Rehab stations: Your sabbatical from zombie mode

This episode of the Better Every Shift podcast is sponsored by the Firestore. Learn more about getting the gear you need at prices you can afford by visiting thefirestore.com. Hey everybody, welcome to the Better Every Shift podcast. My name is Aaron Zamza. I'll be your host. I am a fire officer. I'm also a writer here at Fire Rescue One. And I have a very special guest with me, somebody who behind the scenes, we've already bonded on some really cool topics and one that I think everybody needs to listen to because we're going to talk about rehab, but we're not going to talk about it in the same sense or the sense that you're thinking about the fire ground. We're going to think about rehabbing from a health and wellness, from a personal standpoint, from a department standpoint, how to utilize resources. We're going to talk about cold plunges, ice baths, you name it, on how we can kind of recoup, recharge, and how we can effectively do it. Because this guy right here, I'm talking to Battalion Chief Greg Sawyer. By the way, Chief, welcome to the program. Thanks for being here, man. Thank you very much, Ian. It's good to be here. Well, you were one of the, probably one of the most sought after people after Science to the Stations, after you talked about rehab stations and the concept of rehab stations and also kind of like health and wellness kind of areas within the station. and we'll get into all of that. So our listeners, you know, wait with bated breath as we kind of set the table here because, you know, you've been with Contra Costa County for over 20 years and you've been a battalion chief there for four. You're a strike team leader and a rescue squad officer with FEMA task force four based in Oakland. And you've advocated for health and wellness for the first responders and for those in your department for quite a while. And this kind of idea and concept really spoke to me. You wrote a great article and you set it up so eloquently with, we're asked to do more with less people and that's adding stress and leading to all these different health issues. But talk a little bit about, well, what is a rehab station and what really got you motivated to start putting this project together? Okay. Well, a rehab station is a slower firehouse that doesn't run a lot of calls, that is outfitted with a bunch of special equipment to help your sleep, to help your physical, mental health, recovery, everything. And it's a station that crews can rotate through and spend time at. The way we do it is you spend one month there as a crew, and then you go back to your normal busy firehouse for the rest of the year. and you just take turns and get a little sabbatical if you will but you're still on the clock you're still at work but you're not going pedal to the metal um you know talking about doing more with less that's kind of how it was for me before i promoted and figured out what sleep is all about it used to be just a 48 hour pedal to the metal no stops just stand on the gas and don't let up until sometimes 72 or longer hours goes by. And then you come home and straight zombie mode and miss a day, a day and a half of your four day, cause you're just smoked. And then finally come to it. You're never really the same. It takes actually, well, I found out when I promoted and finally slept a little bit, I found out it took about a month to feel close to normal, like 90% normal, but it took about four months before I was actually like the way I feel now. Um, so one month, uh, at a rehab station is enough to get people's feet on the ground, to get them a taste of what normal feels like, and, um, hopefully encourage them and motivate them to do better the rest of the year with, you know, their sleep hygiene and things like that. I think we operate at like 80% optimized, if not less. Would you agree with that? Oh, for me, it was way less than 80%. I mean, 60, you think 50, 60? I was a zombie for a decade plus, at least maybe two. and really kind of embarrassed and ashamed of the person I was, the way I treated others, just because you have a short temper when you're exhausted, you're in pain and you're just barely trying to keep your head above water, just trying to just not be too badly buried in reports or whatever your job duties are. Anyway, if you take a breath and you get a break, it can do a lot to make you feel human again and realize you don't even know how tired you are until you feel normal. And that's kind of what the rehab station is all about. And the other problem is like when you're running, you know, like you were saying, 48s, and all of a sudden it's a 72 and you're just go, go, go. We're surrounded by people that are doing the same thing. So then we sit at the table and we solve all world's problems. It's with people that are also not optimized or tired. And that kind of begets, right? we're okay we're normal because everybody else around me is normal would you yeah you know my wife would say you can't talk like that you're not at the firehouse you can't treat people this way so what are you talking about i've been treating people like this for 72 hours this is normal yeah right it's not normal um and it's not good it's not it's not good for us and not you know we're not here to bag on the the sleep we're not here to bag on you know, the 48th rate, like we were, we're products of that, but we're also saying, and I think your idea with this is like, there could be a better way out there that we need to start really looking into. And so you, you came up with this concept, how long did it take by the way, to develop this and to get the department to kind of embrace it? Yeah. Everything takes longer than you think. It seemed like the biggest no brainer in the world to me when I thought it up, but, uh, we had a station that had been closed during the recession that was reopening. And so nobody owned a bid there and you know i was able to capture it and use it as a little test kitchen and run an experiment out of there and not have to like kick people out of their bid hops you know um but once i had the idea i brought it to our fire chief and he said well if you can convince the union good luck but if you can convince the union i'll let you try it you can do it and we'll see what happens and so i thought like i said it was a no-brainer and the union would be all about it, but it did not go down that smooth. It took a few months at several meetings before I finally convinced them that we should at least try this while we can. And they said, okay, fine. We'll let you try it for a year. And after a year, we'll vote and decide whether we're keeping it or not. And so anyways, a year later, they didn't even bother to vote. It was no, you know, obviously they saw the light. So it worked out. Good for you. And, you know, no to union officials. Come on now. Well, I was one of them just before I promoted. I was a board. And so I'm like, come on guys you know it's me i'm telling yeah but uh yeah we got to get our own ways not only in our own admin i think the union's got to step up too i think we're all in play here right like you know it's circum it's a manipulation of the bid system right because at our department the bid system is sacred um and now you're saying you have this one one fire station that you're not going to let folks bid into because you're going to rotate cruise through instead. And that was tough because some people really wanted that station. But I said, Hey, there's a couple other slow stations that have openings been one of those if you want to go somewhere slow. So it's not like, right. You weren't able to bid this for the last like six years. So all of a sudden, right? Like, yeah. So how do you, how do you figure out which crews are going in there and how did that whole process? So good question. So, I mean, there's 12 months in a year, you know, three shifts per station. But at first I said, hey, first busiest 12 stations or busiest 12 crews get first right of refusal. And if somebody doesn't want to go, that's fine. We're not going to force them. And then we'll let the 13th, 14th, 15th busiest take a crack at it. And so that's how it started. And now it's kind of doors are open to anybody and everybody, no matter where your station is or what your situation is. If you want to go, you come down. We try to encourage that they go as a group, as a crew. I think it's It's important that you go together with your normal crew. And then we also try to make sure that we don't completely empty out a station all at once and send all three shifts to our rehab station at the same time on the same month. Because then, you know, your normal station empties out and it goes chaos with overtimers. So one shift per station per month and then the other two shifts stay behind at their normal station to keep things under control. and the crew that participates gets backfilled by overtime. And anyway, that's kind of it in a nutshell. And I have a spreadsheet online. Everyone can kind of sign up or reach out to me and I plug their names in so they can see who's going and when and when the openings are. And then I kind of just run the Telestaff side of things and change everybody's assignments as needed as they go. Yeah. Yeah. Eventually, like with systems, you probably be able to automate it at some point, right? Like with signups and everything. But let's talk about what makes this station unique. It's not just the fact it's a little bit slower, but you use it as an advantage. This is what I love about this. And if someone's listening saying, oh, well, we don't necessarily, you know, we might have a slow station, but, you know, how can we justify it? I think the health and wellness thing together, right? Especially if you're putting together packaging for a new station that maybe won't be as busy, like maybe these are some of the things that you add to it. So it's not just a regular firehouse. you added a lot of components that help with sleep, nutrition, fitness, obviously, just all the resilient building habits and gadgets in some cases, right? So let's break down what makes this particular station special. Well, you remember that show from the 2000s, Pimp My Ride with Exhibit? Yeah, Pimp My Ride. yeah we didn't tent my station is what we did here all right i'm liking this yeah gaudy it's got everything in the world as you can imagine at least we tried to get everything we could but yeah at first all i was concerned about was sleep because that was what i was personally suffering from and that's that was my goal but it's kind of become this kitchen sink throw everything in the world at it health and wellness wise um it's not just sleep stuff anymore but so a list of things you know we got we had crappy mattresses a lot of our stations had literally 20-year-old mattresses guys are sleeping on. So we got sleep number beds for this station where you can tune them to whatever hardness you like. We got fancy Tempur-Pedic pillows for them. We got weighted blankets. We got these bed jet cooling fans that blow cold air by your feet under the blankets, keep you cool. It forces you to kind of pass out and go to bed. we got blackout shades in the rooms where you sleep we got uh hatch noise machines that make like ambient white noise and uh to wake you up as an alarm it kind of just lights the room up gently like the sun rising um is that is that set up to your alarm system no our alerted system we're still kind of working on that we got a couple different irons in the fire with that One that I investigating right now is called Ease Alert Yep I love the product I love the it a product out of Florida It it a young i call him a kid he like he started his dad was a captain down in florida blake blake did ride along with his dad saw how stupid the alerting system was like smarter than us firemen so he went and got a job and you know designed this company that yeah it's a great idea um i i laugh because uh i told blake one day i said what did your dad come home and was he mad at you and wouldn't let you play your xbox so you're like what was and he goes well kind of like that and i went well hey right like that's kind of how it started but but ease alert is a system that um you know you're you're working on as well but for now you have these noise machines you have uh gentle alarm clocks that they they will gradually increase the light within the room yeah so that's kind of the sleep side of things more or less um and then we went from there to more other health and wellness stuff um you know before i forget can you can you adjust the temperatures in your individual sleeping quarters and i imagine no it's well the captain has his own room the crew otherwise is in a common dorm but they have like cubicle partitions and stuff yeah it's not super brand new state of the art or anything like that but we make do so yeah uh we got whoop straps uh for them as well so they can wear a whoop for three months, the month before, month during, and month after. And that's free and optional. And if they want to share the data, they can. And it's, you know, anonymous data that we've been collecting. And that's just basically to show them how much sleep they get or what works and what doesn't work, what helps them sleep, what doesn't. And they can experiment on themselves and figure out what's going on. Yeah. Have you gotten some good data from that yet? Yeah, I mean, it's kind of no duh, dadder. Like, you know, it's all been not all that surprising. You know, their HRV goes up, their resting heart rate goes down. You know, their sleep need goes down, their sleep actual goes up. The one thing that's been really surprising, though, is their strain scores go up. And they're not running more calls, but they're not zombies when they go home. They're tweakers like we all want to be at home. and they're doing honeydews and you know projects that they've been neglecting because they've been too unmotivated to accomplish at home and they're playing with their kids and you know exercising and just living more fulfilled active lifestyles and not just like couch and stuff so that was so it's more act more active in general but it's it's just let's just say they're living yeah more playing right like zombies anymore oh that's been cool oh that's awesome so you do the whoop straps and then these are my some of my favorite that we get i get questions a lot about a lot um with the uh the avante cool stuff um what else so yeah so we got a um cold plunge and a sauna it's an infrared sauna and the cold plunge and infrared sauna are both avante cool branded they're very nice um and so the idea is the cold in the morning the sauna in the evening and that's supposed to tell your body how to sleep better and it definitely helps with recovery and detoxification immune system and a lot of other things and it's kind of like hey go try all this stuff out see what works for you you know the cold punch isn't for everybody that's okay these things also they do cause strain and stress on your body i mean you can overdo it if you work out hard and do all these things to the max like my dumb i did you know when i first started playing with these toys I did it too much and kind of burned myself out on them. So it's, it's, well, we have a tendency to do that in the fire service, you know, right. Guys are supposed to cold plunge for what, one to three minutes. And then what do we do? Hey, I did five. What do you, I'll do six, right? Like you've got the whiteboard has the scores who can do the longest, right? So that's, you can hurt yourself. So, but it's, it's just, it's a little test kitchen experiment, see what works for you. What feels good. I mean, the cold plunge for me, it erases pain. Joint pain is just completely gone soreness is completely gone it's awesome in that regard the sauna puts me to sleep like it's just unbelievable how that will shut down any tossing and turning or anything you do if you do that in the evening you're out so yeah um and so cold plunge when they first get on shift typically they're taking a cold plunge or maybe be right before shift and then that's what we tell is that that's or when you wake up in the morning not in the firehouse is taking that yeah or after cardio or running or something like that it's nice okay for recovery yeah yeah um and then we got this other really cool chair this thing lately called a shift wave therapy chair which is pretty incredible it looks like a lawn chair like a zero gravity lawn chair but it has all these like vibrating hockey pucks in the back of it and you wear an eye mask and um some headphones and it talks you through breath work and some meditation visualization stuff and vibrates. And, uh, all I can say is I haven't been that high since seventh grade. The thing is incredible. Really? Really? Okay. It's extremely powerful. The effect that it gives is for people that have done a lot of meditation, they say like, Oh my God, five minutes in this chair is equivalent to multiple hours worth of meditation after decade of learning how to do it. you just go along for the ride pretty much. And it's a major recovery tool, a mental health thing. How did you find out about that? You know, and we had talked behind the scenes, some of these companies, right? Like you reached out to and they, you know, were kind of met you halfway and said, Hey, what's your budget and tried and really want to start helping. And I, right. Like, how did you find out about the share? So one of my coworkers saw it at a conference or something and gave it a test ride and he called me he's like hey we got to try this so i called them up they showed up at the firehouse and we had about 50 guys take a test ride through it over a couple day period and got them talking and we had to have them um they are they have been used for a while in um you know professional sports teams and nfl nba they all have them in their locker rooms um they have them in special forces you know military units they've been in ukraine for a while like when when um troops come off the front line for two weeks of r&r uh they're just so stressed from battle that they don't really get r&r they're just unable to relax and chill but if they hit the chair before they uh start their two weeks they're able to totally shift gears and be chill and actually get two weeks of rest and then when they re-engage they're actually rested um when i was down at the palisades fire about a year ago uh they were down there driving around and letting people at base camp give it a test ride and stuff um so uh and they're in luxury hotels and stuff it's a pretty fancy toy but very very powerful like i can't recommend it enough yeah worth the money in this case yeah they're not cheap they're about 10 grand a chair but it's it's it's pretty incredible um and if you get a lot of use out of it then i mean it's worth it you know yeah so um that's kind of some of the cool toys and then we've got a lot of different subscriptions and stuff that we give people to you know yoga from first jevity we got um rescue rd megan louts the dietician we got um headspace app um leadership under fire from ftny came and did some training with us about mental performance and human performance under stress um we got our physical therapists, Andy and Allie, they're awesome. They have a company, Recon Perform, that they literally come to the station and do like PT work, pretty high-end stuff. They got all their fancy tools that PTs use and they have completely saved my life a couple of times from shoulder injuries and back injuries that I thought for sure were going to result in surgery. But if you do what they tell you to do and you follow the protocols, the pain goes away and you don't have to miss work and there's no workers it's pretty awesome so they come down and give give the folks a tune-up um i bought a bunch of books for them you know there's actual paper books in the station on you know mental health physical health resiliency leadership firehouse stuff um the department uh pays for the chow fund for the station so that's not meal yeah that's not meals but it's like salt and pepper and you know cable internet that sort of thing okay so the guys don't have to pay their home chow and oh yeah right so they you know so the um intangibles like you know the incidentals are all paid for so you don't have to right come together to get yeah so you have what about meals yeah we have any meal no so they have an account at the grocery store they just pick up the the staple items but anything they want to actually eat that's real food they got to buy themselves and no there's no like free meals but hopefully they use um some of the recipes from megan lounce's cookbook that we subscribe them to and stuff and you know that's the point it's like this can be you know you hear people say like what sober october or whatever this can be top to bottom head to tail fully like rehab experience for you and it's not dry january it's not just right it can be everything and you can you know experiment with different diet things and all that too um i wanted to make it so that if you worked overtime or got mandatory you got assigned at a slow station or that you were uh basically immune from mandatory overtimes while you were there but that did not go over very well so they still have to work mandos and stuff but when we do staffing we try to keep them in the slower stations if we can during that month so they don't get that month polluted with a couple of you know really rough nights but i mean they still go to fires they go to everything they have to go to and they've had a handful of first two fires you know since we've had that program so um that's most of the bells and whistles we have a survey we let them fill out um some qr codes they take pictures of and survey to try to see if all these toys are working or not yeah what have you found out so far how long has this been in in play and what are you finding yeah so we're starting our fourth year right now oh wow okay so you've been doing this for a while all right awesome yeah uh you know they like everything pretty much. You know, subscriptions are hard. It's hard for people to log in and do that sort of thing. Actual physical toys and items are better, it seems like, for a lot of people. Or if you have someone physically come and visit them at the station, that's good. So that's been it for the most part. I mean, people have kind of allowed us to justify purchasing some of these toys for other stations as well. So we've slowly been adding, um, sleep number beds to all our stations. We've been putting blackout shades in all the stations. We've been, um, putting pressure on changing our alerting system to a more calm alerting system. Um, a couple other things like policy wise, uh, we sort of created like a quiet time, if you will, between noon and two o'clock every day, uh, where you're not supposed to call the fire station you're not supposed to outbound tele-staff uh announcements you're not supposed to um do training or whatever during that time just kind of give the folks a break from noon to two o'clock uh stole that idea from reach helicopter there's a um a reach base near us that we were working with them for a while that's kind of one of their policies we stole um a handful of other minor things um we looking into some other toys as well like somni headbands which are like these headbands you wear before bed and they have electrodes and they trick your brain into chilling down and taking a chill pill basically putting your brain into sleep mode a lot a lot of these things though like that and the whoops too sometimes it's tough because they're designed for one user and with this program you're cycling people around and um some of the some of the toys are only really good if if you get to keep it forever. So, um, like for the whoops, we started a whoop library. So I have the cash of whoops that are used for station four for the rehab station. And then I have another cash of whoops that people can sign up to take for four months at a time and, and use, even though they're not going to the rehab station. So. Yeah. One thing with whoop is that you can do your health savings account or your, your flex spending. Um, I, I just do it automatic. Like I do flex spending and I didn't realize how many things your flex spending can, can actually pay for now. And a whoop is one of them. You can do an annual membership. Um, and it's, I believe it's worth it. Just it's, it's just data, but you know, you mentioned too, it's, it's figure out what works for you. The idea here is that you're giving them 30 days and no excuses to start trying to figure some of this stuff out to help them prolong their career. I think it's a brilliant idea, brother. The Firestore. Equipping protectors with passion. Every decision we make as a company is about you, our customer. We wouldn't be where we are today without you, and we don't take that lightly. We understand that having the right gear can mean the difference between life and death. Our goal is to get you the gear you need, when you need it, at prices you can afford. Visit us at thefirestore.com for everything but the truck. and shop our family of brands, including Streamlight, MSA, Lion, FLIR, and more. Now let's get back to the show. Did you see this from somewhere else or did you just kind of think, hey, we got this slow station. I've always wanted to do this. Like, how did everything kind of come to be? Yeah, that's a good question. Well, we've kicked around the idea of sister stations for a while where you have like a busy one and a slow one. where they kind of swap people every once in a while. Like that's been a concept, but never got any traction and wasn't going to fly. One day I came in to work in overtime and as a battalion chief, and the chief I was relieving had on the whiteboard tallied all the calls that each of the stations in that battalion had run over the last 48 hours. And I was looking at his whiteboard of all the times of each call, of each of those eight or nine stations he was in charge of. And I'm thinking, this is grotesque. It's just out of control. And it wasn't like summertime or a particularly busy shoot-em-up weekend or something. It was just a normal day. And a lot of the stations were running 20-ish calls with one company. And I'm like, this is no good. We ought to figure something out. And I had just started to have my brain function normally because I had slept for the first time in my life. and I'm like you know what station four is opening you know in a month or two we had talked about it was getting some remodeling done before they reopened it and I'm like we got to figure out a way to put these people on this whiteboard into station four and feel what I'm feeling now and and then they will be motivated to do better and I was always you know pretty healthy guy exercise diet pretty good you know but the sleep is way more important it just is and once you have that missing link, you know, replaced, you feel, I felt like I was in my twenties. Like I was young, single, no kids, no wife. Like I was like, wow. Yeah. Incredible. You know, I haven't felt this way in forever. And, uh, but that's how I should have felt all these years. And I wonder sometimes if I had a normal job, like what potential I was thwarted, what I could have done with myself if I wasn't a zombie for the last 20 years, but you know, it turned out okay. I wouldn't probably change any of it, but a lot of- I wouldn't either. I asked that same question. I'm like, what would I have done if I was normal? I'm like, I don't know. I don't do normal. Like most firefighters, we don't do normal. It is something to kind of ponder, but hopefully that motivates you to continue on, right? You're like, God, I feel so good now. I want to keep this going. Yeah. Our chief is awesome at just saying yes and letting us hang ourselves with our dumb ideas. And so, you know, I can't. Or not in this case, right? No, I'm predicting that you're going to get people to reach out to you. And it's all right if we leave contact information. Is that right? Yeah. Because you spoke about this at Science2Stations and you had just a horde of people like, hey, wait, tell us a little bit more about it. And, you know, and I think, too, just listening to the idea, a lot of departments can't necessarily go and get to the level that you're at with it. But what if you got a slower station and you start putting like, you know, we wrote a grant. We got a couple of massage chairs. And I had first rolled my eyes. But I'll tell you what, one of my stations has the chair. And we give priority to our medics. And they're in it a couple times a day. And does it help? I think a little bit, right? But if you do a little bit with a chair, a little bit with a mattress, a little bit with nutrition, it adds up, right? And I think that's kind of what your approach is. Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, it's not as expensive as you might think. I mean, we're probably into this station for 50 grand or something, you know, with all the bells and whistles. And so it's not astronomical. And then you don't have to have all the things, you know, you could start small, just get some, you know, nice beds and blackout shades and call it good. Maybe a couple of the whoops are a good thing though, because yeah. Or even like, right. Like start with, um, you know, percussion guns. and yes folks i do have my percussion gun at my yeah i'm a nerd right just start with some things yeah a couple things yeah and the whoops are better than you think at just um putting that little angel on your shoulder to force you to make good decisions and see the difference you know it's an educational month for them and the whoop is the best tool at showing them the keys and the way to make things better for themselves you know like from i mean are did you get some a couple of people come up to you and say, holy cow, thank you for letting me do this because it's changed people's careers. Have you seen that side of it? Yeah. A lot of people, the most common phrase is, I had no idea how bad I needed this. A lot of people will say like, hey, my engineer's having a rough go with his old lady or whatever. He needs to go take a break. So I'm going to drag him and we're going to go as a crew for him, not for me. I don't need it. And then when the month is over, that person's like, wow, I did not have a clue how much I needed this too. And so that's been really cool to see um one of the biggest problems initially though was culturally um the stigma of it or whatever um and i'll admit i was one of those idiots who should have probably been a slower spot long ago but i had too much pride and um you know image wrapped up in i'm the guy who works at the busy house or whatever and yeah so initially to try to get folks to go of course there was some that were desperate to go, but a lot of the ones that needed to go the most were also too cool to go, right? And too tough guy to go. And so I would encourage anyone that tries to do this to meet with the cool kids, the influential people, and kind of tell them, hey, I need you to do me a favor. I need you to go first and show everyone that if you can go, then it's cool for them to go. If it's Don't wait for the superstars to go. Then everyone can go. And kind of set that tone. And then also tell your captains like, hey, look, I need you to lead your people. I'm not telling you that you should ask, hey, guys, do you want to go to Station 4? You want to try this new program? Don't ask them. Tell them, hey, we're doing this. We're doing this as a crew. Pick the month that you guys want to go out. You can vote on the month, but we're freaking doing this. And just try it out. What's the worst that can happen? Give me one month of your career and see what happens. And so far, everyone that's gone has either gone back the next year or, you know, been very, very thankful and appreciative. And so I just think it's one of those things. You don't know how bad you got it until you see what normal feels like. And that was really my main motivator. It's like I knew that there was tons of my coworkers who were just as bad or worse off than I was. And if I could just show them what normal felt like, they would be healthier people. and in general just focus more on taking care of themselves so that they can take care of others and just be better firefighters. You don't need to take steroids. You just need some sleep. You know what I mean? Like you said, it can feel like that too, right? Like all of a sudden you get into weeks three and four of sleeping pretty regularly and we get some guys that they save up their vacation. They take three to six whatever weeks off and they come back and they're like, wow, I feel totally different. But yet we still, when we talk about going to a different shift or four shifts and trying to minimize that strain, we still are just stuck in like, I don't know, it's not my regular schedule. Yeah. And you know, that's the elephant in the room, right? Is the schedule. Working 24, 48, whatever. That is the problem. That's the sacred cow, though, that I don't want to shoot. I've shot some of our sacred cows already around here. But if I shoot the schedule sacred cow, the guys are going to come shoot me and I don't want to die. So I came up with this rehab thing instead. We can keep the same schedule we've always had. But especially where I'm at here in the Bay Area, folks cannot afford to buy a home here. It's just not really realistic at all. So everyone's commuting from far away. And, you know, Tuesday. They're working 72s and 96s over by you, right? Some of them, yeah. Some of them, yeah. And there's all kinds of talks at Science to the Station about changing the shift start time to minimize, you know, traffic and commute times by driving at a time where there is no traffic or waking up at the same time of day every day of the week by having shift change at 11 a.m. or 8 p.m. or something crazy. But I'm not interested in shaking the tree that much. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I do a little bit. That's my job is to talk about it. But I think you go from like, just think about for a second. And this is kind of a challenge to the listeners, right? Like, right. There's good, there's better in their best. There's, and then even before that, there's what we're doing right now. What can you do as you're listening to this program for yourself and maybe for your department to get them to think about this a little bit differently or to start to focus on sleep, health, wellness a little bit more. And, you know, it might be just getting a couple of massage guns. It might be getting some, there's cold plunges that are showing up in stations, or it might be challenging somebody to get a whoop for a couple of months. You know, I think this, it just start, should start the conversation, you know, especially if you're listening to this, bring it back to the firehouse and start talking about, could we do this? What was that process? Like you, you met some, some things in the row, like, right. Some hiccups. How did you get the funding then once you started the ball? Yeah. So there was no budget allotted for this project whatsoever. So I had to beg, borrow, and steal from anyone and everyone. So the training division coughed up some money for me. You know, the chief was really good about throwing a couple bucks at me too, but it's grown slowly over the last three and a half years. I mean it not like we had everything that we have today on the first day of this program We didn have a cold plunge We didn have a sauna we didn have anything except for some beds and some blackout shades like we yeah starting point and so that kind of been the other funny thing is every year we add new toys like just a couple months ago we got that shift wave chair and it's kind of reinvigorated a lot of people like oh what's this i want to see this i got to go sign up again and go back now this year to see the new toy um then people go talk about the new toy and then that encourages more people but now I do have a budget for the station and I have, you know, reoccurring money that allows me to re-up subscriptions and things like that. But yeah, unfortunately for a lot of departments, you know, budgets are tight. Ours is doing pretty good. So we were able to come up with some creative spending, but like I said, it doesn't have to be a ton of money. You can look at it maybe as a recruitment tool, recruitment and retention. If you're losing people to the, you know lateral academies or something or you're not getting a ton of folks to apply to your department um you can show them this program and say look the chief really does care about your well-being and your family and wants you to go home and and and um enjoy your life and not just be a complete slave to the department and blow yourself up so that i know whenever i talk about this program with anybody uh from another department they're just blown away and jealous and they want to have the same thing so that's one way to look at it for sure and i think like compromise too right like you're not going to get it all you're it took you you're you're in year four and it took you a while to develop you know the other thing is this is where i think we can use outside agencies and right this a lot of this stuff was being uh when i was working with pro athletes 20 years ago a lot of some of the stuff was already there they were doing cold plunges they were doing saunas they were doing like infrared actually kind of came out i think 10 15 years ago so reach out to organizations i the worst they could say is no the best they can say is, Hey, yeah, we got this old one that we weren't using, or we're going to, we're going to order. We'll donate one of the firehouse or right. Like one thing I've found is people that are in the health and wellness product space are desperate to break into the first responder market. They see us as, you know, young, healthy, active people that will totally use their products and buy their products and tell everyone about their products. And so they're more than willing to give you a deal and go help you get something started because they think that, you know, there might be a lot more sales attached to that. And, you know, back to the cold plunge in the sauna, I know that there are departments out there that have these things. Some chiefs are resistant to them. They don't understand exactly what they are. They're afraid that firefighters are going to hurt themselves or have a heart attack or whatever. So, you know, do you need policies? You need, what do you need you know um we got to educate our people and you know even if it's just something as simple as a laminated piece of paper taped to the machine like hey idiots this is how you use it and that's the that should be the memo to all idiots right like honestly i agree 100 percent it's not a type is important like you know i have a um barrel sauna at my house that's traditional goes 200 degrees and you cannot have something like that at the firehouse you're completely out of service would become out of that thing. The infrared, you know, it doesn't heat your core body temperature. It allows you to run a call immediately right then. You're not out of service or anything. The cold plunges, the same thing. You could jump out and function. But yeah, you need to educate some people on that before they'll let you buy toys that they don't understand and got to buy the right ones. And hopefully they don't break them. You know, are people, you know, right? Like, Are they now they're excited, like you were saying, to get into that station? Like, hey, it is our rotation. We're going to do this. Are you hearing like the other side of it, like, you know, how we start to challenge each other for the good. And, you know, are you hearing some of those kind of side effects? Yeah, it's the carrot and stick, right? The more cool toys you could put there, then the more they're going to want to try them out. And then I've been able to buy a couple of cool toys every year now for the rest of the department. And so we're starting to distribute equally amongst all the battalions. saunas and cold plunges and other things. And so the idea was, you know, to the union, like, hey, yeah, you're right. Not every single firefighter is going to get to do this every single year. But the toys and the things that we learn are going to be things that we can then buy for all of the stations, hopefully over time. And then everyone will benefit from it. There's been times where, you know, the chief, no way in hell would he let me buy the shift wave chair if it wasn't for this program, you know? But now, well, okay, I guess we can buy it because this program is kind of all about this type of thing. And then later on, maybe we'll buy some for some other stations after we justify the purchase and see that it's something that people actually use. And so all the toys and all the policies and things that we learn are being spread to all the stations. So it's benefiting everybody. There's some folks who especially are new who don't want to go because, hey, I'm on ProBee or whatever, and I don't want to waste a month of my time, and I should be running calls. that yeah that's all totally true one month is at the end of the world and you might learn some of the most important lessons that your whole career is how i was just gonna say this is the stuff that can really last and help you it can make or break with the whole career honestly and so um i still encourage folks that have a probie on their crew like just get them down there one month is it gonna be the end of the world i mean um you can still train go to the tower train your ass off you can do all that stuff just yesterday the crew that was down there was doing some um rope rescue stuff um you know you're free to go roam around the district and do what you gotta do so um you don't just sit there and watch netflix you know what i mean right right yep it use it as it as like hey if you're gonna go work do a heavy workout figure out how to recover better right this is that we're giving you kind of this time and this avenue and these resources to do that But, you know, lastly on this, have you thought about bringing in some resources for family then into this and teaching more about the family side and relationships and mental health side? I'm not really focused on that right now. We have some of that stuff in the academy and we have some of that stuff with our EAP type services, you know, and just some of the mental health services that our department provides outside of the rehab station. um we have like counselors and clinicians and stuff that we contract with um that's open to anyone at any time um but no i do know the wives appreciate it though and the kids my wife and kids appreciated me sleeping for the first time and having this new person to live with compared to the jerk they were with the last 20 years yeah where's where's the old dad who cares my neighbors are all friendly now i'm embarrassed honestly and ashamed of the person i used to be it really wasn't the person I feel like I am or I should have been. And I think that brings up a good point. Like we are like, you know, we're, we're always surrounded by like-minded people and we're, you know, not optimized people. Families are, you're hearing that more. Like when, when people do get sleep or when they do focus on it a little bit, you know, the families are the ones that benefit. And, you know, I think that's, that's something that you even talked about the probie, right? You got to figure these things out earlier than what you and I did, you know, right? Like we've been in the, you've been in for 24 years. I've been in for 16, 17. And right. I, I'm not, I'm ashamed of some of the things I did because of, of maybe where I was, you know, as far as sleep and preparation. And so we're trying to leave it better. And I know that's what your motivation is. What's your pipe dream for this? When I bring you back on about what program, how the program's grown, you know, when you retire, what would you like to see as a legacy with this? Oh man, I just want it to spread to other departments. I mean, we have 40 companies. We have one rehab station. That seems like about the right size or ratio. I think if you only had five companies, maybe it would be a little weird to have a rehab station. But once you get to a certain size and you have a dozen or so companies that are running 4,000 calls plus a year, it's like you probably need to look at this because you've got people that are on the ragged edge. I know I sort of like got out unscathed, if you will. I mean, my wife didn't leave me and I'm still here. I probably had some years taken off my life, but I'm still here. And I would like to – you'll never know how many people are affected in this way, but I'd like to hope that you prevent some cancers, you prevent some injuries, some obesity, some bad behavior at work that gets you in trouble and gets you demoted or fired. We had kind of a rash of that before this program got started because people were just burnt out and hitting brick walls. Hopefully, you know, you eliminate some vehicle accidents and some bad decisions on a fire where people are just not having good situational awareness. I mean, it's all these unmeasurable things that I think about that, hey, maybe I saved a life because somebody made the right call or didn't pull out in front of traffic or didn't get divorced or didn't get fired or whatever. or didn't have a depression suicide situation because they actually had their brain functioning normally because they got some sleep and got a hold of their alcoholism or whatever that they were dealing with. So, I mean, I would like rehab stations to just take root and go across the country, and that's kind of my hope. I'm not trying to build a bunch of them here in our fire department. I don't think that's appropriate, but it's a good resource for people, and they should be able to duck in and out of it once every couple years or as needed. Yeah. And just other departments could take components of this, right? Like depending upon what their organizational need is. And, um, but I love it, buddy. It's a brilliant idea. Very well, uh, written article by the way, and we'll leave a link to that. And, um, again, thanks for sharing this. And if people have questions, we'll leave a link to how they can get it in connection with you. Um, they can also, uh, email me at better every shift at fire rescue one.com, but awesome idea. I really believe this is something that it can really can help a lot of people. And I imagine it's helped a lot on your department. You probably don't know about it. Hopefully from this podcast, a couple of people will pull you aside and say, Hey, if I didn't thank you, you know, but great work at great message. I'm, I'm a hundred percent into supporting it. So hopefully this helps get the message out. And, you know, the mission's clear. It's just about, right. We all know we're going through some tough times within the fire service. We all know that we're a little depleted. We need to find ways to recharge and rest. And this is a great idea. And it really helps us try to optimize, man. So thanks for being here. Thanks for sharing. Any final words, right? Other than get out there and figure out ways how to do this. Thanks, Aaron, for having me. And then, yeah, the good idea fairy is always calling me up with magic potions and magic beans and stuff that we should put at the station. So, I mean, not all of it's going to be practical or doable, but whatever you can throw at me, I'll pitch at our budget meetings and see what happens. So I appreciate it, man. Thanks. It's a brilliant idea. And hopefully those that are listening, you know, again, we want to hear what you think of it and maybe how you've utilized it. Because just like everything on the program, we're here to help you improve. We're helping you to get a little bit better. So with that, I'm going to challenge you to get out there and learn something, do something, and then share something to make you and those around you better every shift. Thanks for being here, Chief. Thanks for listening, everybody.