Physical fitness profile among fire fighter in Malaysia / Siti Fatimah Katini

Fire fighting widely known as the most mentally and physically strenuous and hazardous physical civil occupations which require high physiological demand due to few fire suppression tasks. Therefore, high physical fitness needs to maintain for fire fighter in order to complete the task and avoid injury while they are on duty. Thus, the objective of this study is to describe and to compare the physical fitness profile among fire fighter in Malaysia. There were 25 subject aged 33.64 ± 10.05 years old participated in this study, which Kuala Lumpur and Malacca. Health related fitness component were tested in this study; body composition, cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance and flexibility. Descriptive statistic was used to describe physical fitness profile and Independent sample T-Test analysis to compare mean differences of fitness level in both locations. Based on the results, subjects achieve a good fitness level of flexibility with 36 % achieve excellent ranks and very poor results is on body composition where 48 % subject achieve overweight for BMI assessment and 60 % subject achieve obese ranks in fat percentage assessment. For the comparison, there is no significance difference (p>0.05) for the entire test of physical fitness between the fire fighter in Kuala Lumpur and Melaka. Thus, since most of the fire fighter in this study is lower in fitness level, suitable fitness program should conduct by fire station to improve their current fitness and meet the demand of the job.