This column will explore specific investigations that evaluate the impact of PA and fitness on mental and physical health outcomes among firefighters and law enforcement officers.

Tactical facilitators need to understand the movement patterns that first responders encounter because they can have a profound effect on underlying biomechanics and may contribute to excessive tissue loads.

TSAC Report 75, shares content on injury prevention exercises for first responders. Visit NSCA online to read articles on health science, tactical athlete and more.

This article will discuss why it is important for first responders to have abdominal and lumbo-pelvic strength in relation to movements and tasks in their specific jobs. A list of possible exercises and implementation are also included.

This TSAC Report article discusses the training load of GPS technology and blood lactate monitoring for first responders. Visit NSCA online to learn more about tactical fitness.

In this session from the 2015 NSCA TSAC Annual Training, John Hofman covers many common ailments that are specific to firefighters and how they are brought on by overuse, poor compensation, and improper motor patterns. Hofman shares effective strategies that can help improve a department’s health, wellness, and injury prevention programs, as well as corrective exercises.

Although fatigue is commonly experienced in many highly demanding occupations (e.g., military, first responders, etc.), it is poorly defined. Fatigue can strongly affect occupational performance by negatively influencing the ability to interact with the world by altering the capacity to think, move, feel, see, and speak. The first step in fatigue risk management strategies is to establish a context. The context of this narrative review is to specifically describe and discuss the 6 overarching types of occupational fatigue: cognitive, physical, burnout, emotional, visual, and vocal fatigue, and how each affects varying occupations. Furthermore, fatigue type can be influenced by several intrinsic factors, such as sleep deprivation, circadian alignment, ultradian process, sleep homeostasis, and health factors. Similarly, extrinsic factors influence fatigue, such as workload, shift work, and environmental issues. Understanding the types and contributors to occupational fatigue may help clarify the context of occupational fatigue and serve to guide future occupational fatigue management.

This article contains a sample progression to use with high call volume fire departments to help maintain mobility while building job-specific strength and avoiding a hyper-fatigued state.

This article is the second of a continuing series that examines pertinent and recent tactical strength and conditioning research reviews.