Keeping Crews Safe in the Heat

Dylon Koch | Working Athlete

Mark Paulsen | Working Athlete

Dr. Kevin Rindal | Vimocity

Hello, and thank you so much for joining today's live event. We're talking about keeping crews safe in the heat and really, providing you with some actionable resources that you can bring to your teams. You know, working in the trades is challenging enough as it is just from a physical standpoint. And when you add heat on top of that, it only increases the challenges. And so, today what we're gonna be doing is talking about, those things that you can put in place from not just a policy, but a strategy standpoint to make sure that your crews are ready, especially as we come into the hottest part of the year.

My name is Dr. Kevin Rindal. I am the co-founder of Vimocity. I have over a decade- years worth of experience working with elite professional athletes as part of the US Olympic swim team's, sports medicine staff. And I can definitely tell you that heat, hydration, and all those different, tools to optimize performance were absolutely critical. And so today, we're really fortunate to also have two incredible experts in this space, Coach P, Mark Paulson from Working Athlete, and Dylon Koch. We're so excited to hear from them their perspective on how you can optimize your teams as we, enter the the heat season for for this year. So, Coach P, I'm gonna turn it over to you just for additional information on your background, and then we'll go over to Dylon.

Perfect. Thanks for having us on, Kevin. I my background is very similar to yours. I was a director of athletic performance at, multiple schools around the country. So I worked with college professional athletes for the last thirty five years, and my job was simply to help them get bigger, faster, stronger, more flexible, speed development, anything necessary, to be successful and to reach their potential. And so a lot of fun, a lot of challenges because I was generally working with eighteen to twenty three year olds. And in order to do that, you've gotta make things crystal clear.

I made the jump here now into Working Athlete in such a way in the last few years because working athletes, in my estimation, have it more difficult than athletes that are younger simply because they, are not that age and that eighteen to twenty two. You can you can be up to sixty years old working on power line. They they don't have access to the best nutrition like athletes do. They don't get the rest. So on and on and on. So I have a complete and incredible appreciation for anybody who is a working athlete, and that's really what we're all about as a company.

Great. Thank you so much for that intro, and we're so excited to hear from you and your perspective. Dylon, I'm gonna pass it over to you for a quick intro as well.

Yeah. Thanks, Kevin. So I'll keep it short and sweet, really. I came from the athletic background.  I had continued education in sport and fitness administration. And then post college, you know, I did some, athletic training for for professional collegiate athletes, got into some corporate wellness roles, and quickly came over to this space. Been doing this for seven years, as one of our, national account trainers and, been working alongside and supporting blue collar workers and improving their quality of life. At the end of the day, we're all human.

We want people to be able to enjoy their time in their trade, but outside of the trade. And, we believe that our history in strength and conditioning and performance and nutrition completely relates to, safety, performance, and hazard recognition in this space. So we're excited to jump into this conversation with you.

Yeah. Thanks so much, Dylon. And that's exactly where this whole series of conversation is is going. It's it's really laddering up to thinking about workforce readiness. You know, in athletics, we always talk about sports readiness and so that an athlete is focused on their physical, mental, and athletic-specific, preparation so that they can perform at the highest level. And when it comes to sports performance, obviously, hydration plays a huge role in that.

In preparation for this call, we were talking about how there's been studies that have shown that if you're one percent dehydrated, so that think about it from, like, a two hundred pound, individual's perspective. That's thirty two ounces of water. You can sweat thirty two ounces pretty quick in certain environments with the type of clothing and gear that you may have on. That's one percent dehydration will start to impact your cognitive, function, which makes you less able to identify hazards.

If you're two percent dehydrated, it exponentially increases your risk for a sprain and strain because the tissues, are impacted. And so we're excited to dive even deeper into some of those aspects of of this. And so to kick us off, can you walk us through, I mean, you're constantly interacting with, some of the top companies out there across the country. You're hearing from safety professionals in terms of, how they're, experiencing challenges related to heat safety.

But what do you see as the biggest risks right now as it relates to heat safety and dehydration in, in the trades?

Yeah. It's a great question. It's a challenging question.

And the reality of it is is the work doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon. And, the the length of hours, the mental strain, the physical strain is is just getting compounded. And, it's one of those things where we have to be able to adapt, in safety and in performance and understand that, you know, things aren't like they were twenty years ago. I mean, their technologies aren't the same.

Processes aren't the same. Risks aren't even the same. So how can we understand that? And as it relates to to heat illness mitigation, you know, when when working with some of our our our our clients specifically, we work alongside the safety team, and it's I'm not I'm really not worried about the low hanging fruit of how many heat related illnesses you had last year because most of the time, it's usually just, like, one, two, maybe. You know?

But how many incidents are occurring due to cognitive decline? How many incidents are occurring because of slower extremities or mineral deficiencies or, you know, fluid imbalance or electrolyte imbalance that's causing, you know, your body to to respond physiologically that's extremely challenging.

And in a very, very high risk, environment where serious injuries and fatalities are are knocking at your door every second of every day, we need to be hyper alert and hyper aware at those early stages of heat illness that are causing increased risk of all incidents. In my opinion, Kevin, I think that's the biggest problem in understanding this this idea of heat illness. It's really not how many heat cases you had, how many of these other ones are being impacted by by these issues as well.

Yeah. Thanks so much for that perspective. Coach P, love to turn it over to you. What are some of the other, things that you see as the top of mind things for for companies out there?

Well, you know, the subject of hydration on the surface doesn't appear to be all that complicated. I mean, really. Drink some water or drink electrolyte, and and that's really the way it's been presented, and I think that's a mistake, only because we need to give them some visuals.

Let me give you a case. When when I was younger, and maybe you remember this commercial that showed, here's the brain and here's your brain on drugs. Remember you have the pan with the egg in it, and they turn up the heat? Well, that visual sticks with you. And what we've tried to do is make this so that it's understandable. And in doing so, we've we've used the analogy of, an engine in a car.

Your body is a metabolic engine, not terribly unlike the engine in a car. And what happens is in a car, you all know this, you gotta put oil in it and you use it and the oil gets dirty. You get shavings from the machinery. All these things happen, and and then you gotta go in and you gotta get it topped off. And it loses its viscosity and it gets gunky and it it's hard on your engine.

Well, your body's the same way. Your blood is eighty five percent water. When you perspire, have respiration, urination, all these things, that the cell at the at the level of the blood gets diminished and it gets challenge. So we really try to make that correlation between keeping your your blood viscous just like you do your engine. How do you do that? You have to top it off. You have to do the same thing.

You gotta keep water in the tank, and you have to try to get yourself in a situation where we call it sludge blood. And I actually was given that term by a doctor. He said, you know, most heart attacks happen in the morning. Why? Because over the night, you lose a lot of fluid and the blood gets thicker. And when the blood gets thicker as it does in the workplace, your heart gets challenged. Now your heart's gotta pump that thick blood through your capillaries, your arteries and veins, and it's it's making your heart work harder. So, I think it's a good visual for the end user, the worker out there, to understand.

Your goal is to, yes, consume fluids and electrolytes, but I want them to know why because of all the negative consequences of dehydrated blood. So, you don't want the heart to overwork. And the other thing is, thick blood also lifts the amount of oxygen to your brain. If it's not gonna get the blood's not gonna get there, you're not gonna get the oxygen. Your energy system functions at seventy percent, requires oxygen. So it's not only fluid, it's oxygen that's the driving force behind heat related incidences.

And if people keep that in mind, I think they take it more seriously, and that's part of what we have to do. We have to make them understand. I'm unfortunately, as a coach, have been in some tragic situations due to dehydration. I won't go into them, but I wish I could go back and reduce some of the protocols that we had in the athletic world because they they weren't very good back in the day. And so that's where we're in the day. I hope that analogy made sense, Kevin.

Yeah. And I've heard both of you speak several times, and that's why we're having this conversation today because, you know, so often we give people, you know, a chart, maybe a couple pictures. We don't really go deep into the why, and so I think you just even sharing that example in such a great, analogy of the bigger picture why. And I think everybody, when they hear that, they can start to think about, okay.

Now I understand why being properly hydrated is so important. But along those same lines, oftentimes, we we kinda stop there and people think, oh, well, I drink, you know, tons of liquids every day. But as we all know, not all liquids are are equal, and it may be, you know, three Monster Energy drinks after three cups of coffee, and then, you know, we're pounding water. And can you just maybe elaborate a little bit more on how not all, liquids are created equal and the importance of having electrolytes and minerals as part of, the equation when it comes to being ready for for work, being ready for that physical exertion?

You got me. You know, the the the science of Gatorade, you had mentioned that earlier, came out in about nineteen sixty five.

And interesting to note that Pedialyte came out with their formula within a few months, which tells me will tell you that the science of hydration really birthed in a sixty five. And what the research said in a nutshell was that by adding some salts in the form of sodium, potassium, and including that in a mixture with some flavorings that the the individuals would consume it a lot more readily, and it would stop cramping. And what cramping is, muscular cramping, going back to the engine analogy, it's simply your spark plugs aren't working anymore.

The connectivity between the muscle tissue is not there because the the neuromuscular system is being compromised. So by incorporating those electrolytes, and that was the phrase that came out because of that science, electrolytes. It didn't really exist before that. That created this whole monster industry. And the other reason this is what I want them to know, Kevin, that there's a condition that's, improved upon. It's called active transport.

There's a big word called osmolarity and osmolality, but when you put those fluids in your stomach, it gets pulled into the small intestine faster. So from a fast gastric emptying is the fancy phrase, water gets pulled into your system faster if you have an electrolyte solution in it. And, again, that's what started the craze and what started Pedialyte.

So any company, out there is gonna have those those, formulations fairly consistent.
Now some are gonna have high sugar, which we do not believe in, and some have some other additives that we don't believe in. But the bottom line is you've gotta get the fluid to absorb into the system faster. So water is the foundation of everything. Let me be clear about that. Eighty percent of what you drink during the day is going to be simply water.

But a couple servings a day of electrolytes and then having your lunch, breakfast, those have sodium potassium in them, but you've got to keep your electrical system up to snuff. Because when it falls apart, water alone is not going to help you. You you need the electrolytes. I hope I hope that is understandable.

That's a great explanation. Dylon, is there anything else that you'd like to add along those lines, especially maybe even focusing on okay. Let's make this really practical for safety and operational leaders out there in terms of how they communicate some of these concepts, to their team. So if you could maybe expand on that. And then, Dylon, I'm also thinking about, you know, the water that you have today is really impacted by the hydration levels even the day before. So if you could maybe expand on both of those two topics, I think that would be great.

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, the terminology hydration starts at home. As as cliche as it is, it is so true. I mean, pre, intra, and post hydration is, honestly, in our opinion, the three most critical factors to mitigate heat illness, just because, you know, we need to understand too that it's it's not just about hydration, and mineral deficiencies when it comes to heat stress. I mean, I wanna make sure that we're still focusing on the macro problem of heat illness mitigation. Hydration is just a piece of that.

I know we're focusing a lot of our attention on the hydration process, but, I mean, there are many other, factors that relate to this. And that's, you know, the PPE that you're wearing, the your age, your gender. Have you had a previous heat related illness incident before? Right? All of these things are are part of this larger concept and macro problem, and we believe that, that it's been too reactive, to be quite honest. The this this process has been too reactive. Like you mentioned, it's usually throwing up a urine chart and, you know, that's about it.

Now it's and and, you know, how can we build in margin? How how can we increase the capacity or or workload of our workforce to make sure that, you know, when things happen, it's not somebody falling out, you know, on a serious injury or fatality because you're in this at least in the utility space specifically, you're working around high energy. You're working at heights. You're working around heavy machinery.

Things that can take you out or somebody else out very, very fast. We have to be sharp. You have to be cut in mentally and physically because things can go south very fast. And all of those things obviously revolve around the makeup of our body, which is mostly water.

We're essentially eighty percent water, all of us. So that's why we focus on, obviously, hydration. But there are other things to build in margin. Right? There's internal factors and there's external factors.

And, you know, we can talk for hours and hours about that. But, you know, as it relates to the the issue of hydration and, the problem of heat illness mitigation, obviously, your hydration level plays the largest part, but there are other key factors that we need to make sure that we address too.

Great. Thank you. Well, let's kinda dive into some practical aspects. So if someone is proactively putting in, like, a heat safety and hydration plan in place that's completely proactive, what are some, like, simple recommendations in terms of, like, how a crew can not only think about, at the start of the day, having a plan in place, but also having checks throughout the day as temperatures may rise and conditions change? Like, what are some, some practical recommendations that you found helpful?

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that we all need to understand is that the your Monday your or your morning tail board or your your toolbox talks or your check-in, or JSA, though I know their name bunch of different things these days. But at the end of the day, when you check-in at the beginning of the day and you look at the risks in your environment, in the situation that you're gonna be performing work, that changes throughout the day.

I mean, it it's especially around, you know, the exposure to heat. Obviously, we all know that the the heat increases throughout the day and then decreases at the end of the day or, you know, maybe the humidity is more in the morning than it is at the peak of the day. You know, all these different factors, you know, we need to pay attention to. And, you know, there's tools and widgets out there that are gonna tell you all this amazing analytics and data.

But at the end of the day, all they're gonna do is tell you that we need to hydrate more and have a better plan in place. Because, no matter what tool it is, you know, eighty five percent of Americans are chronically dehydrated.

We that's a massive problem when our body is mostly water. You know, our brain's mostly water. Our organs are mostly water. So the most practical thing in in, quite frankly, in our opinion, is understanding that the situation in workplace changes all the time.

And we need to understand that having a culture and a team that is capable and able to speak up and say, hey. You know what? I'm I'm not there mentally right now. I'm not really fit for duty at the moment.

I need to make sure that I maybe let's take fifteen minutes because if we get up in the bucket right now and perform this task, we're not gonna be performing it at the capacity we should be, right, mentally or physically. And, you know, just having a a a culture established where it's okay to address these things, but also understanding that the emergency action, the plan that you have in place, and the care that you provide can mean, saving someone's life or not. I mean, we've we've heard it too often over the last few years where, honestly, protocols weren't followed properly, and it led to somebody, being seriously injured as it relates to heat illness.

So understanding how to respond and educating and training, you have to train, train, train from the field all the way up to the executive level. So I I in my opinion, that's the best way for you to make it, change quickly.

Coach P, anything that you'd like to add just in terms of the the proactive nature of, steps that safety leaders, operational leaders can take to to prevent these injuries from occurring or a heat related illness from developing?

I think you might be muted, Coach P .

Can you hear me now?

Yeah. We can. We gotcha.

I don't know what that is. Sorry.

The only thing I would add to that is is, I'm gonna leave you a little bit being proactive and I can wave my magic wand, and I'm responsible for every worker underneath me like you safety people are, is to, wake up in the morning and walk right to your vanity before you brush your teeth or right after and drink sixteen to twenty four ounces of water. That is almost like an insurance policy because what happens is you get started on the day. You again, you're dehydrated from the jump, and you and then you're always chasing hydration, and you can't catch up to it as opposed to loading it up in the morning and understanding that this this is gonna get me home tonight.

So I look at safety people no different than my profession. We're coaches. And sometimes you gotta be a tough coach. You gotta be a hard coach, and you gotta be on your guys. When they show up in the morning, did you have water when you got up this morning? Have you? If not, go over there right now and drink sixteen ounces. So, I don't wanna get too much on my pedestal, but if we can get the day started, the odds of us having an issue drop off a cliff.

Great suggestion. I remember listening to a podcast, and you're talking about that. That's become a a practice that I do every single day. And, you know, that two to three pounds lighter that you wake up every morning, it's not just something that's magical.

I mean, we're breathing. We're losing water through respiration, digestive process, all those things. And so it's a real deal, and and that's that's a huge, step. So I think the next step would just be to talk about the fact that, you know what, people are gonna respond differently in heat for various reasons.

And so what are some early warning signs that, foreman, safety leaders, even frontline workers can maybe look for in their, their coworkers so that they can pay attention to those early warning signs and then take the appropriate action. So we'd love to hear a little bit more about signs that they could look for and then what would be those next steps if if we see somebody in the early stages of potentially experiencing heat related stress.

Yeah. You know, great question. And that's one of the things that, in our opinion, that there's a lot of lack of information out there on how to respond.

And as I mentioned previously, that's extremely important when during this whole process. So, you know, some of the basic signs and I I consider this, you know, the roll out roll in the box TV, throw in the VCR tape for rest water shade, and they show you this, you know, signs and symptoms series about heat illness. So most of us know these. Right?

The heat rash, the slurring of the words, the you know, maybe you're dragging your feet, or somebody it it may be confused or saying things they don't typically say, right, or seems fatigued over fatigue. Right? Those are all those things where, as coach mentioned, you know, physiologically, our body's going through something that, you know, it's not used to going through. And, we're getting less oxygen to the brain, less oxygen, or blood to the extremities, and we're starting to drag our feet.

We're starting to make silly decisions.

And that's when this gets can get a little squirrely in this trade. So we need to make sure that we, at that time, interject. And and, being your brother's keeper in this space, like, you know, it's you really do have to speak up and say, hey. Woah.

No. We're not performing this right now. We're taking ten minutes to make sure we're right. Or if it's, you know, a foreman stepping in and that's part of establishing a culture where it's okay to you know, we we're in a high production space here, but it is okay to take ten, fifteen minutes to make sure that somebody doesn't get seriously injured. And that can be very difficult to do. That that's that's part of a a culture shift that has to be established from the top down.

Making things extremely consumable to the field. If like coach said, if they don't know why and they don't understand why, then they're not gonna speak up. They're not gonna care about the emergency action plan. They need to know why this is important. And, you know, it it's okay to it's okay to speak up with that aspect culture to be able to do that. So, we can talk in-depth and details about emergency action care for every stage. But in our opinion, you can visibly and, audibly tell when somebody is going through this early, and it it takes the culture to speak up and and stop it and take a break and, reassess.

Thanks, Dylon. Coach P, anything to add there?

Well, I think one of the common misconceptions with this issue is that, the guy out in the field, he thinks he's gonna feel it coming. I'll have plenty of time to address this if I feel bad. Well, that's not the case. When it hits you, it hits you hard. And so you have to know that you're not any different. And, pay attention to your coworkers. If they're slurring their words, like Dylon said, they're starting to drag their feet. They do anything out of the ordinary.

That's problematic. And I have found we have found that proximity to water and fluids is the central problem. Because often you're at a site and the truck with the water is four hundred yards away, and you say to yourself, okay. I'm gonna take I might I'll be done in fifteen minutes. I'll get it later. And so I think you need to establish some kind of routine and parameters that says, listen. I will get water in if this takes me another ten, fifteen minutes. And I know that's hard to digest when you're trying to get off and get home and go to work.

But that's when things happen, when you're trying to push the edge. And like Dylon said, you lose your margin. So I just wanna really bring emphasis to the fact that keep your water sources as close to you. If I had my way, everybody would have a little bit of a a a pack on with water in it all the time, but that's just me. But keep water close to you.

Well, thank you so much. This has been such a great conversation.

We typically like to try to dial these presentations and, conversations, to about thirty minutes, so it really makes it easy for people toto fit  this into their their day. We are gonna have some follow-up resources here that are available.

We also have the email addresses for Coach P and Dylon and myself. Here, please do not hesitate to reach out if you have any questions. I mean, this is something we really care about the workforce. We wanna make sure that they're ready to perform and that they they stay safe and healthy.

So, we're advocates for this industry just to make sure that, they have the right tools and are, are prepared. So definitely don't hesitate to reach out. We also have, some additional resources that we're gonna be, that are gonna be available. So if you scan the QR code, enter your information, it'll send you to a landing page that has, some very value added resources.

And so, that will be available to you. And then also coming up next month, we're gonna be, talking about mental health in the trades, and we have, special guests, Brady Hanson, long time, just incredibly experienced member of the the utility trade. And so we're, really looking forward to hearing his perspective on how mental, health, really impacts, the quality of life of people and the safety and real practical tips for how you can help your crews, advance that. So thank you so much, coach Pete.

Thank you so much, Dylon, for having this conversation. We're we're super grateful, and we look forward to seeing you all again, next month. Thanks so much.