So, I'm here today with Mark Robison who is an Alabama Smoke Diver
and has been a firefighter for four years and he's going to share a few tips
for working out and show a few exercises that you can do to get physically fit for the CPAT test
this is going to be very basic and simple you can get as advanced with this as you want to
but this is tailored to those guys that have no prior physical fitness background
no exercise experience this is just to get you get you moving
in the right direction and get you ready for that CPAT
when preparing for this mentally we want to treat it almost as if it's an obstacle course
it's a 10 and a half minute long obstacle course that you're preparing for
the first thing that CPAT starts with it's the one that gets just about everybody
is the stair climb three exercises I've picked
to help get you ready for this climbing stairs
and ideally when you climb stairs put some sort of weight on
if you can afford a weighted vest get a weighted vest
and just continuously climb stairs for 5, 10, 15 minutes
just walk up and down if you've only got a couple of steps
available to you like one or two steps going up your porch
take two steps up, two steps down and just continuously do that over and over
and maybe add in some air squats the biggest thing with your air squats
to get the most out of the exercise make sure you're going deep
your thighs are parallel to the ground
another exercise that we picked are lunges lunges are great
you can do walking lunges you can do lateral lunges
you can do reverse lunges the lunge is a great exercise
it's going to build your quads it's going to get you ready for those stairs
so coming off the stairs we go into the hose drag
two exercises I've picked are tire pull and bent over rows
because during that hose drag you've got to move forward with the hose
we've got to advance it forward and then you're going to get to a spot
where you have to stop and then pull the hose to you
both those exercises encompass those movements
with the tire pull we're going to have the tire behind us and we're going to be walking forward
when we start doing the tire pull for the things like the dummy drag
that's when we'll turn and face the tire and walk backwards
so with the bent over row there's a ton of different variations
you can do it single arm with a dumbbell both arms with dumbbells, barbells
I just suggest finding a variation or one that works best for you
after the hose drag we go into the equipment carry the equipment carry is pretty simple
pretty self-explanatory the best thing that I can recommend you do
to prepare for that take a couple 5 gallon buckets
fill it up with sand, gravel, water and just do a farmer's carry
carrying both buckets 25, 30 yards down and back
so after the equipment carry we go into the ladder raise and extension
the two exercises I've picked for that will also benefit us in the ceiling breach and pull
so I'm just going to include two exercises that that work well for both
overhead press with dumbbells or a military press and then also pull-ups
pull-ups all around is a great exercise I'm a big fan of strict pull-ups
elbows all the way extended and we bring our chin
all the way up over the bar palms facing away
so after the ladder raise we're going to go to our wall breech
one of the two exercises that I've picked for that is lateral wall balls
with lateral wall balls we want to take a weighted medicine ball
we're going to be perpendicular to our wall
we're going to go X amount of reps on both sides
when doing this I want your feet about shoulder width apart
bending your knees and you're going to load your weight into your right side
almost like you're getting ready to hit a baseball and you're going to explode left
make sure your hips rotate your core rotates
drive the ball into the wall catch and we're going to reset
do that for a certain amount of reps to your left side and then turn and do the same amount of reps to your right
the other exercise that I've picked for the wall breach are Russian twists
you're going to sit have a slight bend to your knees
feet off the ground almost in a V position and we want to take a
you can use a 25 lb. weight a kettlebell, a weighted medicine ball
something like that and we're going to keep our core tight
and we're going to rotate side to side and I like to touch the ground
just barely tap the ground as I rotate to each side
after the wall breach we go to the maze with the maze a couple of exercises
I picked to prep us for that are push-ups, planks, and bear crawls
really just trying to focus on building overall core strength
so once you exit the maze you'll then move to the dummy
the dummy is about 165 pounds some of the exercises that I've chosen
to prep us for that are tire pulls
this is where we're going to be walking backwards now we're going to be facing towards the tire
and we're going to actually walk backwards simulating the same movement
that you'll have as you pull the dummy and then lunges and squats again
so after the dummy pull that's when we move to our ceiling breach and pull
we've already kind of covered some exercises for that
now some other things that I'm going to hit on that I think will really benefit you the most
in preparing for the CPAT: Cardio
you've got to run have days where you do
30 second on 30 second off intervals
you sprint for 30 seconds jog or walk for 30 seconds
and then maybe have some easy running days where we we jog lightly
for 15 to 30 minutes as you're moving from station to station
we want to start to kind of let our body recover
having a higher cardiovascular fitness level is going to enable that to happen
we're going to recover faster
we want to try to get our heart rate down before we go into the next exercise
ideally when we're doing a lot of these movements
remember during the CPAT you are wearing a 50 lb. weighted vest
the entirety of the event so what we want to do when we're doing these exercises
we want to recreate the environment you're going to be testing in
if you have the capability of getting a weighted vest I highly encourage you to do so
get used to moving in it get used to working in leather gloves
we want to again recreate what you're going to be testing in
as much as possible and get comfortable in that
the CPAT test is very intense you have to want it
it requires a lot of heart and grit and you need to make sure that you are
well prepared before test day
so Mark, thank you so much for helping me out with this video
leave any comments below with any suggestions that you have for workouts to do
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and thank you guys for watching