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WWFD#4 HEALTH AND WELLNESS
Welcome to WWFD#4's Health and Wellness page. Every month we will post health and wellness tips. It is extremely important that fire fighters maintain a personal wellness program. Every year the #1 reason for fire fighter line of duty deaths is heart disease. What is the best way to help prevent and reduce the risk of heart disease? A wellness program! We as a fire fighting community have recently seen some of the chronic effects of fire fighting from our brothers and sisters of years past, mainly cancer. How do you help prevent this? Education of what we are up against! It only takes of few hours a week to maintain a fitness program, taking alittle more time at the grocery store improving our diet and educating ourselves on fire and rescue situations including rehab.
Health and Wellness for April 2010
Fitness tips: Important fitness warning!! Don’t get caught in a work out rut! What do I mean? If you work out the same way day after day, week after week and so on your results will be minimized and maybe you’ll quit seeing improvement. Why? When you do the same thing your body will get used to the routine and plateau. You have to mix it up. Its ok to be routine but every 3-4 weeks switch things up, work different muscle groups together, for example do back and biceps on Tuesday’s and Friday’s for 3 weeks then give yourself a recovery week then do back and legs on those same days. The concept is called muscle confusion and allows you to maximize your results by avoiding those plateau’s. Have fun with it, spice it up! Here is one way to do that, use a deck of cards to work out with. Assign an exercise to a suit, shuffle and go through the deck.
For example diamonds will be 10-20 push ups. Hearts will be pull ups or lat. pull downs. Spaids will be chair dips or tricep push downs. Clubs could be V- ups or crunches. When doing push ups change up your hand position from narrow (military) to wide grip and every thing between each time. Do the same with pull ups and lat pull downs change grip from over hand, switch grip, wide, narrow, behind your head or in or in front. For chair dips do one set with straight legs, bent legs, if your advanced one leg in air and switch and so one. With crunches and V-ups switch between the two. Set the reps for each move with in your capabilities so you can maintain proper form. You know what the beauty of this work out is? No need for a gym or facility, it can be done in your living room or yard with minimal equipment. For pull ups a door pull up bar works great, its portable, light, works in most door ways, doubles as a push up bar and is relatively inexpensive. So schedule your time, put on some up beat music, warm up, stretch, work out, cool down, stretch and FEEL GREAT!! Include your family, kids, grandparents, friends, neighbors and encourage your brother and sister fire fighters to do the same!! Remember to always consult your doctor before beginning any work out program.
Health tips: Every month I talk about the importance of proper diet. Eat like garbage, guess what you’ll feel like garbage. Change in diet is hard and requires constant motivation, encouragement and focus on a daily basis. But it is WORTH IT! The last two months I’ve given some work out exercises to try. To really maximize those work outs you have to eat right! You could do hundreds of cruches or ab exercises a day but until you eat right you’ll never get that six pack. The same goes with any exercise. Here are some general guidelines to follow for proper diet in conjunction with exercise.
- Don’t eat fast food, drink sugar drinks or have high carb foods after 2-4 pm.
- Drink lots of water, about 12-20 ounces 1-2 hours before work out.
- If you eat healthy already and only work out 30-60 minutes most of the time this is enough unless you have pre existing health conditions such as low blood sugar.
- Up to 2 hours before work out eat some quality proteins and carbs that will equal the estimated calories you plan to burn in your work out like fruit, nuts, yogurt, Oatmeal, cottage cheese, raw veggies to name a few.
- Don’t eat any solid foods such as vegetables, meat etc less than hour before work out, they won’t be completely digested yet and may give you side cramps.
- A small 100-200 calorie snack 15-30 minutes before work out is ok and may include things like; whole wheat bagle, energy bar, fruit smoothie, half a banana or sport drink.
- During your work out continually sip water with an occasional sports drink especially during cardio days or sessions an hour or longer.
- After work outs you need to replace the carbs and electrolytes lost during the work out so with in approximately an hour drink juice, chocolate milk then a little later eat some fruit or a potato even chicken noodle soup to replace lost nutrients, also this hour is the time that your metabolism is working at a high level and as long as your well hydrated your body will absorb more nutrients out of your diet than most any other time.
- Avoid eating those evening and late night snacks if you have to try un buttered popcorn, celery or ice berg lettuce, these foods contain little to no calories.
This will vary from person to person and will take some time for each individual to learn what works best for them and will vary due to your goals whether its weight loss or muscle gain. Remember to count your daily calorie intake and compare it to what you burn during your work outs and other activities. Good food will make you feel better!! Consult your doctor for your specific diet needs.
Thanks and feel free to contact me for any help or questions you might have.
Phil at wwfire4@my180.net
or call me at the station!
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Health_and_Wellness_for_November_2009.doc