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New Study Aims to Reduce Firefighter Injuries, Save Lives
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Think your training regimen is crucial for your ability to do your job or perform better? Consider firefighters. Trained to run towards danger, firefighters are constantly putting themselves in high-risk situations, and that risk is only magnified by injury or poor movement.
Athletes' Performance recently collaborated with the Pensacola Fire Department, the University of Waterloo and the Andrews Institute for Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine to help reduce firefighter injuries, and ultimately, help save lives. (Read today's press release here.)
While the research study is just getting underway—it began in April—it has potential to save lives and help improve health and safety for firefighters as well as individuals in other occupations.
"Firefighters exemplify the essence of what we consider an athlete," says Mark Verstegen, founder of Athletes' Performance and Core Performance. "Their professional requirements necessitate the highest level of sustainable physical and mental performance in the most demanding situations, putting their life on the line everyday to help others.
The mission is far greater than winning a game, or how fast they run. They compete in a game of life and death, putting the victims first, their peers next, and must be at their highest level of performance to live to save others, and love their families, another day."
The firefighters meet with performance specialists at Athletes' Performance for a 12-week program aimed at improving their conditioning and movement patterns in order to lower injury potential. They also go through a variety of biomechanical, fitness and aerobic capacity evaluations before and after the program to determine the effectiveness of the methods.
Says Dr. James Andrews, founder of the Andrews Institute and renowed orthopaedic surgeon: "Firefighters and their families already understand the hazards of being on the job, whether it is rushing into a burning building or suffering from physical exhaustion and injury. That is why this research is so important—it could potentially save lives. If we are able to identify injury trends and suggest improvement for training modifications, this could have a profound impact on an international scale ... not only in the firefighting community but in other occupations as well."
Click here for the full press release.
