Hey all,
Title pretty much speaks for itself. I'm new here but have been doing the Fridley workout every season several times as a baseline metric. Having just newly purchased a subscription to the content, I'm blown away by how much of there is. I wonder if anyone familiar with these programs can recommend one or a few particular ones that stand out in being able to help prepare for this coming fire season. Thanks so much! In the meantime, I'll try a few different ones and look them over.
Pre-Deployment looks like a solid start. The type if fitness goals it builds on from my experience in both Military and Arduous Fire Fighting are pretty similar.
KB diesel
Hey all! You're in the right spot for training! We just released a podcast on Wildland nutrition guidelines if any of you folks are interested in checking it out as a primer to the season. It with any of the aforementioned training blocks would be great to prep with. Feel free to reach out any time with questions, too. Happy to help!
Hi guys,
I realize this post is older; but for anyone coming across this with the same question:
"Heavy Pack 45-70" is excellent for a pre-fire season leg/hip strength build up.
Adding regular doses of zone 2 cardio adds benefit to it.
I did this before this season and it was very helpful.
Just my two cents
For the sake of anyone visiting this post in the future:
I did the Heavy Pack 45-70 program leading up to my first season in fire, which was also on a reputable hotshot crew.
As Tyler mentioned above, it was excellent for leg/hip strength. Fairly thorough on core stability. Not a huge emphasis on shoulder or chest strength, but there are plenty of exercises for it. Your bench max isn't moving up with this program, but what does benching >200 do?
For reference. with our fitness test, I finished with 20 Pullups, 60 Pushups (in 60 secs), 45 Situps (60 seconds) and 10 min 1.5 mile. I weighed about 170ish, the heaviest I've ever been. Any PT workout felt like a breeze. Any PT cardio was a nightmare.
My suggestion would be to do the program early and prioritize cardio leading up to the season. Your body won't forget that it can carry the weight if you taper off and do something else 6-8 weeks before. MTNTough has good cardio programs that I want to try this off season. (I'm intrigued by the Rowing workouts and getting that sub 7 min 2000 m row)
Our crew PT hikes pretty hard. The mistake I made was doing my offseason training in the Midwest. This was brutal when trying to PT hike at elevation and on steep terrain. So, my take is that the programs here are excellent, but you should definitely intend on supplementing with cardio on mixed/steep terrain. I believe there's a circuit workout mixed in a program somewhere with a stairmaster sprint, a mile sprint, and some bear crawls all for time.