Episode 28: Fighting Fire with Sport Science with Jacob Mota, PhD

When Dr. Katie Hirsch (Episode 18) recommends an interview, I listen! Vince Zittnan from Chicago's Bravest Stories Podcast and I sat down with Jacob Mota to discuss his research on fitness in a recruit academy.

Dr. Jacob Mota is an Assistant Professor of Kinesiology in the Department of Kinesiology and Sport Management at Texas Tech University. He also directs the Neuromuscular and Occupational Performance Laboratory and leads a team of talented researchers. His research interests include determining the role of neuromuscular function on performance and injury risk for physically demanding occupations. Additionally, he is passionate about continuing to uncover the neuromuscular mechanisms which lead to adaptations from resistance training and other exercises. He has published over 35 peer-reviewed manuscripts, many focusing on firefighter health and wellness. He completed his doctoral training at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Human Movement Science and master's and bachelor’s degrees in Kinesiology and Exercise Science from Texas Tech University. He holds the Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist credential with Distinction through the NSCA, a group he is an active member of.   

So what, now what?
If we genuinely want to set candidates up for fire service success, applying sound sport science principles to their physical training in the academy is critical. Just making them hot, sweaty, and tired is doing a disservice. Sport science has already solved most of the fire service problems through research. The two careers need to start talking!

Check out Jacob's research group!

Connect with Jacob on LI

Email Jacob at Jacob.Mota@ttu.edu

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• Episode Transcript

  Annette: [00:00:00] Hey, everyone. It is AZ with Fire Rescue, Wellness Podcast, and I am here with my friend Vince. Vince, say hello!

  Vince: Hello everybody. Thank you for having me.

  Annette: So we're doing something a little different today. I don't know if you've seen those crossover episodes on TV where Chicago Fire is on, I don't know, Law and Order, whatever, but we're doing a crossover episode today with Fire Rescue Wellness and Chicago's Bravest Stories.

  And our guest today is Jacob Mota. Tell us about yourself!

  Jacob Mota: Hey first off, thank you both for having me on. I'm really excited. So I'm a pretty simple dude who just happens to have a pretty cool job as a scientist and a professor.

  Annette: Okay. And the the [00:01:00] history here with Jacob is that he was in a lab with Dr. Eric Ryan at the same time my friend Katie Hirsch was with Abby Smith-Ryan. So that's the history. All right, so about a week ago I did a paper review that Jacob was an author on, and it was regarding an academy. And I got this text from Vince, and he said, I need to talk to this guy. And so that's where we are.

  So I'm gonna turn it over to Vince, actually, and let him get the conversation started because Vince is actually a trainer at the Chicago Fire Academy.

  Vince: Hi Jacob. Thank you so much for agreeing to be on this podcast. Excuse me. I may have an a, I may have an attack here.

  Annette: Vince is verklempt!

  Vince: I am verklempt.

  So I saw the study. Annette was kind enough to post some excerpts from it. And like Annette said, I am one of the physical training instructors at the Chicago Fire Department. And according to the legal department, which I spoke to, I [00:02:00] also have to acknowledge that I do not represent the city of Chicago or the Chicago Fire Department.

  So that is my disclaimer. I am one of the physical training instructors and your study directly affected how I do the training with the Chicago fire candidates who we do have a class in currently. And I wanted to see how this study could benefit our candidates. So I was super interested in it cuz we are actively training these guys right now.

  Jacob Mota: Yeah. That's awesome. I'm so glad you and hopefully some other stakeholders really find what we do is unique and interesting. When it comes to the academy type work, surprisingly from a science standpoint, there's a very limited amount of work out there. There, there's a few studies that have been done in addition to ours, which I'm one person on a part of a really great team.

  I just happened to be the guy that, that y'all are talking to, but it's really the whole team that made this happen. But there’s [00:03:00] just such a surprising, limited amount of work out looking at how effective these academies are.

  Vince: What prompted you to start to study?

  Jacob Mota: So this has happened whenever I like AZ said, I was working at my PhD. UNC Chapel Hill. With everyone on this team we were striking up some solid relationships with local fire departments. We'll maybe go into which fire departments in that direction. But there a number of really good fire department relationships were striking up and the questions came up naturally.

  Say we're finding a lot of problems in the fire service. We're having a lot of problems with injuries, with obesity. How can we get a handle on some of these issues as fire members go through their time as firefighter? And the conversation kinda went to the direction of what are you doing to prepare your firefighters for the job?

  And that's how we get into this idea of looking at their academy and general academies as a whole. We'll kinda get into the work, expanding upon this work right now here in my present position it just [00:04:00] came up like that. We wanna see how effective are these jobs? And there's a paper that came out several years ago by a colleague ours David Cornell.

  He's a professor. He did a very similar study that looked at the effectiveness of the Academy. Somewhere in the 30 week range and he reported some relatively positive changes, particularly from a body composition standpoint for recruits who went through the fire academy, which is fantastic.

  Unfortunately the big thing that he, that his study looked out there, he and his colleague, that is all of the adaptations that were seen during the Fire Academy were gone a year after the fire academy.

  Annette: And Jacob that's pretty typical because we get these young candidates coming into the fire department and some of them maybe aren't in the best shape of their life, and then they go through these fire academies, get in great shape.

  Then the next thing that happens is they go through probation and everything [00:05:00] changes. And so that's very typical with what we see as well across the board.

  Jacob Mota: Yeah. And the hard part about it is while you're going through your probationary year and every single year after, it never gets easier to pick it back up, right? Just like any other person trying to maintain their own health. It's always, there's always parts of life that come in.

  The magic is how do we fix that problem at the academy level? How do we achieve at the level of the academy? There is no standard nationally speaking from a training standpoint. You talk to 10 different academy leaders, you're gonna have 10 different responses to what their PT is gonna be, how frequently they're doing it, the they're doing it, et cetera.

  Vince: 100%. I was never given a playbook about the things I'm supposed to do, [00:06:00] and it is so much of the training is subjective to the individual, whoever is responsible for pt, for any given academy. And I just think that we've come a long way from where we used to put somebody in that position who was just fit or who was a go-getter but didn't have any formal training in fitness or strength and conditioning, and I think we're getting so much better at that. Or somebody who excelled in an academy that may not have been that safe. Maybe he was just a really tough guy. Hey, let's have that guy run it, and he's just doing what he knew from his academy.

  Annette: So Jacob, you said that they improved in some of the respects that you were measuring or some of the parameters that you were measuring.

  Why don't you start outlining some of those [00:07:00] specific areas where your candidates showed improvement?

  Jacob Mota: Yeah really good points. So starting with the positives, there were substantial changes in body composition. Which I really wanna highlight. Body comp is a big deal in any industry, in any profession.

  To have something that positively benefits body composition, said another way, that's something that lowers a person's percent body fat is a really good thing. That's a massive benefit. We also saw substantial changes in fire recruit's cardio respiratory fitness couple different measures of balance and your kinda functional movements.

  In addition to stairclimb which is obviously quite the essential task for firefighters, especially recruits who are trying to go after the CPAT. Those are the kind, the bigger things. We saw some solid changes in across the board but we didn't necessarily stop just at the body comp and the cardio level.

  We also looked at a couple other metrics of strength. So we're, we really push in our groups. We push the importance and relevance of strength and [00:08:00] how it plays a role in injury prevention. And I don't wanna go down that path yet, but we definitely should. And unfortunately what we found is the academy itself didn't really make recruits stronger.

  There, there actually strength gains following the academy, throughout the academy. We also didn't really see any changes in vertical jump. And you may kinda read vertical jump and you say, who cares? Why do firefighters need a vertical jump? That's kinda a silly. Vertical jump comes from straight sports science background, which is all we're groups of sports scientists, we're groups of coaches.

  We're just applying science principles to the vertical is a critical indicator of what we at global neuromuscular performance. It's probably not the most precise indicator, but it gives us a very good outcome. If you have someone's neuromuscular function that improves dramatically, the vertical jump is gonna increase, especially when you think about body composition improving as well.

  So to see vertical jump not [00:09:00] increasing is quite telling that there's perhaps something missing from this training program and specific, maybe talking about the training program. We believe this is. Pretty representative aspect of what PT looks like for fire service academies. About the first half of the fire service or this particular academy was really PT dominant.

  Think more of your bootcamp based stuff. Your calisthenic based stuff, a lot of running, pushups, air squats, those types of calisthenic movements. And then the second half of the academy kinda transitioned a little bit to more strict occupation related training. So we're teaching recruits, how do you handle hydraulic tools?

  How do you handle ladders, hose drags, et cetera, et cetera. Kinda stepped away from the physical training nature and went strictly into the stuff and we, that probably is why it didn't really change.

  Vince: Well, Jacob, to [00:10:00] circle back to body composition, this is the one thing that I see so often with the candidates, especially early. And I think, and I mean you tell me if my theory about this is correct. I explain this to the candidates early on, that they're losing weight at a rapid rate.

  And their bodies are changing because their lives are structured now. They're getting up at a certain time, they're eating certain meals, they're going home, and by the time they get home, they're exhausted. Their lifestyle has changed. They're structured. And that's, I attribute that more, obviously the physical training and, but we all know that body composition has a lot to do with diet and structure of those diets.

  And is that a correct assumption?

  Jacob Mota: Oh, absolutely. Diet has a big role when it comes to your body composition. I'd argue that misconception in my kinesiology/sports science world that [00:11:00] diets can be outworked. And that's not true. So if you're a new recruit, you're doing this training academy. Or any new physical endeavor, oh, I can just kinda eat whatever and my life's gonna change.

  And unfortunately that's not the case. Diet is the fuel that we put into our vehicle. If you're fueling correctly you set yourself up for, in terms of the academy, yeah, you're adding a lot of structure. You're. Potentially some regimented of meals depending on what the Academy does and how it provide, I'm not sure you guys do it over, obviously, whether or the fire departments will actually encourage the macronutrients distribution for their recruits. So they're not gonna give the recruit the food, but they're gonna say, here's the amount of car proteins you need to consume on a daily basis. That is a [00:12:00] big deal when it comes to maintaining or positively changing body in any direction.

  Vince: Yeah, I think that's something that, that we're lacking in the training side of the academies. We don't dive into meal planning or how to set these guys up for success as far as their macronutrients and some of these guys have no idea what to eat and what's best for them. I throw out at them about the risks of energy drinks and things like that could be potentially harmful for what they're gonna be doing in their academy setting.

  Having them switch to things like applesauce for their pre-workout or right before we work out. Because the way our academy is structured, they have their lunch and right after lunch is when we go into our PT. They start off with they're hungry early in the academy. Everybody eats and then they start getting the idea, okay, we're doing PT right after lunch.

  You'll see these lunches like change dramatically. No more [00:13:00] pastas. No more burgers.

  Annette: Jacob, I want you to connect the dots for our listeners, because right now it's three people that have background, various backgrounds in health, Wellness fitness coaching. But maybe that's not necessarily all of our listeners.

  And so one of the things that you stated was that the academy training program did not necessarily make the recruits stronger because they were doing calisthenic type exercises. So from your physiology background, will you just explain that to the listeners why they're not getting stronger

  Jacob Mota: yeah, I'd be happy to. Thanks for the opportunity. This is without…I don't expose myself as much as a supernerd.

  Vince: Nerd out.

  Annette: Nerd out Jacob.

  Jacob Mota: So strength is the topic, right? Strength, when the average lay person hears it, their brain goes immediately to someone at the gym with a barbell on their back. And that plays a significant role in our [00:14:00] everyday life.

  We require strength to get out of bed without pain. We require strength to play with the kiddos, to walk the dog, and of course to lift weights, to do the job, to do anything, have strength, not your strength efforts. Your body doesn't convince itself that it needs those maximal strength efforts, so it, it simply says I don't need to be strong, so I'm not going to.

  When it comes to calisthenic type training, your body weight type training, that doesn't require a large amount of force. So in order to perform those activities, your body is just is doing it. Your muscles contract, okay? It's a stress on your cardiovascular system, which is great. But it doesn't really stress your skeletal system.

  It doesn't push them to grow. Cause after all, they're more than capable of producing that strength to move your body up and down. And we find that strength is a pretty big deal when it comes to [00:15:00] getting at things like fall reduction, total balance in multiple populations, including opportunity to improve.

  Annette: So before we get to the slips, trips and falls, which I'm fascinated. Give us the…you gave us the positives that came out of the academy training. Give us the negatives that you found.

  Jacob Mota: Yeah, the negatives all come down to that strength, and something that we measure that was not necessarily improved upon would be the hamstring to quad ratio.

  Ham strength ratio is exactly how it sounds. It's how strong is your quads, which is the front part of your thigh muscles relative to your hamstring muscles. Hamstrings are the backsides. We need that ratio to be kind improved upon with strength training. We want your hamstrings to be stronger.

  Is what it comes down to. When your hamstrings are a little weaker relative to your quadriceps in addition to just general weakness, you're gonna be exposing yourself to greater risk and greater likelihood of having a [00:16:00] lower extremity injury. In the sports science field we really lean toward the ham to quad ratio and it's association with the ACL tear. Which is obviously, everyone knows torn acls are prevalent amongst lots of athletes.

  That's definitely a complicated topic. But hamstring, quad strength ratio plays a role there, undoubtedly. So to see a lot of those aspects not changing, to see your whole body performance metrics, your vertical jumps not changing. Those are big things that we can definitely improve upon thankfully .

  What I tell fire leaders everywhere is we don't have to reinvent the wheel here. The sports science world has fixed a lot of these problems over the last 15, 20 years. We just need to take the sports science lessons and apply them to the fire service.

  Vince: Jacob, in your opinion, what can somebody like me, how can I cast a wider net and increase strength for a hundred or so candidates?

  I, and I have taken your [00:17:00] study to heart and these guys do their Nordic stretches now too, because you want to narrow that ham quad ratio. Correct. You want them to be almost as equal as they can get as close to just narrowing that ratio as you can.

  Jacob Mota: Yeah, pretty much. The solution is definitely complicated.

  The bigger the class is, right? You've got hundred recruits. How do you solve this? You don't. All the time in the world, you don't have the ability to just go in one on one by one and one solve every recruitment in your department. That's difficult. The biggest that seem to make for changes is progression of training.

  So what we're getting at here for those who might not be familiar is progression from an exercise standpoint means we typically start the novice, the new person out relatively low intensity and or volume of exercise, but we want those things to gradually increase [00:18:00] over time. By the time the recruit is done with the academy, the workout that they're doing builds. You don't have to be doing these dangerous activities of your one RM back squat and hurting yourself. You simply just need to load the skeletal muscle system enough to convince it that it needs to grow and become stronger. It doesn't take significant amounts of training.

  Take a little bit and focus some time, 20 minutes max.

  Vince: We can build pretty much anything for these guys, but spending any money in our training for these guys when, as far as like stuff like that, you would get pushback from pretty much 99.9% of the departments that run a training academy.

  Jacob Mota: Oh no, I get it.

  Farmers carries, grab hose, grab a sandbag. Grab something that's heavy, a piece of machinery, a retired hydro tool, [00:19:00] and you hold onto that and walk hundred meters or walk a lap around your facility that will build strength. It doesn't have to be complex. It doesn't need to be these crazy things.

  Vince: Here's something that other academies can implement that, that we've done in Chicago. We've gotten those like Home Depot buckets. We've taken some webbing , and we've turned those into handles and we put a little PVC chunk of PVC pipe on 'em, and they'll carry those, we fill 'em with sand and they walk around the block with carrying two of those.

  They're heavy as shit. But it is a humbler for sure. So if it, I'm glad that you actually. Said that because now I feel better about having them do that.

  Annette: Vince has vindication.

  Jacob Mota: No, absolutely. Yeah. That, that is a fire service ingenuity at its finest. I'd love it.

  Annette: Jacob, it occurs to me I don't write individual coaching programs for [00:20:00] anyone anymore. I used to do that years ago, but it occurs to me that if you are a strength and conditioning coach, independent or personal trainer that's independent, and working with a firefighter that's going through the academy, you would be very well served or you would be serving that firefighter very well to really focus on that posterior chain strength, knowing that their academy physical training is going to be focusing on the opposite due to limitations and equipment. Would you agree with that?

  Jacob Mota: Yeah, I think that's a very good thing to, to kinda look at. Yeah. Focusing on outside of the academy, focusing on posterior chain, the backside, if you'll, I think that's a very good outlook.

  Annette: And one of the things, I'm gonna put you on the spot, but I know you're gonna agree with me. So I'm just basically , this is confirmation bias right here, but my platform, my, my pedestal, my whatever you want to call it, is that I really feel like firefighters deserve qualified and [00:21:00] competent coaches, whether that's strength and conditioning coaches dietitians, so on and so forth. And what you are saying, the research that you are telling us really speaks to support for that. We really need people that know what they're doing to work with firefighters.

  Jacob Mota: Yes. Wholeheartedly agree. We have data to suggest that firefighters may be a public servant but really they should be looked at as. athletes. I'm presently an assistant professor at Texas Tech University, but prior to I professor at University of Alabama, kinesiology department at Alabama I kinda get a similar but not frequent response here at Texas Tech. The answer is, yeah, absolutely. I work with athletes every day, just not the athletes. You think of fire firefighters are as much athletes as the fellows who are playing in playoffs this weekend.

  It's just they don't get the same [00:22:00] recognition. They should be looked at in the same because when firefighters are needed, they're needed cause of their physical capabilities. That sounds a lot like an athlete.

  Vince: There's there, there's actually a sign at one of the firehouses.

  I'm not gonna say which house in Chicago, but it says that a firefighter at a working fire is working harder than any professional athlete at that given time.

  Jacob Mota: Yeah, absolutely. Unfortunately not getting paid as much. But maybe one day that might change.

  Vince: That would be something that would be something

  Jacob Mota: A thing leaders definitely need consider administrators, of course, is what is the best route forward. How do you have a firefighter be able to stay on top of all their CEUs like you're describing Vince like you're really trying to be also that play that role for these recruits? So leading them, show them how to do the fire service, but also how do you, how you physically capable of yourself having someone with a fire service, or excuse me, understanding the fire service, but also an innate [00:23:00] understanding.

  Physical training, programming and nutrition. That will go a long way.

  Vince: Jacob, I know Annette put you on the spot earlier. I'd like to do the same if you had to pick which serves the 99 percentile of firefighter candidates, would you say that it is more beneficial for them get a better engine or to be stronger.

  Jacob Mota: Ooh, yeah, you did put me on the spot. Huh? That's a hard one,

  Annette: Vince. That's almost not fair.

  Vince: It's almost not fair. But when do I get an opportunity to really hold a somebody of this caliber's feet to the fire ? It's only for my own edification here, cuz I, I wanna know which, obviously the correct answer is both.

  But if you were to lean one way the other, which would, if you were in my position, which would you be focusing more on?

  Jacob Mota: Yeah. Def [00:24:00] definitely. My, my feet are burning right now, but , you can't see me on video. You just see me squirming all around my, my, my space here.

  Vince: Is there anything based in your studies that would make you lean one way or the other.?

  Jacob Mota: It's definitely a question that we've never really looked at so specifically. So I wouldn't be able to lean on that data per se. But what I would give you the response is probably like this strength takes substantially, much more effort to obtain that takes longer amount to, to longer amounts of time.

  You have to dedicate the training in order to become quite strong. Cardio, endurance or capabilities required for the job. They don't take in my opinion, as long to meet. You're never gonna be an elite cardios athlete in six weeks, but you can improve your VO2. Level that's quite quickly of training[00:25:00]

  So long to gain strength and cause the recruits are in a position. Mandated to be working out in a very structured format. I would almost focus more on, on the strength thing. But I say that with a big asterisk around all that because we all know a big problem with fire service is cardiac issues.

  And especially as you look at firefighters who are doing the job for longer, cardiac issues are a really big. So it's hard to just say, yeah, just focus on strength without thinking, Hey, we also need to focus on the cardiovascular system and the cardiovascular health because of the role that it plays in line of duty deaths every year for the last 15 plus years.

  Long story, long winded answer saying both

  Vince: I also want to find out based on your studies is because I I'm so fascinated by the VO2 metric. Did have you guys gone [00:26:00] with these candidates? Cuz I didn't say anything in the literature. Have you guys followed them through consumption drills or anything like that with them going through a bottle of air and how they fared?

  Like prior before early in the academy, to the end of the academy?

  Jacob Mota: Very timely. You asked me that. I just had data set completed yesterday. Looking at air consumption metric or an air consumption drill in addition to a bunch of demographic variables, body composition max testing, C so we do have that data.

  I just, we haven't had to really dive down, so gimme little bit. Give me another call. We can talk about that part of the future, but that is definitely forthcoming.

  Vince: It's not that much of a stretch to say that if you had a rocking V02, that you would actually you would be longer on your bottle and you wouldn't run outta air as soon as somebody who's V02 wasn't the greatest.

  Jacob Mota: Oh, hands down. [00:27:00] Hands down. Yes. If your Vo2 is higher, your 45 minute bottle may last you longer.

  Vince: So I mean that would be something that we could strive for in training. I think that if we had a way where we could increase VO2 in our candidates would it be fair to say that would be a good place to start with making a stronger engine for some of these candidates?

  Jacob Mota: Yeah, I do. I do think that, especially from a working fire stand. Your VO is gonna be high and maybe, just throw it out there and explain. V2 stands through volume of oxygen. This is essentially a metric of how much air that you can breathe in and utilize within your body. How much air your lungs can take the oxygen that into your blood and then your heart, that blood to your working muscles, the more efficient that your body is extracting blood, or excuse me, extracting oxygen from.

  The air, the bulk air that you're moving into your lungs, [00:28:00] and the more efficient your heart is at moving that blood around, the higher your V02. So that makes sense to someone who's a really fast why am I whenever, my buddy over here who's, not even 20 minutes into a working fire, hasn't even touched a quarter of his.

  VO2 is a big reason for it. Probably not the only reason. But it's a big deal.

  Annette: So Jacob now that Vince held your toes to the fire, made you sweat, made you squirm, let's just take it down. Let's take it down a notch for a second. . So you and I spoke on the phone and I believe it was Gena was the lead author on the study regarding muscle quality and rate of torque development and how that relates to slips, trips, and falls.

  Am I right on that first?

  Jacob Mota: The good news is it's either gonna be Gena or I and I'm not positive. Which one of us, it was , we've done.

  [00:29:00] Functional balance type movement. But yeah, we can keep going.

  Annette: All right. All right, so we're just gonna say Jacob and Gena wrote a paper and it's really interesting because I never considered that the quality of your muscles might be influence your slip strips and falls. And so start at the kindergarten level and explain to us what that even means, Jacob.

  Jacob Mota: Yeah, so muscle quality is a super neat little metric. Essentially muscle quality is, the way we use it a lot is in reference to a variable that we calculate from ultrasound. Are familiar ultrasounds the way undergraduate students, it's little tool that maybe a physician will use to check on a pregnant mother where I check, take a picture of the baby.

  But we take that same tool and we look at the. So we are interested in the quality of the muscle, which is really just a ratio of how much contractile to non contractile tissue there is. If you're really into, if you're a meat eater yourself and you're, [00:30:00] you think of it. In the form of maybe like a piece of a beef steak, you'll look at a steak and you'll admire perhaps the marbling within the steak that marbling its flavor and it tastes great.

  Marbling is present in human too, so unfortunately that marbling in us means that our muscles do not work as well. The increased intramuscular fats that's present within muscles. Means that you're, you physically cannot contract your muscles as well as if you could, if you didn't have that intramuscular fat.

  So we use this muscle quality metric with ultrasound to give us a little bit an indication of how much intermuscular fat does one have within their muscle interest. We've done a number of studies over the years kinda our team at UNC back then with Jenna, with myself hay. Of course our boss, Dr. Eric Ryan to look and see the role of muscle quality in many different aspects of muscle function. Some of which we did do quite a bit of work in the study that I definitely remember off the top head that Gena wrote was the lead [00:31:00] author on this was looking at, I believe, shift work.

  We didn't look specifically at slip trips, falls. Muscle quality metric. We did do a separate study looking at slip trips, falls, but we didn't do it with with muscle quality.

  Annette: So am I understanding this correct? Muscle quality does impact slip strips and falls, or does not?

  Jacob Mota: Yeah. So muscle quality, I'm not So muscle quality does impact your ability.

  To contract your muscles. Yes. Without a doubt, muscle quality is gonna be influencing how strong of a contraction that you're gonna be able to perform.

  Annette: Got it. And as a, an aging woman, I'm gonna be 52 tomorrow.

  Vince: Happy birthday. Happy birthday.

  Jacob Mota: Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Happy birthday.

  Annette: Yeah.

  But as an aging woman, is this muscle quality something that's a byproduct of age too? We're fighting against that change in muscle quality along with everything.

  Jacob Mota: Yeah, absolutely. That's the ticket that we're dealt . The tricky part about age and muscle is as we age really after, in our forties we start to lose muscle [00:32:00] mass at roughly around the rate of about percentage year.

  Now that rate can be modulated by a number of different factors. . The really big unfortunate aspect of that is the first muscles that we kinda lose, if you'll are what we call type two muscle fibers. These type two muscle fibers are what we rely on to be a real big, heavy hitters when it comes to force production.

  When we really need to produce a lot of strength and a lot of force, we call those type two muscle fibers in order to really give us the backup. But as we age, those are the first puppies to check out and see. See if they see you later.

  Annette: My puppies have checked out Jacob, so sorry. Vince, I need to take a break.

  You go ahead and continue. I'm just gonna cry.

  Vince: You have another day.

  Annette: That's true. I do have another day.

  Vince: But Jacob, this muscle quality can be altered with strength training.

  Jacob Mota: Absolutely. With strength training [00:33:00] you're able to essentially increase the amount of contractile tissue present within muscle. So it's a double whammy in a very good way.

  Vince: So you can in theory, hit the pause button on your clock as far as muscle. with proper strength training, correct?

  Jacob Mota: Absolutely. I'd argue that from a function standpoint, you can hit button on loss of function training.

  See, look at it. AZ you're good. I know you're good. You're solid.

  Annette: I'm solid. No problem.

  Jacob. Let's just tie some thoughts together because we now know that we need to maintain our muscle as we age. I think we've [00:34:00] accepted that we need to maintain our muscle. We know that strength training is important, but we also know that protein consumption is important.

  Vince: Oh, I'm glad you said that. That was my next.

  Annette: I know you did a little bit of work with Dr. Hirsch in a couple of protein studies, but give us the wave tops. What do we need to know about protein, especially as we age?

  Jacob Mota: Yeah, that, that's a great question. So Dr. Hirsch and I, we go back long. Katie's fantastic, far better person than me.

  We're so pretty close this day. She's at my wedding. She's definitely knows more about the protein metabolism side than I do. I do know enough of the way to push it to the layperson in a very simple way, protein is incredibly important. Protein contains essentially amino acids.

  And these amino acids are key to maintaining muscle mass, maintaining function and to maintaining a high quality of life. So when it comes to takeaways for firefighters we need . More protein than the average [00:35:00] person's consuming. In fact, one of the studies you referred to we looked at essentially the influence of someone's regular amount of protein intake on body competition, right?

  So we looked a whole bunch of firefighters, and we essentially do three day dietary recalls. Just tell us what they ate over the last three days essentially. And what we found was that when people over about 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body mass. Those people were having more favorable body composition, meaning that individuals who are consuming more amounts of protein the better their body composition really turned out to be.

  That's for a number of factors. Protein itself has a big satiety factor, right? So satiety is it's hunger. If you eat a carb-heavy meal, your satiety is not gonna maybe be as fulfilled as if you ate a protein heavy meal. I'm not sure if it, if too much, if you go protein versus protein, but research pretty, that protein as a whole makes you feel less hungry.[00:36:00]

  So the more protein you consume, the better your body composition is, the better you're probably eating, or perhaps less likely to overeat.

  Vince: If you think about, if you've ever gone out for a steak dinner, you get to a point where you just can't eat any more steak, but you can always grab one more french fry or there's always that little piece of bread that you can have.

  Jacob Mota: Exactly. You can never stop. Try stopping with fries. If they had an all you can eat fry buffet, you'd be there for a day, but oh yeah, you can't have five hamburgers.

  Yep. It's the thing that when people realize, oh, that's the role that protein takes and to how well I'm eating, and then you look at why am I eating all this pasta?

  It doesn't have a lot of proteins, and my body doesn't have a signal to say, Hey you're consumed a of food. It's very quickly broken down and absorbed. Whereas protein kind of sits in our gut. and our body knows it. So it says, Hey, chill out guys. Let's go back to reality. Drink some water.

  Vince: Jacob, in any firehouse you could go to any [00:37:00] firehouse across the country and you're gonna find protein, you're gonna find creatine and you're gonna find amino acids. And I've heard both sides of the story that you can take your amino acid, you can throw 'em in the garbage. And I've even heard that uneducated people say that you don't need your protein supplements as well. You should just get that from food. But and I've used creatine as well with great results. But can you chime in if you have any information about, those three big hitters that we would find at a firehouse?

  Jacob Mota: Yeah. Protein creatine, amino acids, essential or maybe branched chain. When it comes to supplementation, the key is the word supplement. This is supposed to be in supplementation. I too hear that argument of, Hey, you, why are you drinking this protein shake? Just go eat more food. The advantages of protein shake is that it does provide you with a relatively large amount of protein in a relatively small calorie window.

  [00:38:00] Especially if you drink it and say like a water beverage you don't have to worry about extra calories that may come from mixing the protein shake something else. What you perhaps get away is relying solely supplements, whey protein shakes or those types of from relying source of protein. Probably more, more, if anything, just from a gastrointestinal health standpoint, simply rely more on it as the insurance policy to make sure that you're getting enough protein rather than the leading edge.

  Fighting the spear fighting the battle. Creatine is another one. You actually consume creatine in the diet. If you eat a steak, you're consuming arguably, a large chunk of creatine. But creatine in from a supplement standpoint has many benefits beyond musculoskeletal health.

  And I wanna be clear, I'm definitely not the creatine expert of the group. Some of my friends like Katie and Katie's advisor, Dr. Abby Smith-Ryan, those are definitely more people who are very versed in the creatine literature than I'm. [00:39:00] So the broad stroke takeaways, creatine is beneficial from a cognitive benefit from a neuroprotective benefit and TBIs.

  In addition to things like increasing size of muscles, increasing performance capabilities creatine is one of the supplements that is shown to be effective, efficacious and pretty safe. You can't really say that about too many sports supplements. It's definitely kinda a crazy world when it comes to mixing the supplements that do work really well without being dangerous to someone's health.

  Whey protein supplemental protein, those are fine things to.

  Annette: Here's a shameless plug for episode…I believe it was Episode 8 of the Fire Rescue Wellness Podcast, Dr. Creatine, Scott Forbes was my guest, but we talked about you can get all the creatine you need in your diet.

  You would just need to eat four pounds of steak or six pounds of cod, or several gallons of milk. So it's just not feasible for most people. It's probably not feasible for anyone. So supplementation on the creatine is something that is pretty much [00:40:00] across the board. Gold stamp for me.

  Jacob Mota: Yep.

  And you're not needing to take tons of creatine. You only need five grams of creatine per day. It's fine. That's actually the, that's recommended amount in the journals. I suggest five grams creatine maintenance. It's totally fine from a long term safety standpoint about whether or not you can handle it.

  It's totally fine. There doesn't seem to be a lot of negative evidence against creatine.

  Vince: and no need to cycle on and off.

  Jacob Mota: No, not really. There's not evidence that I'm aware of. Again, there's others out there who are more experts in that field. But the evidence, I'm aware of you, you can have long-term creatine supplementation then be just fine.

  Vince: I wanna go back to your study before I hammer you on some more supplementation stuff. Are you guys planning on going back to these 19 recruits and seeing where they are further down the line, or are you guys done with them?

  Jacob Mota: That's a wonderful question. Now, unfortunately, we are [00:41:00] kinda, kinda done with them right now.

  This like many things in life was directly impacted by Covid. So we wrapped up data collections of the study right before Covid hits and, I blinked and we're in 2023 now. I dunno if y'all know. So we just kinda fast. We are here at. We are actually starting a new study with the Lubbock Police Academy.

  And we are gonna be doing follow up assessments with some of their over the years. So those studies are forthcoming, but not this crew here.

  Vince: Okay. And one more thing before I forget cuz I had this written down to ask you, but were you guys just gonna be objectively measuring metrices or were you actually involved in providing your input on like increasing vertical jump, increasing strength, increasing, all because you went through a whole litany of metrics from start to finish with these guys?

  Did you guys have input on their training or were you just gathering. [00:42:00]

  Jacob Mota: Yeah, great. Great question. We are purely from this study standpoint, purely there from a we didn't wanna get in. Philosophy here is we're not boots firefighters, we're not the officers. We help decision makers understand what their job is or understand what, maybe you can make more efficient or better.

  So we, we didn't have any input kinda intentionally. That was truly a decision of the academy

  Annette: We're on a schedule here, Vince , it's nap time for the baby. Jacob, what I usually do at the end of my episodes, is I say, was there anything else that I should have asked you that I did not, or do you have closing thoughts that you wanna share with our listeners?

  Jacob Mota: One, one thing we probably. We started to talk about, and then we got sidetracked. And I take full responsibility here. My, my grad students get, I get sidetracked very quickly. , I'm one of those people, I don't really take myself too seriously. I take work really seriously.

  But different. I'm just, [00:43:00] Jake. That's We did a study I guess it was published three or four years ago now. Maybe four or five. We did physically look at balance firefighters. Something I thought was kinda cool. And one thing I bring up kinda getting away the recruits, firefighters, functional, which is metric firefighters to essentially walk a plank while wearing full bunker. Avoid overhead obstacle, and then walk backwards on this plank we asked firefighters to perform this functional assessments as quickly as they can, and what we found oftentimes surprises a lot of people.

  We looked at a litany of neuromuscular variables. We looked at everything under the sun from our super nerd science standpoint. We looked at peak torque, which is your maximal course torque production capability. We looked at the rate of torque developments ability generate, and then we looked at also [00:44:00] number, a number of other things on someone's ability to navigate this firefighter specific functional balance assessment.

  And there are three variables that are very important. Age percent body fat and the ability to generate force or strength quickly were the three substantial indicators or predictors of performance in this task. So that is to say that age, strength, and body are very important in this group.

  And what I tell, I kinda give the spiel about once a year to firefighters or different organizations and spiel is I can't do anything about age. Wish could. We're moving forward. My two-year-old is growing every day like a weed, but we can change percent body fat in firefighters, in anyone, and we can make people stronger.

  Those are things we can change, and the data suggests that body compositions and strength are critical indicators of injury risk. [00:45:00] And that's really what we wanna be. That's what our future focus has been over the last several years, is to really fully elucidate the role of strength and not only the fire service, but also law enforcement agencies.

  Vince: I think your balance study is my new deep dive. I'm that fascinates me as well. Cuz in gear, and that you can attribute to this. I feel like a toddler.

  Annette: That little kid on the Christmas story in a snowsuit. Yeah.

  Vince: And that's how I feel like I'm moving. I'm, I always feel like I'm moving in quicksand with the boots and the gear and everything.

  I just I, my dexterity is, I would say half, I feel like it's half and my legs get really heavy really quickly. , and I don't know if you guys have gathered your data yet on that study, but I really feel like an orange on a toothpick. That's how I feel . That's how I feel when you're fully encapsulated.

  Annette: Jacob, I'm gonna feed you your next study , because, and you're, you can thank me later. [00:46:00] Female. Female specific gear is all but non-existent in the fire service. It does exist, but many departments either don't know. Or don't wanna buy it because it's more expensive. Also, female specific turnout boots I don't think exist at all.

  So I have to just wear a smaller men's size. And we know that the last that those boots are built on are made from men's feet, which are different than women's feet. So here's your study. Comparing the ability to do the balance test simply between males and females and then drilling down. Does that female in fact have female specific year or not?

  You're welcome. Thank me later.

  Jacob Mota: Fantastic. Absolutely. Female firefighters are not just, different form of men. They're different physiology. They have different, unique needs. They still do the job incredibly. And arguably in some cases, some data suggest maybe a little better

  [00:47:00] But yeah, tho those are substantial disadvantages that the female firefighter faces that is gonna increase injury risk.

  Annette: So at NSCA National, when you buy me a beer to thank me for giving you the study, we will also name the study. “You're not clumsy, it's just your shit doesn't fit.”

  Vince: They have to cite you in the study.

  Annette: Oh, yes. I collaborated on a lot of studies now!

  Jacob Mota: Absolutely. Absolutely. That's a slam dunk.

  Annette: Jacob, if any of the listeners are interested in reaching out afterwards, are you okay if I share your email and social media platforms?

  Jacob Mota: Yeah, absolutely. I love that.

  I love love helping people, love helping firefighters and the fire service just get better. So I'd be happy to help any, anyone or chat at any time.

  Annette: That is wonderful, and we'll make sure and get that contact information in the show notes. Vince, any final thoughts?

  Vince: I'm gonna stop now because every time Jacob talks about another study, I'm fascinated.

  So I want to do this. [00:48:00] If it's all right with you, Jacob, I'm going to have you back.

  Jacob Mota: Yeah, I'd love to.

  Vince: This is great, and I'll tell you how the implementation of your study as it directly relates to the candidates that we're working with right now. I'll give you some feedback.

  Oh,

  Jacob Mota: that's pretty cool. That sounds fantastic.

  Vince: We're gonna try, we're trying to implement a stronger vertical jump platform and we're in working on that ham quad ratio Diligently, actively working on that.

  Jacob Mota: I like it. That sounds fantastic. Sounds like great improvements are ahead, .

  Annette: All right Jacob. We are so appreciative you of you and with that, we will sign off.

  This has been AZ and

  Vince: Vince from Chicago's Bravest Stories

  Annette: and we are officially out. Thanks everyone.

  Thanks.[00:49:00]

  Thank you for joining me on the Fire Rescue. Wellness Podcast. I'm your host AZ. I find the research and resources and then provide the fire service with the so what now, what? To ensure the health and wellbeing of every [00:01:00] member of our profession together. Let's thrive. Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of The Fire Rescue wellness Podcast, where today I am sitting down with my friend Dan Bornstein. Dan, please say hello to my podcast people.

  Dan Bornstein: Hello, podcast people.

  Annette: Oh, I love the enthusiasm. I love it. Dan, I always start my podcast with three rapid-fire questions that I hope to elucidate alittle bit of background about my guests.

  Are you ready for my questions?

  Dan Bornstein: Fire away.

  Annette: All right. Who is Dan Bornstein?

  Dan Bornstein: I think it depends upon who you ask.

  Annette: Good answer.

  Dan Bornstein: I would, if so, you're asking me. So I would say I'm a dad to two teenagers. I'm a husband to my adoring wife. I'm a son and son-in-law. I am trained as an exercise scientist and [00:02:00] public health person.

  an aspiring rock musician, , and and a former, because I think this will be relevant to your audience. A former volunteer firefighter.

  Annette: I need to hear more about the aspiring rock musician. Please elaborate.

  Dan: So I, when I used to live in Charleston, South Carolina, and I was in a band called Kabuki Love Machine, where I was a drummer. We actually had two drummers, so I was one of the two drummers and I did lead and backup vocals, and we just played the music that we grew up with. So like seventies, eighties, nineties, rock and roll. And it was awesome. It was just awesome. We weren't, we were okay. We weren't awesome, as musically awesome, but we had a great time together.

  We gigged not too often, maybe once every two months or so but it was just a total getaway from everything else in my life. And it [00:03:00] was me making music together with other people is one of, for me, one of life's great joys. And I now, I've moved to Vermont about a year and a half ago, and I have, I don't have a band yet, so that is a big vortex in my life right now.

  Annette: I do not know if Scott Caulfield plays an instrument. But I really think you need to be in a band with him. More to follow. All right, Dan, what sets your soul on fire?

  Dan Bornstein: Aside from playing rock and roll music I'm a total adrenaline junkie. I think that's part of why I became a firefighter was I really did...you know this, right? That when the pager goes off or the alarm bell goes off, the adrenaline starts pumping no matter what kind of scene you're going to. So when I gave up firefighting, I got into actually into high performance driving. And so I'm also a high performance driving instructor and I was an amateur race car driver for a little while.

  So [00:04:00] anything that gets my heart like pumping so downhill skiing also now that I live in Vermont, is an adrenaline rush. That's the kind of stuff that sets my soul on fire, on the fun side of things. On the professional side of things, what sets my soul on fire is finding connections, like being a professional dot connector. So finding some group or some individual who's doing something really cool over here. And then another personal organization that's doing something really cool over there. And I can see how if the two of them came together that sparks would fly and they would be able to do so much better and do so much more together.

  That also like professionally totally sets my soul on fire. So I'm, I've. I guess coined myself a professional dot connector.

  Annette: I like that. I am professional glue, so I do the same thing that you do, but I don't [00:05:00] connect the dots. I glue the people together. Who knew we had all these things in common, Dan.

  Wow. Who knew? Who knew? And the race car driving this. You are just blowing my mind right now. All right, last question. Rapid fire. How are you changing the world?

  Dan Bornstein: Oh. On a daily basis by trying to make people smile. I think that's, my wife once asked me like, one night in bed, like why do you think you were put on this earth

  It was just, it was like a Tuesday night and I was like, wow, that's a fine time for a question like this. But what was so weird was that without even giving it any thought, it was almost like, My soul was speaking, like I didn't process it at all cognitively, I just said to make people smile. So on a daily basis it's making people smile.

  But really it's about trying ultimately, professionally for me, [00:06:00] it's largely. Trying to increase physical activity levels across the entire population so that we can improve population, physical health, mental health, and then readiness for whatever that means, whether that's readiness for.

  Being a parent or a, a dually employed professional or a member of our US armed forces or a first responder readiness can mean a lot of different things, but without being sufficiently physically active based upon my own. Research and also probably personal bias. It's pretty tough to be ready for life.

  Annette: And we're gonna dig really deep down in that rabbit hole of readiness as one of the main topics on this podcast. But before we get there, when I first met you, I think it was in 2019, but I'm not sure. When I first met you, you were fulfilling a position at The Citadel. So tell me a little bit about what you did at The [00:07:00] Citadel.

  Tell me about the program you developed. Tell me all the things.

  Dan Bornstein: Tell you all the things. Yeah. I, we met, I think at Summer Strong,

  Annette: oh. Yes, that's right,

  Dan Bornstein: which, so for those who have never been to or seen or heard about a Summer strong you owe yourself the joy of going to Summer Strong. I won't say anything more about it cuz I like the mystery behind it.

  But that's where I think we first met cuz we had just started rolling out the programs, the academic programs at the Citadel that I had conceptualized. I didn't develop the whole thing cuz I had a lot of help. But what we developed there was the first ever degree, actual academic degree and certificate programs in what we call tactical performance and resiliency.

  So the NSCA the National Strength and Conditioning Association had developed their certification as a tactical strength and conditioning facilitator. But there [00:08:00] was recognition that was a necessary but maybe not necessarily sufficient condition for a highly effective tactical strength and conditioning professional.

  That there were a lot of other skills that maybe and knowledge sets that needed to go along with that. So while I was at the Citadel, which is a military college down in South Carolina I stood up a center there that was called the Center for Performance Readiness Resiliency, and. and there were three basic components of that center, one of which was academic degree and certificate programs.

  So we created an online undergraduate bachelor of science degree in Tactical Strength and conditioning. We developed a graduate certificate online in tactical performance and resiliency. And then we also developed a residential masters of science in tactical Performance and resiliency. That was the academic side of what I was doing while I [00:09:00] was there.

  Annette: That was one of, if not the only program like that in the country at the time, right?

  Dan Bornstein: Yeah, it was the first. It was the first ever. I don't think it's the only one now, which is a good thing because there's a lot more need for education in this space. But yes, at the time it was the first and only.

  Annette: Outstanding. What I wanted to really talk to you about today I've heard you speak about this couple times. I heard you speak about it at Tactical Annual this year with Dr. Dawes, the lack of fitness becoming a national security issue. It's, this is really intriguing to me and I think it's potentially something that my listeners have never even considered might impact the candidates that are coming into the [00:10:00] fire service.

  So tell me first, what does this even mean?

  Dan Bornstein: What does this even mean? Can I back up even further?

  Annette: Heck yes you can.

  Dan Bornstein: And talk about how we even got to this idea that, that physical act like low physical activity or low physical fitness might actually be a national security issue.

  Annette: Back up the truck.

  Let's talk about it.

  Dan Bornstein: All right. Yep. I was getting my PhD at the University of South Carolina and it was a PhD in exercise science, but with an emphasis on physical activity and health. So yes, I was studying some mechanistic and cellular level exercise physiology. But the overall emphasis was, like I was talking about earlier, trying to increase population levels of physical activity.

  And at the time I was also working a s a graduate student on a project called the US National Physical Activity Plan, which was like a strategic plan [00:11:00] to do what it sounds like increased population levels of physical activity, and we had decades of really good science on the importance of physical activity for.

  And also the how physical inactivity is associated with many non-communicable and now even communicable diseases like Covid, right? We saw that there was this pretty strong correlation between low physical fitness and poorer outcomes from Covid, so we had, again, decades of evidence. but very but this persistent decline in the physical activity levels of the population.

  So there's this disconnect, right? How is it that we have all this science but the problem's getting worse? And then I took a class in health promotion and the class was about messaging and framing in public health. So how do you frame or talk about a particular problem? and the class was being taught by a professor [00:12:00] who I love, he's fantastic.

  His name is Jim Thrasher. So shout out to Jim Thrasher at the University of South Carolina. But his area of expertise was actually in tobacco control policy, and what I learned in his class was that what led to the significant drop in smoking in the US and the subsequent drop precipitous drop in l ung cancer in this country was not the evidence on the harmful effects of smoking to the smoker, but the harmful effects of secondhand smoke.

  So in, in essence, what was happening was you had all this science that said smoking was really bad for you, but that wasn't enough for any kind of policy change to try to limit that. But when the harm evidence on the harmful effects of secondhand smoke became evident, that's when you saw the federal government and even [00:13:00] local municipal government stepping in and saying, we're gonna limit your access to smoke to cigarettes.

  We're gonna put surgeon general's warnings on packages of cigarettes, and we're gonna tax cigarettes and we're gonna limit where you can even use them, right? You can no longer smoke in the workplace or on airplanes and so on and in bars and so on and so forth. And so basically what you did was you changed the environments, making it really difficult to access the thing that was negatively impacting not only individuals in their own health, but the health of others. And so it was in that moment as I was studying this stuff that I went, okay, we know that physical inactivity is really bad for the individual and physical activity is really good for the individual.

  What is the, like secondhand smoke equivalent? How is physical inactivity? How is my being physically inactive, adversely affecting other people? And [00:14:00] that's when I started doing research on the physical fitness levels of recruits entering the military and the associations between low fitness and musculoskeletal injuries that were taking place during basic training and then following service members over the course of their careers, and then even into veteran status and how much that was costing the Department of Defense and the VA.

  And so that's when I had this idea. I think we need to reframe physical inactivity as not necessarily a public health issue, but as a national security issue. And so that's that relationship. And again, the problem is getting worse, right? As we're seeing physical activity levels and fitness levels still continuing to decline we see that this year, for example, the US Army fell short of recruiting goal by approximately 20,000 soldiers.

  Annette: Wow.

  Dan Bornstein: [00:15:00] And so what does that mean? It means that we are gonna have a smaller army. It means that selection processes for things like special operation forces those things may decline as. They're having trouble filling their ranks and you're just gonna have this trickle down effect.

  And I know the same is true across the fire service and also in law enforcement. It's getting harder and harder to find individuals who not only have the desire or propensity to serve, whether that's serving their country in the US armed forces, or serving their community as a first responder but they also lack the fitness to serve. So finding individuals who have both is becoming increasingly more challenging. And that poses very real and very present threats to our national security, but also our state and [00:16:00] local safety and security.

  Annette: Absolutely. And as you were talking about the tremendous expense for the military.

  On these soldiers or other military members that they're hiring. The dollar signs just started flinging, flinging, fling in my head. Is that number in the millions?

  In the billions?

  Dan Bornstein: It's in the billions. It's in the billions,

  Annette: Lord.

  Dan Bornstein: Yeah, it's in the billions. So because there's not only just the medical cost for treating the injury as it happens, let's call it an ankle sprain or or maybe it's shin splints or something like that. There's the direct medical cost, but then there's also the indirect costs. So there's the taking the person out of you know. And the fire service would be putting on limited duty, basically.

  Or maybe they get they get processed out of themilitary. And the amount of time and money that you've spent on training that [00:17:00] person, now all that is lost. So when you start adding these dollars up they're in the tens of billions of dollars per year for the DOD. And then it just moves on to the VA as they have to treat the residual effects of these musculoskeletal injuries that were sustained over the course of a service member's career.

  So it's, it is a major economic issue but it's also a practical issue from the standpoint of just having enough people who are fit enough to go out and do the job.

  Annette: And not only, I think this was your analogy, we're all dipping from the same well police, fire, and military agencies are all trying to hire from the same historically, many of the police officers and firefighters were former military members, so that.[00:18:00]

  Especially if there's so many of them getting injured and processed out, that pipeline is getting shut down as well. That's very concerning.

  Dan Bornstein: It is it is, it's really concerning. It's we can either act or not act on the problem, and if we don't act on the problem by really putting resources behind.

  then frankly, we really do so at our own peril. Truly at our own peril, and I, that might sound hyperbolic. But it's really not hyperbole. It's a reality that when that alarm bell sounds, there might not be enough people to answer the bell or anybody to answer the bell. And I see that in my own hometown right now, my new hometown of Norwich.

  Which is a small town in the middle of Vermont. There's not a whole lot of crime. But there's one police officer right now. And we were without any police officers for a [00:19:00] short time. We have a volunteer fire department. The chief has called me a few times asking if I'll join again.

  And it's been so long, I'd have to go through the academy and I'm 50 and I'm not sure I wanna do that. Oh. But you don't but they're, I think they're down to 12 firefighters.

  Annette: Not to bring up Scott Caufield again. He was a firefighter in the Navy let's go Scott.

  Dan Bornstein: Yeah, he's too far away though, so it's weird.

  I live in Norwich, Vermont. Which is not where Norwich University is. Oh. Which is crazy cuz Norwich University is in Vermont, . But it's actually, Norwich University is actually 40 miles north of me in a town called Northfield, Vermont. Let's make things complicated. . Yeah. Scott's response time for the Norwich village Fire department would be a little too long, a little too long, but for Northfield Fire Department, he could certainly sign up.

  Annette: Northfield, if you're listening, Scott Caufield [00:20:00] he's your guy at the school. He's your guy. Look for Alfie too. He's your guy. So yes, if I'm not mistaken, you have actually addressed Congress about this issue. And you said, we need to act on the problem or not act, but that's going to cause a lot of peril. So when you address Congress, what did you have to say to them?

  Dan Bornstein: Basically what I said what I've, a lot of what I've just said now. You can't just come to somebody with problems, you've gotta come with solutions as well. So the context in. I had the opportunity to brief Congress. I've done it twice. But this, the most recent one was to release formally a new what, what I, this new military settings sector of the National Physical Activity Plan.

  So I had mentioned that earlier when I was at University of South Carolina. I was working on the development [00:21:00] of this national physical activity plan, which at the time was organized around eight different societal sectors. There was an education sector and there was a transportation sector, and there was a public health sector.

  And again, all these areas that can influence physical activity levels. But about two-ish years ago, I was tapped on the shoulder and asked to have to develop a new sector chair, the group to develop a new sector on military settings. . So we did that and we officially launched the military setting sector in the context of a congressional briefing.

  So basically, yes. What we were saying to Congress at that time was, the Army is facing some serious recruiting challenges, and we had some of the generals from Army's training, command training and doctrine command, talking about some of those challenges. But al also talking about some of the ways in which they're addressing those challenges.

  Once somebody gets into the Army, [00:22:00] through the Army's, what's called holistic health and fitness program or H2F, which I know you're familiar with and some of your listeners may be as well. I was talking about it again in the context more globally of how we compare to other nations.

  And so one of the last slides, for example, that I had was a slide of US Army soldiers marching in formation. And a group of Chinese soldiers marching in formation with research based statistics showing that for every one army soldier that gets injured in basic training, there are two male and three female US Army soldiers who get injured in basic training.

  And Army, I'm sorry. China is by far our greatest. Adversary. It just is. And so if we don't do something about this it's gonna be a [00:23:00] problem. At some point we may unfortunately have to face China on the battlefield, and if we don't start addressing the issue by really resourcing physical activity and fitness and the other domains of health mental health and spiritual health and cognitive health, and but we were specifically talking about physical activity and physical fitness at that time, then we're gonna lose.

  That's the reality. I thought. The reality is we will no longer be the world's number one superpower. I don't know. I don't know enough to know exactly what that means from a total geopolitical perspective. But it'll become the reality.

  Annette: So Dan is part of the answer because I remember as a child when I was grade school, even middle school, not so much in high school, but definitely grade school and middle school, I had gym class three times a week. Is that the [00:24:00] answer? Going back and saying, we, we messed this up, we need to put gym class back into the school system, or at least that part of the answer.

  Dan Bornstein: Yeah. Hard. Yes. That's, that is definitely part of the answer. So what we've done in essence is we have engineered physical activity out of our lives in many different ways, right? So our ability to live our life. When you think about how we live today compared to how we lived 50 or a hundred or 150 years ago we had to be physically active to survive 150 years ago.

  Now we don't. When you look at how our public school systems have been set up over the last 15 to 20 years, there has been policy, federal policy that has put priority [00:25:00] around reading and math and some of the core academic subjects. Why? Because we were falling behind other nations. So this emphasis on these core quote unquote academic subjects and the standardized testing to assess ability around those core academic subjects meant that other things got deprioritized.

  Other things being physical education, music drama and other things that we know also really develop the human. . But yes, physical education has been stripped out of a significant portion of the educational experience K through 12. And as a result you have a population of people who have much lower, what we would call physical literacy.

  Ability to actually use their bodies and they have much lower physical fitness in [00:26:00] the military. So Colonel Kevin Bigelman with US Army, who's basically running the H2F program, one of his lines is if you can't throw a baseball, how are you gonna be able to throw a grenade?

  Touche.

  Annette: Touche.

  Dan Bornstein: And I see some kids nowadays and I look at how they run or I look at how they throw and it's a little embarrassing . But there's also more to it than that, right? So there used to be more opportunities to walk and bike to school. But because of land and land costs, schools are now the town where I live in now, the school is like right in the center of town and there are tons of kids that walk and bike to school. And the same was true when I lived in South Carolina. But there are a lot of schools that are located 5, 7, 10 miles from town or from where people live. So they've gotta get on a bus to go to school. You can't walk or bike to school anymore, or it's not safe because there aren't safe [00:27:00] sidewalks or what have you.

  So again, our whole transportation system has been. to primarily serve single occupant vehicles. There's been almost no attention paid to to those who are trying to get from point A to point B by walking or biking or rolling if they if they're not an able-bodied person. So again, we have an entire system, a transportation system that is, that has been engineered to not account for physical activity. You have an entire educational system that is stripped away. Physical education and opportunities for physical activity. You have a healthcare system that is set up to treat disease rather than prevent disease. But there are signs for hope. There are efforts.

  There's something called Complete Streets. There's a Complete Streets Coalition [00:28:00] which talks about how you can actually engineer or reverse engineers streets in cities and towns to accommodate pedestrians, cyclists, cars, buses, what have you, in a very safe way. You've got medical schools that are incorporating courses in physical activity and nutrition as part of becoming a medical doctor.

  Annette: Praise be. And finally

  Dan Bornstein: Yeah. Is it pervasive? No. These are like exceptions to the rule, more so than they are the rule. But in education, it, we still don't have the type of policies that are going to ultimately change the system such that physical education becomes a part of every child's day and or week.

  So yes, to answer your question, yes, it is a huge part of the problem.

  Annette: And as you were talking about all of those nice things that we've engineered to make our lives so easy, [00:29:00] it reminded me. Again I brought up this book, the Comfort Crisis in episode 16 with Jorge Carvajal. Have you read that book?

  Dan Bornstein: No, I haven't, but I can. I'm gonna go out and read it.

  Annette: It's actually, it's really good. But one of the main points from the book is that our lifespan is longer than it's ever been, but our health span is shorter and everything we do, most of us, everything we do is in an effort to make things easier and more comfortable for ourselves.

  So there's just no struggle for us. And there's no challenge for us physically, so yeah, definitely. Michael Easter is the author.

  Dan Bornstein: Yeah, no I'll, I will definitely check it out. And that reminds me of a term that I used to teach when I was at the Citadel and I taught a course called Physical Activity and National Where exercise science meets political science, and we talked in that class about the concept of compressed [00:30:00] morbidity and that concept of compressed morbidity which is sounds a lot like what you're describing is that from a healthcare perspective and a cost for treating disease perspective, the person who has the lowest drain on the healthcare system is the person who essentially never really never sees the doctor for any disease or what have you. But they just suddenly die so the example I used to give to my students was, you've got this like 98 year old person, no diabetes, no heart disease, no anything, none of these chronic diseases, right? They maybe go for a Wellness check once a year.

  And they've maintained the super active lifestyle. So they're jogging across the street and get hit by a truck and. So in terms of the drain that they've put on the healthcare system, it's close to zero compared to somebody who age 13 now gets diagnosed with type two diabetes, which [00:31:00] is an incredibly expensive disease to treat, and they're a type two diabetic for 50 or 60 years.

  That never used to happen. Type two diabetes, which is a lifestyle disease, was a disease even 20 years ago that was essentially a disease of people who were 50 and over, and now it's a disease that's quite common among even teens and pre-teens. Gosh. So again, when we think about, again, also, so when we talk about national security and here's a little nugget too that it's a little bit more indirect, but when we, when people say what is, what do you mean? What's this association between physical activity and health and national security? If you look at the percent of the GDP, our gross domestic product that we spend on health expenditures, it's almost 18% of our GDP.

  Annette: unbelievable.

  Dan Bornstein: When you compare that to, when you compare that [00:32:00] to our military expenditures the annual budget for the National Defense Authorization Act, that's more usually between three and 4% of GDP. So when we start talking about our ability, again to compete with some of our greatest near-peer adversaries like China and we start falling behind, not just in the planes and tanks and bombs that we have, but in the war fighters that we have. If we could somehow save a whole bunch of money on what we're spending on treating these non-communicable, preventable lifestyle diseases and put them into either education or our military we'd be in a much better.

  But right now, that's not the priority.

  Annette: I absolutely agree. And ironically or coincidentally, I had a phone conversation with one of my coworkers today. I don't often speak to him. He's on a different [00:33:00] shift, but we always have great conversations. And so he called me today like a savage who calls anyway, but shout out to Marty because his question was this: I have this nine and 11 year.

  These two children and they played baseball. And the older kid he can crush 25 pushups and a whole bunch of pullups. And he was just telling me all the things they did together. And he said is it safe for him to start lifting some weights or is he too young? And I said, with supervision and really keeping control of how much weight and his form. It's perfectly safe. But I just thought, Marty, you are such a damn good dad. You're doing these, you're modeling these behaviors. They see you go to the gym and they're interested in what you're doing and they're modeling you, your behavior. The whole family does circuits together, but that's not the norm.[00:34:00]

  And so how do we reach these children other than gym class, but how do we reach these children that are growing up in homes where family dinner is McDonald's four nights a week? Where family leisure time is, screens and TVs. How do we reach these children, Dan? Cuz the parents, I don't think we can reach them.

  Dan Bornstein: Yeah. So it's a good it's a great question. And I hate to give up on an entire generation or sets of generations. So there there's a really important model in public health that any of your listeners, or maybe you can put it in the chat notes or whatever, that's, it's called the social ecological.

  Or socio-ecological model. But basically what that model demonstrates is that [00:35:00] at the very center is an individual, the individual's knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behavior. So imagine a circle, right? And that circle is this individual and their knowledge, skills, attitudes, and let's say it's around physical activity and health.

  if you go, there are concentric circles that move out from that center circle. That is the individual. And those concentric circles have a very significant impact on that individual's knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behavior. And the first circle that's outside of that initial one is the social environment.

  Your parents, your friends. Your colleagues. What have you, right? So if you're hanging out with a bunch of drug addicts and drinkers that old saying you are, the company you keep is very true. And so the example of your friend calling you today is it a great example of [00:36:00] setting up a social environment that is significantly altering the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors of those children?

  And then if you, but if you move out from there, from that social environment, you get to what's called the physical or built environment. Maybe this guy's really dedicated and he's got a gym in his garage, or he takes them to a gym or he is got some equipment or what have you.

  So he creates this physical environment that's supportive. And remember we were talking earlier about like transportation infrastructure, what, there's some places where it's frankly not even. To go outside, or at least the perception is that it's not safe to go outside. So that's the built environment.

  And then on top of that is what's called the policy environment. And policy could be it could be an elementary school principal. So policy is really Again, it depends. There's like little p policy makers, which are, let's say it's a business owner or a school's principal. And then there are [00:37:00] big P policy makers who are legislators, right at state or federal levels.

  But they determine the environment. So a policy can change the physical environment, the social environment, and then the individual knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors. As it relates to kids I don't think we should rule out parents as a huge opportunity to influence behavior of children.

  And so there, there's a lot that can be done there. And there's a lot that can be done in schools. we let's talk about faith-based setting. So that's another setting within this national physical activity plan. There are a number of lots of Americans who practice a faith no matter what it is, and maybe go somewhere to do it.

  And there could be a, that's a tremendous opportunity, right? There's a lot of trust in our faith leaders and you even see that there are even some organizations that use the connection to the [00:38:00] faith as an opportunity to bring people together to exercise. So there, there are all these opportunities to interact with the environments.

  in which our kids interact. So that could, again, that could be school and school's a good one because they spend a lot of time there. That's the, where they spend the majority of their time. So if you were going to forego parents then Yes. Going to schools and changing the environments in and around schools to support what we would call comprehensive school physical activity programs.

  Which is, yes, physical education is a cornerstone of that, but also opportunities to have what I would call a free range classroom. So when I was a college professor, it said in my syllabus that sitting was discouraged, that you were encouraged to get up and move around the classroom as long as you weren't interrupting [00:39:00] somebody else.

  Learning, right? But I would've students like stretching or doing jumping jacks in the back of the classroom or whatever, just because we know that a short bout of physical activity actually improves your cognition, it improves your ability to be focused and your time on task.

  So Annette, I I don't, I wouldn't want to rule out parents because I, because we. That they have such a strong influence over their children's behavior. And I think if we are gonna have our biggest bang for the buck, then I would say yes. We want to intervene on schools and if the goal is to improve physical activity and fitness of a population that has a higher propensity to serve their country or their city or state, Then I would, if I, if somebody asked me where should I spend my money?

  I would say, spend it on DOD [00:40:00] schools or DOD connected students, because these are children of parents who are already propensed to serve their country. So again, when we look at our parents as role models you could say the same thing for firefighters and law enforcement officers. There, there are legacy law enforcement officers and firefighters, they do what mom or dad did because they saw what it was, they believed that it was cool and so on. So yes, schools are a great place to do it. And DOD connected schools, again, I would say would be our greatest bang for the buck.

  Annette: I'm gonna throw you a curve ball from way out see what you can do with this Dan

  Dan Bornstein: Swing and a miss?? No, I'll try.

  Annette: All right. For years, and I only can speak specifically to Illinois, but for years we had hundreds and sometimes thousands of applicants for a firefighting job. [00:41:00] And because of the way it works, it's a testing process. It's an ordered list.

  It could be a list of 200 people and that department may not even hire anyone in the two years that list is good. So people were just praying for opportunities. So many people wanted the job, and we've seen this shift in the last few years for many different reasons. One, the pension system was changed in Illinois. I think that makes the job a little bit less desirable. I think the fact that younger people are way smarter than we were at that age, and so they're making comparisons, okay, I could go fight fires and not sleep at night and maybe fall through a floor and maybe die, or I could be an investment banker. I think I'll go be an investment banker.

  So I think those are two of the issues. And then also this physical fitness issue does come into play. There are some people who truly want to do the job. Are unable due to their [00:42:00] lack of physical fitness. So given all those variables, put 'em in a shaker, shake it up and hand it to you. Dan, what do you see as some ways that we can, or I can make a difference in my cosm in a short amount of time.

  Dan Bornstein: Yeah. First I would say that if you're an individual who's already living a healthy lifestyle, you're eating relatively well, you're sleeping relatively well, you're regularly physically active I believe you have an obligation in service to your community and your country to be a champion for healthy lifestyles in your.

  going into the schools, going into the firehouses, going into the places of worship and being a leader, being a spark plug, being a champion where you live, work, play, pray, and so on. So I would [00:43:00] say de consider yourself deputized a deputy of healthy living and active living. Go ahead, put the badge on and go to work.

  So I would say that's number one, right? And that's you, right? That's something that you do, right? You are, you've taken care of it for yourself, and now you're taking care of. So many other firefighters. But anybody can do that, right? You don't have to be a certified strength and conditioning specialist or have a bachelor's or master's degree in exercise science.

  Just go out cuz physical activity. Annette. So I think another really important thing for people to understand that's really misunderstood in this country is the difference between physical activity and exercise. Yes. So there are so many reasons to be averse to exercise. Exercise is structured, planned, usually hot, relatively high intensity, physical activity that requires maybe going someplace special, changing your [00:44:00] clothes, sweating having self-efficacy or a good understanding of what you're gonna do and then probably being pretty uncomfortable and carving out the time to.

  Those are significant barriers, and you can remove a lot of those barriers when you realize that exercise is a form of physical activity. But physical activity itself is anything that isn't sitting. So even standing, you're actually using postural muscles that you don't use. when you're sitting. So when you're standing, you're actually expending more energy and training some of those postural muscles to help you maintain good posture.

  But take it just a step further, literally and figuratively. Take some physical activity breaks. If you've been sitting at a desk for 10 or 15 or 20 minutes, get up and do 30 seconds of jumping jacks or marching in place or what have you. So breaking up [00:45:00] sedentary time. and fi I call that physical activity snacking, by the way, love that term.

  So finding ways to to snack on physical activity throughout your day is really important. So gardening is physical activity. Taking the stairs instead of the elevator is physical activity. Parking further away at the mall or the grocery store is physical activity. Taking your dog for a walk is physical activity.

  Playing with your kids is physical activity, ping pong, playing, pool, all this stuff. Physical activity and it counts. It all really does count, and it matters with respect to your health, physical and mental health. So getting back to how do we solve this problem of people not signing up to serve.

  Yeah, I think it's a physical activity issue and and I think I'm trying to remember, can you ask me the question I got tangential. So can you a, can you throw me the curveball question again?

  Annette: [00:46:00] Absolutely. So we as a fire service are having so many fewer applicants.

  Dan Bornstein: Yeah. Pension programs, all that.

  Yep. Yep. Got it. Okay. So I think another thing that, that I'm now starting to encourage the Department of Defense. To start to do. And I think that the fire service could do the same thing. It's gotta be able to back up this statement. But we oftentimes, when we think about service members or veterans, we think of them as broken.

  And we do. And we do in some ways have a system that does break them. But what if the system was the opposite? What if the system was set? , not to break them, but to keep them healthy and strong. So I know that sleep cycles get disturbed when you're doing shift work and so on, and that there are elements of the job in the fire service that are inherently risky and unhealthy.

  Those things, [00:47:00] not withstanding. There are ways in which you can create systems and environments within firehouse. That ultimately will help somebody maintain their health, not only during the course of their time as a firefighter, but for years and years afterwards. But it's up to the leadership of the fire service to create the policies and systems and environments in those firehouses to take care of the firefighters.

  So again, at the individual level, if you've already got it locked, , go be a champion. Go be a deputy of physical activity and healthy lifestyle. And if you're in a leadership position in the fire service, you should be that agent of change for policies and systems and environments that are gonna help your firefighters.

  And then from a recruiting perspective, you can say, why not join an organization where [00:48:00] you not only get to serve your community, but it's an organization that's truly gonna take care of you physically, mentally, nutritionally, spiritually, for the entire time that you serve and is gonna set you up for a healthy life for the years after service.

  Dan, you're warming

  Annette: my heart right now. That is the key, and I would encourage you to drop the mic, but. I wanna ask if there's any parting comments that you would like to leave the listeners with, or would you rather just drop the mic?

  Dan Bornstein: I'm gonna drop the mic. I'm gonna drop the mic. I've been told I talk too much, so if you are encouraging me to say, drop the mic, I'm gonna drop the mic.

  Dan,

  Annette: you're amazing. I've been looking forward to this conversation, and I regret that we had to reschedule because you were so sick, but I am so glad that you are feeling better. And Dan, is it okay if I put your contact information in the show notes?

  Dan Bornstein: Yeah, absolutely. All right. Absolutely. [00:49:00] And you have that right?

  Annette: I do.

  Yeah. So my listeners. I appreciate you so much. Please. You have now been deputized to be agents of Change for Health and Wellness, and with that AZ and Dan are officially out.