Fire & Rescue Plan Tree

Firefighting demands peak physical and mental performance. Our firefighter workout program is built to prepare you for the extreme challenges of the job—hauling gear, forcing entry, climbing stairs, and carrying victims under intense conditions. This firefighter fitness program develops strength, endurance, and durability to help you perform at your best when lives are on the line.

Click the tabs below to see the individual training plans under each category.

• Competition Plans
  • LLS Firefighter Stairclimb Training Plan
• F/R Academy & Schools
  • Smoke Diver Training Plan
  • Fire Academy Training Plan
• F/R On-Ramp & Base Fitness
  • Leopard: Slight Strength & Work Capacity Emphasis
  • Jaguar: Balanced Base Fitness
  • Panther: Slight Strength & Work Capacity Emphasis
  • Lion: Balanced Base Fitness
  • Tiger: Slight Strength & Work Capacity Emphasis
  • Fire/Rescue On-Ramp Training Plan
• PFT Plans
  • BLM Fire Fitness Challenge Training Plan
  • Firefighter Combat Challenge Training Plan
  • Urban Fire Fitness Assessment Training Plan
  • Cooper Physical Fitness Test Training Plan
  • CPAT Training Plan
  • Beep Test Training Plan
• Wildland Fire
  • Wildland Fire Fitness Assessment Training Plan
  • Wildand Fire Yarnell Hill: Base Fitness – Slight Endurance Emphasis
  • Wildland Fire Rattlesnake: Base Fitness – Slight Endurance Emphasis
  • Wildland Fire Storm King: Base Fitness – Slight Endurance Emphasis
  • Wildland Fire Mann Gulch: Base Fitness – Slight Endurance Emphasis
  • Wildland Fire Blackwater: Base Fitness – Slight Endurance Emphasis
  • Smokejumper Selection Training Plan
  • Hotshot Crew/Smoke Jumper Pre-Season Training Program
  • Wildland Firefighter Pre-Season Training Plan

Fire Rescue Professionals are Tactical Athletes. You should train like it.

By Rob Shaul, Founder

The traditional firefighter fitness approach, especially urban firefighter fitness, is rooted in “soft” wellness efforts and dumbed down, or non-existent fitness assessments.

How the fitness culture at many fire rescue units became so poor we’re not sure. Some blame unions. Some blame firehouse life.  Some blame “legacy” members and leadership.

Our approach is different. We believe an unfit fireman can get him or herself killed. Worse, an unfit fireman can his or her teammates killed.

Job-specific fitness for fire rescue athletes is not a joke. It should not be an afterthought. It is a professional responsibility as important as equipment maintenance, communications and firefighting tactics.

Our programming for Fire Rescue Athletes reflects the dark reality that they can die at work. We believe fitness can save lives.

MTI’s Fire/Rescue Athlete Programming Approach

When I started my gym in 2007 the intent wasn’t to train tactical athletes. The goal was to design professional-grade programming for mountain guides, ski mountaineers, and alpinists who lived, worked and played in Jackson, Wyoming. The existing strength and conditioning models — bodybuilding, CrossFit, traditional strength work — did not transfer to the demands of mountain sports. None prepared athletes for steep ascents under load, long-duration fatigue, or eccentric control on the descent.

From that problem came MTI’s first programming framework — the First Principles:

1. Identify the fitness demands of the mission or event.
2. Identify the exercises that best train those demands.
3. Define the end-state performance goals.
4. Reverse-engineer progressions to achieve those goals.
5. Test, assess, and refine through direct application.

In 2009, as U.S. troops with deployment orders to Afghanistan reached out to me for help preparing. Their pre-deployment PT had failed. They could not move efficiently in the mountains, carry their load, and sustain effort day after day. Afghanistan’s mountain patrols were smoking them.

The result was the Afghanistan Pre-Deployment Training Plan — a six-week program built from mountain programming principles: step-ups, Leg Blasters, sandbag get-ups, shuttle sprints, and rucking progressions. It was designed to be completed anywhere, by any soldier with minimal equipment. Thousands of service members and dozens of battalions used the plan before heading downrange. 

Soon after, Patrol Officers, Federal Agents and full time SWAT/SRT members began reaching out to me to design programming for Law Enforcement Athletes. And soon after that I began to hear from firemen and wildland firefighters.

Urban Fire Rescue Fitness Demands

High Relative Strength

The ability to move one’s body and load efficiently. Relative Strength is strength per bodyweight.  MTI’s tactical strength programming emphasizes the legs, hips, and core — the “combat chassis.” Excess mass is a liability; functional strength is an asset. Relative dStrength forms the base of all other fitness attributes.

Many don’t understand the load carriage fitness demands for urban firefighters. Bunker gear, SCBA, and rescue equipment can reach loads up to 75 pounds. Strength – especially in the “combat chassis” is critical for urban firefigters to manage and move under this load.

Work Capacity

The ability to sustain short, high-intensity efforts under load. When things are most dangerous and urgent, work capacity is what is needed to perform. Work capacity is where strength and endurance converge under pressure.

Endurance

Short endurance (1-3 mile running, step ups) for Urban Firefighters.

Tactical Agility

Combat movement is unpredictable, loaded, and directional. MTI’s Tactical Agility framework develops tactical agility — acceleration, deceleration, and redirection under load — built for combat, not sport.

Chassis Integrity

Chassis Integrity is MTI’s proprietary functional core strength and strength and endurance training methodology. No one trains the mid section like MTI. Chassis Integrity prioritizes movement patterns – extension, flextion, rotation and anti-rotation – over muscles. Exercises are done primarily from standing or kneeling to “integrate” the full “combat chassis” – thighs to shoulders, into the training. Core training isn’t an afterthought at MTI, it’s consiciously programmed every cycle and shares equal important with strength, endurance and work capacity.

Stamina & Durability

The best thing fitness programming can do to protect a tactical athletes from injury is to make him or her physically-fit for the mission-direct fitness demands of the sport. Injuries happen when the mission demands 4,000 feet of vertical climbing and descent with a 50-pound pack and the athlete hasn’t trained for it. MTI programming is engineered to prepare you for the specific fitness demands of your mountain sport or event, and in doing so, make you durable. Fitness = Armor. 

The ability to recover and maintain performance across long events or repeated efforts. Stamina includes both physical recovery and what we call attitude stamina — the ability to keep moving, stay composed, and maintain tactical focus when physically depleted.

Wildland Firefighters

Wildand firefighters bring together MTI’s mountain and and tactical programming history like no other type of athlete. The main difference in MTI’s programming for Wildland Fire vs. Urban Fire is a significant emphasis on mountain endurance – running, uphill movement under load, and rucking. MTI’s Wildland Fire programming also trains strength, work capacity and chassis integrity, but the main difference between our programming for other tactical athletes is the mountain endurance element.

Mission-Direct Programming

MTI’s Fire/Rescue programming is mission-direct: built from the demands of the job backward.

We do not design for entertainment or aesthetics. Every session, circuit, and progression must transfer to performance outside the gym. We train for movement under load, performance under stress, and recovery under fatigue.

Strength is foundational. We build it with classic barbell lifts, strongman implements, bodyweight movements and sandbags. Core training is integrated, not isolated — developed through MTI’s Chassis Integrity methodology, which blends total-body, rotational, and anti-rotational strength from standing and kneeling positions.

Endurance and work capacity are treated as separate but complementary systems. Running, rucking, and for certain operators, swimming, are trained as distinct modes, each with targeted progressions for aerobic base, interval speed, and connective tissue strength.

Our Fluid Periodization model allows multiple fitness attributes to be trained simultaneously in our base fitness programming. Strength, endurance, work capacity, chassis integrity and tactical agility are built and developed together, adjusted by operational season and training cycle. Random training has no place here.

The Burden of Constant Fitness

Urban Firefighters and full-time Wildand Firefighters don’t have an offseason. Their readiness must be constant. This “burden of constant” fitness is factored into MTI Fire/Rescue programming.                                                                    

We design training that builds and sustains readiness over time, cycling intensity and emphasis to prevent burnout and maintain progress. Recovery weeks and variations in focus — from strength to endurance to chassis work — are programmed deliberately.

This structure preserves not only physical performance but long-term motivation. It ensures LE operators can maintain mission readiness year-round without compromising durability or the training becoming stale.

Research, Testing, and Evolution

MTI is a strength and conditioning research lab, not a commercial fitness brand.

Every plan we publish is tested in-house by MTI coaches and athletes before it reaches the field. We test what we write. We iterate on what we learn. Over one hundred in-house studies have been conducted measuring programming effectiveness and transfer to mission performance.

Field feedback from operators, units, and leaders informs every update. Many of our cornerstone plans — including the FBI SA PFT Plan and others are now in their fourth or fifth versions. Each iteration refines the programming, sharpens the method, and increases its direct applicability.

Programming at MTI is not fixed. It is an evolving craft — continually tested, revised, and improved.

2 Types of Programming, 2 Ways to Purchase

We have two types of programming: (1) “Base Fitness” and (2) Event-Specific Fitness.

“Base Fitness” is our day-to-day programming for LE athletes who aren’t training for a specific event or mission – like a selection, PFT or deployment. MTI’s Base Fitness programming and plans for military athletes concurrently trains strength, work capacity, endurance (run, ruck), chassis integrity and tactical agility and is designed to meet 90% of an Urban Firefighter or Wildland Firefighter’s mission-direct fitness demands.

MTI’s “Event-Specific” fitness programming is laser-focused on preparing the athlete for the fitness demands of a specific event such as a PFT or selection (Smokejumper). Event-Specific programming is designed to “peak” the athlete’s fitness for the event and ideally is completed in the weeks directly before. 

Finally, there are two ways to purchase access our programming.

• Purchase and Individual Training Plan (see links above)
• Subscribe. With a Subscription you get access to our daily training sessions for Military, Law Enforcement, Fire Rescue, General Fitness and Mountain Athletes, as well as access to 450++ Individual Training Plans and 8 daily programming streams. 

The MTI Ethos

• Mission first. Every rep must serve performance outside the gym.
• Craftsmanship. Programming is built, tested, and refined, not copied.
• Accountability. We test every plan ourselves.
• Rapid Iteration. If it doesn’t work, we change it.
• Quiet professionalism.

Questions?
Don’t know where to Start? Looking for a specific plan or guidance for a goal? 
Please email me directly, rob@mtntactical.com. I personally answer dozens of athlete questions weekly.