That getting a reaction ball and bouncing it around the bay or parking lot is a fantastic way to not only pass the time but increase agility and balance.  They are inexpensive, fun, help burn fat and increase anaerobic fitness, which is essential for your career.

Sporting good strores have them or you can use a “kong” ball (dog toy) from the pet store.

BTW these little buggers are humbling!

Obese SC man dies after 8 months in same recliner

Responders, I am off to the Virginia EMS Conference in Norfolk tomorrow.  If you plan on heading to the conference please stop by and say hi.  Be sure to tell your friends and co-workers.

Responders this weeks exercise is a great abdominal, spine, glute and core co-contraction movement.  The stability ball plank.  Position yourself as shown, lock your knees, chin tucked and back flat/neutral.  ONLY hold the position as long as you can keep your glutes squeezed.  Do not let your heels roll in and don not shrug!  Do 3 to 5 times.  If ya are the stud roll to ball away a few inches.

Responders, it has dawned upon me that there are still a lot of misconceptions regarding fitness and injury prevention in EMS.  I just gave 3 presentations at EMS Expo in Atlanta, GA.  It was a great trade show with a group of fantastic speakers and presenters.  What stands out from my experience at EMS Expo are the misconceptions surrounding injury prevention and our profession.  As I spoke about, at any one time up to 10% of our workforce is out of work, having suffered an injury.  But when surveyed 46% of you have reported a back injury in the past 6 months(_{Studneck, J. Crawford, J. December 08, American Journal of sports medicine}).  So as a profession do we underreport our injuries or are we self treating?  I presented some data showing that once you are injured that your chance of having a more severe re-injury increases 31%.

The misconception that I am alluding to is that all the responders I spoke to assumed that fitness comes before health, wellness and injury prevention.  What I tried to teach everyone, and what I have been writing about for a long time now, is that we need to focus on prevention of injury first.  By focusing our efforts on injury prevention we will enable ourselves to become fit and healthy.  As I am fond of saying ‘Athletes do not train for their sport after the game is over.’  Why should be any different?  More to come…

Just finished my long 3 hour talk on fitness testing and injury prevention. Sadly only had 5-6 folks attend. We gotta get the word out responders, chance needs to occur in our profession, we need to be fit and well and not get hurt so often. Tomorrow has 2 90 min. talks, which are much more fun to give and the expo will be open to all attendees!

Responders, I write this sitting in a hotel room in Ames Iowa.  I spent the day testing and then teaching corrective exercises to a great group of hospital based Paramedics.  It never ceases to amaze me that we can test for, determine and correct an injurious pattern before it becomes an injury.  We can also significantly reduce the chances of a second injury through the same tests.  In just 90 min. per group I screened, taught on duty/in uniform stretching, self massage and injury prevention techniques.  Each medic left with their own copy of the Fit Responder book and they have a set of posters in their squad room to reinforce and remind of all the techniques I taught them.