Firefighting, Viking Warrior and Heart Health

Last Tuesday after our third or fourth call after midnight I was having a little bit of trouble getting back to sleep. So I decided to do a bit of research and came across this article.

http://news.illinois.edu/news/11/0803firefighting_GavinHorn_BoFernhall.html

This article states that researchers found that "three hours of firefighting activity caused acute increases in arterial stiffness and impaired cardiac functioning in young, apparently healthy male firefighters." This study is one of the first to show a link specifically between firefighting and possible detrimental effects on heart health. Heart attacks have long been the number one cause of firefighter line of duty deaths, accounting for nearly half of the death toll. The article stated that during cardiac fatigue the heart's stroke volume (how much oxygenated blood it can pump out to the body with each heart beat), and its diastolic function (the heart's ability to relax between beats) both decreased during firefighting activities. When the heart can't pump enough oxygenated blood out to the body, it spazzes out and there's the potential for bad things like heart attacks and strokes happen ('spazzes out' being the technical term). The article also states that the cardiac fatigue can be exacerbated by heat, the heavy bunker gear and equipment, and the "fight or flight" response.

After reading this article, I fell even more in love with the Viking Warrior Conditioning program. I used this program to get ready for my first full gear stair climb.

This was the first program that broke down a cardiovascular fitness program for me on a basic anatomy and physiology level. Kenneth Jay stated in his book and DVD that breathing hard during a workout isn't necessarily a sign of getting a good workout. The blood in most folks as already saturated at close to 100% of its oxygen carrying capacity. Breathing hard isn't going to do all that great of a job of squeezing more O2 into your blood cells if they're already at full capacity. Second, he stated that just because the heart's beating faster during a workout, doesn't necessarily mean that cardiovascular fitness is improving. If the heart is fluttering away and beating super fast, it might not be have enough time to adequately fill before each beat, and thereby become more inefficient pumping less oxygenated blood out to the body with each beat. Imagine you're sitting on a lake in a row boat with a leak in it. You have a 1 gallon bucket to bail water out of the boat. You can bail your little heart out as fast as you can, but if you're not letting the bucket fill all the way, you're not as efficient as you could be, and might end up tiring yourself out long before you can bail out enough water to keep the boat from sinking. This is the same case with the heart. In order for the heart to be efficient it has to have enough time to fill completely with blood before each beat. This allows it to get more oxygenated blood to the muscles with each beat, improving muscular endurance. Keneeth Jay claims that the kettlebell snatch increases stroke volume by helping to open up the veins, allowing more blood to return to the heart so that the heart fills up quicker between each beats. This could possibly help to counteract the "cardiac fatigue" noted in the study.

Currently as part of my workout program I do a set of 50 kettlebell swings with a 12 kg bell after each call, day or night. The plan is to work my way up to sets of 50 with my 32 kg bell. Once I get to this point I'll switch back over to alternating between VW snatches and push presses after each call. Hopefully this will keep my heart beating strong well through my career and long into my retirement.