If you ask yourself the question “What do I want to get better at this week, month, or year?” what subject or subjects does your mind go to? Basic Firefighting Skills? Nutrition? Physical Fitness? These are certainly the top topics that it’s easiest for us to put into the crosshairs of personal development and growth. Just look at the push on January 1st for most of the firefighting community United States of America to increase our physical fitness and nutrition. Easy steps that are hard to implement because of routine, tradition, culture and more often than not simple discipline. A simple Google search for keyword “nutrition” and you’ll no doubt get millions of hits that preach the next best thing, or tried and true methods. These are all great and you certainly should be concerned with what goes in your pie hole both on and off duty. But let me pose these questions to you.

How long can you live with eating crappy food?

Our customers that we see every day on EMS runs prove that the human body in some circumstances is a completely amazing machine and can easily go 60+ years on horrific dietary choices.

How long can you live without food all together?

This one certainly cuts the time table down considerably but still tops 3 weeks of life on average.

How long can you live without water?

This one cuts the time table down even more but is above 3 days on average based on conditions of course

How long can we live without Air to breath?

Now we are down into the minute category.  Approximately 3 minutes without air and we start to see significant brain damage.  Yea you paramedics and smart asses out there we know that free divers, cold water, and even just water itself leads to longer times but you get the point.  

So, with a super small time table without the clear cut winner of the bodies most vital need itself why do we as firefighters not spend anytime at all training ourselves how to breath better, more efficiently or even how to truly conserve our air when breathing on SCBA regardless if we’re involved in a RIT or mayday scenario?

Over the next few weeks we’re going to release content that specifically helps you get better at breathing.  Nose breathing vs Mouth breathing.  The impact on the central nervous system.  The impact on the amount of work you can do on the fireground.  How to recover better and quicker.  Check out this quick video on the impact of breath.  Let us know what sort of breath work you have tried and what works for you!