You are on Tower 23 and arrive to a second-floor structure fire. Incident command delegates you as support truck. Nothing else needs to be said; you know what to do. You and your crew grab ladders from the ladder bed (pull), take it to position then butt the ladder (pull), raise it to the porch (push), help the hoseline advance (pull or push), take out second-floor windows (push or pull), then you hear “fire under control” over the radio. Now, your company grabs smaller pike poles and heads up to the second floor to overhaul. You expose the drop ceiling (push then pull) and help push charred roof boards off the rafters (push).
As you can see, pushing and pulling are essential tasks in firefighting. They are evident in the scenario above but, regardless of your rig or role, we use these every day. This is because we are always manipulating our environment, moving objects farther or closer. Our goal gets accomplished effectively, but is effectively good enough? Effective is when the end justifies the means even though there might be a better way. Instead, what we should strive toward is efficiency. In this context, efficiency means pushing or pulling to protect our spine and shoulders while conserving energy. Here, we’ll talk about how you can dramatically improve your efficiency in pushing and pulling by addressing common restrictions, improving postural habits, and changing our movement focus.
Changing Common Muscle Restrictions
Movement restrictions come from the overuse of some muscles and the underuse of others. This in turn causes us to move poorly. Very common restrictions are the overusage of the pectorals (chest) and the trapezius (traps) and underuse of our scapular muscles (muscles in the shoulder blades used for drawing down). These imbalances can be seen in rounded shoulders, hollowed chests, and sometimes the head leaned forward into a sniffing position.
So how can we address this? If you recall from earlier articles, we talked about overactive and underactive muscles being like an improperly charged hoseline and that the steps we’d take to correct it would be to depressurize, drain, redeploy, and perform the fire attack. Those are the same steps we can take to address muscle problems that cause movement restrictions.
Depressurize: Take a softball, place it against a wall, and hold it in place with your chest. Now, roll the ball back and forth sideways while applying pressure to the ball against the wall. You can do the same with your traps by turning away from the wall and rolling from your shoulder to your neck and back, or you can use your hand instead of the wall.
Drain: Press the palm of one hand against a wall and turn your body away from it so that you can no longer see it and your fingers are turned away from you. Stretch out your pectorals. A second stretch would be to take your hands and place them behind your back. Grab your right wrist with your left hand, gently pulling it downward so that your shoulder is as far away from your ears as possible. Look to your left and make motions with your right shoulder to improve the stretch in that sided trap. Be sure to perform the same thing on the opposite side.
Redeploy: Holding a towel in both hands, straighten your arms out in front of you. Keeping your elbows in their current position, pull the towel tight, eliminating the slack while remaining relaxed in your shoulders and chest. Create tension in between your shoulder blades and hold for 10 seconds. Do this three times.
Fire attack: Holding the towel tightly in both hands, bend at the waist so that you are looking at your towel and the ground. Start by tightening that same area between your shoulder blades, pull your shoulders back so that your chest comes forward a bit, and pull your elbows toward your hips. Reverse the process and then come to a standing position and squeeze that same space between the shoulder blades as you drive your shoulders upward, raising the towel to chest height. Draw your shoulder blades in toward one another by keeping your elbows tight yet comfortably at your sides. With your shoulders down away from your ears, continue to squeeze between your shoulder blades, and press your shoulders forward as you extend your elbows so that your arms are straight while maintaining the towel in a taut position.
Because we live in a world where we are always drawing things into us (reading on your tablet, driving, eating, washing dishes), we overuse our pectorals and traps in an effort to keep items closer to us. This is the hoarder’s position. The fireground is not the place to hoard, except maybe the pipe, but that’s another thing. We need to be in position to pass and move. Now, how can we do this?
Postural Habits
Why is it that we develop these common restrictions? Think about the daily activities we perform. We drive to work, read the news off our smartphones, wash the dishes, use the computer to enter staffing, and so on. If you think about it, we are always in a rounded position where we can advantageously draw items into ourselves. This is not the position we want to be in when it comes to fighting fires.
Unfortunately, our gear reinforces this position. When you put on your turnout coat, your shoulders want to round because of the weight. Now, throw on your self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA). The weight of the SCBA pulls your upper body back and down so we compensate by pulling forward and up. Then we have the chest strap that encourages our chest to hollow. We are comfortable in the hoarder’s position, making us susceptible to injury, and then we put our gear on and the hoarder position becomes that much more comfortable. It is from this dysfunctional position that we end up performing life or death tasks. So what can you do about it?
Take a P.A.R.
Yes, I hijacked another acronym. On the fire scene we conduct personal accountability reports to pause and make sure all members are accounted for. Well, I want you take postural awareness reports (P.A.R.) throughout the day. We are going to continue driving to work, reading the news, and washing the dishes, but our posture doesn’t have to be poor while doing it.
Throughout the day, take a moment to pause and become aware of your posture. Are your shoulders crowding around your ears? Is your chest hollow like someone just punched you? If yes, then take a second to correct your posture by circling your shoulders backward. To do this, pull your shoulders up and forward then circle them backward and down. Your shoulders will go from in your view to outside of it. You should feel as though your neck is taller than before as well as feel that tension between those shoulder blades.
The great thing about having habitually good posture without your gear on is that, when you put your gear on, you will automatically revert to that good posture by making the proper adjustments without thinking.
Changing Movement Focus
Every day we are pushing and pulling. When we are doing these actions we are typically focused on the object we are pushing or pulling and not on how we are moving it. As a result, we often end up with a negative result. You grab the hose with your hand, pull your elbow in toward your body (engaging your shoulders if needed), and then maybe your back gets used. We are performing the movement farthest from the spine and ending closest to the spine. This is backward. It’s the equivalent of our fireground priorities being property conservation, incident stabilization, and then maybe life safety. How ridiculous is that? But, we are doing that equivalent on a regular basis.
Our spine and brain are the most important parts of our body–they are our life safety. We have to protect them at all costs. Moving as previously mentioned does not take protecting your spine into account. We need to change our movement focus to starting closest to the spine with tension, thereby protecting it, and then making tension and movements away from it. Pulling or pushing should look like this:
1. Set back: This is that small movement in between your shoulder blades that pulls your shoulders back and down.
2. Set/move shoulders: Create some tension in your shoulders as if someone is trying to pin your arms to your sides.
3. Move elbow: This is your final move. Pull or extend your elbow to make your object reach its destination.
I understand that the idea of moving like this may seem awkward. But take the time to practice operating with this sequence and timing to build the habit, which will then allow you to perform it quickly and unconsciously.
You are going to be pushing and pulling sometime today, so take a few moments to make sure that you are establishing habits that are going to benefit you in emergencies by addressing common restrictions, improving postural habits, and changing your movement focus now.
