Relationship between Firefighter Physical Fitness and Special Ability Performance: Predictive Research Based on Machine Learning Algorithms

Abstract

Firefighters require a high level of physical fitness to meet the demands of their job. The correlations and contributions of individual physical health parameters to the tasks of firefighting would enable firefighters to focus on the effects of specific physical conditions during their physical training programs. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to identify the relationships between various physical health parameters (weight, maximum oxygen uptake, body fat percentage, upper body muscular power and lower body muscular power) and performance on simulated firefighting ability tasks, which included a set of seven tasks (rope climb, run 200 m round trip with load, 60 m carrying a ladder, climb stairs with load, evacuation of 400 m with supplies, run 5 km with an air respirator, run 100 m with the water hose). Through use of a partial least-squares regression (PLSR) algorithm to analyze the linear correlation, we revealed the change in various training performances of specific ability tests with physical fitness parameters. The present study demonstrated significant relationships among physical health parameters and performance on simulated firefighting ability tasks, which also represent that those parameters contributed significantly to the model’s predictive power and were suitable predictors of the simulated firefighting tasks score.

Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors, Musculoskeletal Health, Physical Fitness, and Occupational Performance in Firefighters: A Narrative Review

“…In addition, a high resting heart rate as correlated with poorer occupational performance (r � 0.36, p < 0.01). ese results were supported by two studies which reported that high BF% was associated with poor performance in the physical ability tests [63], and that aging and fat mass were significant predictors of work inefficiency in firefighters [64].…”

“…Poor body composition was significantly related to slower performance time on the simulation. Similarly, Xu et al [ 63 ] reported that poor body composition (higher BF%) was associated with poor performance on the work ability test in 20 full-time Chinese firefighters. Superior cardiorespiratory fitness, and upper and lower body muscular power, was inversely related to the completion times in the work ability test.…”

“…However, more research is needed on the extent to which the location and severity of injuries negatively affected occupational performance, especially in firefighter specific tasks. Cardiorespiratory fitness was significantly related to all components of occupational task performance in firefighters [26,63,72,73,77,84,101]. In addition, upper body muscular strength and endurance were significant predictors of occupational performance [26,72,73].…”

“…Firefighters routinely have to perform activities that are exhaustive on the upper body, such as door breaches, hose carries, hose drags, victim drags, and victim carries [74,76,102]. In addition, firefighting simulation tasks require predominantly upper body strength and endurance [63,70,74,76,77].…”

Effects of Fatigue Running on Joint Mechanics in Female Runners: A Prediction Study Based on a Partial Least Squares Algorithm

“…The original data matrix X, Y will be normalized to facilitate the expression of the corresponding data by the formula in the subsequent operation while reducing the error between data volumes, and the corresponding matrix will be obtained after processing. The E NK is the corresponding matrix for X NK and F NJ is the corresponding matrix for Y NJ for repeated iterative operations (Xu et al, 2020).…”