Key Takeaways
- Break your training into two categories: Endurance/Aerobic Fitness, and Strength.
- Building Aerobic Fitness is the main focus in training, and therefore a good chunk of your time should be focused on that.
- Strength training is there to complement your aerobic fitness, with the goal of training to move efficiently under load in the mountain environment.
- Taking your recovery seriously by prioritizing adequate sleep, hydration, and nutrition will set you up for success.
Reality Check
If you’re new to fire and are just starting out training for the season ahead, it’s important to know the realities of the job.
Wildland firefighting is, above everything else, an endurance activitiy. The season is several months long, filled with hard days of physical activity up to and beyond 16 hour shifts. Taken into account the fact that each “roll” is typically 2 weeks long, followed by only 2-3 days off for rest and recovery, the endurance capacity of a wildland firefighter (and in particular a Type 1 resource) is nothing short of Olympic level.
In training for the upcoming season, the idea is not to build impressive and flashy muscles or 6 pack abs. The goal is to built like an old beater work truck from the 1980s, which is, in a word-durable.
To get this durability and endurance, your primary goal in training is to increase your aerobic fitness, and secondary to that will be strength training. Your aerobic capacity is the foundation for your endurance, while strength training will allow you to move efficiently in rugged terrain, under load. Let’s dive a little deeper into each category of training.
Aerobic Fitness/Endurance
As we mentioned above, your aerobic fitness is the bedrock of your endurance, and therefore should take priority in your training. Your aerobic capacity is built through frequent and long duration activity at an easy to moderate pace, with smaller, less frequent bouts of higher intensity mixed in.
Fortunately for us wildland firefighters, this is simple to train. Simple, but not easy. It does require a commitment and effort, but the payoff of being able to keep up with the crew, take the heavy loads, and be reliable can’t be understated.
Building this aerobic base is done over a period of many weeks and months, with the bulk of your training spent on long duration outputs at an easy to moderate rate of effort. The methods are many here, but some activities could be running, hiking, crosscountry/backcountry skiing, mountain biking, etc. Obviously using hiking as your exercise route to increasing your aerobic fitness is ideal, as it is the job, however it is important to not only vary your training, but to also do activities you actually enjoy in order to be sustainable in the long run.
The Maffetone Method
You want these long duration, base building activities to make up about 80% of your aerobic fitness training. The simplest way to ensure you’re training this correctly is by using the Maffetone Method. The Maffetone Method is a calculation to determine your Maximimum Aerobic Function (MAF), and is simply 180-your age. This number tells you your target heart rate for building your base, so if you are 30 years old:
MAF: 180-30=150 heart beats/minute
You want 80% of your aerobic training to be at or under that 150 heart rate.
If you lack a watch or heart rate monitor that can track that for you, a good rule of thumb is any pace where you can have an easy, unlabored conversation is achieving your MAF score.
Now, what to do with that other 20% of your aerobic training? This is where you want to focus on higher intensity, shorter duration activities. Some good example activities of this would be tempo runs, hill sprints, HIIT workouts, really whatever gets your heart rate up and keeps it above your MAF score. Feel free to either tack these workouts on to the end of your strength days, or dedicate a day to focus solely on these higher intensity workouts.
Strength
A wildland firefighter must be prepared to move, over mountainous terrain, for long periods of time, under weight. While the hike into work alone can be brutal, the daily work of digging line, swamping, and carrying a chainsaw/tool is full body, physical labor. This requires full body strength to able to perform effectively and sustainably.
There is no need to train for strength the way a powerlifter does, and it’s worth mentioning that any extra mass that you have, must also be carried up the hill. A 300 pound bench press has little carry over to the physical demands of firefighting, and while a 400 pound squat may be impressive, you’ll see a better performance on the hill if you can squat 135 pound 100 times.
The way to look at strength training for the job is as a complement and an enhancement to your aerobic fitness. If your strength training means your body can go longer, farther, faster, and keep the fatigue out of your back from hours and hours of carrying your line gear and swinging your tool, you will have succeeded. In reality, as long as you are making endurance training your priority, you can get away with almost any method of strength training you so choose. Again, consistency and effort will give you the results you want.
Your strength training sessions should cover all the major full body movements in order to achive a full body strength training fitness regimen. This would include Pull exercises (pullups, deadlifts, rows), Push exercises (pushups, bench press, dips, overhead presses), and Leg dominated exercises (squat, lunges, box steps, hip thrusts, Romanian deadlifts, etc.). Adding in a few more dynamic exercises, such as cleans, snatches, burpees, box jumps, etc, will round things out. Throw a little of everything together and do it with speed and you can build some challenging HIIT/Crossfit style workouts.
Don’t let the above list be the end all be all of your strenght training though. I encourage you to try different things, see what works for you and what doesn’t. There is a wide variety of strength programs and literature out there, so don’t be afraid to dive into something fun and different.
Recovery
An often overlooked aspect of a fitness regimen is recovery after the days/weeks/months of training. While the body is remarkable and can put up with an impressive amount of abuse, during training we want to maximize our recovery so that we can get the most out of the next day’s training session.
Proper recovery comes down to a couple important things. Sleep, hydration, and nutrition. While we won’t dive too deep into these topics here (but stay tuned, we’ll follow up more deeply on these topics later), it’s critical to your training to prioritize an adequate amount of quality sleep; ensuring you are adequately hydrated by drinking plenty of water, supplementing with electrolytes as needed; and eating enough and well enough by getting the right amounts of protein, fats, and carbs in your diet.
In addition to prioritizing the above, I highly recommend adding in a deload week at the end of each month. In a deload week, you take the previous week’s volume/weight, and reduce it by 25-50%. This week will feel like a vacation, but it is important to take it as seriously as the normal training weeks as it really allows the body to absorb the gains and recover in preparation for the next month’s training.
Putting it All Together
By now you’re probably thinking to yourself: “This all sounds great and all, but what should I actually do?”
To provide a basic framework to base your training off of, here’s what myself and so many others who have been at this a long time recommend:
- Start with about 5-6 hours of aerobic training/week, this means 4-5 hours building your aerobic base using the Mafetone Method with the other hour or so focused on high intensity workouts.
- 1-3 Strength training sessions/week, doing either a full body workout or broken up into a Push/Pull/Legs routine.
- Increase volume/weight by 5-10% per week
- When it’s possible to hike in the mountains, take that opportunity as an aerobic base building and a strength building exercise, adding weight and speed gradually.
An example training week might look like this:
| Day of Week | Training |
| Monday | AM-Aerobic Base Building (medium distance) PM-Strenth: Push |
| Tuesday | AM or PM-Aerobic Base Building (tempo run, sprints, HIIT, etc.), *accessory/corrective exercises |
| Wednesday | AM or PM-Strength: Legs |
| Thursday | AM or PM-Aerobic Base Building (medium distance), *accessory/corrective exercises |
| Friday | AM or PM-Strength: Pull |
| Saturday | Aerobic Base Building: Long run or hike |
| Sunday | Rest and Recovery |
*accessory/corrective exercises: things like Knees Over Toes exercises, working on any areas of weakness you might have, etc.
You might find it helpful to track your workouts. I have found this is very helpful in tracking my current progress and volume/weights as well as in planning for next weeks training.
Using the above program, you’ll see that there may be a day or two where you work out twice a day. As you increase the volume of your workouts, breaking up the day’s training into two pieces can be easier to manage than one drawn out session.
In Conclusion: The Methods are Many, the Priciples are Few
Hopefully you have a better understanding of what your training needs to look like in order to perform at your highest level this season. To recap some things:
- Building your aerobic fitness, i.e. endurance, is your highest priority in training.
- Strength training, while important, is there to complement and enhance your aerobic training, allowing you to move as efficiently as possible while under load.
- Proper recovery through adequate sleep, hydration, and nutrition will set you up for the next day’s training session.
Obviously, everyone is built different, and determining your training regimen means being honest about your strengths and weaknesses. Maybe you already have a massive aerobic base, but could use more time strength training, maybe you can deadlift a car but can’t run more than a few miles, determine where your weaknesses lie and attack them, and above all enjoy the process and never forget what you’re training for.