By Rob Shaul
Through the Mountain Tactical Institute (we’ll announce it next week) we’re working with a medium-sized city’s fire department to a multi-dimensional research study.
One of the study goals is to assess the agency’s Fitness Training Culture.
The idea of a “Fitness Training Culture” is something which has occupied my thoughts for several years. It first arose early on when I began working with mountain athletes here in Wyoming.
With the exception of alpine ski racing and ultra running there is no strong tradition of gym-based, or even, programmed, fitness training for many mountain sports.
Climbers, “just climb” to for climbing. Freeskiers “just ski” for skiing. Kayakers “just kayak” for kayaking.
Part of the reason is that until facilities like us came along, training programs which transferred to mountain performance simply didn’t exist for many of these sports.
But even now when we have mountain athletes around the world following our programming, some local mountain athletes won’t experiment with gym-based training.
Building a Fitness Training Culture in the mountain sports world is an ongoing, hard process.
Over the years I’ve visited and worked with many military/LE/Fire-Rescue units and teams, and have observed that some have a much strong Fitness Training Culture than others. Sometimes command leads the way. Sometimes a commitment to being professional about fitness training comes from the ground up.
We’ve created a survey to assess a unit/agency’s fitness training culture. We ask that you please take it for your unit. We’ll report the findings next week.
Questions? Please email rob@strongswiftdurable.com.