Abstract
Fire fighting is a dangerous occupation that is associated with a large amount of physical fitness, education, nutrition and overall wellness. Volunteer fire fighters participate in fire occupation at less frequent intervals and require more physical activity to be able to perform fire related tasks such as hose lays, ladder placement, patient rescue, efficiently. Physical activity plays a vital role in achieving the fitness required to perform fire related tasks and using behavioral modification is used promote increased time being physically active. This was an experimental single subject research design that used exercise logs, implementation worksheets to log activity and inactivity minutes over the course of a 12 week period of time. Subjects were screened for health risks using the ACSM physical activity readiness questionnaire. Information recorded on exercise logs and implementation intention worksheets were used in order to establish how much time the subjects were spending being active or inactive. Activity was classified using the metabolic equivalent of task (MET) and any exercise that was 3.5-10 MET was classified as appropriate exercise that could be recorded. To help classify exercise further, a compendium of exercise containing MET examples was given to both of the study participants. There were two volunteer fire fighter subjects in the study and both completed the 12 week experimental period. The major finding of this study was that using preintentional motivation, a behavioral modification technique; one could increase the amount of activity and reduce the amount of inactivity that a volunteer fire fighter participated in over the course of experimentation. There were two types of preintentional movtivation used in this study. Treatment B required the usage of implementation intention worksheets in conjunction with an exercise log to keep track of minutes being active or inactive. Treatment C required the usage of implementation intention worksheets, exercise logs and meeting with an exercise professional two times during that experimental phase. Treatment B showed to be more effective when increasing activity minutes and reducing inactivity minutes. With more subjects to test the program and usage of physiological markers such as body fat analysis or weight loss/gain or VO2max testing to assess true physiological gain, more validity to results may more clearly be identified.