Everyone has a personal level of intolerance to reach before making a change. After graduating from the Chicago Fire Academy in 1989, Darryl Johnson was assigned to Engine 107, one of the busiest engine companies in the city. He reached his breaking point while responding to a call in a high-rise building.

“One of the guys I was with got a little tired, so I had to carry his load,” Johnson says. “By the time I made it to the fire floor, I could barely move. It was miserable! I dropped his equipment and my equipment and had to take quite a few breaths because I was completely exhausted. When I was done, I made up my mind I would never feel that way again.”

Johnson decided to educate himself about building his endurance as well as his strength. He realized that while he was “big and bulky,” he didn't necessarily have the muscles that he needed for firefighting.

“Firefighting needs endurance and strength,” he says. “The two work hand-in-hand, so that's what I started targeting.”

After 12 years of firefighting, Johnson was transferred to the Chicago Fire Academy to teach physical training because of his strong commitment to firefighter fitness. He is a member of the American Council of Exercise's Peer Fitness Trainer program, a certified kickboxing instructor with the Exercise Safety Association, a certified personal trainer and a group-certified training instructor of the National Exercise Training Academy.

It was pretty radical for then-Commissioner Cortez Trotter to name Johnson fitness coordinator, but changing the culture of the Chicago Fire Department is exactly what Johnson was tasked with.

“It was a very big change, but Trotter wanted to turn this into a positive, not a negative,” he says. “People look at size as a reason to be unfit, but you can have a small or a thin person that's unfit.

Johnson's role in the department is to get everybody involved in physical fitness. “Not just the firefighters, but everybody — the fire chiefs, the people that work in administration, the whole fire department. We realize that heart disease is the number-one killer of firefighters [and] the general public.” His interest in health issues also includes diabetes. “You need to eat right and exercise daily,” he says, adding that through a good program “sometimes you can go off the medication that doctors put you on.”

Fitness program roll-out

In January the Chicago Fire Department introduced a fitness program to every one of their stations across the city.

“What we really needed — core strength, endurance training, cardiovascular training — were the things I worked on and wanted to implement to produce a better body and a better firefighter, which is conducive to the tasks of firefighting,” he says.

Based on both his firefighting and training experience, Johnson designed a workout for firefighters, EMTs and paramedics — career or volunteer — that can be done alone or in a group. Using resistance bands and a fire truck, door or other stationary base, each of these spot-training exercises and drills takes 30 seconds to a minute. According to Johnson, these exercises are realistic “because that's what firefighting is. You do something really hard for 30 seconds or a minute.”

These exercises can be done in a station or at home. “One of the things that we stress is that you can travel anywhere with these bands,” he says. Johnson also tries to get firefighters to work out in a group: “If guys are at work with an hour to kill, all the members can strap on to the engine or the truck and get their exercising done and keep it in a group setting. It doesn't take any longer than 35 or 40 minutes. You can strap these on to a door, and you can do partner workouts with it.”

He also encourages firefighters not to exercise on the spur of the moment. Instead, make it part of your daily lifestyle. “Any day can be stressful for you, and your mind needs to know your body can take on these tasks without any damage,” he says. “That's where we want our people. Strong bodies, strong minds.”

The Chicago Fire Department is still in the initial phases of its new fitness program, but Johnson says a lot of people are already involved. Those numbers are sure to rise with a new incentive program.

“Just recently, contracts were passed and there's going to be agility testing,” he says. “Firefighters are going to get $350 if they pass all the portions of the test, which consists of a mile-and-a-half run, one maximum rep bench press, sit-ups and a flexibility test. They have to pass all phases to get the incentive part.”

Exercises, step by step

In teaming up with Fire Chief magazine to create the resistance-band exercise program poster, Johnson hopes to spread the message that increased muscle endurance and strength are not unattainable goals.

“These are very simple exercises,” he says. “Done right within a span of five to 10 minutes, you'll feel totally exhausted from the endurance level. From that, you can take it to other levels, too, which will motivate you to even push more.

“It's all muscle endurance and getting everyone motivated to make it part of their daily lifestyle, get wellness checks, eat right and live a healthy lifestyle.”

The results are more noticeable than you might think. “With the incoming candidates, we monitor them for six months, and the only thing we've seen is consistent improvement,” Johnson says. “I lay out the program and ride it out for three months. At that point, they've improved, their body can tolerate it. By that time … we can go with more of the work-related functions they're going to be use in the field.

“That's where this poster comes in handy because it's job-related: torso rotation, shoulder rotations, chopping, swinging and balance.”

Are these exercises enough to make a difference? “You have some of everything to make a difference, and if they are done right and done in the way you should, it strengthens every part of your body.… These are all the areas we need to strengthen for muscle endurance and give us the tool we need to work and work effectively.”

This poster is the perfect way to spread the word, Johnson says: “Getting everybody fit — that's my job.”