The demands on the profession of disaster management are more than mental and emotional. Disaster response can be, and often is, extremely challenging physically. To be prepared, the profession should have high expectations for physical fitness.
We see disaster management joining the ranks of the military and of professional sports in the value placed on physical fitness. Moreover since those in disaster response, from fire fighters to emergency management personnel, are engaged in the community, we believe that the profession has a unique opportunity to educate citizens on the value of physical fitness in their lives.
Much has been written about how to control weight and to become fit. The body is an extremely complicated structure with many checks and balances. Furthermore, individuals have unique physical profiles that determine their best physical fitness routines. Despite this, we believe that there are several general observations that apply to all who aspire to fitness.
1. The body is an open energy system. What this means is that energy that comes in must equal energy going out. Excess energy is conserved and stored as fat. Any argument about eating as much as you want because the food ingested is “special” in some way is bogus.
2. Nutritionally, the body needs fats, carbohydrates and proteins to function. The best diet strategy is to avoid fad diets and to exercise portion control, which limits caloric intake. The only types of food to minimize in the diet are those that are highly processed and filled with preservatives. Highly processed foods are low in micro-nutrients and fiber which help fine tune the fitness system. They also have a higher probability of introducing contaminants, which could mutate genes in healthy cells into cancerous causing genes. The Weight Watchers program has proven to be the most effective approach to dieting.
3. Fitness has at least four dimensions: cardio endurance (the ability of the lungs and heart to pump oxygen into tissues); muscle endurance (the ability of the muscle tissues to work over long periods of time); muscle strength (the ability of the muscles to work against heavy loads), and flexibility (the ability to extend range of motion around joints). Any fitness program should address these dimensions.
4. Body composition, the percent fat one carries around, is not so much a component as an objective of a fitness program. For almost all males, this objective can be met by maintaining a waist size of 35 and under; for females, a waist size of 29 and under. A rigorous and consistent fitness effort will achieve this objective.
5. Cardio endurance can be developed by engaging in moderate to high intensity exercise that stresses the lungs for a minimum of 30 minutes a day, to an optimum of 60 minutes a day five times a week. Best exercises are jogging/running, bicycling, or rowing.
6. Strength training is best accomplished through a weight training program using multi-joint exercises (bench press, dead lifts, parallel squats, clean and press, and bent barbell rowing). Multi-joint, full body strength training should be conducted no more than twice a week.
7. Flexibility can be achieved by engaging in daily stretching exercises or by taking up a martial art or yoga.
8. Research has shown that getting a minimum of 7 hours of sleep a night, drinking several glasses of water a day, and maintaining healthy teeth (by brushing and flossing often), have significant impacts on one’s health (and fitness).
9. Finally, negative habits such as smoking and substance abuse are detrimental to fitness and should be eliminated altogether.
Almost all will agree on these general observations. The hard part is building a program that incorporates them and then following it consistently. The most common reasons given for not following a program are: don’t have time, have some physical malady that prevents exercising, don’t feel comfortable in front of others, and too much effort.
For disaster response, physical fitness is a job requirement, so all of the reasons for not following a program are invalid. One can even exercise around a physical malady until completely healed. The public deserves guardians capable of protecting them.
One sure fire method of developing the discipline to carry out a fitness program is to alter one’s image of self. “Disaster managers and response personnel are fit. They are public guardians, so as a responder, I need to be fit. I see myself as a fit person and a fit person does not smoke or abuse substances. A fit person exercises often. And so on.” Get the idea?
We recommend the following resources as references for developing a fitness program:
Posted by Jim Porto 