing that we've also got a strength from which to go forth as we try and do that. So that's just kind of the analogy that I use of equating it to the fire triangle, which is we need heat and fuel and oxygen in order to get any kind of combustion. The same can be said with performance. We need to be at our top physically, but we need to be there psychologically, environmentally as well, or we're just not going to get there. These concepts may not be entirely new to you. By discussing them and working on the self-evaluations in your workbook, you will reinforce your understanding of them and be able to react instinctively in the field. For more information on these topics, refer to the resources listed in your workbook.