NSCA’s Coaching Podcast, Episode 65: Annette Zapp

Annette Zapp, Lieutenant Firefighter in Chicago, talks to the Former NSCA Head Strength and Conditioning Coach, Scott Caulfield, about strength and conditioning in the firefighting niche. Topics under discussion include the perks of being a firefighter who is also a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist^® (CSCS^®) and Tactical Strength and Conditioning Facilitator^® (TSAC-F^®), the typical lifestyles and attitudes of firefighters in general, and common issues that they face both physically and mentally.

Find Annette on Twitter: @FireSQFitness or Instagram: @FireSQFitness

“But beyond that, I truly believe that fitness, nutrition, good sleep, good mental health and wellness as well as spirituality, I think all of those things are really important in creating resilience in firefighters.” 9:22

“Your brain is literally taking out the trash while you sleep. So if you don't sleep, you accumulate trash.” 11:42

“Because to be honest, just a general personal trainer isn't really going to be able to help out firefighters that much. We really need that sort of strength and conditioning background, the performance background.” 17:14

“I teach them I'm here to meet you where you are. I'm not interested in changing everything that you're doing or steamrolling over you. I am here to help.” 20:04

“...this is a sympathetic driven job. We are on 24/7. And there's an analogy. It's actually a pain analogy. People that are in chronic pain, their doorbell and their fire alarm sounds the same. Like they're just in a startle response.” 22:38

“The thing is, with firefighters is that we are a perpetual fixers. See a problem, fix the problem, move on to the next problem, and never really process what we saw.” 24:48

“Twitter and Instagram, @fire, F-I-R-E and then the letter S and the letter Q and then fitness, F-I-T-N-E-S-S. So when you spell it out it's firerescuefitness. And then they can always connect with me on my website. There's a chat function and an email function. And so that is www.firesqfitness.com.” 29:47

[00:00:00.84] Welcome to NSCA's coaching podcast, episode 65.

[00:00:05.82] But beyond that, I truly believe that fitness, nutrition, good sleep, good mental health, and wellness, as well as spirituality, I think all of those things are really important in creating resilience in firefighters.

[00:00:23.40] This is the NSCA's coaching podcast where we talk to strength and conditioning coaches about what you really need to know but probably didn't learn in school. There's strength and conditioning and then there's everything else.

[00:00:33.99] Welcome to the NSCA coaching podcast. I am Scott Caulfield. And today joining me in sunny Washington, DC at the NSCA National Conference, Annette Zapp, who, awesome enough, lieutenant for an engine company with Lisle-Woodridge Fire District in the Chicago land area. Welcome to the show.

[00:00:52.86] Good morning, Scott. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

[00:00:56.10] Yeah, I'm super excited to have you. Most of our interaction is done through Instagram, sending each other pictures of dogs or funny sites and anything dog related.

[00:01:08.55] That's true. You know what, Scott? I have a funny dog story. And this started really early in my life. My mom used to be concerned about me putting strange animals. And so, my grandpa took me out for a walk one day. And my mom's only advice to him was, don't let her pet dogs.

[00:01:24.60] And so I came back and I said, Mommy, I pet a dog. And my mom gave my grandpa the business. She's like, I told you, don't let her pet dogs. And grandpa was like, well, she said, I pet the strange dog, Grandpa? I couldn't say no. So it started at a very young age.

[00:01:42.66] And being in a fire department, do you have a dog on the engine like everyone expects them to?

[00:01:50.88] You know what? We don't and it's tragic. But there's a really good reason. We work on a three shifts rotation. And it's really a bad idea to have a dog with three different shifts running. You know, what's going on, so we don't have a dog. It's tragic.

[00:02:05.68] That's an old wives tale or a myth of firefighting.

[00:02:10.26] Yeah, it's sad.

[00:02:12.19] But we get plenty of chances to see dogs and puppies everywhere at them. I've seen a few in the hotel here, so I might have to track some down.

[00:02:20.46] I went for a walk this morning. And I did, sorry, Mom, I petted all the strange dogs. Sorry.

[00:02:27.18] But yeah, you're a 15 year veteran of the fire department. Super cool. So I definitely want you to talk about your experience as a firefighter first. But you know, secondary to that, or you know kind of the cool part beyond that is your CSCS, you're TSAC certified. You know, you have advanced training and you're involved with ISSN and all this other stuff. So we definitely want to hit, you know, on some of that more specific. But, yeah, tell us a little bit too about being a firefighter.

[00:02:56.73] All right. What Scott's basically saying is, I got a lot of baggage and we're going to unpack it. So as he mentioned, I am a 15 year veteran. I work for a small fire protection district in Illinois. It's a suburb of Chicago. We're about maybe 30 minutes west of the city.

[00:03:13.48] And if you don't know difference between a fire department and a fire protection district, we pretty much are a little kingdom in and of ourselves. So we are a line item on your property taxes. And when we want a new fire truck, we don't have to fight with the police or the public works who gets a snowblower, who gets a fire truck. We are a fire protection district.

[00:03:35.16] For 15 years, I've been working there. I worked my way up through the ranks and I am now a lieutenant on an engine company. I'm a lieutenant on a very busy engine company, which provides me very little sleep. It's a very sad situation.

[00:03:49.92] But we run about 7,800 to 8,000 calls a year. We have 35 square miles, we have a very big geographic area, we have fire stations, 87 foreign employees. Yeah.

[00:04:02.18] That's huge.

[00:04:02.89] Yeah.

[00:04:03.59] And so what is a typical day, if there is such a thing, in the life of a firefighter look like?

[00:04:09.90] You know what? That's a great question. And we made a huge change actually two years ago. We went to mandatory, non-punitive morning workouts. So we come in the morning, our shift starts at 7:00. Most people are there earlier. Our shift starts at 7:00. We do our rig checks. And then everyone already has on their workout clothes.

[00:04:30.48] And then we do some foam rolling. We do some corrective style warm up exercises that are delivered via YouTube by yours truly. And then everyone kind of separates off, goes their own way, does their own individual training, and then we all regroup at 9:00. There's usually a drill or something like that.

[00:04:48.81] So that's if the public doesn't call us 57 times before we finish our training. So as I mentioned, we usually have a drill at 9:00. Then we go to the grocery store. People always wonder what the firefighters are doing at the grocery store. Folks, we gotta eat too. So we go grocery store.

[00:05:07.14] Come back, we make our lunch. And in between, all of those things we're running calls left and right. And the afternoon is usually dedicated to clean the station, cleaning rigs, all that good stuff. And if things go well, we eat dinner, we're allowed to go to bed. And we are allowed to sleep. But it usually doesn't happen.

[00:05:23.73] It's nothing like that.

[00:05:24.99] That's what we call a typical day.

[00:05:26.65] That's too funny. I just saw two firefighters in the grocery store. I was in the other day. And this weekend in Leadville, Colorado.

[00:05:35.25] Well, it's interesting the public sometimes they'll look in our cart and say, oh, what are we buying you today? They don't understand that the firefighters toss in money in the morning and we buy our own groceries. We are probably the best consumers of groceries in the town.

[00:05:52.26] Back in the day when I was in the Navy, which you probably know, if you're on a naval vessel, one of your main jobs, beyond whatever your real job is, is fighting fires. Because you can't call a fire department when you're out in the middle of the Mediterranean Ocean. So actually firefighting was one of the things when I got out of the navy I was very heavily thinking about becoming a firefighter And was involved with the volunteer fire department month or more when I made it back home.

[00:06:20.97] But you know obviously got into this line of work and kind of got busy with that. But it definitely has always been one of the things that I definitely have always thought would be a cool job or something I would want to do.

[00:06:33.87] You know it's provide a great career and it can provide a great lifestyle. It allows me to come to the NSCA Conference because I can do a couple shift trades and take a vacation day and I have 20 some days off. There's generally pretty good benefits, good insurance, good things like that. But you know the other thing, Scott, that people don't realize is that there's kind of a dark side to the fire service. And interestingly enough, we talk about line of duty deaths.

[00:07:00.75] And when you talk to a normal person about how do you think a firefighter dies in the line of duty most of them would say, well, they have a traumatic accident or something like that. And the fact of the matter is, a lot of firefighters suffer a stroke and heart attacks in the line of duty. But what's really tragic is that in the past decade actually firefighter suicide has started outpacing other line of duty deaths. And I say other line of duty deaths because I truly believe that suicide is a line of duty death.

[00:07:33.03] So, it is, it's a fantastic job. It feels really good to help people. It's a very gratifying job but there's also that dark side of it that we're just starting to discover. And thankfully, we're starting to educate people as they're coming in on that. So I think you would've been a great firefighter.

[00:07:49.14] I might have been. I might have been.

[00:07:50.58] I think you would've had trouble fitting the arms in the coat, though. You would've had to have custom.

[00:07:54.27] Well, I wasn't that big. I've spent too much time in the gym now. I was definitely a little smaller back then. Maybe it could have been a different fitness path as well. So what are we doing then to deal with all this suicide and outpacing line of duty deaths? Is there some stuff that you guys are implementing and have been or--

[00:08:17.52] Yes so this is pretty new, all of this is really new and it's just coming onto my radar as well. But in Illinois, one of our firefighters, Matt Wilson, he's from the Bolling Brook Fire Department, he actually started, a foundation called the Illinois Firefighter Peer Support Network. And he recognized the need because he saw that darkness in himself, and he actually reached out and he got help. And through that process of reaching out and getting help, he realized that the resources weren't very good.

[00:08:49.11] It's interesting when a firefighter, a military person, or a police officer goes to talk to a counselor or psychologist, oftentimes they end up upsetting the psychologist more than the psychologist is able to actually to help them. So that's kind of a niche market that needs to be filled. But with the Peer Support Network, we have resources for firefighters that they can reach out. They can talk to a friend, or I'm sorry, they can talk to a fellow firefighter who understands the job. And we can get them the resources that they need.

[00:09:22.62] But beyond that, I truly believe that fitness, nutrition, good sleep, good mental health and wellness as well as spirituality, I think all of those things are really important in creating resilience in firefighters. So personally, we take our new firefighters aside at my fire department and we have the conversation with them, you know, you're going to see things in this job that are going to be beyond what you can even imagine. And you're not going to feel OK about those things. But it's OK not to be OK. And it's great to reach out for help. So that's what we've got going on.

[00:10:00.56] That's huge just to be able to recognize it too and figure out where you need to get help from other experts is huge.

[00:10:07.89] Absolutely. I had no idea how the fire service was going to affect me. And I think part of my issue was, I'm a very sleep driven person. I've since I pet the dog when I was tiny, if I didn't get enough sleep, I was wrecked. So sleep was really important for me. And I had no idea how much that deprivation was going to affect me. And the other thing is, I had no idea how much the dark and traumatic things that I saw were going to manifest themselves.

[00:10:40.45] And so luckily, I never had a huge struggle with really bad depression or suicidal ideations but I definitely changed, the fire service changed me. And it made me kind of dark and sad. And so, throughout this discovery process of finding out what the fire service was all about, learning about the Illinois Firefighter Peer Support Network and then sort of the light bulb going on for me, I actually changed the trajectory of my business to then focus on firefighter health and wellness. So very excited about that.

[00:11:18.11] That's such great point about sleep deprivation too. Because it's been such a badge of honor right for people to say I only need two hours.

[00:11:27.87] Grind, grind. I'll sleep when I'm dead. Yeah.

[00:11:30.38] Now that we find out that like whatever, x amount of sleep deprivation is actually the same like equivalent to being intoxicated on alcohol and all these crazy things that it can do to you.

[00:11:42.78] Your brain is literally taking out the trash while you sleep. So if you don't sleep, you accumulate trash. That's the analogy I use. And firefighters, they get that one. Yeah, you're right though. It was always a badge of honor. I'll sleep when I'm dead.

[00:11:57.70] Yeah, and I know my buddy, Jeff Nichols, you know former SEAL talks about all that and how much it affected him. And you know at the time when he was in the teams and that was the badge of honor. And actually a great Outside Magazine podcast. I forget his name. I think it's Dr. Kirk Paisley.

[00:12:16.35] Oh, he's great.

[00:12:17.34] Who talks a lot about sleep. He was a SEAL team door kicker and then became a doctor and then went back to the teams and found all these issues with their sleep deprivation and all kinds of blood markers that were just trashed from this lack of sleep.

[00:12:33.99] The testosterone markers. It's crazy. They were finding, I think Dr. Parsley might be his name. Dr. Parsley found that 22-year-old seals were having testosterone levels in the 200s. I mean they should have maxed out testosterone. And interesting, as long as we brought up testosterone, we have been running some testosterone on our firefighters and the numbers are abysmal.

[00:13:00.28] Interesting.

[00:13:00.83] So and again the thing that I counsel them for is, or counsel them to do is, sleep, bro. You gotta sleep. You gotta sleep.

[00:13:09.72] That's great. Yeah, it's weird. I guess, you know obviously this strength and conditioning stuff is a passion of yours. But at what point did you realize as a firefighter that you needed to be more educated on this and you needed to find out more to help the department or the people you worked with?

[00:13:28.36] Yeah, that's a really good question. So, I've been doing it, I wrote a blog about this the other day. I've been doing this kind of stuff for almost 30 years. But I started when I was 18 months old I've been doing health and fitness and all of those good things for a really long time. But I didn't really hone in on the firefighters till probably about five years ago.

[00:13:47.34] I did the common, I could be everything to everyone. You know, if you had a kid who played baseball, yeah, I could help. Your wife wanted to lose weight, yes, I could help. I did it all and I did it pretty well, I'll be honest. But I really realized that you have to focus in on what you're best at. And what I know best is firefighters. And firefighters are, they're an interesting demographic, because they're all the same.

[00:14:16.56] You go to any firehouse and any town in any country in the world and they're going to be the same. They're alpha males and females. They are very suspicious of outsiders. When something starts in the firehouse whether it's good or bad, it spreads like wildfire. And they really, really, really respect you when you can meet them where they are. Because they don't want some experts, quote unquote, coming in to talk to them. They want to relate to someone.

[00:14:51.81] So to answer your question, no one knows a firefighter better than a firefighter. And so my path has been somewhat easy and greased to get into firefighter health and wellness because of my background. So five years ago, I started culling, if that can be used as the right word, my general clients and started focusing only on firefighters and fire departments.

[00:15:17.82] So right now I have one contract with Downers Grove Fire Department, which is near me. It's about 75 members. I'm currently writing a contract for another department near me and then I help out with my own department. And then I also work with individuals, and almost exclusively, when someone comes to me for help now, I ask if they're a firefighter. And if they're not, I say no. Because I really do focus on firefighters.

[00:15:43.89] That's awesome. You mentioned firefighters being great-- to get into this. And oftentimes it ends up being someone in the department's duty or you know, extra duty, to be in charge of fitness, right? So I guess how are you doing at recruiting people to learn the right stuff? Or on the flip side of that, if we have coaches who are involved in whatever, maybe collegiate high schools sports, and would see the want or need to get involved in helping firefighters, do you see like a career path or a way for people to get involved that way?

[00:16:27.30] Yeah I think there's two basic best ways for this to happen. I think the very best way is to have a firefighter that is credentialed in strength and conditioning, nutrition and all that stuff, and I haven't met very many of them. I just met a girl, her name is Maureen, and she's in Wisconsin, I believe. And she is a registered dietitian. She is a firefighter, and she is also the dietitian for the New York Mets. She's a unicorn. But there aren't very many of them out there.

[00:16:59.04] So what I would like to see and I'm working on this, is finding firefighters that, A, have an interest. But beyond that interest, have the ability to get themselves credentialed and coached up to the level that we need. Because to be honest, just a general personal trainer isn't really going to be able to help out firefighters that much. We really need that sort of strength and conditioning background, the performance background. So I'm just currently looking for people with the interest that I can help get them going in the right direction.

[00:17:34.20] The other way we can hit this is super credentialed people coming in from the outside. So our John Hoffmans, our Matt Wennings, people like that. It's more difficult for those people, of course, because they don't have the automatic credibility with the firefighters. I'll tell you a little side note sorry about that in a second. But, those people, because they're so excellent at what they do, as long as we can teach them how to relate to the firefighters, they'll be hugely successful.

[00:18:03.09] And my side story is, when I got my first contract with the Downers Grove Fire Department, I went in to do a kickoff lecture with them. And I on purpose, wore, you know just khakis and a polo very professional but casual. And I started speaking with them. And they kind of had a little bit of an attitude. They were leaned back in their chair, wondering what this outsider was going to tell them. And then I said the magic words. I'm a lieutenant with the Lisle-Woodridge Fire Protection District.

[00:18:30.72] And everyone started to pay attention a little bit more closely. I automatically had credibility. They didn't know anything about my background other than I'm a firefighter and I'm going to help them. So interestingly enough, one of the guys in the lecture that day, he retired about nine months later. But he wrote a letter to the village of Downers Grove and he said how thankful he was that I was helping them and how helpful I had been to him individually.

[00:18:55.47] And he told a funny story about the day he met me and how I was giving the presentation and I was wearing this dress. And you know, he was wondering who this lady from the outside who didn't know anything was? And then I said I was a firefighter. And then he sat up and paid attention. So he didn't even remember what I was wearing. He thought I was wearing a dress, but that's what stuck in his head. That I'm a firefighter and I'm here to help.

[00:19:18.06] That's interesting. That's interesting. How has it been being a female and then influencing all of this stuff as well? So I mean probably over 15 years, you definitely probably seen growth in female firefighting.

[00:19:32.69] Well--

[00:19:33.87] Still not there?

[00:19:34.89] Interesting, when I started we had about 3% nationally. And within a couple of years, we at our department had 3%. And I don't think it's bumped up much nationally from there. It's about 3%. But it's interesting that you ask about being a female strength and conditioning coach in the fire service. I think I actually have a leg up on that. Because the ego thing doesn't get in the way.

[00:19:59.60] So, they know I'm here to help. And I teach them I'm here to meet you where you are. I'm not interested in changing everything that you're doing or steamrolling over you. I am here to help. And I start with things like, what can you not do right now that you'd really like to do? And some of those guys say, man, I'd just like to play with my kids on the floor. Like, my back and my hips hurt so bad I can't get on the floor.

[00:20:26.36] I meet them where they are. And then we start to sneak in the performance stuff. So get those guys out of pain, make them feel better, and then start sneaking in the performance stuff. I think it works like magic.

[00:20:36.29] Nice. Oh that's cool.

[00:20:37.79] Yeah. So what are some of the typical issues that firefighters, are, you know from the physical lacking physical standpoint?

[00:20:48.50] Well, you know it's pretty typical of what we see nationally. Firefighters are overweight and obese unfortunately. In fact, I think statistically, there are more obese than the general population. Yeah. But the things that I see, especially with them, complete lack of T spine mobility. Scott, I'm a big woman but I am a small firefighter. And I barely fit in that cab. To turn around and put my belt on or something like that is almost impossible.

[00:21:19.08] So lack of T spine mobility, hip mobility is just absolutely terrible. The gear, unfortunately, although it is custom, so to speak, for each person fit to their waist and their length. It not necessarily custom fit to their joint. So, my knees don't bend in the right spot in my gear, so I'm fighting my gear every time I step up on the step. Hip mobility is terrible.

[00:21:41.84] And then firefighters, we wear boots in the station, we were boots on the street. And because most of them are in the trades, they wear boots to work. And so their ankles are locked into those boots all the time. So just getting those guys to be able to move their ankles, their hips, and their T spine, it's like magic. They're like, you're the best person ever. Where have you been my whole life?

[00:22:05.24] So how much of your hair do you pull out when you see a YouTube video of a firefighter in their full, like, oh, [INAUDIBLE] mask and all the--

[00:22:16.01] Here's the thing though, what those guys don't understand is, our risk for cancer is so immense compared to the general population. And now you're going to take that gear that's contaminated, because I don't care how many times you wash it, it's still contaminated. And then you're going to sweat in it. It's such a bad idea. It's bad.

[00:22:33.98] You know, and the other thing that firefighters, I just did a post about this the other day too, this is a sympathetic driven job. We are on 24/7. And there's an analogy. It's actually a pain analogy. People that are in chronic pain, their doorbell and their fire alarm sounds the same. Like they're just in a startle response.

[00:22:52.55] So I kind of use that with firefighters too. Like our doorbell and our burglar alarm sounds the same. We're on all the time. And then there's this perception that you need to do all this high intensity, sympathetic driven training, and they're doing it sleep deprived and all of that stuff. So that's my latest soapbox that I'm on. Firefighters need more parasympathetic type training and more sleep.

[00:23:15.57] Did we talk about sleep already? I think we did. It's important. Yeah.

[00:23:20.80] And you just spoke at ISSN couple of weeks ago, right? What was that about?

[00:23:26.12] I did. I talked about-- here's the thing. I have a master's in biochemistry. These people at ISSN have masters in nutrition. They have PhDs. They do research. I'm not going to teach them anything about nutrition. But the thing that I taught them about was the very special population that is firefighters and what they need.

[00:23:47.24] Firefighters tend to overeat because of the, I call it empty spots in their hearts and due to the trauma that they see so or demons whatever you want to call it. So they fill those empty spaces with food, with alcohol, all kinds of other vices. So I talked about just the mental mindset of firefighters and how important nutrition was to them, and how to reach them. And it was a great presentation if I say so myself.

[00:24:18.51] And you wouldn't think about that or you don't think about that, I don't think like you're talking about the stuff that you guys see. I have a buddy who retired from the Navy E7. And he got into-- he was going to be a firefighter and then he got into like just first responder or ambulance service. And he was like, dude, I couldn't do it. You know, after a couple of calls he had gone on that were just absolutely unfathomable, he was like, I could not do that job.

[00:24:48.23] The thing is, with firefighters is that we are a perpetual fixers. See a problem, fix the problem, move on to the next problem, and never really process what we saw. That happens both in our professional life and then people get to know us that way in our personal life. So when they need things fixed in their personal life, they call us too.

[00:25:05.54] And the other thing that you mentioned, Jeff Nichols, I can't remember which podcast it was, but he talked about, of course he worries about the SEALS and the military guys that were in Afghanistan. But he said, those guys eventually come home. fighters live that life for 30 years. So he said he worries about firefighters a lot.

[00:25:28.79] That's a great point. You don't really think about that when you're considering it. But what-- is there kind of a trend or anything like new that you're seeing in the firefighting fitness, strength, and conditioning world? Good bad or ugly?

[00:25:48.14] Yeah, a lot of bad and ugly, just a lot of things kind of put under that functional training sort of umbrella that's very attractive to people. But when you really break it down and look at it. It's really not functional. It's not a really great way to train. I think that the awareness for nutrition is getting better.

[00:26:09.63] When I started, they would always have biscuits and gravy on Sunday and then Saturday too. But the rationale was, we don't eat this way every day. Well, yeah, but you kind of do. Well you know if you do it every Sunday that you work and every Saturday, that's at least once a week. And then you know, the other thing too is that firefighters tell me some of them, they eat better at work than they do at home.

[00:26:35.72] That's mortifying.

[00:26:36.54] Yeah.

[00:26:37.24] Yeah, so I think the awareness for nutrition is increasing. But we've got a lot of work to do. And things are helping us, you know, things like that Instant Pot and better crock pot recipes and things like that. Guys realize, oh, I don't have to go get burritos, cause we can throw some chicken in the Instant Pot. So.

[00:26:53.06] It's such a great point.

[00:26:54.35] Things are getting better.

[00:26:55.78] Yeah, do you have any more upcoming speaking gigs coming up soon?

[00:27:00.35] I do. I'm so excited. I'm speaking at TSAC in San Antonio in August. So I'm super excited for that. And then I've applied for several things for 2020, but I haven't heard back for anything yet.

[00:27:15.04] What's your session at Tactical going to be this year?

[00:27:18.20] I'm going to talk about just what we were talking about, taking that firefighter and transitioning them into being a strength and conditioning-- transitioning that firefighter into being a strength and conditioning professional for their departments, so being an actual-- because here's the thing. Fire chiefs are very easily influenced. And when they think for example, that someone went to a 40 hour class and now they are able and capable to train people, that's what they expect.

[00:27:57.02] But the analogy that I use always is, you could send your secretary to a 40 hour car care class and she's not going to be able to work on your diesel engines. So, at TSAC, I'm going to talk about kind of that path of going from a firefighter to an actual strength and conditioning authority.

[00:28:13.40] Cool. I'm super excited.

[00:28:16.31] Yeah, it's exciting. Anything you're looking forward to this week here?

[00:28:21.64] You know what? I'm looking forward to actually all of it. And I'm going to try to-- I didn't get a ticket for the banquet. But. I'm going to try to do that. I didn't do that last year. So I'm going to try to get that done.

[00:28:31.71] That's always fun.

[00:28:32.51] Yeah.

[00:28:33.11] Dress up.

[00:28:33.97] Dress up.

[00:28:34.92] Awards.

[00:28:35.41] Yes.

[00:28:36.59] So again, people probably get sick of hearing me say it, but you know I think the coolest part about the NSCA is the diversity of the organization, tactical, people were firefighters and strength and conditioning coaches, and college strength coaches, professional, high school, and everyone in between, researchers, professors, students. I saw two students in the Dunkin' Donuts this morning and said hi to them. And they were just super eager smiles ear to ear. It was so awesome.

[00:29:05.63] That's great.

[00:29:06.14] The first national conference.

[00:29:07.52] I love it.

[00:29:08.21] It's so cool.

[00:29:09.18] I love it. I love being able to connect with those-- I met the gang from Rutgers at ISSN so I'm looking forward to reconnecting with them and with Katie Hirsch at UNC Chapel Hill. So, I love it. Connecting with people is what I love.

[00:29:25.61] It's awesome. And I know you're very engaged on social media. So if people are more interested in some of the stuff we talked about today or especially reaching out to you and learn more about what you do, whether it be firefighting or strength conditioning, what's the best way that they can connect with you?

[00:29:42.14] Well, don't forget you can also send puppy memes. But I am the same handle on both Twitter and Instagram, @fire, F-I-R-E and then the letter S and the letter Q and then fitness, F-I-T-N-E-S-S. So when you spell it out it's firerescuefitness. And then they can always connect with me on my website. There's a chat function and an email function. And so that is www.firesqfitness.com.

[00:30:08.82] Awesome and we'll be sure to put all that in the show notes and it's been great. I've learned a lot today too.

[00:30:15.04] This is a great opportunity. I appreciate it as well. This is a great way to kick off the week.

[00:30:19.08] Yeah, totally, thanks for being on and again thanks to our sponsor, Sorinex Exercise Equipment, truly appreciate their support of the NSCA's coaching podcast and of everything we do. So thanks to all of you listening too. Please again, you know, if you like the show, go on and give us review wherever you listen to the show. Subscribe, download, all that good stuff. Shared on social media.

[00:30:42.48] Reach out to an eye on social, send us puppy memes, et cetera. Thanks again to everyone, especially Annette for being on.

[00:30:49.56] Thank you so much. And as you know, we at the NSCA love research, and especially applying that research. If you're not a member yet, join us and get access to the best strength and conditioning journals available. Just go to NSCA.com/membership.

[00:31:03.12] This was the NSCA's coaching podcast. The National Strength and conditioning association was founded in 1978 by strength and conditioning coaches to share information, resources, and help advance the profession. Serving coaches for over 40 years, the NSCA is the trusted source for strength and conditioning professionals. Be sure and join us next time.

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